Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion SPOILERS! The dialogue in the Astral plane

the Astral plane.

To make it clear, I am talking about our first "live" meeting with our friend from the Artifact, when we enter the Artifact itself by the command of Githyanki Queen.

This was first dialogue in the game that REALLY pissed me off. Because there was no role-play in it. It was either clearly written for the Githyanki character only, or as a "punishment" for the player for not listening to the Guardian. It's a poor writing in both cases.

So what we have here? Either an insulting/arrogant approach, an aggressive one or cold/practical one. Nothing friendly, caring or loving. While Guardian is being nice and polite with us through the whole scene, we have no option but to behave as a real douchebag. And even after choosing the least insulting options, you have no proper farewell.

Our character is NOT EVEN VOICED. So what is the problem to give us more options? For example, while entering there could be "I just wanted to see you" or "I wanted to make sure you're real" or "I wanted to know the truth". Just saying "I wanted to talk to you" sounds like you're here to demand some explanations. This is confirmed further by Guardian response, because she "knows" you think she is lying to you. But I don't think that at all! Even if she is, I do not care, but I cannot role-play this, I am here to demand answers and be a douche. Then, while the Guardian is kneeling, we again only have aggressive option, can ask dumb question implying mistrust, can have highly-arrogant god-like "stand up, you won't die here" or not much better "fuck the queen, she can kill her yourself". WTF?? I do not like her kneeling at all, I don't believe she deserves this, I feel guilty about it, but again, I can only be a douche about it.

The last choice provides as at least neutral "I care about my allies" or smart "What is the power", which are OK, especially compared to the previous lines. After such a good role-playing options in the dialogue with Githyanki Queen, where we can insult her, not kneel to her etc. i didn't expect such a poor options in literally the next scene.

I know that to meet her we had to ignore all her warnings in the first place, we had to "agree" to kill her for the Queen, but I would expect some options to explain my motivations to do this, I do not want to be punished in such a way. I would accept mistrust from the Guardian, some scolding from her - this would be just a normal reaction. I would even accept for all my explanations to have some charisma or intellect or whatever else checks. But as of what we have, this is not acceptable at all..

This scene does indeed come across as not very authentic. Unlike so many other scenes in the game, so it stands out.

First, when we talk to the queen, we have to agree to do her bidding at some point but the scene automatically assumes we mean it. I did not, and I suspect it's the same for most other players. I just agreed to get out of an immediate death threat and had no intention of going through with it if I could avoid it. The game does not appear to recognize that. The dream figure knows our mind so they shouldn't assume we came to kill them either.

Having said that, apart from the absence of an option to say something like "I did not come to kill you, I just agreed to be rid of her so that I can look for a way out", I can live with the responses I have, at least for my current character. She told the figure to stand up because she does not like people kneeling before her, and she was inquisitive about everything. That fit.

So yeah, a dissonance. But not a critical one.

Oh dear, try this whole area as a githyanki who is not Lae’zel. It gets much, much worse…

But otherwise I think the writers assuming that you entered on the Queen’s order to kill the Guardian considering the scenes before, is not a bad assumption. You can refuse to enter the Astral Plane and Vlaakith (and Lae’zel) is very clearly demanding you to do it to kill the Guardian. Yes, it would be nice if the answeres were more subtle, but it is hard to imagine someone would just pop in to the Astral plane to check on her. After all, at this point we don’t know for sure what we will find there when we enter (we are told there is basically a monster in there) and we cannot know if the Guardian is not just our tadpole manipulating us.

I did that scene yesterday with my halfling bardlock and Lae'zel.
I never agreed to Vlaakith, that I would kill the entity. As long as you aren't saying one specific line, Vlaakith just leaves, saying she leaves the door open.
Lae'zel urges you to go in, but in no way did I ever express, that I will kill the entity.
And I don't think 'I want to talk' is rude, considering, we don't really know, if we can trust the guardian. And my character is very distrustful towards them and don't normally do, what they say ( she doesn't use tadpoles, she killed the cultists instead of infiltrating them), so 'I want to talk' was exactly, what I wanted to say in this situation.

I never met with the queen. Only had Raphael or Emperor, as durge.

The thing I wanted out that scene was to explain why I stabbed her. My theories up until that point were that the guardian was:

1. The tadpole itself
2. Shar
3. An elder brain

So the "stab" was intended to A) dispel the illusion and force the guardian to reveal their true nature B) make it clear I didn't appreciate being lied to, manipulated and encouraged to make my infection worse

As I read it wasn't a 'live' meeting at all - it was a projected image.

I have actually missed this "projection" explanation. The was an option to ask Emperor to keep it, I guess he would than explain something more, but as there were more important lines to say to him I choose something else and then there has been absolutely nothing on this topic and I couldn't ask him anything Of course there will be something like "I've chosen anything I believed won't scare you". But damn, I've really invested my time and imagination creating this image of the guardian. What a troll (again)

My issue with it is even if you are nice and show no hostility, like you just want to talk, she still is like take my sword and kill me. It makes no sense given the context

I think this worked as manipulation on the Emperor's part - I'm just upset we have to stand there like a mute idiot.

Did you ever see the the HBO series Rome? There's a great scene between Marc Antony and Cato in the show where Antony uses a similar manipulation technique.

(paraphrase from fading / flawed memory)


The Emperor wants to immediately dial the interaction up to 11 and then take Tav's reluctance to stab a defenseless person as full submission to their manipulations. I wanted to Tav to be able to say something to the effect of: "I see what you aren't fooling me" Otherwise this is the Guardian's scene, not Tav's.

This is unfortunately the case with basically every scene the Emperor is in. His main purpose as it pertains to the plot is to leech away player agency. Every scene he's in, he's the one in charge and you can only nod or shake your head (not that it matters). It becomes very noticeable in the Githyanki creché scene where you get to stab him only for the game to railroad you back to the desired outcome. It's even worse at the start of act 3 where siding against him literally results in a game over screen for you. Really? Why can't we leech off of Orpheus' power on our own? The game tries so hard to shove the Emperor down your throat that it just drops any pretense of allowing player choice in the scenes he is in. That would be fine if the game actually set him up as an atagonist you need to overcome but if you actually side against him in the end, he's just another trashmob mindflayer you kill in one turn and there's no real build up or payoff for doing so either. It's just horribly written.