Updated: 9/21/2023, 2:40 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a Larian representative said Newbon’s comments were in reference to a quest line at the Roysmorn Monastery that hadn’t been found at the time of the autograph stream the clip originates from. The quest nets you a powerful weapon in the Blood of Lathander, and can result in you blowing up Astarion and other party members. That’s not behavior becoming of a good leader, but at least reactions like Astarion’s (once you’ve revived them) are extremely funny.

So, while that’s one mystery solved, the thought that there might still be more secrets to uncover is still exciting.

Larian’s full statement reads as follows:

Neil’s comments were from a signing he did closer to the launch of the game, and he was being secretive in order to avoid spoilers. Players have since found the quest and the lines of dialogue he was talking about. Spoilers ahead!

There’s a quest off the beaten path at the Rosymorn Monastery that rewards you with a nice mace called the Blood of Lathander. If you’re not careful or you try to steal the mace, you may activate a terrifying solar weapon.

If you (intentionally or unintentionally) kill Astarion with this solar weapon and then revive him once you’re back at camp, he… will have some choice words for you. Here’s a clip of Astarion’s reaction:

The original story follows below.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a huge game, full of secrets big and small. But according to the voice actor behind the sassy, roguish vampire Astarion, there’s a secret section somewhere in Larian Studios’ RPG that no one’s found yet. I’m now tempted to boot up my save and start pushing against walls until something gives way.

Neil Newbon—who voices Astarion and has been streaming the game on his personal Twitch channel—spoke about a hidden two-hour section of the game no one has found yet (thanks GamesRadar). This was during an autograph signing stream on August 31, and from the looks of the comment section, fans still haven’t found it.

“There’s even something I know about that you can’t get to unless you do which I don’t think anybody’s gonna work out,” Newbon said on the stream. “I was told this in confidence, and I think I’m one of the few people that knows about it. Quite fucking crazy. But at some point, somebody will find it.”

Newbon declined to talk any specifics about what this mysterious two-hour chunk entails. He wouldn’t even say if it involved Astarion, but given that he had to be told about it, rather than it coming up in his own recording sessions, there’s reason to believe it’s not directly tied to his character. We’ve reached out to Larian Studios and Newbon to see if this two-hour section has been discovered, and will update the story if we hear back.

On its surface, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a tactical, choice-driven RPG, but it manages to hide a lot of reactive outcomes and secrets in its systems. You have so many spells and other tools at your disposal that it’s possible to approach situations in multiple ways, and the game puts in a lot of effort to accommodate even the most off-the-wall solutions. But that reactivity means there are entire scenes you can miss just by approaching a situation one particular way. So it makes sense that sections of the game might be near impossible to stumble upon naturally.

Even with a month of playtime, Baldur’s Gate 3 fans are still discovering new hidden secrets all the time. PlayStation 5 players have had even less time to find new stuff, launching about a month later than on PC. While the console version is a little rougher around the edges, it’s definitely a comparable experience to PC, as long as you’re not married to using a mouse and keyboard.

Baldur’s Gate 3 continues to evolve. The hit fantasy RPG received its much-anticipated and sprawling Patch 3 update today, which brings Mac support, a Magic Mirror feature to redesign your player character’s appearance, and an overwhelming number of bug fixes and tweaks.

Larian Studios’ patch notes are always a pleasure to read, and the ones for Patch 3 are no exception. They also include spoilers though, so new players beware. The development team is still promising new features and epilogue scenes in the future, but in the meantime there’s plenty to chew on for both PC and PlayStation 5 players.

On Sony’s console, for example, Baldur’s Gate 3 now matches colors more closely between the spells you’re using onscreen and how the PS5 controller lights up in your hand. Neat! More importantly, Larian says it’s improved optimization and performance, including when it comes to framerate. It’s still aiming to hit a solid 60fps in performance mode, but 30fps should be more consistent across every area in the game in quality mode.

One noteable change in the gameplay itself revolves around NPC reactions. One change reads, “NPCs will no longer run away from anything but the [REDACTED] to improve interactivity and flow.” Druids and Necromancers on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit are rejoicing, since it means they can now summon their minions without frightening away everyone in town.

Other modifications are much more escoteric. “Fixed Shadowheart looking like she’s either in pain or about to sneeze in the background of a dialogue with Thulla,” reads another part of the patch notes. In case you’re wondering what the hell that refers to, fans quickly found an exact screenshot of the expression.

Some changes weren’t even part of player feedback. “Nobody asked for this, but we made the ceremorphosis scene on the nautiloid more horrifying,” reads one note. “These patch notes are massive, they fix so much, add so much, and even then add shit like this, just cause,” a fan wrote in the comments on Reddit. “Studio is incredible.”

Here’s the full list of Patch 3 changes in Baldur’s Gate 3 if you’ve got the time to read a small novella:

HIGHLIGHTS

• Baldur’s Gate 3 is now fully supported on Mac!
• A Magic Mirror that lets you change your appearance is now available at camp!

Combat

• Cazador now cannot turn into or remain in his Mist Form if in magical sunlight, such as that created by the Daylight spell.
• Fixed Ansur’s Stormheart Nova blasting right through the ice shields you can hide behind.
• Grym suddenly got eerily smart and was avoiding the Crucible in the Adamantine Forge. With a nervous laugh, we dumbed him back down a little.
• Fixed Level 4 or higher Divine Smite allowing you to add Divine Smite as a reaction, allowing for two Divine Smites in 1 attack.
• Fixed the Divine Smite damage increasing over the cap of 5d8.
• Made several improvements to the Poltergeist enemy: they are now revealed on being attacked or hit with Radiant Spirit Guardians; they will not turn Invisible again if they are still in a character’s See Invisibility aura; in Balanced and Explorer Mode, they have disadvantage on Dexterity Saving Throws when Invisible; the range of their attacks has been reduced; and they won’t try to keep distance from the player in combat so that they are easier to find.
• Fixed the Sneak Attack damage bonus not increasing to 6d6 at Level 11.
• Fixed a case where multiple Smokepowder Arrows could be used for free while the Extra Attack feature was active.

PS5

• The colours on the PS5 controller will now match elemental damage types more closely.

Performance

• Improved performance in the Lower City. More to come!

Art

• Made dye colours more intense and more visible on some armours. This will only affect newly dyed items.
• Dragonborn characters can now select any of the barbarian piercings.
• Fixed Shadowheart going blonde when equipping a hat.
• Improved the reflection in the Spectator’s eye in the Underdark.
• Fixed face tattoos disappearing when zooming out.

Flow and Scripting

• Fixed a bug where companions temporarily leaving the party (e.g. being sent to prison) would forget their partnership history and act unusually cold towards you.
• Fixed a bug letting you trade with Cazador while he begs for mercy.
• Improved the Astarion romance flow if you agreed to spend a night with him before going to camp by disabling some less important camp moments.
• Fixed some dialogue options only showing up once when talking to Withers.
• Fixed a blocker where if you knock Orin’s Slayer form into the chasm, you can’t get her Netherstone.
• Fixed an issue causing Dammon to enter combat and die at Last Light, preventing Karlach’s story from progressing.
• Added a journal step for when the tieflings leave the Emerald Grove. The Forging of the Heart quest will also close if Dammon is no longer available in the region.
• Fixed the game thinking you’re dating Gale instead of Karlach in one of the dialogues with Karlach.
• You now need higher approval for Shadowheart to confess her Shar worship to you.
• Myshka the cat will now follow you around if told to, even if you don’t have Speak with Animals.
• Halsin, Jaheira, and Minthara will no longer be able to undergo Volo’s icepick lobotomy. It’s just not their kind of pastime.
• Fixed not being able to cut Vanra out of the hag by interacting with her Knocked Out body if all of her mushrooms are destroyed.
• Lae’zel will no longer tag along (whether dead or alive) after you slit her throat when she ambushes you at night.
• Fixed a bug allowing you to yoink the Orphic Hammer right out of the so-called Impervious Sphere in the House of Hope if someone else in your party is in an interactive dialogue with the sphere.
• Fixed a flow issue in Shadowheart’s endgame romance dialogue to make sure Karlach appears alone in Avernus if Shadowheart says she’ll meet her there at a later point in time.
• Fixed Karlach’s journal mistakenly saying you arrived in the Shadow-Cursed Lands when you arrive at the Rosymorn Monastery Trail.
• Wyll should now acknowledge Karlach approaching him for the first time more consistently.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Shadowheart swimming scene to not play for some players.
• The Narrator no longer thinks you’re a mind flayer when you’re not.
• Fixed companions talking about killing Gortash after meeting Orin even if the former is already dead.
• Fixed issues with Astarion discussing topics that are no longer relevant.
• Reworked the interaction between Nere and Minthara:The ‘Travel to Moonrise Towers’ quest no longer sends you to Minthara after saving Nere – he has a lyre of his own now. He gifts it to you if you saved him from the cave-in. This lyre can now be used to call for the drider through the Shadow-Cursed Lands, like Minthara’s lyre does. Both lyres have new descriptions.Nere no longer mentions Minthara in his Speak with Dead.You can ask Minthara for a safe passage to Moonrise if you’d heard about it. She will ask to raid the Emerald Grove first. If this happens, Nere can be asked about Minthara and then Minthara can be asked about Nere.The journals for ‘Travel to Moonrise Towers’ and ‘Follow the Convoy’ were updated accordingly.Saving Nere no longer creates a danger zone if the duergar was killed before clearing the cave-in.
• During your date with Karlach, Tender Henk will no longer walk away to reveal another Tender Henk standing behind him. Staring.

Gameplay

• The following spells will now correctly break the Sanctuary condition: Call Lightning, Evard’s Black Tentacles, Polymorph, Hunger of Hadar, Fear, Ice Storm, Flesh to Stone, Divine Intervention, Hypnotic Pattern, Slow, Stinking Cloud, Banishment, Glyph of Warding.
• Level Up will now queue all characters who can be levelled up so you don’t have to click on them individually.
• Fixed some corpses never showing the ‘(empty)‘ tag after you loot them.
• Fixed not being able to use some reactions while in disguise.
• Cazador’s staff, Woe, now correctly unlocks the Blight spell when equipped.
• Fixed several magic items and Volo’s Ersatz Eye losing their power after you are killed and revived.
• Fixed the Spell Sniper feat not working on attack spells.
• The Spell Sniper feat will now correctly reduce the Critical Hit threshold by 1.
• Fixed the Idol of Silvanus buff disappearing after Long Rest.
• NPCs will no longer run away from anything but the Dark Urge Slayer form to improve interactivity and flow.
• Mummies raised through Create Undead can now Jump to follow you around better.
• The Everburn Blade now correctly sets explosive surfaces and explosive objects alight when hit.
• The Misty Escape feat will no longer break concentration.
• Reading shop signs will no longer be considered a crime.
• The Cutting Words reaction is now set to Ask by default.
• Summoned zombies and skeletons will no longer be able to pick up loot and disappear with it when dismissed.
• The Azer summon’s Overheat ability is now available on its hotbar when summoned.
• The Nimblefinger Gloves now correctly apply their Dexterity bonus to gnomes, halflings, and dwarves.
• Fixed an Animate Dead exploit allowing you to summon 2 skeletons from the same corpse.
• Optimised how the game handles object selection on controller.
• Fixed Sovereign Spaw being able to resurrect hirelings with Animating Spores. We taught him to not use this on player characters anymore.

UI

• Your selected trade mode (trade or barter) is now saved to your player profile.
• Added an option to the Default Online Settings to let you automatically listen in when another party member enters a dialogue in multiplayer.
• Clarified whether something is a Resistance, a Vulnerability, or an Immunity in the Examine window.
• Added a notification for when another player in your party is trading.
• Fixed spells being interrupted by climbing, allowing you to attack twice after climbing down from a crate.
• Updated the Character Sheet on controller to place active Conditions above the list of Notable Features.

Level Design

• Fixed some small holes in Act I that weren’t letting tiny characters through them.

Writing

• Added a dialogue option to the first in-person dialogue with the Dream Visitor to avoid only having two antagonistic choices.
• Rewrote some spell and action descriptions that were too vague.

Audio

• Fixed Raphael’s boss fight music sometimes being incomplete or missing.
• Fixed some VO not playing in dialogues on PS5 split-screen.
• Fixed audio cutting out with 3D Audio enabled on PS5.
• Optimised audio in merged split-screen cinematics.

Cinematics

• Improved contact when petting Ketheric’s good girl, Squire.
• Added some lovely blood spurts when Volo carries out his expert operation.
• Fixed Wyll’s horns clipping into Karlach’s face during an Act II romance scene.
• Fixed missing music on the Wyll path of Karlach’s endgame scene in Avernus.
• Placed a nice purple picnic blanket in a romantic scene with Gale and fixed a camera spin if you choose to prefer to spend your time with him on a bed.
• Fixed Shadowheart looking like she’s either in pain or about to sneeze in the background of a dialogue with Thulla.
• Added some missing Boo squeaks.
• Reworked the intro of the scene when you approach the altar at the Temple of Bhaal and fixed some bugs.
• Updated cameras, facial expressions and head directions to better suit the tone in dialogue with Shadowheart.
• Fixed some pops and camera issues when you start dating Lae’zel, including Lae’zel’s body flying elsewhere and then back again mid-dialogue.
• Boo will now be framed in the shot as intended when you talk to Jaheira after recruiting Minsc.
• Fixed Scratch floating in the air while you pet him by the posthouse in Rivington.

CRASHES AND BLOCKERS

• Fixed a crash when listening in on conversations in multiplayer.
• Fixed a crash when loading a savegame made during an Active Roll in dialogue.
• Fixed a crash when previewing wall spells.
• Fixed a crash when walking away from a triggered trap.
• Fixed a crash when switching between controller and keyboard and mouse while

Lauded for its story, characters, and density of quality fantasy narrative, BioWare’s 2000 RPG Baldur’s Gate II is one of the most celebrated computer games of all time. An adaptation of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, it aspired to digitize the rich experience of playing at a table among friends, dice and character sheets in hand. But while D&D is often a wellspring of inspiration for deep narrative and rich characters, it turns out a certain Japanese RPG’s late ‘90s crew of misfit environmentalist rebels provided the necessary inspiration to take BG2’s characters to the next level.

In a recent interview, James Ohlen, BG2’s director of writing, said that Square’s Final Fantasy VII served as the inspiration for his game’s now-iconic characters. The experience, as he describes it, sounds rather intimidating, but it sparked his competitive nature.

Read More: Let’s Mosey: A Slow Translation of Final Fantasy VII

“I went and played Final Fantasy VII,” Ohlen told Rock Paper Shotgun, “and was like, ‘Oh my good god, these character’s make ours look like a bunch of cardboard cutouts.” Ohlen was encouraged to check out Square’s generation-defining PlayStation exclusive after hearing about it from a producer at Interplay and was immediately blown away by the depth of the characters.

To anyone who’s played the original FFVII, this is probably of no surprise. Despite a lackluster language translation here in the west and dialogue that amounted to little more than short sentences in tiny blue boxes, FFVII’s protagonists are a group of troubled people struggling under the weight of a complicated world history, forced to navigate delicate interpersonal relationships. It may be a story about super soldiers, magic orbs, and a dying planet, but FFVII’s characters often contend with relatable human emotions like regret, loss, and love.

Read More: Sony Deletes Mentions Of Troubled Star Wars: KotOR PS5 Remake, Hides Trailer [Update]

In the same interview, Ohlen recalled his “20,000 hours of dungeon mastering” as an essential foundation of his work in video games. He ran multiple gaming groups while working at a comic shop. “I didn’t really have much of a life outside of Dungeons & Dragons,” he told Rock Paper Shotgun.

The rest of the interview makes for a great read if you’re interested in the inner workings of some classic BioWare titles, which has some anecdotes about how Ohlen “actually totally, entirely ripped off The Empire Strikes Back” when writing the story for Knights of the Old Republic.

Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios’ king-size role-playing game, has tons of intricate lore by virtue of being based on Dungeons & Dragons. Nearly three months after its August 3 release date, players are still discovering hidden information about the game’s mechanics, romanceable characters, and storied fantasy races. Some of these secrets are simply nice to know, like the fact that you can use a waterfall as a shower. Actually, most of them are nice to know, including the fact that women in the Drow race are pretty much all gay, like one Reddit user discovered earlier in the week.

u/drowfucker (they know what they’re about) posted dialogue between the devilish Tiefling Karlach and Minthara, a Drow who is also one of BG3’s potential Companion options, while wondering if “all female drow are inherently lesbian.”

“What’s romance like in the Underdark, Minthara?” Karlach asks in the screenshot dialogue.

“In Menzoberranzan,” Minthara responds about her underground hometown, “romance is commonly a luxury enjoyed between women. Men are mostly present for propagation.”

Based only on this, we can interpret that BG3 Drow women are romantically more interested in women, but Minthara, importantly, continues to say that “here on the surface, gender does not define one’s role so strictly.” Larger Dungeons & Dragons lore doesn’t take a definitive stance on the matriarchal Drows’ sexual orientation, but it does establish a couple of freaky details.

For example, when a Drow woman is pregnant with multiple children, the babies eat at each other in the womb. As she experiences their struggle, the pregnant Drow will feel something in her body that is, apparently, better than an orgasm. Drow priestesses can also summon scorpion-handed Glabrezu demons as their interspecies fuck buddies. As a reminder, D&D goes back to the ‘70s, when boy nerds were more brazen about exoticizing women in their tabletop sessions and beyond.

BG3 expands on that history gracefully, allowing Minthara to be, yes, a physically powerful woman, but, more importantly, an interesting character. But until our real world even barely approaches something like gender parity, I’m okay with Larian preserving some of the Drows’ frosty matriarchy for fun.

“If you use [communication spell] Talk With Dead on a male Drow,” a top comment on u/drowfucker’s post says, “and ask what his occupation was, he just says ‘…male.’” Sometimes that’s all you need to be, beautiful.

Role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 lets players summon purple lightning and kiss parasitic Cthulhu emperors, but it won’t let them give out hugs. Fans of the Dungeons & Dragons game routinely lament this small injustice, wishing badly to comfort their favorite party members during the game’s sometimes devastating campaign. Developer Larian Studios has not yet addressed this chaste desire in any of its detailed BG3 patches, including the brand-new Patch #4 which went live November 2, but BG3 dataminers found evidence that hugs may eventually come to the game anyway.

“It seems we will get the hug option soon?” u/BusinessContent9507 posted with a screenshot of scripts for cinematics featuring the half-elf cleric Shadowheart.

“Finally. I thought I’d never get a hug out of you,” she appears to say when hugged or when a “Skip Hug” option was ignored.

If you’re Shadowheart’s partner, her dialogue options after receiving a hug seem to broaden. She might say:

• “I could get lost in those arms.”
• “Hard to imagine there was a time when I didn’t have you to hold me.”
• “You’ll have me addicted to these embraces, do you know that?”
• “One hug is never enough, is it?”

Then, it looks like Shadowheart might respond to hugs from anyone—a friend or a partner—by saying, “I hope there’s more where that came from,” “That hit the spot,” or “You could charge gold for hugs, you know. They’d be queuing over the horizon.”

Read More: Latest Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch Nerfs Sex Speedruns

Kotaku reached out to Larian for comment on hugs appearing as an action in BG3. There are currently several hugs featured in the game’s cutscenes, but the majority happen in romantic contexts, and Shadowheart’s dialogue seems to expand physical affection beyond this context.

Many BG3 hug enthusiasts have been demanding more opportunities for friendly touch, so, if dataminers are correct and hugs are in the air, people are going to lose their minds in a tub of super-sweet devotion.

“Let me hug my companions as a friend!” a Redditor with over two thousand upvotes enthused in response to the mined Shadowheart dialogue. “At least when they are in a deep pit of despair.”

But, even if BG3 mostly remains a romantic game, some hugs are better than none. “I don’t care how long it takes [for hugs to enter the game],” said another popular comment. “I already know the wait will be 100 percent worth it.”