Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Stick a fork in me, I'm done for now [Karlach Spoilers]

I'm still in Act 1. I literally JUST decided to romance Karlach, but I stumbled on to spoilers yesterday. I'm a bit sad that I did, but also grateful because they saved me from raging at the end of the game.

I don't mind bittersweet endings, or even tragic endings...as long as there's consistency. If playing Karlach as an origin character allows you to survive, then it should be an option for companion Karlach. There are so many ways for this character to be saved, logic fails me as to why none of technical fixes that are mentioned in the later acts are even *tried*. The story is just dropped, options not pursued.

Surely a tragic ending needs closure? Just going to black screen immediately is a huge letdown as is having someone else be the one to be with her despite me being the one who romanced her. We paid a pretty penny for this game and invested lots of hours, only to have it blow up in our faces and leave us with nothing.

Yes, life isn't fair. Life often has no closure. I get it. But this game is something we overtly paid for and most of us expect at least completed story lines without dropped solutions, irrelevant quests, and truncated end scenes. We expect closure in this case precisely because it's not real-world.

For now, I think I'm going to put the game down and see if Larian completes the development of this character's story. If not, I may pick it back up and start over anew and play a character that only romances the characters that Larian chose to properly flesh out their stories. In that case, I will avoid the area where you find Karlach and play as if that character doesn't even exist.

Mind telling me what you did to romance Karlach in Act 1? I got high approval and chose the suggestive dialogue option after the Infernal Metal quest completion, but nothing happened.

You can't really do anything but confirm your desire to each other. In my mind, it was a great set up to allow slow relationship progression. Everyone else was throwing themselves at my Tav, but Karlach couldn't. She did come to me one night at the camp and told me that she wanted to "make me see stars" or something like that. hahahaha! But that's all that could be done.

I also found her story to be tragic and wanted to be "the one" to be able to hold her after so many years of having to distance herself due to the fire.

So the romance is emotional, verbal. Anything physical has to wait. ..and I thought the having to wait was a nice dynamic.

At least that's how things played out for me.

I didn't get that scene for some reason.

I mean you just have to fix her heart engine thing with two pieces of Infernal Iron with Dammon and she can progress to the next stage of the relationship.

To clarify, it's two separate Upgrades that are needed, in two different cutscenes. Then you can slap booties.

I wish...sadly, I stumbled on to some spoilers. Folks were great about using the hidden text, but context still gave me enough info to realize that the end game for Karlach isn't what's expected. The dialogs and events make it seem like technical upgrades are needed for her heart and all will be well. But those were dead ends by the end of Act 3. You will not experience what you think you'll experience. That's all I'll say here if you haven't already been spoiled.

You are going to put the game down because of KARLACH? Why? She, they, whatever, wasn't even part of the main cast, it's more like a DLC character except they don't do DLC. I really don't get the obsession with this thing.

Baldur's Gate is a great game beyond the romance fluff, you would be missing out.

Karlach is an origin character that can only be saved if you pick her. Even so, there is nothing wrong with dropping the game and coming back when you feel like you're ready

Yeah, the amount of branches that are clear ways to save her that result in 0 exploration and a forced group of bad endings seems like a major oversight. Its pretty rough.

In regards to that first statement:

Oh wow. I’ve tried to not read the spoilers too much. So it looks like I drew some poor conclusions. Nevertheless, it is apparently accurate that Larian decided to not pursue obvious solutions to her problem like the technical ability of that other race that I haven’t met yet…Gondorians?