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The god stuff is definitely one of the bigger questions as none of it has really be shown in the introduction we've got. Apparently the Dead Three are in play as well as Shar to some extent, Gale's not over Mystra so who knows where that'll go, there's a hint that Lolth may be watching to some degree and there's a chance that the Absolute may not in fact be a Mind Flayer peace circle. Sort of the problem with having only the Intro, a bunch of stuff is teased and you don't know if things will be expanded upon or left as a tidbit.

Just wait Svalr, you'll discover that Lae'zel is heir apparent to Vlaakith.

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I don't find her appealing, but I don't hate her enough to rant about it on the internet. She's sort of... meh. Sorry, Shadowheart, my fellow "modern woman."

Also, I'm pretty sure Gale didn't intend to eat an evil piece of shadow magic, and wasn't planning to bring any empires crashing down. He just wanted a nice present for his ex-girlfriend and apparently had no concept that some things might be out of his league.

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Originally Posted by JustAnotherBaldu
Originally Posted by Albannach

I find her so unpleasant and annoying, I don't care about her 'mysterious past'. I kill her and that takes care of that.
I generally killed Sebille in DOS2 because anyone who wants to murder you for merely looking at them probably needs to be put out of their misery.

HAHahahahahaha!
Can we bro-fist on that?
Sybille yeah that was her name.
Killed her too once just for that stunt.
But I reloaded afterwards cause I was still too curious to see what her Edgelording was all about. ^_^
And because I wanted a Rogue in my party.

Originally Posted by alice_ashpool
I like all the companions in their own way, but that doesn't stop me thinking that some of them are actual grade A morons (wyll and gale im looking at you)

What? Why them? Those are the most "sane" people there!! ^_^

Wyll is the literal Hero archetype and he shares my great hate for Goblins. =)
Gale is not that much of a Hero, but he too enjoys doing good stuff.
How are they moronic? laugh


Originally Posted by Verte
Both pay attention to conventions and try to fit into the male worldview of a good girl.


Its not a worldview to behave logically and normal though.
In your defense I do not know much about Shar-Clerics and from what I found out ingame, Shar is a Goddess I would never consider to worship.
Shar is a Deity of Secrets though. Which also means of manipulation.
Which means: Of decieving others.

Shadowheart could therefore play the part of a very benevolent person! Maybe even try to be heroic and cheerful, or optimistic?
You know - the clever path of being a nasty, manipulative t... otally smart, evil Cleric. =)
But she isn't.

I totally expect that at some point LarianStudio's will find a suuuuuuper believable reason for all of her character. If we recieve enough flashback material about her that is.
So that all will be forgiven and I feel so bad that I had such an unimpressed and annoyed opinion of her in the past.
I will be redeemed...
... in simping service to this high Lady (LOL)...
... and kiss her feet like the lowly male that I am. (snort)

Since this seems to be societys worldview of a good boy that is!
" She is a Wamen! All Wamen are Queeeeeeeens! "

xD

Originally Posted by Atlus
Originally Posted by alice_ashpool
Originally Posted by Atlus

I wish if you were playing a mage character, the narrator would give you a understanding of how horrific what Karsus
did to the weave was and the fact that Gale even attempted it should definitely make you think “This dude has no moral boundaries and definitely has threatened more innocent lives than any of your evil companions.” Kinda like a power for a price situation with the cost being unnatural obsession.

I like the juxtaposition between his "good face" and "polite manner" and the fact that he has the ambitions, drive and morals of a neutral evil character. Killing a single goblin in cold blood: nope, pointless, vindictive even; causing the deaths of thousands upon thousands to become a the most powerful wizard ever: yep, every time, no hesitation

but after all that he ends up bumped back down to lvl 1 with a flayer-parasite in his head. can you say owned?


I like that interpretation a lot. I wonder if, as the game progresses, you start to see how “ambitious” he is and it starts to bring your character into conflict. My understanding is you get a glimpse of it if you “fail” to feed him. I really like the idea of being locked into a character you think is good and then turns out that he’s just a human(oid) with complicated interests.


Does he really have a tadpol in his head?
As far as I could tell he was lying, the other npcs you have a "mindmeld" of sorts when you come across this them. A mage shows up from a portal asking questions and acting like he knows you, along with no "mindmeld" scenario.
I generally don't trust wizards and didn't press convo's with this character, so I have no clue truthfully. On a side note, he was eating dirt next to the portal more times than one on my plays.

Wyll is probably my least fav character out of all of them, you know this guy if you give him the chance will talk about himself for 20minutes straight. I don't know which one is worse the wiz or the douche lock.

Last edited by fallenj; 19/11/20 02:03 AM.
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Originally Posted by Atlus
Karsus had "good" intentions but didn't understand the implications of taking Mystra's power and controlling all of magic. I'd wager that put Gale in a even worse position because he knew about it -- and did. not. care.


Gale wasn't trying anything of the kind, though.

He just wanted to free a fragment of the Weave that had been trapped in an ancient book by an ancient mage. There's nothing morally ambivalent about that, as far as I can see. Just arrogant and stupid.


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Gale can be super sleezy, I'll grant you that, but I don't get the impression he'd commit mass murder to gain power, which seemed to be implied earlier in the thread. He'll just passively endanger the lives of everyone around him rather than isolating himself in some safe place. A pretty solidly true neutral character, I think.

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Originally Posted by Atlus
I think OOC we know that Gale has a tadpole (from the devs)


Oop you got me on this, didn't know that.

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Originally Posted by Rieline
I have played the early access. I say this and probably if i am right someone will remember this words.

I think Shadowheart worship of Shar is not genuine at all. I think she is indeed a cleric but nof ot Shar. And i think she is costantly brainwashed. There are many instances where she show genuinely a good side and she show to care. However i do believe she is a quite a lot conflicted character and part of her true self can surface out if not all if she manage to recover the memory.

To me she is just Brainwashed with no memories. And her reactions with the temple of Selune... Well that speaks a lot to me.

((would also explain why her approval is inconsistent at time. ))


Yeah there is also her telling Astarion she finds romance boring and likes flings, yet she has the most chaste and lovey dovey romance scene

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Originally Posted by Tarlonniel
Gale can be super sleezy, I'll grant you that, but I don't get the impression he'd commit mass murder to gain power, which seemed to be implied earlier in the thread. He'll just passively endanger the lives of everyone around him rather than isolating himself in some safe place. A pretty solidly true neutral character, I think.


Is he a psychotic mass murderer? No, not until the bomb goes off at least. But he is either an idiot or the more likely an extreme narcissist. You don't go around messing with cosmic power unless you've got a serious ego or severe inability to comprehend the kind of damage you could cause. Becoming a walking bomb capable of leveling a city is not something a neutral or good person does, at least I wouldn't think they would. At least Wyll only screwed his own soul, Gale's on a whole other level of "fuck the consequences".

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Originally Posted by FelLich
Becoming a walking bomb capable of leveling a city is not something a neutral or good person does, at least I wouldn't think they would. At least Wyll only screwed his own soul, Gale's on a whole other level of "fuck the consequences".


The point is that Gale had no idea those would be the consequences. He knows it now and can be held accountable for what he does with that knowledge, but he didn't know it then.

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I'll concede that he probably didn't know he'd turn into a doomsday weapon. However, I'm not convinced he didn't know there were significant, and I mean significant, risks with messing around with god level magic. I'll also add that the whole alignment system is not a great way to get people's moral compass, in my opinion, other than a very general idea.

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Interesting that Asterion will get all kinds of interpretations about how he is not all that bad a person deep down. But when it comes to Gale or wyl, there is great focus put on their vices.

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He was messing around with a small piece of the Weave - that's not quite god level magic. Though I may be misunderstanding just how powerful the control of a small piece of the Weave would make you.

And you're right, the alignment system doesn't do more than give a general idea of someone's behavior. That's more or less its entire value as far as I'm concerned - giving you a general idea of how someone behaves, which may not apply in certain circumstances and which can shift gradually over time.

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Why is this dumpster fire of a post not locked yet? This is just an excuse for the OP to vomit his naked misogyny all over the forum.

If you're not going to shut this down, at least change the title from "Why I effortlessly dislike Shadowheart" to "Why I effortlessly dislike women", so people know what they're getting in to here.

Last edited by Firesnakearies; 19/11/20 04:17 AM.
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Originally Posted by Svalr
I like her, but I feel like her disapproval and approval is way too inconsistent, probably the worst out of any character.

If you don't like her you can always just kill her instead of taking her along.


I don't know if I'd describe Shadowheart's approval as inconsistent. She just doesn't easily fall into the "good deed vs bad deed" binary most people assume characters should fall into.

From my experience with her Shadowheart is a neutral good person who's trying to be neutral evil. Basically she's a fundamentally good person who is striving to be a self centered pragmatist who can do what is necessary to further her personal goals.

She likes it when you ignore people's pleas for help and dislikes it when you agree to go out of your way to help someone, but she likes it when you help people after already agreeing to do it. She dislikes it when you perform senseless acts of evil and dislikes it when you pick unnecessary fights.

Keeping that personality in mind I find I am rarely surprised by her reaction to things I do. It might seem counter-intuitive, but that is because it is. She's a bit hypocritical. Which comes from the fact that she's part of this religion that espouses virtues of selfishness and pragmatism that don't necessarily align with how she genuinely feels.

So she'll go along with attacking the grove because she rationalizes it as the pragmatic thing to do to further your goals. Then she'll get drunk as Hell because even though she's telling herself it had to be done she still feels guilty about the deed because deep down she knows it was wrong.

Honestly she's probably the most complex of the current followers.

It's just a shame she's mechanically so weak comparatively.

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Hey, we've managed to have a perfectly civil, entirely off-topic conversation. That's a win - I think.

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Originally Posted by Atlus
Originally Posted by Ari
Interesting that Asterion will get all kinds of interpretations about how he is not all that bad a person deep down. But when it comes to Gale or wyl, there is great focus put on their vices.


I think that the narrative wants you to have this view. Asterion is flagrantly evil at first but then you hear about his backstory and you think “oh, well, there’s a bigger bad dude” but then

you learn that he’s such a bastard that even vampires don’t trust him


It makes you try to parse out how evil he naturally is vs how evil he is in reaction to becoming a free day walker.

Gale & Wyll both present at heroes in the narrative but the more you learn, the more you smell something fishy. Both seemingly come up with more “ph, btw, you should probably have known this two hours ago”

Originally Posted by Firesnakearies
Why is this dumpster fire of a post not locked yet? This is just an excuse for the OP to vomit his naked misogyny all over the forum.

If you're not going to shut this down, at least change the title from "Why I effortlessly dislike Shadowheart" to "Why I effortlessly dislike women", so people know what they're getting in to here.


I will admit that I have been flip-flopping on joining this forum due to the lack of moderation and (in my view) near constantly inflammatory comments/threads


Things are not so bad here. Just gotta learn how to discern a hill not worth dying over and keep in mind that we are the vocal (and mostly negative) minority.

I did find the journey of parsing Asterion’s character interesting on a first playthrough admittedly. He started bad, looked like he may have some good, and then realized first impressions should be trusted.

In wyl and Gale’s case, I think it just comes down to the fact that, the moment a person is presented as altruistic, they are held to higher standards. Or just that the contrast in character traits will make the smaller ones stand out more.

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Originally Posted by Firesnakearies
Why is this dumpster fire of a post not locked yet? This is just an excuse for the OP to vomit his naked misogyny all over the forum.

If you're not going to shut this down, at least change the title from "Why I effortlessly dislike Shadowheart" to "Why I effortlessly dislike women", so people know what they're getting in to here.


How does dislike of one fictional female character translate to misogynism?

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Originally Posted by Soul-Scar
Originally Posted by Firesnakearies
Why is this dumpster fire of a post not locked yet? This is just an excuse for the OP to vomit his naked misogyny all over the forum.

If you're not going to shut this down, at least change the title from "Why I effortlessly dislike Shadowheart" to "Why I effortlessly dislike women", so people know what they're getting in to here.


How does dislike of one fictional female character translate to misogynism?


Personal opinions will translate into opinions of characters that's just how life is.

Honestly I figured hijacking this thread for general companion hot take discussion was the best course of action. The weave fragment that Gale was trying to get was a piece of Mystra, so it more than likely wasn't full god power but it was part of her power and so, in my mind, dangerous to mess with. How dangerous, well we know that it turned him into a bomb. Before messing with it, we don't really know unless Gale later fesses up about knowing that there were some real dangerous it's more just an assumption on my part that he should've known it was dangerous to mess with. Look at the Bhaalspawn, they all had fragments of Bhaal's power and they were fairly dangerous.

When it comes to Astarion, I've stated the point that he strikes me as aristocracy, above the peasants and all that. Combined with the eternal undeath he's developed a cruelty bent. Though he does state that he's been under Cazador's control for 200 years, so that would shape a person. Of course Cazador could be the evil that Astarion has described or he could be keeping Astarion in line, keeping him from feeding on or killing people. He also in my mind just fits a bunch of vampire tropes and doesn't really interest me. Though I suppose if he was a woman I'd probably pay more attention...so there's that.

The funny one is Lae'zel, she pretty much gets written off as an angry soldier type who needs to get to the Creche and that's about that. Or at least that's what I've seen.

Finally, the Approval and Disapproval system requires interjection on the companions part. Having them just silently like or dislike something really hurts getting a feel for the kind of person they really are.

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Originally Posted by Soul-Scar
Originally Posted by Firesnakearies
Why is this dumpster fire of a post not locked yet? This is just an excuse for the OP to vomit his naked misogyny all over the forum.

If you're not going to shut this down, at least change the title from "Why I effortlessly dislike Shadowheart" to "Why I effortlessly dislike women", so people know what they're getting in to here.


How does dislike of one fictional female character translate to misogynism?

Well, the op has written that this fictional female character "represents the modern day woman". If you hate a character who at the same time is representing to you an entire group of people, that implies you also hate this specific group.

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Originally Posted by JustAnotherBaldu
After having a few discussions about her and the whole probably "kind of like a god-child" or something theorys and the like...
... and Shadowheart always popping up again as a theme of discussion in circles I am a part of, I feel the need to get this off my chest.


She is not hot stuff. She only looks hot. But she is not hot stuff.
Shadowheart represents the modern day Woman.
Wannabe strong & independend Woman, which never truly takes an active role in anything, but is also never happy with the results of anything.


Didn't need to read further than this sexist garbage

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