10 Secret Video Game Mechanics That Let You Mess With NPCs
Tired of playing nice with NPCs? Try these tricks!
To keep up a sense of immersion, video games tend to treat their NPCs somewhat seriously. Unless the game is comedic or an NPC is deliberately written as a joke character, you can't really expect to engage in a little bit of tomfoolery when interacting with them.
That is, unless the developers include a secret way to mess with them.
That's right! Some games, even the more serious ones, include secret features that exist in the game solely to allow you to mess with its NPCs in unique and hilarious ways, regardless of how serious or not the situation is.
Finding these special features usually requires noticing a hidden mechanic, setting the scene up in a deliberate way, or exploiting something the developers forgot to remove. However, once you get everything in order, you can do amazing things, such as making NPCs fight one another, insulting them right in their faces for infinity, or turning them from scary adversaries into pitiful punching bags.
A tidbit of humor can fix any situation, especially when it comes to relaxing with your favorite game, so if you're in a playful mood, the following secrets will help you pull some much-needed pranks.
10. Balthazar's Mom - Baldur's Gate 3
Baldur's Gate 3 comes with a huge variety of dialogue options for you to choose from.
Pretty much every interaction in the game has branching paths for you to take, and just when you think you've seen them all, there are also hidden dialogue options that can only be activated after you've done something outside of the conversation.
And it just so happens that one such secret interaction gives you a chance to mess with one of the game's more repulsive NPCs.
The necromancer Balthazar is the self-aggrandizing and monstrous lackey of the Absolute that you encounter in Act 2 of the game.
The moment you meet him, he starts to order you around and talk about how great he is without really giving you a chance to retaliate.
If you want to show up, you can steal a jar with his mother's remains from the shelf in his chamber in Shar's temple, so that when you speak with him, you can show it to him, startle him, and then cause him to lash out at you in a desperate attempt to save face.
This interaction does an amazing job of making Balthazar drop his self-important act, so if you're sick of it, be sure to give him an impromptu family reunion.