So, I was deep into Baldur’s Gate 3 the other night, you know how it is, hours just melt away. I stumbled upon this automaton, one of those metal guys standing around. This particular one was playing gatekeeper, asking questions before it would, I dunno, let me pass or give me something. Typical stuff for these games.
Now, I fancy myself pretty decent at figuring things out. I started trying to logic my way through its questions. Read all the notes I’d picked up in the area, clicked on everything that looked even remotely interesting. My party members were probably getting bored just standing there while I muttered at the screen. I tried a few responses based on stuff I’d read, seemed plausible to me. Nope. Wrong. The automaton just gave its usual deadpan rejection.
My Process Trying to Figure It Out
Okay, plan B. Maybe the answers were hidden in plain sight? I spent a good while just looking around the room, examining shelves, weird glowing crystals, the usual fantasy clutter. Nothing obvious jumped out. I even tried intimidating it, persuading it – you know, rolling the dice. Didn’t work either. This thing was stubborn.
I started thinking, maybe it’s one of those things where the answer is in a book I missed way back, or maybe it relates to some character I barely spoke to. That’s the thing with BG3, right? Everything could be connected. It was getting late, and honestly, my patience was wearing thin. It felt like one of those annoying riddles where the answer is super specific and maybe doesn’t even make total sense until you hear it.
After more clicking around and trying different dialogue options based on pure guesswork, I finally managed to get through it. It wasn’t some grand moment of intellectual triumph, more like throwing darts in the dark until one hit the board. The specific phrases it wanted felt a bit random, pulled from some poem or text I vaguely remembered picking up earlier. Stuff like:
- One line about how magic weaves through all things.
- Something about decay, or how even metal rusts, you know, poetic stuff.
- I think there was another one, but honestly, I was just glad to be past it.
It really wasn’t that complex once you knew the lines, but finding them? That was the chore.
Reminded Me of Something…
You know, it felt weirdly familiar. Not the magic robot part, obviously. But the whole situation. It reminded me of this one time years ago, working on a project. We had this system, this old legacy thing, and something broke. To fix it, we needed this very specific command sequence entered into a terminal that looked like it was from the stone age.
Nobody knew it offhand. The documentation was useless, written back when the thing was first built and never updated. We spent ages, me and a couple of other guys, trying different commands, digging through ancient network drives looking for clues. It felt exactly like talking to that BG3 automaton. We knew what we wanted the system to do, but figuring out the exact magic words to make it happen? Total guesswork, trial, and error.
Eventually, we found the sequence scribbled on a faded sticky note stuck inside a dusty manual in the back of a filing cabinet. Seriously. A sticky note! All that stress and wasted time for a few cryptic commands someone jotted down ages ago. Felt good to fix the problem, sure, but also kind of ridiculous.
I guess that’s the thing with puzzles, in games or in life. Sometimes they’re satisfying challenges, other times they’re just frustrating roadblocks because the key is hidden under some random rock, or on a sticky note. Anyway, the automaton is dealt with. On to the next thing in Baldur’s Gate, I suppose. Probably another riddle.
