Scrapped Baldur's Gate 3 Feature Would've Sent Dead Characters to the Fugue Plane

Death could've looked pretty different in Baldur's Gate 3 once upon a time.

By Hannah Adkins

Despite the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive enough game as it is, like any other piece of media released there were things that didn't make it into the final cut – be it individual lines, ending variants, a certain Bard companion that just wasn't meant to be, and more. While a good amount of this information has come from players datamining or using mods, as time goes on Larian Studios is revealing more details behind their game that secured all five major Game of the Year awards. The latest of these revelations comes from Larian co-founder and CEO Sven Vincke during a conversation hosted on PCGamer's RPG roundtable podcast, where Vincke provided yet another piece of Baldur's Gate 3 that didn't make the final game.

If you're amongst one of the many who has already played Baldur's Gate 3 (and I assume if you're reading this article you are), you're familiar with the game's death mechanics. In most of the modes if your character or a party member dies you can use a Revivify Scroll on them to resurrect them, continuing their fight against the Absolute (and whomever else this particular character may be fighting against) for another day. The exception, of course, is playing the game in Honour Mode, where death is permanent and your only option is to start from the beginning.

But thanks to Vincke's latest confirmation, we now know that this could have looked very different if Larian had gone through with one of the pieces of scrapped content including an entire mechanic that'd task players with escaping the fugue plane. Speaking on the topic, Vincke explained: "Whenever you died, you were supposed to go to the fugue plane. [We] had this entire thing so that when you died, you were gonna go into the fugue plane ... for instance, you would be in the fugue plane but the rest of your party would still be walking around in the material plane."

The fugue plane in Forgotten Realms lore is described as a neutral area within the Astral Sea, referred to as "the place where spirits go right after people die." In the fugue plane, gods some to the dead to sort them into the heaven they belong in if they've earned a place there...but only if you've been faithful to a particular god. If you haven't been a religious person, the consequences are quite intense.

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PCGamer notes that Vincke couldn't get into details on the scrapped mechanic beyond this, an understandable decision from the award winning studio considering they have other projects in-development that could very well see the mechanic retooled to fit the confines of the new game. While we don't know exactly what Larian Studios is working on, we do know that it won't be Baldur's Gate 4 – or any other Dungeons & Dragons related story as the studio has confirmed they're moving away from the IP.

As for what that means for Baldur's Gate 3, there is still at least one additional significant patch coming for the game, which will introduce new evil endings (both for The Dark Urge players and not) as well as modding capabilities in the game officially, including for console players. Beyond that, Larian still plans to introduce photo mode and crossplay capabilities down the line as well. 

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