Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Gale's New Bio - Heavy spoilers even for EA Players

It makes a lot of sense if you have ever known a manipulative/abusive person.

deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.

Gale wants to make himself seem like the poor hopeless romantic with a heart of gold trying to win back a fickle goddess.

In reality he's a power hungry asshole using the party for his own ends.

You can clearly see this if you bring him to the Necromancey book in the village.

There's probably two Gales, one for each way to play him. Choose to be evil, he can be evil. Choose to be good, he can be good.
You're describing the Gale I am going to play.

I think a lot of folks are trying to figure out who the "canon" Gale is.

He can go either way as the main character. The player can make him good or evil or whatever.

But who is he as a companion? If left to his own devices?

Unfortunately, I suspect it's not that simple. I think just interacting with Gale is going to have an influence on who he turns out to be. I think Tav can influence Gale to go down a dark path, and I think Tav can inspire Gale to be a better version of himself.

This is how it is in DOS2. Except for Beast IIRC, there are no "canon" alignments for each companion, and they will go along with and become whatever you choose to become, [HERO] or [VILLAIN].

So not only does Gale EAT my incredibly expensive, unique and powerful magical items, that solely benefits him not the party, he was delusional enough to attempt to usurp the Goddess of Magic, with magic? My Dark Urge (pun intended) to rip off his hand now makes me feel so much better. To quote a certain Homer "Urge to kill, rising."

Not so fast. Wasn't Elminster also a lover of Mystara, as well as an insufferable Gary Stu with an overly fantastical backstory?

Maybe Gale IS Elminster.

I disagree with you a little bit. Sure we influence who he turns out to be, but he's still somebody when we meet him. He's done things and has beliefs and opinions and values. What are those when we meet him? And frankly if his entire personality changes purely based on how weinteract with him, I think that's a bit of a copout. I don't mean him changing the outlook and behaviour he is in response to our interactions with him. I'm talking about him having entirely different personalities depending on if we act good or evil. So if we're good then he was always good, if we're evil then he was always evil. That's no way to write a character and I don't for a moment believe that's how Larian wrote him.

I hear you, but it's the nature of the beast.

In other words, in Gale's universe, you're entirely correct. Gale has a history, thoughts, emotions, and he follows his own calls to action.

But none of that's true in our universe. Gale is an intangible, an idea, a creation that exists to play a role in a story for your entertainment. What will his role be? Why, that's up to you, of course. It's for your entertainment. Do you want him to be good? Ta-da! He is! Do you want him to be bad? Wave your wand, roll your dice, there is no absolute truth to the way this story unfolds. Not yet, anyway.

I have never encountered a game that retroactively changes a companion's personality based on how you act. Why do you think that's the case in this game? Frankly it's a cop-out on what Larian themselves has said. If his personality and nature changes retroactively based on how you play then your character is not really influencing him. He's always been the way he is and in-universe you have no impact on it. Your character's choices don't actually matter, they don't change him really.

Exactly! This is what I mean when I say each of these companions has a 'default' alignment, which is based on the character's story when first we encounter them. It's something Larian's writers have established by way of having written these characters. What we as players do with these characters through the course of our games is an entirely separate issue.

And Gale's default orientation is a narcissistic megalomaniac (which does not conform with being good), for how else can one describe a character who declared himself the greatest wizard ever and then tried to usurp the powers of a god?

You brought up DOS2 as an example, but that's not really true that all companions could be 100% influenced by the player there.
They had very strong opinions and urges at first, you barely could convince them in anything. For example, there was no way to stop Sebille from killing certain character at the start of the game.
Later with grows of hidden approval meter you could influence them, but they still would have some principles. For example, you could get pretty evil Ifan, but don't you dare to use the deathfog machine on Arx with him in the party. He's soo strongly against using deathfog that even if you're lovers he would go hostile.
I'm expecting something similar with companions in BG3.

IIRC those "principles" were pretty barebones. I think it was just the deathfog with Ifan (and Beast? Maybe Sebille?). To me, with one action that might make your team stop, you could turn altruistic heroes into self-serving sadists pretty easily.

Lol all that speculation on Gale's persona and what his default orientation and moral values, while all we have are some breadcrumbs of information about the release version of the game. Sure, suit yourself, ban Gale from your roster in advance, based on your forum speculations and rushed conclusions and made up stories. I'll personally hold my horses and unravel companions for myself properly, by playing the damn game! I mean its fine to discuss the possibilities, but I find it somewhat silly to talk about a character that we know like 5% of the story about by calling him megalomaniac and usurper and banning him as a potential story piece after reading a general synopsis on the website. Damn..

Once again, what is it with those people who's barely scratched the surface of a character and immediately label them names? Oh man...

Whom are you talking about? There were total 0 of altruistic heroes or self-serving sadists at the start of the game. All morally grey with certain ways to turn them in one direction or another.

Take him for the necromancy of Thay quest

I did bring him for the quest. Can you elaborate? Or is taking him to the book and seeing him craving for its contents should answer all the questions about the character who has a gazzilion voice lines? By that logic I should have raised him to be among the saints after he asked me to protect the little tiefling girl.

That's kind of my point. They were grey enough that you could develop them in either direction and turn them into (almost) whatever you wanted. So Gale can be a megalomaniac wizard who, shamed by Mystra's rejection, attempted to usurp her powers, then realized the folly of his ways, and now works to protect those around him. From that point, you can develop him as a more selfless character determined to better himself and others, or descend into his possessiveness and megalomania.

This 👆

This is so much more evil than I imagined. I suspected that Gale upset Mystra by experimenting with the shadow weave but repeating Karsus' folly? This is so much worse! Makes me think that we might have to deal with Paladin of Vengeance sent by the Church of Mystra in much the same way that we had to deal with the monster hunter for Astarian.

Two theories - one old, one new.

Tin foil hat theory - before reading please protect yourself from the 5g waves emitted by this theory.

Achem. Perhaps Gale is actually Larloch. Hear me out:

* We know that Larloch was a chosen of Mystryl
* We know that Larloch is or was the greatest archmage/arcanist in Faerun
* We know that Larloch almost succeed in his attempt steal Mystra's resurrection energies and become the new god of magic
* Larloch knows where Nethril's cities are located so he would know where to find the book Gale mentions
* Larloch was at Myth Drannor when the city of Shade crashed into it so he was in close proximity to a shadow mythallar
* Larloch knows how to corrupt and absorb the energies of a mythal and this would fit with Gale's mirror revelation

Obviously the weak point of this theory is that Larloch is/was a lich while gale appears to be flesh and blood. But a god could reverse lichdom so this isn't impossible. And the de-lichification would explain why the former archmage is now a level 1 wizard.

Modified version of my old theory - Gale tried to use the shadow weave to become the new god of magic

I've still not entirely retired the shadow weave theory. The website's description of the orb as punishment from Mystra makes very little sense.

* The orb is acting like a shadow-weave orb not a weave-linked artifact
* Destroying magic artifacts is antithetical to the doctrines of Mystra's church - why would Mystra impose a punishment that goes against her beliefs and her very nature?
* Mystra destroyed all of Karsus' notes on the spell he used to kill her and assume her portfolio - the spell itself is speeding towards the end of the universe
* Mystra blocked access to level 12 spells - like the one Karsus used BUT it's possible that the Karsus' folly spell still exists in shadow weave form.

Long story short, if Gale were to repeat Karsus' folly he would have either a) tried it when Mystra was dead (as Larloch did) or b) used the shadow weave

To underline the shadow weave nature of the orb - Mystra is a seducer, her chosen follow her out of love. Shar, on the other hand, is not above using fear to keep her underlings in line. Gale is terrified that the bomb will go off - the fear-based control seems Sharran and not Mystran

Long story short - the website is an unreliable narrator. It was Shar, not Mystra, that put the orb in Gale's chest

On the issue of Gale's earth shaking status - I'm okay with it. I like it. I like bombastic stories. Time to queue up Orff's O Fortuna and give into my power gaming fantasies. In my defense: I have bad taste.

If you can manipulate your companions into becoming different personalities taking significantly different paths, they are weak characters.

I for one don't want to feel like a puppet master, deciding whether Gale and others will be taking a dark or a redemption path this time around. Influence them within reason - yes, puppet master - no.

There is such as thing as giving the player too much control over the story and characters. The characters need to be well motivated, well written and believable more than puppets for the player to play with.

Except Gale was already at his end game involving the attempted murder of a god. The consequences and his general attitude towards life after such an event and losing all your life achievements don't make any kind of sense. It's like the writers don't understand their own writing. Anything goes that sounds epic, but nothing means anything.