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Olive quickly flicks through her options in a panic as the Gnolls descend on her. Viscera hangs in seaweed-like strands from their crooked fangs, their hands clutching crude weapons made of ragged flint and bone. As a sorcerer, Olive doesn't have much health or armor, but her power comes from magic inherent in her bloodline, and what magic it could be! Depending on that bloodline, sorcerers can summon vortexes of flame, banish foes to other dimensions, or channel the ancient power of dragons themselves.
Olive, on the other hand, has the spell Minor Illusion, which creates a semi-convincing hologram of a housecat. She has Shocking Grasp, an attack that will only work when the Gnolls are already in face-eating range. And she can cast True Strike, a spell so bad she might as well just spend her turn seasoning herself.
Olive will get no second chances. Olive will get no respawns. Over sixty hours in at time of writing, and Olive, one of the least optimised characters you'll ever seen in Baldur's Gate 3, is somehow still kicking in the merciless gauntlet that is Honour Mode.
You only (O)live once
To put this farce into context: a while ago I had a friend crash at my apartment for the weekend, and one Sunday morning, I woke up before her and began tinkering with the Baldur's Gate 3 Honour Mode while I waited for us to grab breakfast. I wasn't seriously planning a real attempt, I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about, having heard all sorts of horror stories.
For those who don't know, Honour Mode is BG3's ultimate test – a single-save-file "Iron Man" option that autosaves after all your choices, and deletes the entire run if you lose. Not only that, but enemies are buffed and bosses in particular get horrifying new powers. It's the sort of thing you should tackle with a well-optimised hero, if at all.
Somewhere along the line, brave little Olive had gone from being one of those dolphins the military use to trigger sea mines, to becoming the most inspiring hero I'd ever seen
That's not exactly what happened though. My intention was simply to check it out and see how brutal it was, using a disposable character as a guinea pig, then come back later for a proper second attempt with some min-maxed, steroid-filled, exploit-wielding superman when the first canary had died. This sense of fatalism decided, I gave the controller to my sleepy friend as she wandered into the room, telling her to go nuts. What did it matter? This character was surely doomed anyway.
Having never played BG3 before, her child "Olive" was hardly a consequence of metagaming. A Forest Gnome and Storm Sorcerer with a… let's say, non-traditional set of stats, her spells were picked only to match the generally tempestuous theme or if they "sounded nice". It was also decided that Olive was a kind, gentle character, so offensive spells were minimised.
I've seen ducklings that were more threatening, but before long Olive had the mandatory leech in the eye and was being heckled by her pet brain and a cosmic frogwoman to get to the helm. This was about to get ugly.
Fighting with Honour
Funny thing is, Olive did manage to survive the Nautiloid sequence, evading tentacles and fiery pitchforks alike. Then she made it to the Druid Grove. Then she was ingratiating herself at the goblin camp. Suddenly it was two weeks later, Olive's creator had long since gone back home, but I was completely hooked. Somewhere along the line, brave little Olive had gone from being one of those dolphins the military use to trigger sea mines, to becoming the most inspiring hero I'd ever seen, and even now the thought of her possible death fills me with stomach-churning dread.
And that's in part because Honour Mode really is as nasty as they say. Every fight is a tooth-and-nail skirmish for survival, the new Legendary Actions are horrifying, and the single save slot means there's no rolling back the clock on your fuck-ups to try again. Not only that, but now Olive had been characterised in my head as a good person, I didn't have it in me to betray that choice my buddy made. That meant no siding with villains and no rampant theft from shopkeepers. Oy.
Still, Olive couldn't be entirely naive if she was going to make it in this tough world. I quickly realised that you couldn't be scared of side quests if you wanted to level yourself up for the mandatory encounters, and a decent Charisma score meant the stalwart Storm Sorcerer could wheedle her way out of a lot of dire situations. A couple of levels in Tempest Cleric also granted some much-needed equipment proficiencies and complimentary lightning powers, and frankly it felt appropriate. God knows some higher power had to be looking out for her if she'd made it that far.
I also leapt at the chance to make Olive more powerful whenever the option was there; the Emperor had barely held out the Astral-Touched Tadpole before she pounced on it like a starving man on a sandwich. Not out of villainous ambition, but a pretty rational need for every advantage possible - without that crucial edge, she might well be lost forever, and it made the choice all the more meaningful.
A while ago I wrote about how I don't like to wear armor in RPGs that makes me look too far from being a regular joe, and a big part of that was the narrative satisfaction in feeling like a regular person overcoming great adversity. Well, Olive definitely brought that feeling back - as a little scrapbook of poorly-thought ideas, she couldn't have been more of an underdog if she tried. She did indeed manage to bring down the Gnolls by throwing out various summons to draw their attention - not to mention a laissez-faire approach to those wonderful explosive barrels. Now having made it to Rivington, with a hundred battle scars, mistakes, victories and compromises behind her, I'm determined to bring Olive to the finish line, in complete defiance of the odds.
Speaking of brutal RPG experiences, FromSoftware's next game should be full-on horror - and one sequence in Shadow of the Erdtree proves it.
