Baldur's Gate 3 YouTuber discovers 'time travel' glitch that also reveals 4 nude Gales hanging out in your camp for some reason

Two and half years since Baldur's Gate 3 released, and players are still finding new ways to bend & break Larian's preposterously flexible RPG. Indeed, far from running out of bizarre exploits to discover, the glitches and hacks are if anything becoming weird and more impressive.

Take this wild exploit discovered by BG3 YouTuber ProxyGateTactician, which essentially allows players to "Time Travel" back through the RPG. Oh, and it reveals four naked Gales who are hanging around your camp the whole time, which isn't strictly related to the glitch, but who wouldn't want to hear about that?

While ProxyGateTactician discovered the exploit, the job of explaining how it works was left to fellow YouTuber SlimX. Normally, once you've completed an Act in Baldur's Gate 3, you move on to the next area never to return. But SlimX explains that by performing some convoluted Resting shenanigans during the opening of Act 3, you can prevent the cutscene in which you're attacked by the Gith from activating, which re-enables the use of waypoints in Act two.

If you return to the Shadow Cursed Lands, however, you'll find a very different scenario compared to how you left it. Last Light Inn, for example, is full of aggressive shadow creepers that will start battering you the moment you arrive, while other characters are attacking random enemies and, in some instances, even their own allies.

The reason this happens is complicated. But basically, moving to a new Act in Baldur's Gate 3 causes the game to delete the level cache file for the previous area, which contains all the world state data for that area. If you then return to that area, the game reverts to what is essentially factory default setting for it (which is not the same as the play-state when you arrive at that act in the first instance). As a result, NPCs may be scattered around in weird locations, and characters who should be invisible or inactive might be extremely visible and very much active.

Which brings us to Gales au naturel. Again, the reason there are so many Gales hanging out while, er, hanging out is convoluted. But basically, there are various plot and romance scenes in Baldur's Gate 3 that necessitate multiple versions of Gale. Some of these are doppelgangers, while others are spectral version of him.

These multiGales are always present, but they are invisible and inactive in the game world unless you meet the specific criteria that requires them. Yet the Time Travel glitch makes them all reappear, clustered together in your camp like emperor penguins huddling for warmth. There's also a fifth naked man among them, though he is technically not a Gale. Why is he bunched up with the nude Gales? Who knows. Maybe he thought it was a game.

Once you've backtracked to Act two, you can also use a separate glitch that SlimX details to travel back to Act one, which is similarly discombobulated as the game frantically resets the table to accommodate your unexpected return.

Why would you want to do this? Well, aside from the obvious answer of four naked Gales, you can also farm XP from these areas by fighting enemies who have reappeared and respawned. Whether or not you can actually take this forward into Act three isn't clear, given that travelling backward involves skipping some major story events. But even if you can't do it right now, I'm sure someone will discover a glitch than ensures you can soon enough.