Developer Larian Studios has gone to some absurd lengths to make sure that your murder sprees won't totally break Baldur's Gate 3, including a series of fully voiced NPCs almost nobody will ever meet.
The first act of Baldur's Gate 3 asks you to get involved with a conflict between a horde of goblin raiders and a group of Tiefling refugees making camp in a druid enclave. If you want to help the Tieflings, you're asked to go kill the leaders of the goblins. Kill the bosses, and the next stage of the quest will send you to talk to the Tiefling leader Zevlor, who'll organize a party to celebrate the defeat of the goblins.
But what if you choose to murder Zevlor and help the Tieflings anyway? YouTuber Proxy Gate Tactician (as noted by PC Gamer) tested exactly that in a recent video. If Zevlor's dead, another Tiefling called Asharak will take his place, with unique dialog acknowledging the previous leader's passing. If you've also murdered Asharak, he'll be replaced by Cerys - a character who can't be dead because you don't normally meet her until Act 2.
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Now, let's suppose you do something truly wacky, like choosing to help the Tieflings against the goblins while also murdering the entire Tiefling camp except for Zevlor. In this extremely rare case, you can still talk to Zevlor and activate the party sequence, and you'll meet a whole bunch of new Tieflings with their own totally unique conversations, which you'd never otherwise see.
The thing that impresses me most, however, is a character you definitely haven't met called Gerson the Bent. He only shows up if you take out the goblin leaders while you still have a single party member waiting back at the Tiefling camp, seemingly as the method for the devs to bring in a loading screen to cover all the Tieflings heading for greener pastures. Yes, Larian wrote dialog and cast an actor just to make this one extremely obscure transition a little bit smoother.
Larian boss Swen Vincke has previously said that the secret to a good D&D RPG is "investing in things that maybe 0.001% of the audience will see," and it seems like it's only now that we're starting to truly see the extent of those obscure details. Heck, Astarion actor Neil Newbon has been teasing that players still haven't found a hidden 2-hour section of the game. Who knows what else players will stumble upon next?
Players are certainly testing the RPG's limits, like the terrible hero who got an apocalyptically bad secret ending.
