Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General JK Simmons Not a Very Convincing Villain.

So first; I am excited that we learned that ChatGPT is basically just Amazon Echo Silver.

Second, and more importantly, back to the discussion of villians. Its important to understand there are a LOT of TYPES of Villains. This is one of the major antagonists - and it seems Larian is going for a sympathetic villain archetype (Anti-villain) with this one, but there are a LOT of other options and a lot more villains in the game that will be very different and have different motivations.

This is me going back to my undergrad Literary Influences class - which was a long fucking time ago.

Here are all the different types:

1) The Bully - Opposition to the protagonist is expressed through oppressive behavior. Can be sympathetic or not - depending on if backstory is explored.

2) The Beast - This is an actual monster. They cannot be reasoned with and is popular in horror and science fiction genres. This is probably the most common type of villain we will face.

3) The Machine - Basically the same as the Beast except they are lifeless, not capable of pain, or any human or animal traits. Basically the Undead would fall under this category.

4) The Anti-villain - These are the sympathetic villains that have positive traits or codes of honor. They may have noble goals but immoral tendencies. Solas from Dragon Age comes to mind. I think maybe Kethric Thorm is one of these.

5) The Mastermind - They are highly intelligent, they have some sort of evil master plan. This is a pretty standard and common type of villain. Its important to note that the mastermind wishes to defeat the hero on a mental and intellectual level and not through direct action. Lex Luthor is the most obvious. Irenicus would fall under this as well.

6) The Fanatic - Ideological extremist usually motivated by religion or an extreme ideology. The cultists of The Absolute would fall under this one.

7) The Henchmen - Not smart. a Sidekick of a greater villain. Loyal to the villain if not their ideology. Moist from Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog - but there are a lot of other examples, they are usually not particularly memorable characters.

8) Evil Incarnate - They represent EVIL itself. Usually no backstory, no development. The Joker I think is the best example of this sort of evil, although there have been graphic novels written that have attempted to fill in a backstory that does humanize him. Sauron from LOTR is a great example. They wear pointy hats and wave "we are evil flags".

Anyway, the point is we have seen a fair share of these so far and I think we will likely see all of them before the end of the game.

Yeah, I agree that Kethric is mostly an anti-villain, he might have a bit of mastermind and fanatic about him.

Phase spider Matriarch, now she's a Lolth fanatic. Such a short simple place in the adventure, yet well done.

Haven't really seen a mastermind yet, the Mindflayers we've met were carrying out the task, not setting the agenda. Oh, Raphael, he'd be both mastermind and evil incarnate.

Reasoned approach and reasonable assessment on the character type presented.

Not perfect but good enough. Also I'm getting lucian vibes.

For all we know Ketheric is just the Act 1 Boss Antagonist. No more special than... [DOS2 spoilers]

This is what I think too. He looks too obvious of a villain, sounds like a red herring to consider this guy as more that yet another puppet of the absolute. We have seen countless of those already.

Happy to have Simmons as a BBEG - Counterpart was one of my favorite series, I was really annoyed when it didn't get renewed. Guy has an amazing emotional range.

If we use the list provided Irenicus would be a 5 with a touch of 4 & 3. But Irenicus was really Lucifer meets Icarus meets modern evil - the greatest of all elvish wizards meets the hard limits of his power* so his 'sister' convinces him to break the rules of universe and become a god. He fails and,at this point he's Lucifer-Icarus but then he's punished with the loss of his soul which adds a layer of modern evil to the black forest cake of his badness. He becomes unfeeling and clinical - essentially a lich in a living body.

While we all worship David Warner I agree with David Gaider on his performance: really good but he flubbed some of his lines. Gaider wrote the lines where Elliseme is released and he said Warner didn't quite get what Gaider was going for - his voice is supposed to communicate great pathos but it doesn't. And there are other flaws: Irenicus was supposed speak without feeling until he takes charname's soul and only then would his voice be full of passion.

I don't think Simmons will make the same mistake - in couterpoint he was able to change from ruthless and cynical to hapless and pitiable in an instant and I think he'll do the same in the game. It looks like we will able to pity Ketheric in the way we were supposed to pity Irenicus. Looks like Ketheric will be 5 with a touch of 4 and 7 - the absolute is the real end boss (that we'll see in BG4 or DLC 3)

It's a great choice - if you haven't seen counterpart you should watch it. Underrated show.

* I never played with a group that took this seriously but in 1e elven wizards could not go beyond lvl 10

I think that's right. He's a mini boss.

I think the only real question is if all the lieutenants will dealt with in Act I or not.

I was also considering the possibility that we might be given the option to throw our lot in with Thorm, but judging by what siding with Minthara actually entails, that's probably not on the table.

100% disagree with that. In particular re: donkey-work code-related tasks – Jenkins and so on – it has been a genius in terms of writing any script you can think of. We lately incorporated a mono-repo ‘micro-frontend’ soluton called NX, and it has answered every single question you could think of in the most perfect way possible. All of its ‘suggestions’ have been incorporated into the project, and each has added a new layer of automation that was otherwise difficult to extract from the obsure NX documentation.

Similarly, for essential boilerplate that my brain seems to de-prioritise over more innovative tasks, ChatGPT hits the nail on the head every single time. It has increased my productivity tenfold in this regard.

I’ve also quite a big interest in medicine, and, for example, I was quizzing ChatGPT on the iqoro recently, an interesting innovation for neuromuscular training, and all of its knowledge has been spot on, absolutely perfect. Again, it was difficult to get the facts from the site – I now am seeing unprecedented gains from this device, which is quite difficult to ‘master’ without a guide like ChatGPT to set you on the right path. It is an extremely effective piece of ‘kit’ – but only if you ask the right questions and get the right answers.

It makes mistakes from time to time, but so do humans. I would say 95% of its answers have either a) advanced my career to some measurable degree or b) advanced my health and fitness in the same manner.


Cool story bro.

Can't wait to give him pictures of Spider-Tav,

Joking aside, Kethric seems like a cool villain.

Yeah, same here. His voice was extremely subdued and he seemed ... Bored? It didn't really do it for me.

Larger issue though, are they really going to announce/present all three major villains, as they mentioned in the update ? I'm like... where's the mystery ? Man, this game...

This is being discussed over at https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=845273.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence)

I've seen this once when someone asked this bot why rats chew on electrical cables. It claimed they get protein, fat and calcium from it or something like that.

If it helps you, great. Most would do well applying caution 🫤

It's quite difficult to compare older, complete games, softened by nostalgic feelings and the usual partial forgetfulness, with what we get from an EA and a short trailer.

Wether Simmons is good as villain or not is to a great extent personal taste, but the data base to judge about this should be a bit bigger than that trailer. I don't see a need for celebrities in video games but for me his performance as Ketheric is ok so far. I can connect the voice with the person shown. Religious fanatics, which for me Ketheric is, are usually not very subtle and nuanced people and should not be shown as such.

The trailer as a whole is quite bad in my opinion. Without having played the EA, how can you even construct a notion about what the game is about? A bit less movement and particles and fast cutscenes and a bit more talking would have been better. I got the feeling as if it was made of parts developed by several teams without much coordination and mixed 5 minutes before release. It's maybe not the intention of the trailer to inform about the greater game structure, but what is the intention? Just to place the name of Simmons and a calender date? Well done then.

Simmon's has enough of a profile to be recognised by wider audience (both for his film work in blockbuster films, like Spiderman/Batmans and more artsy productions), and bring starname to the project, I don't think he is your average "celebrity". While he got recognition and performed some lead roles he is mostly a known for his character work, which should make him an excellent fit for crafting a computer game character that has brief apperance, but leaves an impact. He is also not a stranger to doing VO for animation and games.

He seems fine to me. Too soon to be jumping to judgements on this one, IMO.

The only line I am puzzling over is "Death's design shall be complete" - hokeyness aside does he mean the God of Death, and if so which God? Or is he speaking of some larger concept of death in the Forgotten Realms?

Hopefully it's not just a throwaway line and actually has some context behind it.

Is that how he is tied into this?

Yes. I don't care for stars, movie or something else, but being a good actor, known or not to a wider audience, is most probably a good premise to give life to a character. In my opinion it had worked here. Lucky Mr. Simmons that he only has to offer his voice and is not urged to really run around in the ridiculous armor.