Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Wyll's Questline Doesn't Have To Be Bad

Many people complain that Wyll’s questline is subpar compared to other companions, which is ironic because he arguably has the most ties to the main storyline, especially in Act 3. But in practice, every single part of his quest he has his spotlight stolen by someone else: Karlach, Mizora, Florrick, Gortaash, Duke Raavengard, the Emperor. He has no agency over anything and constantly gets sidelined by more impactful characters or events. The Ansur quest is where this peaks.

The Balduran reveal is bad enough in that it is a very easily missable side quest of a companion quest instead of part of the concerned character’s (the Emperor’s) storyline. Worse, there's a complete lack of companion reaction, and any subsequent Emperor scenes, if you’ve done them out of a certain order, don't recognize the reveal. But the worst thing that scene does is completely sideline Wyll, even though it didn’t have to:

It was the perfect "never meet your heroes" setup, and it was ruined. Wyll's more upset that a dragon we didn't even know existed until five days ago is dead than that his hero turned out to be a Mindflayer who doesn't give two shits about ideals. And the way his end-of-quest lines trigger right there and then, it looks like he gets over it in a matter of minutes.

He should be shaken by the Balduran reveal. Let him go to camp, brood on it for a couple of long rests. A scene where your character walks in on him and the Emperor discussing heroics and morality in the Astral Plane. Then he decides to look ahead.

Similarly, his "should I be a hero on the streets or can I do more good from that high backed chair" dilemma would have been a perfect one if it was triggered by Wyll observing the Absolute's ploy, how Gortash gained control, how he could do some good from that same position. But as the scene is currently presented it goes: "the dragon's dead I amount to nothing > no, I'm actually strong, I'm a hero! > Wait, I can even rule the city thanks to daddy! > omg what should I do, PC?"


I do not pretend to know what to prioritise when working on a game. But tweaking Astarion’s questline (referring to the music change) even though it's the most consistent one in the game, or editing Gortash’s “love” letters, seems redundant to me. Especially when there’s whole story paths that feel like unpolished, late game additions in Act 3 – Wyll, Karlach, the Emperor, Minthara. Ofc small tweaks like letters and music are much easier to implemment than big changes that include voice lines, just saying why waste resources on parts of the game that have nothing wrong with them when you should be focusing on parts that are lacking/wonky.

Anyways, in Wyll’s case I think the whole questline would look significantly better if he had a proper end-of-quest reflection. And personally it'd have been interesting to see more interaction between him and his former "hero". What do you guys think?


edit tl;dr: The problem isn't Wyll's character or questline, but his complete lack of agency over it, plus lack of coherent, fleshed-out quest resolution and reflection.

I agree. I was very baffled that the core of his quest wasn't about him but about the Emperor. I once did the quest without him and there was barely a difference.

Wyll's dilemma feels always odd but I recently had the probably oddest version of it. He started to tell the group about his ambition to become a politician after the whole Ansur situation, Gale mentioned the horns might prove a problem but Wyll insisted, then I allowed him to choose for himself and ... he backpaddled, distancing himself from the idea he himself had brought out of the blue only moments ago. It felt very, very odd. In general his conflict is not very well developed. Why does he even want to become a politician? He does not seem to have much love for the upper class apart from the dancing opportunities it offers. Because he wants to meet his father's expectations? Because he wants to stop corruption? Maybe I have missed a crucial piece of information, but for me the politician plot always jumped out of nowhere. As a side note, it's hilarious that Wyll's politician route is treated as his "bad" ascension path.

Along with the matter of agency, it also bothers me how often he is treated as a secondary character in his own content. The Emperor was mentioned, but the difference in his epilogue between when he is with Karlach and when he is alone is also noticeable. When he is alone, he is awesome. He has a lot of things to say, no matter if he is a politician, the Blade of Frontiers or the Blade of Avernus. I also very much enjoy *how* his character is written in all of these endings, both the more dignified politician, and the adventurer eager to tell you of his exploits are very charming and leave me wondering where this Wyll was all along? When Karlach is in the picture, she gets to say all the interesting stuff and Wyll is left with barely nothing. Recently the Avernus sequence was added for everyone (very idiotically placed between the romance-ending and the epilogue) and here Wyll is given the unaltered Tav-role without any agency and Karlach treats him as if he was new to this sort of thing. This feels very wrong considering how the two of them first met, when Karlach was the prey and Wyll the hunter, chasing her through Avernus.

I agree with how oddly the politician ending is handled. I don't think it seems to expand his characterization or anything, and it seems like we *should* be getting the idea that he's being power-hungry but it's not really played with much? You can have characters with vastly different endings and what it means for them, but with Wyll it kind of feels like all of his endings are somewhat neutral. When you see him in the epilogue he seems to be doing well enough as a politician, unlike the uncanny feeling Ascended Gale and Astarion give.

It gets unintentionally funny when some of your companions are lightly shocked by Wyll striving for political power and an aristocratic title and then you have Gale, dearest Gale, who objects simply because it sounds boring. (I think his comment was along the lines that if anyone can make politics sound interesting, it's probably Wyll.) I could understand Gale's point of view but the other comments felt weirdly negative for no real reason.

That's not what I got from Gale's comment - I thought he was saying that Wyll has a better chance of retaining his integrity than most folks who go into politics. His opinion seemed just as negative as that of the others.

Still my favorite ending for Wyll.

His complete lack of agency is jarring. This dude asks you to decide his fate at every turn. Contrast this with how Shadowheart reacts when you dare to suggest that killing the imprisoned girl might be a bad idea. There the game punishes you with a dice challenge of 30 for "not trusting your fellow companion to make up her own mind".

Don't get me started on the Balduran reveal. It's terrible on its own, but the Emperor can also suddenly decide to join the enemy in the destruction of the city he founded... What a horrific writing.

I'll have to listen to it again then.

Completely agree! You've put everything I wanted to say about this quest perfectly into words. I wish I could print this out and staple it to the doors of Larian's offices or something.

Agreed. Wyll's quest is probably one of the most incoherent, despite (or because of?) having multiple interesting things they could be doing with the character.

When I first encountered Wyll, I thought he was a bit bland. But then when I took him to Karlach, and he was torn and genuinely debating whether to kill her simply because he didn't want to acknowledge that Mizora had duped him, I thought this was setting him up for a really interesting character arc about realizing that his black and white "I'm the hero" attitude was wrong, and that Mizora had him doing things that did a lot more harm than he first thought, even if she technically obeyed the letter of their contract. I expected this to get even worse after Wyll defied Mizora -- surely she'd retaliate by abusing those loopholes even further.

I also thought the conflict between Wyll and his dad might have been more interesting. Instead, they made it so that Wyll was completely in the right, a squeaky-clean hero, and wasn't even angry at his dad for kicking him out. I honestly expected there to be something genuinely bad or at least questionable that Wyll had done, where Wyll was stuck in his "hero vs monsters" mindset but his dad had deeper wisdom that let him see that Wyll was setting himself up for worse things to come. But that wasn't there either.

To say nothing of the fact that Wyll becoming a devil had... no narrative impact? A few allusions, perhaps, but it certainly wasn't the focus at any point.

The Balduran quest drove me absolutely insane. It was Wyll's quest... supposedly. But the Emperor arguably got more character development. But no matter who's quest it was, the significance of "Balduran" to ANY of these characters was never established. Yes, I realize he's a historical figure to them, but just because he has name recognition doesn't mean the reveal has any narrative weight. If I'm watching a Captain America movie, it's still going to be jarring if a random anti-hero turns out to have been George Washington. (Also, if you do this quest before rescuing Wyll's dad, the conversation with him about his life choices has so much whiplash. I saw a version of the conversation that played out with Wyll's dad present, and that one made infinitely more sense, even if it was still too little, too late). Setting that aside, I couldn't help but notice how Ansur had absolutely nothing to say to Wyll. This quest was positioned like it would be a test of Wyll's character, about whether he was worthy as a hero, but Ansur just had no interest in him at all. Talking about Balduran ended up being a distraction from the guy who's character was supposed to be on display here, and I don't think this happened to any of the other companions.

Honestly, the one thing I liked most in Act 3 was Wyll volunteering to go with Karlach. It felt like the perfect bookend to that early scene I really liked between them, except that the middle of his story had nothing to do with it.

Aside from edits to the main story, Wyll's storyline is the one I want to see adjustments to the most. My main votes are "Please reconsider the fact that we can currently do the Ansur quest BEFORE rescuing Wyll's dad (resulting in some very weird pacing)" and "Can Wyll's final quest actually be about WYLL, please?"

My theory is that this quest wasn't meant to be Wyll's quest originally.

Ok... you guys wanted to so... Cauion, Spoilers ahead!

Yeah, i think this quest is about Wyll, because after that he makes a decision, what he will be.

If he's human, he will remain Blade fo Frontiers.
If he's a devil, he becomes the blade of Avernus.
... unless you convince him to become a Duke.

So...what i find way worse is the ending of the questline and romance, which is closely tied to Karlach's story. Which means, Wyll's ending is just as F***ed up as hers if she's alive and goes to Avernus. I watched a video, where a player had a happy ending with him, being Grand Duke, being married with an adopted child. But sadly there was a catch: Karlach died.

So yeah, i would find it more important than anything, to give Karlach a happy endling option, that grants Wyll a happy ending, too. Still, as the Blade of Avernus he will literally go to Hell with her. We need better options for that. Not this messed up nonsense we have to deal with now. Wyll deserves a happy ending option with Karlach still alive, too!

Maybe a decent band-aid would be to allow other non-romanced companions to choose to go to Avernus with Karlach.

The decision he (or more correctly: YOU) make does not depend on anything related to the dragon quest. There is no casual relation between these two events.

She was still alive in my ending. Just with a few added tentacles.

Karlach's less explosive endings requires a weird amount of metagaming because all of the decisions are last minute and not foreshadowed in any way. If you don't know about the tentacular situation beforehand, you cannot take her along especially for this reason and because Wyll's decision to accompany her also is made on the spur of the moment you cannot plan around this either.

When you are on one of those characters who cannot save her - or want Wyll to be Duke - you also have to take her along to the last battle no matter how scarcely she was part of your party set up before, which can be jarring as well.

Isn’t it true, too, that Wyll’s questline breaks completely if you do Ansur before you rescue his father? And even without metagaming, you can find Ansur, technically speaking, by going through a little pipe around the area of Wyrm’s Rock.

Emperor spoilers