I haven’t had time to play much of Baldur’s Gate 3 yet, but I’ve learned many hard lessons in my few hours so far. One major thing that I’ve already written about is that I wasimmediately overwhelmed by the amount of Dungeons and Dragons know-how necessaryto do justice to the game – I’m not a hardcore D&D player so I was immediately stressed out. However, the hardest lesson I’ve had to learn is that I need to save more. Like, a lot more. Like, every ten minutes more.
I’ve never been a save scummer. After all, when I play D&D with my friends, there are no rerolls, no matter how much you beg your Dungeon Master, so I apply the same philosophy to RPGs. The dice are always right. I’ll do what I want, and deal with the consequences later. Much like in real life, I attempt to hope for the best and prepare to deal with a critical failure if it happens.
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I went through the first few hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 without a care in the world, assuming the autosave would be enough to keep me from losing too much progress if I died. I wasn’t playing aggressively, preferring to lie or threaten my way out of sticky situations instead. Everything was going well, I’d only died once, and I was well on my way into the first major quest, skipping off with my trusty party to go find Halsin. And then I found a secret door on the way, covered in vines and looking so very enticing.
Oh, that stupid door. I wish I’d never opened it. On stepping in, I found a statue with glowing eyes, and one of my companions warned that statues with glowing eyes are never a good sign. Out of arrogance, I thought, well, it can’t be that bad, and sauntered past it anyway. I gotnuked. The statue shot what must have been a missile at me, and my entire party died. That’s on me, to be fair, I messed around and found out. It’s fine, I thought, I’ll just reload and skip the door until I figure out how to approach it in a way that won’t end up with me dying immediately. So I loaded my last save game.
I’d lost an hour of gameplay. An entire hour. It hadn’t occurred to me to save my game, and I was now back at Druid Grove with a bunch of main quest items to complete and follow up with. I had to redo a bunch of conversations and hope I’d get the same outcome, or a better one. I replayed my hour of gameplay, went a little further in the game, and turned my PC off so I could sulk in peace. At that moment, I vowed never to let this happen to me again. I would never trust autosave – I would save every ten minutes if it meant never getting screwed over by my own impulsiveness. I still have no intention of using my save files to cheat my way into better rolls, but mark my words, Baldur’s Gate 3 will not catch me slipping. I will make a thousand save files if I must. I will save scum for my life.
