Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Not enough being told about Withers (SPOILER HEAVY)

So, in the end Withers almost plainly confessed that, yes, he actually a Jergal himself. Well, i know he does that for Dark Urge at least.
Except, he still didn't. Ppl who isn't deep into Forgotten Realms lore would miss that, not understanding all his cryptic speech. I think that's a miss. There should be at first religion check, giving players plain explanation they are facing a real god in flesh. And even if player fail check - there still should be opportunity to get plain answer from him.

And second, would be nice if game would explain, how comes that one of eldest entity in D&D, and once deity of immense power, ended up lying in some forgotten tomb o_O
As well as why god-on-retire have so much interest in another scheem of Dead Three.

Still weird why he would go against them personally, since he literally gave them most of his godly powers, so he himself could "retire". Even served Myrkul for quite long time, until Myrkul lost his claim for Fuge Plane.

He does say in dialogue

[Spoiler]That he will forever rise up whenever Balance has been upset[/spoiler]

And tells Arabell
[Spoiler] that she can feel that the balance has been upset[/spoiler]

A certain [spoiler] post credit scene[/spoiler] just hammers home that the dead three were fools, and [spoiler] Jergal[/spoiler] outsmarted them.

Withers specifically admonishes

If Ao would have a grudge against Dead Three, he wouldn't send anyone to solve it. He would just outright DELETE all of them.
(And Vlaakith not even a real goddess). In reality of Forgotten Realms that plainly means her name is not in Ao's Tablets of Fate.

Also Larian's pull that mindflayers supposedly soulless just goes against the lore. Neither spellcaster, nor psionics could be soulless. Soulless constructs can be infused with some magic, but in order to actually cast a spell or manifest psionic powers - having a soul is actually a main "component".
So, both mindflayers and elder brains clearly have souls. They might not have their souls circulate normally as other mortal souls do - but souls they do have. Cannot not have those.

I didn't encounter him directly admitting it, but I was really tickled by the post-credits scene as that was when it finally clicked for me, even though there was lots of foreshadowing. I rather like the idea of it only being revealed post credits. it reminds me of Solas' final scene in Dragon Age: Inquisition which has a very similar vibe.

Could the post-credits scene be a teaser of things to come in Baldur's Gate 4, assuming that will be a thing. (It had BETTER be a thing!)

If you play as Dark Urge, For what who knows who Jergal is - that's very much dead giveaway.

I've never found him in the tomb. He just joined my camp out of the blue.
I've discovered and raided that tomb long after.

His placement in this game is very weird. He exists pretty much ad just filling a mechanical role. The fact he is who he turns out to be... doesn't seem to actually matter to the story. I forget he's there most of the time, even. Yet he's also one of the only characters that is always going to be around, yet they don't make any narrative use of him. It's like they just thought he'd be a cool Easter egg, which honestly is what I assume their thought process was.

It makes perfect sense to me. He is there to clean up the mess Jergal created in the first place. Those three had been nothing but trouble since he gave them the reigns.

He was riding the line of getting involved by providing some basic support that any high level cleric could do, just a little cheaper since he didn't need spell components. If he had gotten too much more involved, Ao would have had something to say about it.

I think however...

Similar to my takeaway as well. Using one of the most enigmatic, powerful (and possibly villainous) deities in the setting as a borderline debug npc that handles stuff that IMO should be handled by npcs (raise dead, hiring mercenaries) and debatably immersion-breaking stuff (respecs) An npc that's borderline irrelevant to the story and hardly interacts with other npcs, despite seemingly being a lich walking around in broad daylight.

Also, way too friendly/good. he should be more sinister, IMO. Even if he is trying to help us. He is not a *good* god by any means, and IIRC the writers (Ed Greenwood, etc) apparently intended him to be downright villainous, just exceedingly careful and deliberate. As in, Mystra's death and the TIme of Troubles was something he was hoping for in the first place, so having him run around 'undoing' his 'mistake' of raising the Dead Three up originally is a little off-character for him. If anything, he should probably be metaphorically nudging things with a stick to see if things spiral out of control.

As an aside, I wish his alien-looking avatar was represented in BG III. Having him appear as a bog-standard human undead is a little underwhelming.

He wasn't exactly trouble-less deity himself. All those godly domains were his. And gods wouldn't just "keep those domains on the shelf", so to say, Ao would never allow it. So, Strife, Death and Murder was very much how he influenced mortals himself, when he was in power.
He just grew tired of it, as no one really was able to oppose him for very-very long time. So, he very much just got a "retirement" position of a "dead scribe" instead.

There was bigger events, where those three wasn't involved at all. Like Spellplague (at time of which at very least Bhaal and Myrkul were still dead). And where Cyric was punished for it in the end (although not by Ao, but by other gods), Shar, despite being involved in it as well - never suffered consequences. Although she failed to became goddess of magic herself... she did however help Asmodeus still Azuth's godly power, and become god himself.