Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Writing and Shadowheart's Big Act 2 Moment

OH! I should add that I have a mod to change her hair.... I just think she looks prettier this way.

At this point in the story you walk into Shadowfell, where Shar holds the most power and you know that SH got direct orders from Shar to kill Nightsong. Without prior knowledge of the consequences of each choice it is not unreasonable to assume that sparing Nightsong would result in a similar outcome for SH as failing to rescue Mizora is for Wyll and as talking shit to Vlaakith is for you.

I think "good aligned" PC letting SH make the choice herself is not supposed to mean that you expect her to spare Nightsong, but basically saying "I don't like this, but I am not going to demand SH to sacrifice herself for the prisoner". And Shadowheart in turn surprises you by making a huge leap of faith.

Ketheric can't be defeated so long as he is immortal, and his immortality depends upon Nightsong. We know that Nightsong has been defeated and captured once already, and allowing her to live is a significant risk: If captured again, the chance to defeat Ketheric might be lost.

And that scenario almost comes to pass if Nightsong is spared - she is recaptured during the rooftop battle, and Ketheric regains his immortality until she is freed again.

Heck, given her solo flight to Moonrise Tower, and the party's long fight to reach Ketheric, it's rather lucky she wasn't defeated and secreted away somewhere (perhaps aboard a departing nautiloid) before the rooftop battle. Her temperament is largely unknown, and the player doesn't have the option to request that she remain with the party for safeguarding if freed (a minimum precaution).

A game over at this point for parties who spared Nightsong wouldn't be outlandish given their gambling of both their own survival and the fate of the world for the sake of doing "the right thing". And this is overlooking that defying Shar in her own realm might be a fatal mistake to start.

Luckily for Lawful Good Paladins everywhere, Larian allows "good" choices to be made without suffering much if any logical consequences while "evil" choices are punished harshly. The cost of sparing Nightsong is more-or-less "Misty Step + Help" - and then she joins in the battle to boot.

All of this is to say that the scene was handled poorly in general, not just in regard to Shadowheart's characterization. There's no real back-and-forth discussion of potential consequences or morality among the party despite the gravity of the situation, nor does Nightsong argue much of a case for herself.

The interaction begins with the all-knowing narrator saying, "You might be able to sway Shadhowheart from the path of darkness to the path of light." And then the game is like, "Actually, attempting to sway her is the only wrong option."

Even more than this, it felt confusing to me that the dialogue options do not correspond to what happens. If you choose "Trust Shadowheart - do not interfere," then what happens is that your Tav actually just waits 1-2 seconds for the Nightsong to drop some utterly game-changing information ("I know about your fear of wolves, and your past, which Shar has lied to you about")--after which point you can then interfere. If this happens, you can convince Shadowheart to spare the angel using a potentially attainable persuasion check (vs. the essentially impossible one that happens if you follow up on the narrator's voice-over by trying to sway Shadowheart before choosing "not to").

For me, when I see an option that says you are choosing not to interfere, I think of that as a serious decision that I should be prepared to face the consequences for. It does not mean "Wait like 1-2 seconds because there is an ongoing conversation, in fact we are between a couple of sentences right now, and then you can change your mind and interfere."

If the dialogue option had been written as, "Allow the Nightsong and Shadowheart to continue speaking" or even just "Wait and observe," that would make sense. I wouldn't have felt so confused about how "not interfering = interfering more effectively a couple of seconds later after Larian continues its conversation between two NPCs."

Finally, I can't help but feel a little eye-rolly about Larian's messaging overall. It feels like they are saying, "Didn't you notice that Shadowheart has doubts about committing this violence? Therefore you should not intervene."

If a friend or loved one is continually talking about committing an act of violence, but shows some tell-tale signs of doubt or uncertainty about whether they should go through with it, the correct response is not to stay silent and let them figure things out in order to demonstrate that you "trust" them. Withdrawing yourself from their decision-making or emotional space is not what prevents folks from doing violence, at least as far as I understand it. It felt pretty heavy-handed to me, narratively, for Larian to be like "Well didn't you notice that Shadowheart was actually conflicted? If you did, then you should let her have free will. Free will is important. In fact, as a reward for letting her have free will, we will have a second NPC just keep talking and convince her to change her view."

I do think it's interesting that this messaging connects with the themes I've noticed in Larian's writing overall, in BG3 as well as in Divinity: Original Sin 2--the theme of free will, that doing "good" is always more complicated than it seems, that Gods/faith/religious doctrine is illusory, and that free will is the end goal and dogma is bad. All of that feels present in Shadowheart's climactic moment.

But for me, the implementation in this conversation felt off. There was no other moment in the game where I so keenly wished Larian was aware of the medium they were working with--i.e. that they tried to account for the limits of not having a DM interacting with players.

If I was playing D&D in person, and the DM brought us to this crucial conversation and said, "Do you want to do anything?" And I said, "I want to try to persuade Shadowheart to not kill the innocent prisoner and cause dozens of people to be consumed by shadows," and the DM was like, "Too fast, my friend. Nightsong was actually still mid-convo. I was just asking but now your over-eagerness will alienate Shadowheart," everyone at the table would be confused.

BG3 functions more like a chose-your-own-adventure book; I think it has to, and has done amazing things within that form. But if I choose "don't interfere," I'm thinking, Ok, God help me, I'm turning to page 52 to see what happens when I've waived my chance to interfere. Not, "Cool, I'll just wait a second and let Larian keep writing. Good thing I'm not overly eager to be good, or Larian's good character would not have swayed my companion to the path of light."

how quickly she goes from trusting you to declaring that she's going to murder you on the spot. And it never comes up again.

No follow up. No apology. No recognition that she just threatened to murder her ally and confidant for having the audacity to - gasp! - gently suggest that she think this whole thing over.

as people pointed out, it makes no sense that if you gently suggest she not commit murder, she threatens to murder you, even if you are in love or have 100 approval. And then you have to pass extremely high persuasion checks or she will try to kill you or kill the nightsong. But if you say to hurry up and kill her, she doesn't snap at you and immediately does as you say. It makes no sense.

How to fix it:
1.) Add a bunch of dialogue once the trials start. You and her should go through Shar's ideology and history in more detail and get into heated moral debates about it while you are down there. That would serve to flesh out her doubts, the lore of the mission, and your influence on her.

2) Tie the options in the final confrontation with Nightsong to your relationship with her, your good/evil actions up to this point, and how much or how little you have challenged(reasonably) her Shar faith. If you have done good deeds, like saving the Tieflings, and you leave the decision to her, she should spare Nightsong. If you did evil deeds like kill the Tieflings or gave up Isobel, she should kill the Nightsong, if left alone. It would be up to Larian to decide if they are going to track a series of decisions as morally good/bad or just hinge the decision on whether you kill the Tieflings at the Grove or not.

If you've done good deeds and have high approval with her, she should easily accept your suggestion to spare Nightsong, without anger or protest. If you've done evil and have high approval with her, she should easily accept your suggestion to kill Nightsong.
If you've done good and have high approval with her but you want to convince her to kill Nightsong, it should be a moderate check(~15). If you've been good but have low approval with her, the persuasion check should be very high (30+).
Vice Versa for evil.