Baldur’s Gate 3’s Side Quest Design is its Secret Weapon

Since its full release last August, Baldur’s Gate 3 has enjoyed immense success and a loyal, loving fanbase. It swept the 2023 Game Awards, including winning Game of the Year, and added even more trophies to its shelf at the BAFTA Games Awards last month. While there are a number of things that contribute to such success, the Baldur’s Gate 3 side quest design might be its standout feature.

Avid players of RPGs know bland side quests well, as many games are full of them. Whether it’s a fetch quest for marbles around an enormous castle, or traveling across oceans for seemingly endless junk, quests without personality or meaning can rapidly kill a player’s enjoyment of a game. However, side quests can reveal some of BG3‘s most fascinating NPCs and help or hinder them in ways that are impactful to the story.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Proven its Mastery of Character-Driven Quests

Mayrina and Auntie Ethel

One of BG3’s best quests spans across acts. Auntie Ethel is introduced in the Emerald Grove as a doting old woman. Later, she will appear in the Sunlit Wetlands, where players meet Mayrina, discover Ethel is a hag in disguise, and begin a quest to save the woman. If Mayrina survives and Ethel is killed, players will see her again in Act III and discover Ethel has returned and terrorized several people.

What makes this quest stand out is that it introduces a defined area with its own depth (the hag’s presence attracting a vampire hunter who is after Astarion) and players have to make numerous moral choices, beginning with Mayrina’s brothers and ending with whether to save a child in Act III. In the final act, players might also discover ramifications from choices they made in the early game depending on what they did with her undead husband.

Kagha and the Shadow Druids

While Kagha’s presence in the Emerald Grove is an integral part of the main quest to help the tieflings and find Halsin, investigating her is optional and easy to miss if players simply go straight to eliminating the goblin camp or raiding the grove. There’s a minor mystery where players can get lore about the isolationist Shadow Druids and Kagha’s motivations, and those playing a druid class can get unique dialogue. While the game doesn’t fully explore it, the outcome of the quest introduces what stance the players take toward the natural world.

The Ironhand Gnomes vs. the Gondians

This hefty quest begins in Act I when players can rescue gnomish slaves in the Underdark. Here, players will learn their leader, Wulbren, has been imprisoned in Moonrise Towers. If players choose to save him, Wulbren and his Ironhand Gnomes return in the final act to help take down the Steel Watch, which is a major quest for those wishing to destroy the Absolute, as Wulbren claims the Gondians are purposely helping create Gortash’s Steel Watchers.

However, meeting the Gondians in The Foundry tells a different story entirely. The Gondians have been forced into servitude under the threat of their families being killed, which unlocks the quest to save their families from the Iron Throne, Gortash’s underwater prison.

In a series of heroic deeds to take down Gortash, BG3 introduces two major factions of artificers and, once the Steel Watch is dealt with, forces players to pick a side (which has spurred on Wulbren’s general unpopularity). Quests like this highlight the moral complexity of the world, which is the bread and butter of many beloved fantasy RPGs like this one.

Omeluum

Omeluum has become a fan favorite character, in part because it’s a mind flayer that stands out from its monstrous kin. Players meeting it in the Underdark discover how Omeluum broke away from its colony, became a scholar of the good-aligned Society of Brilliance, and seeks to help its kind by developing a brain-free diet. Its presence alone dodges the expectations of a game that inherently opposes mind flayers.

This is also one case where it’s actively worth it to keep a character alive. If players go to the Iron Throne, which is necessary to save the Gondians and Duke Ravengard, Omeluum will urge the players to retrieve the duke and not worry about its fate. However, if players go out of their way to save the friendly mind flayer, it will not only be grateful but can teleport itself and another person straight to the submersible, an incredibly handy mechanic for this otherwise challenging side quest. With a plot that firmly places mind flayers as the pressing concern—considering players live with a tadpole happily marinating in their brain juices—it’s refreshing to meet one who criticizes its kind’s motives, genuinely has good intentions, and is helpful when it matters.

Side Quests in Baldur’s Gate 3 Pay Off

As this list is not exhaustive, there are many more side quests that are impactful on the overall story. Even a quest that has players running around Baldur’s Gate fetching the body parts of Dribbles the Clown reveals (ironically) bits and pieces of the lives taken by Bhaalist assassins in their murderous rituals.

Completionists are also rewarded in the final fight against the Netherbrain if they go out of their way to complete every quest, including skippable companion quests, as they will receive numerous powerful allies to summon against the Absolute’s substantial forces, including an armored owlbear cub and Kith’rak Voss riding a red dragon. Being able to do so also makes the endgame feel more important while battling for the fate of Faerun.

In the sphere of RPGs, it can be rather common to play a game that seems to write quests just for the sake of it, especially as RPGs get longer and longer. Even some of the best games ever made might have a handful of downright boring tasks, but few quests, if any, in Baldur’s Gate 3 ever feel pointless or dull no matter their length or outcome. This is the secret to continuing the remarkable success of the franchise.