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Karlach would have been fine if they hadn't dropped so many hints that her engine was gonna be fixable. If you're a good-aligned character then by the end you're most likely best friends with the Gondians, who engineered technology based on the heart and probably understand it well, plus another, different group of super engineers in the Ironhands. You're told that Karlach is closely related to the Steel Watchers and then you pick up a special piece of infernal iron from the Watchers but you can't do anything with it. It's not like I'm saying Karlach should just go ask Elminster to Mary Sue the engine away, but the game does really indicate that after you deal with the Steel Watcher forge you're gonna be able to do something with the engine. It doesn't feel like a proper story arc it just feels like they didn't finish the questline
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Nov 1, 2023 16:42
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I wouldn't say no to more Karlach but some theoretical definitive edition content that's like "whoops looks like we found the super infernal iron to fix your heart after all" would be a significantly less interesting outcome than the endings that are already out there, and I think everyone kind of understands this implicitly. Because it would require no actual thought from the player and would be what everyone who likes Karlach at all would choose to do, what I would choose to do, rather than being something you'd actually have to think about. I don't feel "but other characters get 100% good endings" is all that convincing to me, either, unless you believe that every companion's outcome should be equally happy or tragic. I feel that one of the reasons why Karlach is one of the best and most memorable characters in the game is that contrast between her personality and the weight of what she is grappling with.
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Nov 1, 2023 16:58
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Casey Finnigan posted:Idk I thought the goblins acted pretty goblin-like. They were stupid and violent cause they're goblins. Like I don't question that they're acting like every goblin in every videogame ever, it's just that that portrayal is utterly boring to me. I just don't really find the choice between eating children on one hand and, well, not, to be particularly compelling.
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Nov 1, 2023 17:02
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Idk unless I missed something I didn't think they were on the level of eating children. They raid and pillage and then party with their ill-gotten gains. They're like raiders in Fallout or pirates or something.
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Nov 1, 2023 17:16
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Karlach is particularly annoying because one of the other core characters is literally sitting around with a divine favor from her god in her back pocket. Shadowheart, You got any opinions on the Karlach situation? Oh really, none at all? Nothing you can do? You know what, go camp out in the corner with Gale and Haslin. This is why I even like Jahiera better than you.
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Nov 1, 2023 17:48
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Eifert Posting posted:Karlach is particularly annoying because one of the other core characters is literally sitting around with a divine favor from her god in her back pocket. She does if you let Karlach become a mindflayer and it's just sorta  . (I assumed you didn't bother to bring her to the finale.)
Lawman 0 fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 17:53
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exquisite tea posted:I feel that one of the reasons why Karlach is one of the best and most memorable characters in the game is that contrast between her personality and the weight of what she is grappling with. I can totally understand preferring a more nuanced dilemma over "Here's The Good Ending, you can get a bad ending if you don't give a poo poo I guess", I just don't think it really lands because there are so many possible solutions in the setting that aren't explored. Even ignoring the obviously unfinished content around the enriched iron in act 3, your other characters can canonically die and get brought back without it being a big deal. Gale has his little sidequest with his scroll of true resurrection, Lae'zel has a different intro if she dies on the ship and you revive her on the beach, Astarion has his funny rant after dying in the monastery collapse, that sort of thing. And, sure, you can come up with some lore explanation as to why being turned to ash by a solar laser is fine but having your mechanical heart burn up or get removed means you're dead for good, but you have to actually put that in the text (and preferably have it be something that makes sense on its own and isn't just a transparent post-hoc justification), otherwise it just feels arbitrary.
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Nov 1, 2023 19:06
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Honestly I would have preferred that we had a different third option for the mind flayer dilemma than karlach becoming one and just had the choice of her dying or returning to avernus.
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Nov 1, 2023 19:10
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The thing with Karlach and her depressing endings is that they feel a bit out of place because BG3 largely isn't that kind of game thematically. For the most part other than Wyll and maybe Astarion everyone else gets to live happily ever after. I guess the PC can also have a bad ending but it feels like you're meant to make Orpheus or the Emperor be Mind Flayers anyways. Compare that to say an Obsidian rpg where they tend to write grimmer endings. In Pillars of Eternity or KOTOR 2 or games like those your companions might get somewhat happy endings but they're usually tinged with failures or depressing circumstances. But every character tends to get treated that way. I think players would be more accepting of Karlach's ending if most of the other companions got endings like she did, but since she's the only one getting an ending that grimdark a lot of players feel cheated.
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Nov 1, 2023 19:23
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I mean Shadowheart either ends the game as a monster or with severe PTSD and possibly cursed, Wyll without his dad, damned to the hells or fighting in avernus, gale can sacrifice himself or go completely power mad with the crown, astarion can also end up a monster or be banished to the shadows forever and Lae'zel can watch her prince be turned into the thing she hates most while she prepares to launch a guerilla war or meets her fate with the lich queen. The origin characters have it rough. Lawman 0 fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 19:34
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exquisite tea posted:I wouldn't say no to more Karlach but some theoretical definitive edition content that's like "whoops looks like we found the super infernal iron to fix your heart after all" would be a significantly less interesting outcome than the endings that are already out there, and I think everyone kind of understands this implicitly. Because it would require no actual thought from the player and would be what everyone who likes Karlach at all would choose to do, what I would choose to do, rather than being something you'd actually have to think about. I don't feel "but other characters get 100% good endings" is all that convincing to me, either, unless you believe that every companion's outcome should be equally happy or tragic. I feel that one of the reasons why Karlach is one of the best and most memorable characters in the game is that contrast between her personality and the weight of what she is grappling with. I don't consider the current endings to be interesting, so it's not possible for them to make a less interesting one. Making it so her only possibility is to go back to the hells, die from something that should be easily fixed, or turn into a mind flayer is just being bleak for bleakness sake since it counter to the world established in game and the greater lore of the game. You've got direct divine intervention from a god, you repeatedly die and come back to life and have a scroll of true resurrection hanging around, in the pen and paper world you've got spells that completely replace or repair a body, and in the game they specifically establish that some infernal engines work in Faerun and you meet the mechanics who make them. It's about as 'interesting' of an ending to me as some teenager typing out a bunch of racial slurs to be edgy is as a post, it's forcing in an 'edge' that isn't really there. Casey Finnigan posted:I mean, I dunno, there have been plenty of groups of people historically that did all of those things and enjoyed it just fine. It really did not strike me as beyond the pale for fictional bad guys. There are plenty of groups of people historically that would qualify as extravagantly evil and beyond the pale, so I'm not sure why pointing out their existence is relevant. I think you're using 'extravagantly evil' and 'beyond the pale' to mean something very different than I would here, neither the historical or fictional ones are people I'd consider 'relateable', certainly not people I'd be worried about killing to protect the people that aren't engaged in torturing people to death for fun from being tortured to death for fun. To clarify: Casey Finnigan posted:Idk unless I missed something I didn't think they were on the level of eating children. They raid and pillage and then party with their ill-gotten gains. They're like raiders in Fallout or pirates or something. Raiders in fallout are definitely 'extravagantly evil' and 'beyond the pale', they are typically chilling right next to the mutilated bodies of people that they captured and tortured to death. I don't have a problem if someone wants to play an evil character in an RPG, but saying that stuff like capturing people, holding them as slaves, and torturing them to death doesn't count as very much evil is a rather weird take to me.
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Nov 1, 2023 19:52
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I mean yeah I don't know. I don't think raiding villages and torturing people is that severe of a crime in the DnD world where like canonically one of the countries is ruled by a necromancer that transformed most of his population into undead thralls. Also if the raiders in Fallout are extravagantly evil then that means the player character is too, considering their unbelievably large body count and piles and piles of stolen loot. PC in Fallout is just a successful raider. Some of the raider camps in Fallout 4 have pretty interesting backstories but you just waltz in and blast everyone to bits, then steal everything they own. e: the goblin stuff just didn't bug me at all. It makes sense why a bunch of raiders are all fine with ruining a bunch of innocent lives. It's how they make their living, and they care much more about themselves than others. Pretty human behavior I also didn't feel good about just killing them off. Kinda makes sense that they'd probably just go and attack the grove again if you left them alive but a) why should I have any obligation to massacre a bunch of goblins for the sake of some druids that refused to even assist the tieflings during the last attack (in my game), b) the most powerful part of their fighting force is already eliminated and c) a bunch of lovely people praise you for it Casey Finnigan fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 20:00
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I think the point was that you don't need to go into the weeds of D&D racial alignment discourse to justify why someone would want to kill people and take their stuff, since that is something regular humans have been motivated to do.
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Nov 1, 2023 20:00
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Lawman 0 posted:I mean Shadowheart either ends the game as a monster or with severe PTSD and possibly cursed, Wyll without his dad, damned to the hells or fighting in avernus, gale can sacrifice himself or go completely power mad with the crown, astarion can also end up a monster or be banished to the shadows forever and Lae'zel can watch her prince be turned into the thing she hates most while she prepares to launch a guerilla war or meets her fate with the lich queen.
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Nov 1, 2023 20:02
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Count me as someone who was bummed that goblins were there to just exist to be evil. There isn't even something like meeting a big group of them who were going along with things because the rest of them were meddling with a terrible force that essentially brainwashed them and didn't want to face annihilation. The grove at least had Shadow Druids infiltrating and radicalizing a leader while it had others who were torn on what to do. The goblins just exist to being a low challenge encounter that you can kill without any moral scruples. For their effort to make things "interesting" they sure dropped the ball with them. Guess they still think races should have inherent alignment.
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Nov 1, 2023 20:02
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Lawman 0 posted:I mean Shadowheart either ends the game as a monster or with severe PTSD and possibly cursed, Wyll without his dad, damned to the hells or fighting in avernus, gale can sacrifice himself or go completely power mad with the crown, astarion can also end up a monster or be banished to the shadows forever and Lae'zel can watch her prince be turned into the thing she hates most while she prepares to launch a guerilla war or meets her fate with the lich queen. If we look at the good endings for the characters: Shadowheart gets her family back with a dose of PTSD and a pain curse but that feels like a fairly positive ending for her. Wyll has to go hunt demons but the nature of his contract means he only has to kill demons so Mizora can probably jerk him around only so much. And Wyll hunting monsters is what he wants to do anyways. Astarion has to live in the shadows but he's free of the dude who tortured him for hundreds of years. Gale gives the crown back and gets not only Mystra's forgiveness but gets to live again. Lae'zel is a rebel who is going to try to lead crusades against Vlaakith but there seems to be a sizeable Githyanki contingent willing to work with her so that might end ok. At the least she's doing what she loves/believes in. Karlach's the only one who gets a truly hosed ending because she's either dead or she has to live in hell forever. Wyll also has to do the hell thing but at least it's his choice and he also has a patron who is invested in keeping him alive and happy enough to keep serving.
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Nov 1, 2023 20:02
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Terrible Opinions posted:You can pretty trivially save Wyll's dad and end his contract. I didn't figure it out the first time around.  Edit: Yeah I wasn't trying to be a jerk about it or anything I was just trying to draw a comparison. I also think that the actual burning death scene looks pretty profoundly awful on the docks and is just incredibly awkward like basically all the scenes between lae'zels farewell and your final romance scene/withers. Lawman 0 fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 20:08
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Jimbot posted:Count me as someone who was bummed that goblins were there to just exist to be evil. There isn't even something like meeting a big group of them who were going along with things because the rest of them were meddling with a terrible force that essentially brainwashed them and didn't want to face annihilation. The grove at least had Shadow Druids infiltrating and radicalizing a leader while it had others who were torn on what to do. The goblins just exist to being a low challenge encounter that you can kill without any moral scruples. For their effort to make things "interesting" they sure dropped the ball with them. if they had a splinter group of goblins who were still all Cockney and weird but also good they'd be the most popular NPCs in the game
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Nov 1, 2023 22:25
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Pattonesque posted:if they had a splinter group of goblins who were still all Cockney and weird but also good they'd be the most popular NPCs in the game There was that one goblin in the cage who refused to bow to the absolute because Maglubiyet supposedly keeps them in line (as disposable slaves).
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Nov 1, 2023 22:51
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cant cook creole bream posted:There was that one goblin in the cage who refused to bow to the absolute because Maglubiyet supposedly keeps them in line (as disposable slaves). I freed that guy after I slaughtered the goblin camp but he got immediately chased down and eaten by Minthara's spiders, oops.
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Nov 1, 2023 23:54
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Pattonesque posted:if they had a splinter group of goblins who were still all Cockney and weird but also good they'd be the most popular NPCs in the game Knowing the player base, they'd demand one as a romance option too. Maybe even have them send the player love letters like the one for Minthara you can find under the waterfall. drat, I should've tried delivering it to her.
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Nov 2, 2023 20:16
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Durge question. When do you find out that they were apparently a necrophile.
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Nov 11, 2023 08:00
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I don't think I have a durge playthrough in me. I can deal with the random murders of people but speak with animals is genuinely a highlight of the game and I don't want to go into every conversation worried I'm going to murder them for no reason.
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Nov 13, 2023 15:41
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There's like 5 instances across 50 hours where that's an issue to consider
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Nov 13, 2023 15:58
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Eifert Posting posted:I don't think I have a durge playthrough in me. I can deal with the random murders of people but speak with animals is genuinely a highlight of the game and I don't want to go into every conversation worried I'm going to murder them for no reason. you can be the "reformed" durge. jahera digs it.
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Nov 14, 2023 06:55
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Black Noise posted:Durge question. When do you find out that they were apparently a necrophile. If you eat the Noblestalk (from some Underdark side quest) after meeting your butler. I thought the Dark Urge stuff was way, way too much. The backstory stuff you hear about them is so over the top evil that even a reformed Durge should probably kill themself knowing there's no path forward of atonement. Durge seems more evil than most demons even. I liked the high level of it, and if you ignore large parts of the backstory. I think it pairs super well with Minthara, who I think nails the general idea a bit better.
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Nov 14, 2023 07:50
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Antifa Spacemarine posted:If you eat the Noblestalk (from some Underdark side quest) after meeting your butler. Durge is probably on par with Raphael and the Demons in pathfinder, there was a player in the WOTR and BG3 threads that also overlooked the fact that if you embrace chaotic evil you pretty much invite a bunch of rapists into Drezen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRpLBuD4Yo I found the answer to my question it was in a cut scene our durge player made private. I don't think they picked this dialogue option but Durge and their Paladin friend in our co-op run seem to have been avoiding selecting the "difficult" dialogues regarding Bhaalspawn. When you rescue Volo you can ask "What if the Bhaalspawn doesn't do the right thing?" and they (Paladin) just skipped it despite the other people voting for that choice so there is probably treachery in the works. I was really hoping the threat of oath breaking was going to keep them in check and surprisingly little reactivity with that as well.
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Nov 14, 2023 08:16
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*rolls into the thread with a heavy load of ~discourse~* Ok I'm gonna say it Shadowheart isn't very well written and comes off as a bit sexist.
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Nov 18, 2023 21:17
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Her dying her hair instead of it being selune/shar magic bullshit is incredibly funny to me for some reason
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Nov 18, 2023 21:22
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Lawman 0 posted:*rolls into the thread with a heavy load of ~discourse~* No amount of mind wiping can get rid of her core mindset of bratty spoiled rich girl
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Nov 18, 2023 21:53
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trevorreznik posted:No amount of mind wiping can get rid of her core mindset of bratty spoiled rich girl Yup that's absolutely a vibe she gives off and it isn't helped that she suffers heavily from not getting enough actual positive character development in act 3. Instead we get a laundry list of fun facts about what she's interested in and no social scenes of her writing poetry or whatever or developing a hobby. I'm thinking about this because by comparison Lae'zel is much more tightly written and is capable of showing emotional vulnerability without it taking away from her core characteristics as a fierce and skilled warrior. Also that she actually you know has an end sequence and is a core part of the endgame. edit: Also I find that her being an obvious problem drinker isn't funny and pretty gross. Lawman 0 fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Nov 18, 2023 |
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Nov 18, 2023 21:59
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Perfect Potato posted:Her dying her hair instead of it being selune/shar magic bullshit is incredibly funny to me for some reason Lae'zel, who is otherwise super aware of even small changes in her threat zone, not being able to figure out that Shadowheart dyed her hair is hilarious
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Nov 18, 2023 22:36
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Her changing her hairstyle after breaking up with her goddess felt a little sexist yeah. That’s like a 90s stand up bit applied to the dnd world. She’s less of a self obsessed brat than Gale though.
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Nov 18, 2023 22:44
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With Gale I openly became angry with him trying to fish the crown out of the water since I had literally just talked to him about not doing it LITERALLY the day before and the game was like "what if you changed your mind though" and I was incredibly pissed that it didn't respect the decisions I had already decided.
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Nov 18, 2023 22:50
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Eifert Posting posted:Karlach is particularly annoying because one of the other core characters is literally sitting around with a divine favor from her god in her back pocket. If the game went to lvl 20 Gale could Wish the problem away too. Going to Avernus to help Karlach solve her issue is a nice DLC hook too (or a sequel in BG 4).
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Nov 18, 2023 22:57
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Yeah I think it's pretty appropriate. As much as we have bitched about the ending it does lend itself to doing whatever.
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Nov 18, 2023 23:00
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Karsite Dracolich Gale is the final boss in BG4
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Nov 18, 2023 23:01
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Best Friends posted:Her changing her hairstyle after breaking up with her goddess felt a little sexist yeah. That’s like a 90s stand up bit applied to the dnd world. Nah, changing your hairstyle after a pivotal moment is just an anime trope. It's also something people do in real life as well, but Shart is obviously an anime.
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Nov 18, 2023 23:23
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Changing your hair after a big life moment isn pretty stock standard visual story telling. The specifics are gendered, you're rarely gonna have a woman shave their head like a man will in fiction, but it isn't inherently a sexist bit.
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Nov 18, 2023 23:57
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Terrible Opinions posted:Changing your hair after a big life moment isn pretty stock standard visual story telling. The specifics are gendered, you're rarely gonna have a woman shave their head like a man will in fiction, but it isn't inherently a sexist bit. I mean really what I'm trying to lead up to here is that I can't shake the feeling that she really just a princess in need of rescue by a big strong hero/heroine and we could you know probably do a bit better than that in TYOL 2023?
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Nov 19, 2023 00:02
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