Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback First meeting with Gortash feels very fake. Third act spoilers

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the first meeting with Gortash during his inauguration looks very strange. He literally stands in front of all the nobility of Baldur's Gate and bragging about how he drove them into a trap, how he came up with the idea of ????creating the Absolute. And it would be nice if he at least stepped aside or talked to us mentally, but during the dialogue, you can literally hear the echoes spreading throughout the hall. And all the most important people of the city do not notice this, and after the inauguration they are like: "Yes! Gortash will restore order in the city, he is a man of action!"

Isn’t that pretty representative of how politics work?

I have also noticed that. I assumed most of them are bought / tadpoled, but... if they WERE tadpoled, we should feel it when trying to talk to them. Them being bought kind of makes sense, if one assumes only the corrupt decided to see that farce of a coronation.

I don't think they could have been bought, they are one of the richest people on the coast. In addition, most of them are greedy for power, how is it even easier to take the place of Gortash other than to reveal his plan

To further this, if you accept his offer of alliance, and then return to the audience chamber sometime later, the entire place is covered in blood and all the Flaming Fists have been replaced with the Black Hands. There is absolutely no reactivity in this scene at all and its very strange.


This was my first thought too, but it would be nice to have confirmation. Just a line or two of dialogue about how it seems the city's elite are all tadpoled would be enough to banish doubt and create more intrigue.

I thought the dialogue itself was great and what felt completely off was the framing (where and when the dialogue takes place, in other words).

Yes, the scene is absurd. Along with all the other issues raised in this thread, it fits neatly with the hypothesis that Act III is an unfinished mess, full of placeholders.

Yes, well said, that’s what I wanted to draw attention to. I really hope that the developers will somehow change the scene. I see the meaning of the chosen place only in the fact that if you refuse the alliance, then a horde of robots will attack you. But it still seems to me that the feeling of danger could have been created differently

The camera pans and the patriars are all sitting listening to Gortash say how he’s faking it all to gain power. It IS very, very hard to believe. If the same dialogue happened in a separate area, with some privacy, would be fine. But in front of everyone is kinda wild.

I feel the same way about the scene. It's really strange. It's probably even stranger when you play the Dark Urge campaign.
Of course, the active group also gets to hear everything because the tyranny wants them to know the truth about their "leader". However, only Karlach seems to be part of this conversation.
Still, the scene needs a more proper setting than revealing everything in front of all the nobles and rich. On the gate entrance.

I don't think there is any sufficient justification we can make for that scene.

Act 3 is rushed, and unfinished. There are notable clues for cut content throughout the game, despite what Larian says, it is apparent that the game should have stayed in development a while longer.

It's in act 3.

Play it like I do: game ends with act 2, after that it's just a sandbox to try out spells. Act 3 is broken - and while it has been getting better, it is still nowhere close to the quality of act 1 and 2.

Personally I think that they had intended to make the Gortash segment more about political intrigue. Compared to Orin and Ketheric, Gortash leaves so much evidence talking about targeting specific patriars and his strategies. One of the easier ways to get into Wyrm's Rock funnels you into the easiest area to access the rooftop lair of Gortash too. The existing quests tied in with Gortash involve weakening his bargaining positions (newspaper and the Gondians), so it feels like to me that we were supposed to be able to expose Gortash/helping the patriars to prevent him from becoming Archduke.

Additionally, it is odd that the Stone Lord is associated with the Bhaalists when the Zhentarim are a Banite faction, but that whole segment felt undercooked.

I see one option, this is the deadliest room in the location. And the situation is created in such a way that you are in a trap, there is not a single profitable outcome other than cooperation with Gortash. Steel guards are everywhere, bombs, flamethrowers and Wil's father are against you.
By the way, I figured out how to solve the situation with the dialogue. The steel guard must be given the opportunity to use the silence spell in some way. Then, by surrounding the group and Gortash, they will be able to create a dome in which everything can be heard, but not heard from the outside. Maybe a steel guardian shield or something like that

That... that is a genius solution to the act 3 problem as a whole!

But on topic: yeah, the way that entire scene is set up is just weird. On my 1st run I was like: so he is bragging about being the force behind the Absolute and nobody in the audience says a damn thing? They just clap along?

On my 2nd run, once I got past the final boss of that room which were constant game crashes (the moment Gortash's cutscene started no matter what graphic settings I used, game kept on crashing on both Vulkan and DirectX 11, eventually found a solution in full screen mode and even then the game ran at ~10fps - didn't happen on my 1st run, so Larian broke something in patch 1 or 2), as a Dark Urge the entire situation was even more baffling than on my 1st run... and honestly? I have no idea how Larian can possibly fix it, other than make Upper City an actual zone we can visit and that we get an actual invitation to attend that scam of a ceremony that is moved from Wyrm's Rock to somewhere in the Upper City, but that would also require rewriting Orin's entire abduction scheme.