What glaring, obvious thing did you miss while playing one of your favorite video games?

I usually find that good, enjoyable games usually challenge my finger dexterity and keep my attention span focused for a decent amount of time. For me, the truly memorable games I’ve played also challenge my soft skills. Baldur’s Gate 3 encourages player creativity in all situations and, like a real life tabletop game, gives keen-eyed players with discoverable tidbits and hints that make the game so much more enjoyable when they pan out. Some of these are really specific and may only be recognized in hindsight on a repeat playthrough but some of the things you discover are so in-your-face that it’s really hard to miss them, like recruiting your characters.

Over the weekend during a tabletop session, a player in my group revealed they had never found Gale in BG3, prompting a string of surprised reactions. Initially, I was surprised too — Gale is a bit unique when it comes to the BG3 recruitable characters because he’s one of the characters you are guided towards, being quite literally inside an arcane symbol that also serves as waypoints for the games fast travel system. Because of a piece of dialogue regarding the potential danger of the symbol, our player walked around it without interacting. Something like this happened to me too.

Further down the road from Gale is the entrance to the Druid’s Grove which is where one of the game’s first large group battles takes place. There’s even a cutscene that sets the stage and introduces another recruitable character, Wyll. I wanted to recruit him but thanks to all of the dialogue options afterwards, I lost him. It wasn’t until I was well into Act 1 that I finally noticed he was in the middle of the Grove next to a training dummy that I had walked by a dozen times. On my second playthrough, I also noticed that after the introductory fight at the Grove, he’s standing right inside the gate near the group of characters you engage in dialogue. It was at this point I realized I didn’t miss him once, I missed him twice in about 100 feet. 

Discovering things you missed in video games should always add to the experience because some are meant to be found initially and others on repeat adventures. All the ones we miss (especially when we shouldn’t) should provide a light hearted, humorous moment that also adds to our enjoyment of the game so tell us about a time you missed something glaringly obvious in one of your favorite games!