Shocking Baldur’s Gate 3 scene reveals Karlach knows she’s in a video game

A scene with Karlach near the end of Baldur’s Gate 3 reveals that she knows she’s in a video game and being manipulated by the player, causing some to admire the devs while others have an existential crisis.

Out of all Baldur’s Gate 3‘s main cast, Karlach stands out as someone who’s truly a fan-favorite. Though her heart has technically been replaced by an infernal machine, she wears that heart on her sleeve and remains optimistic even in the most dire moments.

However, that facade breaks at one of the most unlikely moments for Karlach, a moment in which she realizes that none of what she’s doing is real and that she’s in a video game.

This scene is a pretty rare find, which is part of why it’s taken players so long to find out about it, but the devs were clearly poking a bit of fun at the game’s most dedicated fans.

Karlach breaks the fourth wall in shocking Baldur’s Gate 3 scene

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a heftier game than most. For many, it takes literally hundreds of hours to see the credits roll, many of which are spent resetting saves and finding the best way to get through whichever obstacles are set in front of you.

While the process of loading and reloading saves seems entirely normal as the person playing the game, it’s hard to imagine what it’d be like to be subjected to someone editing and fine-tuning your existence as they control your every move.

Karlach has this realization in a scene near the end of the game in an interaction that’s a bit rare to find but rewarding for the game’s most dedicated players.

It starts with Karlach peering into your soul with a technique she learned, one that allows her to tell if someone’s lying just by looking into their eyes. However, as she goes to look at the camera, she looks into the player’s eyes rather than the character you play as. This leads to her technique working a bit too well as she sees beyond the boundaries of the game she’s trapped in.

“Do you know how all of this ends? You, me, this adventure?” asks Karlach. She then says, “You speak like you know. But you don’t know. They know. And I think I know now, too. I want to know what’s coming, I want to know how this will end. Have you done this before?”

Karlach then laments her state as a video game character, saying that she’s jealous of the player that can live in a free world. “I’m so jealous. I’m stuck here, forever here. In these tangled lines, in these hundred hours, or less, or more.”

Following this dialogue, Karlach goes right back to being her normal self, almost as if she has no clue what she asked the player in the first place.

Some players laughed away the incoming existential crisis with some jokes, but most were shocked at how well-executed the scene was.

Here’s a clip of the full, four minute conversation with Karlach.