Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion [Major DUrge Spoilers] Regarding that intervention's lack of narrative consequence

what happens when you reject Bhaal.

Every other companion in this game has had to sacrifice something to achieve their "good" ending. Shadowheart has to accept Shar's torments or lose people she loves, Astarian has to go back to the shadows, Lae'zel has to give up the person she aspired to be, and so on. These are hard decisions that result in serious narrative scars that these characters will have for the rest of their lives.

Yet, for some reason, the DUrge gets to be special. Not only do they get to obtain that freedom they've been fighting for, but thanks to the divine intervention of Withers, that freedom basically comes with no strings attached. No more urges, no more Bhaal, no more guilt. Everything is happy for you.

How am I supposed to be satisfied with this? Even your companions call out what a deus ex machina this is, with Astarian going so far as to rant about how all your problems get to be solved with the wave of a magic wand. He's absolutely right, this feels like cheating, and I hate it.

I don't mind having an option like this being on the table, but with such strong themes of rejecting oppressive authority figures and healing your scars, there SHOULD have been a middle ground option where we get to fight for our own sake without another god sweeping in to magic away what we choose to sacrifice. Withers undermines our do or die choice to master the urge ourselves or die trying.

Give the DUrge an option to master the piece of Bhaal's soul they have so that Bhaal can never have it back. Let them trade away their only chance at true peace to spend the rest of their lives in an active conflict against the god of assassins. Let us make him work to reclaim what was his! That's exactly the kind of ending my morally conflicted DUrge deserves. The struggle they've always known, but one that is finally their choice to have. One that lets them win against Bhaal or die trying on their own two feet.

Where is the option to make the sacrifice to master the urge and win against Bhaal on our own?

First Bhaal just seems like the most inefficient god and overstepping boundries of other gods. First you murder Alfira or Quill, without any Player agency, which is fine. Problem is this is the only time that happens. Next time you get those urges and are forced against them is in Act 2, sure, you can murder Isobel or your romanced partner, but 2 dc 14 wisdom saving throws and everything works out fine.

Then you get to the endgame and Bhaal can force Orin to turn into the Slayer, even if she resists, which is like a divine intervention. And after you kill her and reject Bhaal, he just takes away the taint and kills you??? It made sense, when Sarevok died, but not here. Worse still, any semblance of heroic sacrifice is gone, as you immediately get brought back by Withers.

Shadowheart or anyone you romanced doesn’t rush towards you, revivify not working, etc. Even if we work under assumption that you resisted the Urge pretty much all the time, you are still responsible for the whole Absolute plot. Getting an easy way out like this just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

you’ve effectively become a different person than you were before, and you’ve developed a soul/self wholly separate form Bhaal.

It really felt like at this point in the game, they were expecting you to either be 100% aiming for that evil chosen of Bhaal ending, or had been resisting the urge the entire time and saw it as something that was inherently not a part of you. That kinda put me in a hard spot where it felt like the dialogue was almost mocking me for reluctantly choosing Bhaal with lines like “well, I guess there’s no other way! *wink* *nudge*”, when the reality is, my character’s biggest ideological hangup with the whole murder thing was always Bhaal being the one to decide how they ought to behave. Naturally, the one thing they wanted to do was to win. Withers isn’t winning though, he’s losing. Bhaal killed them and reclaimed the urge. They didn’t master it. They have no more motivation.

Which, fine, I kinda liked the betray Bhaal at the last second and commit suicide ending (once I got over having to stomach the bowing), but boy did that feel half baked with zero companion reaction from my love interest as I gutted myself in front of them. Not to mention that Karlach’s scene plays immediately after, leading to an unavoidable companion death and completely distracting me from the impact of my “fuck you father” decision. It was even worse choosing madness option, because I jarring got the option to go to hell with Karlach and Wyll, despite the prior scene showing me going feral. Hah!