It looks like Baldur’s Gate 3 might be getting a permadeath mode
Hold your party members tight
An achievement added to Baldur’s Gate 3’s GOG release has teased the possible addition of a new permadeath mode for the D&D RPG - meaning that if your whole party dies, your save will be permanently wiped. In a game where play time counts can end up in the hundreds of hours, that’s a fairly terrifying prospect.
The apparent reveal comes via Reddit user Scornz, who spotted that a new legendary achievement called Foehammer had popped up in the GOG version of Baldur’s Gate 3. (Scornz seemingly noticed this because they previously had 100% of achievements in the game, which had then been knocked down by the addition of the new achievement - an impressive accomplishment in itself!)
Foehammer’s description states that the player must “complete the game in Honour mode” to unlock the achievement. If it’s to be taken at face value, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Honour mode might well be the same as the mode of the same name from Larian’s previous CRPG Divinity: Original Sin 2 and its predecessor’s Enhanced Edition.
In those games, Honour mode gives the player just a single save slot to work with, and no ability to separately autosave or quicksave - meaning you can’t gloriously savescum your way through fights, reverse bad rolls or undo poor dialogue choices. What’s worse is that if a party member dies, the game will automatically save. And if your whole party dies, your entire save will be deleted - losing all of your progress and requiring you to start afresh from the beginning of Act 1.
Needless to say, it’s pretty hardcore - especially when combined with an increased challenge in battles similar to the Tactician difficulty level, which also increases the supplies you need to rest at camp between fights.
While Larian is yet to officially announce the addition of Honor mode in Baldur’s Gate 3, and we don’t know whether it’ll be exactly like the mode as seen in DOS2, it certainly sounds like it’ll put your skills - and luck - to the ultimate test. Given my knack of rolling ones, I think I'll be sticking to Normal, thanks.