Three years later, a line of dialogue for an impossible situation on the nautiloid was found in Baldur's Gate 3
An alternate line was discovered in the prologue of Baldur's Gate 3, but it only triggers under a condition that's impossible to reach in a normal playthrough.
A player known as ImpressiveLie7365 found that the mind flayer on the nautiloid bridge delivers the line if the player character is an illithid themselves.
Data miners had spotted the line before, but nobody understood what triggered it. Normally, the mind flayer in the room where it fights commander Zhalk addresses the party as slaves, demanding they connect their nerves to the transponder, since it assumes the tadpole infection turned the heroes into mindless thralls.
In the alternate version, the wording shifts – the mind flayer demands the party find a slave, instead of calling the player character one.
Testing through mods produced consistent results. Turning the character into a full illithid reliably triggers the dialogue branch. The description for the Ring of Ceremorphosis mod explicitly notes that some NPCs recognize the transformed hero as a mind flayer, and the only confirmed case at the time of writing involved an illithid at the nautiloid helm.
One detail hints at how old this discovery really is. The alternate line was voiced by the actor who worked on the character during early access, not the one who replaced them later. That suggests the mechanic behind this line got cut before the full release.
An early theory linked the line to "We", the intellect devourer that can join the hero on the ship. The idea was that "We" could trigger the scene, but that couldn't be reproduced since "We" doesn't even open the door leading to the cutscene. Larian Studios also released a patch that gave the player character the lead role in nearly every cutscene, making verification even trickier.
Theories about where the line came from boil down to a few possibilities:
"We" might have originally triggered the scene, had it occupied a full companion slot
the line could be a leftover from early access, when players could reach level two before leaving the nautiloid, and a druid could enter the room in beast form
illithid power progression was originally planned to unlock during the prologue rather than later in the story
a temporary illithid ally might have joined the party, forced to stick with the heroes to survive
None of these theories fully explains it, since the line only triggers for a full mind flayer, not a character who simply consumed a few tadpoles. Mechanically, it all comes down to character tags tied to illithids, which activate that dialogue branch.
The game cutscenes have been reworked since then too – previously, whichever companion stood closest to the trigger would appear in the scene, but now the player character takes that spot instead.
