Upon further thought, the whole mindflayer ship opening is quite possibly one of the worst ways to start a story. The entire plot is suddenly pigeonholed into an urgent quest to find a way to get rid of the mindflayers, which turns out to be false both narratively AND from a gameplay sense. It really messes with player expectations a lot.
I also think the mindflayer tadpole plot device is quite boring at this point. Seems to me like literally every other subplot in the game is a lot more interesting with more potential varied outcomes than the zero sum 'what the hell are these tadpoles and how do they factor into the big bad's plot' thing. I really think we should have gotten an opening phase showing us hints at all the other subplots before the mindflayer stuff happens and screws everything over sideways.
I only wonder if BG3 is putting too many eggs into everything being dark and mysterious, because we literally don't find any meaningful answers to anything in regards to the larger plot at our current point in the EA. I've said this before, stuff like this is why expectations in regards to the writing for people who are really into crackpot theorycrafting are sky high (like all the insane people guessing that Gale might be a reincarnation of someone who fought against Mystra or something). But to everyone else who prefers a more well rounded experience, it's not surprising that things feel a bit shallow.
And the higher you go, the steeper you crash if you fall. The writers of the Mass Effect series know that all too well.
At this point, I think it would be much better if the PC's didn't have the tadpoles in them at all. Get rid of the fake urgency completely. And most of all, get rid of the plot holes or far out explanations why the PC's tadpoles are "different". It's getting too messy to be a good story. I'm afraid I'm going to be seriously let down here. Already, looking for a cure three times, and failing every time is really annoying because they are prolonging the tadpole situation for whatever reason.
Even if the party didn't get tadpoled before the crash, we would still encounter the True Souls and start unraveling the mystery. There could easily be OTHER motivations for both good and evil parties to get involved in the plot. You could even have a good old betrayal or body snatchers moment when one of your trusted companions or followers turns out to be a True Soul, which is not possible when literally everyone has a tadpole and they're just working differently because. If Shadow Magic implies Shar has altered the PC's tadpoles, surely a divine intervention level event does not require Mind Flayer tadpoles to be inserted first. The foundation of this plot seems very shaky and I'm afraid god avatars are going to be casually popping up at level 5 when level 15 is more appropriate.
But I guess they wanted to add "fun powers" and gameplay is calling the shots over at Larian. I never used any of the tadpole powers anyway, considering the source and all the unknown. In the end, it's still a disgusting parasite in your brain and not giving us a way to remove it isn't cool.
