Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion *Ending spoiler* Discussion regarding a major choice near the ending

The choice between Orpheus and the Emperor.

If you choose Orpheus then the Emperor leaves abruptly, leading to an ending where someone had to transform into an illithid in order to defeat the Netherbrain. If you choose the Emperor then Lae'zel would loose her chance to free her people and, in her own words, be chased by Vlaakith's people for possibly the rest of her life. It's just a terrible circumstance for at least one character.

I strongly feel that there should've been a persuasion check with the Emperor when choosing to side with Orpheus. The Emperor just up and left pretty abruptly to surrender to the Netherbrain and barely gave you any explanation for choosing to do that. The worst part is that the game didn't even give the player any dialogue choices to persuade them to reconsider which in a game like Baldur's Gate 3, a game that is mostly about dialogue choices, is honestly baffling. When you side with the Emperor, Lae'zel objects but you still get a chance to convince her with a speech check, Voss as well can be persuaded but when it comes to the Emperor you're literally given no chance to do so which is extremely frustrating.

The most prominent reason why I think we should've had an option to stop the Emperor from leaving was that it could've result in an ideal ending for everybody. We could free Orpheus (obviously) and fulfill Lae'zel's goal of freeing her people from Vlaakith, having the Emperor would mean that nobody would need to be turned into a mindflayer in order to defeat the Netherbrain and the Emperor would achieve his goal of being free.

I've had discussions where people would say that there's no chance for an alliance between Orpheus and the Emperor because Orpheus would kill the Emperor at the first chance he got but Orpheus seemed like the kind of person to put the greater good above his personal vendetta and it is to his benefit that the Emperor survives since, once again, we needed an illithid to defeat the Netherbrain which the Emperor is.

Some dialogue ideas I had when trying to convince the Emperor would be something like a "you've asked me to trust you thus far. Now I'm asking you to trust me" or "You've protected me from the beginning. Let me return the favor. I wouldn't let Orpheus harm you".

regain his humanity

an Illithid has to perform the final ritual spell in the first place

That final interaction in the Astral Prism should have been a proper "Dialogue-Boss" like those so prominent in act 2. Make all those reactions and interactions, like to Ansur's death by Baldurans hands and him dominating Belmane, possibly causing her strokes, actually matter. When the player still engages him in a positive, trustful way, there should be the option to remind him of this. The weight of this argument is way more than what a singular Persusasion check can convey. There should be half a dozen checks and saves, from Persusasion, Insight, History to Will saves, simulating not only an argument, but a psychic struggle, between 2 conjoined minds.

As it is, the dialogue has no reactivity and railroads you into one of 2 situation without any regard for how you developed the relationship with him over the game, and that goes against one of the core design elements of this mostly fantastic game.