Act 1 foreshadowed Baldur’s Gate 3’s most important plot twist but it's easy to miss

Baldur's Gate 3 has huge replayability potential. You can make many different decisions during adventure and experience something new each time. Additionally, on the latter paythroughs, we can understand that developers were teasing us by putting information, which looks innocent, but in fact foreshadows the later stages of our adventure. The perfect example is book from Act 1 that warns us about Emperor.

Act 1 spoilered important Baldur’s Gate 3 plot twist

In the Act 1, our character is “haunted” in dreams by a mysterious guardian. They reveal more about our situation and claim that they are here to protect us from transformation into Mind Flayer. So, they look like your biggest ally.

Source: Baldur’s Gate 3, developer: Larian Studios

In Act 2, however, we discover that our guardian is in fact a Mind Flayer himself and not a regular one, he is called Emperor. He claims that he wants to help our team. However, in the later parts of the game, his intention doesn’t look as straightforward as he said. Instead, Emperor wants to manipulate us to achieve his own goals. But, at the same time, he still behaves like our ally. He even reveals you some of his tricks openly.

So, Emperor is definitely a grey character. Many people across the Internet are debating whether he is good or bad person.

However, there is one interesting detail. In Act 1 we can find a book called „On Psionic Manipulation and Countermeasures.” As the name suggests, it’s a guide on how to talk with Mind Flayers correctly and how to interpretate their behaviors. So, this is a tutorial to deal with Emperor. It also strongly suggests that his real intentions might not be as good as we would like them to be.

So, where to find this book? There are at least three different places where you can get this book:

1. Githyanki base Creche Y'llek (Act 1),
2. Lower City Sewers in Baldur’s Gate (Act 3),
3. Golbraith's Cellar in Baldur’s Gate (Act 3).

This is definitely something that can be perceived as a spoiler but we don’t know that without context. We can understand it only if we reach some later parts of the story.

Baldur's Gate 3

August 3, 2023

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