Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Illithid Powers!!

Can we just kill ao already and make Torril a divine thunderdome?

Preaching to the choir

I would gladly offer prayers to anything that manages to get rid of that annoying nothingness overgod

Am I the only one worried about what putting brain eating parasites could do to a magic user? Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma are mental attributes, so I am really freaked out that a (supposedly) Intelligent/Wise/Charismatic Caster would put anything remotely dangerous near the area of the body we need to cast spells. It's like if a Fighter cut off his main hand to replace it with another.

Oh I mean brain damage in general just seems really REALLY bad but then again...it looks like the negative effects of that might take while to show...potentially as late as act 3 and we really don't know what the consequences will be other than there will be some, likely big consequences. But also I mean...even if not on the first playtrhough, we still have to find out where it all leads because odds are it's still going to be somewhere fun. We have at least five gods floating around and more than one of them have a specific interest in our adventuring party so ways out or around will almost certainly present themselves. Plus I have to find out if the player character can become the Adversary.

Precisely.

Astarion would be first in line to join the Absolute willingly. No need to write a shaky narrative about an undead creature getting tadpoled.

Hello all. Why no Cleric Domen Death?????

I too feel, from what I have seen, that the writing is a bit odd when it comes to the parasites. I have just played a little of EA and that was when it first came out. I do follow the game closely after the last PFH. For instance I have no personal experience with "Daisy".

Pretend that you are one of the people new to BG3. You recently saw a movie with DnD in the title and now social media has exploded over a bear. You decide to give BG3 a look and like what you see.

In the game:
You get a parasite in your head. Eeek, get it out.....
Your party is pushing for getting rid of it ASAP and pretty sure you would want the same thing.
Consequence, (pushed to its point): Skip long rests where the companion stories progress and rush the main story and don't stop to smell the roses on the way (so skip all side content).

Then suddenly your guardian show up. By "definition" a guardian is someone that looks out for your well being. This guardian wants you to embrace the slimy little worms.

WTF!!!! (in the voice of this new player) How am I supposed to handle this. The narrative is pulling me in different directions all the time.

Granted this is based on not nearly enough information but again from what I have seen so far I have no clue how I'm supposed to react in game.
While this might be ok in some ways. You do not want to know the ending of the book before you read it. It is complicated from the point of view that this is a game where you have agency to influence things. By at least my definition that means that when I make a choice I expect some sort of result that I can relate to that decision.

I'm a tad worried from what have seen here that I might get some really nasty surprises that I did not at all expect (as I might interprete what the game tells me differently than was intended). If I was reading a book where that happens I might well put it aside and it would end up one that I DNF.

I'm a glass is half empty kind of person and hopefully the gaps in what I know will fill in the blanks in a way that makes it all "make sense" once I get to experience the full story in game.

That was very confusing for me too, first thing I thought was ''Ok, we're on a timed quest'', then proceeded to do my best to beat everything I could without resting. Result: Not getting cinematics at camp or advancing half the plot of the game xD

Now I have full faith in Larian here to have some 5d chess masterpiece level writing for the game. But the term "guardian" is definitely an interesting name to say the least for someone who pushes you to embrace everything that any ounce of sense in you flags as wrong. Now this guardian also promises to protect you which does make me wonder. The most obvious suspicion here has to be that the guardian is almost certainly a fake persona. Someone is pretending to be the person of your dreams with information likely extracted from your mind...in your dreams. But the big questions are who and to what end? It could be Orin the shapeshifter, though dreams aren't really her domain as Orin is almost certainly related to Bhaal in some capacity. But I actually suspect it might be Shar...it is her artifact that protects us from being mind controlled and it is likely through that artifact that she has access to our minds. And she might not be lying about protecting us but Shar is still evil so if we ally with her we may still be headed for an evil ending. But I am incredibly excited to find out how Larian have crafted this amazing game.

I think it becomes apparent fairly early in the game that the tadpoles are in stasis and cannot proceed with ceremorphosis until released from stasis. We also suspect that someone or something controls the stasis and is waiting for some specific timing. But by that point I feel it's sufficiently clear that ok, this plot won't just move forward by itself, you're not on an actual clock, and this stuff will be resolved when and if you progress the main story. So feel free to take things slowly and smell every rose along the way.

Sure but you get that information for the first time at the underdark and it can be dozens of hours before you reach that point and realize it may not be as urgent as the game initially implies, specially if you avoid resting and using the tadpole powers.

There's too many levels to the story introduced all at once. Like I've said before, Larian can't pace things right but impatiently throw everything in the mix from the start.

You have a tadpole... oh it has been altered... oh it has been altered again by someone else... oh it's in stasis... oh but you can still use it and even make it more powerful through a fun skill tree. It's just a mess.

It's irrelevant whether or not they warn you about the consequences. They push the fetish content onto the player simply by devoting so much of the player choice and narrative to it and by compromising the PC and NPC characters so heavily without providing a quick way out(not counting the painless one that's constantly on offer) . And a GM that keeps churning elaborate fetish plotlines/mechanics for the player to follow/use, but vocally warning them of the dire and horrific consequences of choosing them, is about as suspect of peddling his/her fetish as the Guardian ingame. I'm guessing in she's going to be VA by the Maggie Robertson btw.

And it's not just the one mechanic at play in the 'brainworm farmer' -narrative. From what I've seen of the chapter 1, the storyline seems to be poised to branch in a way that gives the player either the option of fighting the flayer cult(and whatever convoluted godliness is behind the brain devouring aliens) or furthering their goals. Certainly whether or not you ally with the grove&harpers or the cult, is going to have many consequences later on. I suppose, that playing as a merry murderhobo, you may ally with the cult while abstaining from inserting more turdlike maggots in your brain and from the obligatory reward drow sex, but I'd say just working undercover with the tadpole cult is still engaging with the body horror fetish, since it's such a spectacularly senseless and self-harming choice in all other respects. And then there's the business of them adding origin character backgrounds that account for the reason why characters might not want to remove the tadpole, which tend to be rather non-consensually d/s heavy.

And like 1varangian helpfully pointed out, you're stuck with the parasite, even if you do everything to fight the cult. The game initially had a premise that you'd have to remove the parasite quickly or die, and it's not like they didn't make the most of proving you're wrong. On the contrary, you're in a way punished for trying to remove the tadpole in chapter 1, even when not relying on total idiots like Volo. One more sensible attempt even seem to make the parasite stronger... which with this new mechanic might have even worse outcomes, assuming the PC doesn't want to romance lots of irreparable brain damage.

IIRC the screenwriter/director of the first Alien film was adamant that none of the women members of the cast wouldn't suffer the facehugger-chestburst experience, so as to avoid catering to a particular (male) crowd. The other thing that probably prevents the film from turning into a retrograde fetish film is that at least the main character is rather capable and has the resources to fight back against the giant... alien. In comparison, I don't appreciate the relative helplessness forced upon the player in BG3. But, I guess I should have realized from the first trailer where they were going to nudge the game narrative to.

I'll probably play BG3, but like I've said before, there's seemingly no reason to slog through the badly done body horror fetish plotline, which they seem to have devoted substantial, and ever increasing(even if just incrementally), portion of the game content to, for a second playthrough.

some people think that they are anti the Maker.

however, they can not understand the Maker and Omen are one body with two sides.

just any extreme intensification has already seen by the Maker, especial the infinity ambition of human.

however, i do think the Maker would like to see the show that the smooth things instead of intensify.

just as kelemvor replaces cyric and bhaal.

but we can not say cyric and bhaal are useless, just they should be put on other suitable places.

This makes literally zero sense. Aside from the fact it's not a "fetish" as you keep insisting on calling it, and the fact that if you don't engage with that path you'll hardly ever see it at all, the fact it exists is not the same as it being pushed on anybody. You have more than enough choice to play the game without ever touching that aspect. That path isn't even 10% of the game.

You find out one of the first times you rest that you arnt changing like you should. Well assuming you didn't kill gale that is

Nettie also gives you a pretty full run-down on what's going on.

the ball, i mean the artifact hasn't belonged shar.
so i think the guardian isn't shar.

and i think red orin also isn't the guardian.
she should be as an avatar of bhaal, she is controlled by bhaal, such as the dark urge before.

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by the way, i think that things are not so absolute.
we suppose and almost ensure the guardian is evil natural and try to control our player character.
whereas this also give our player character a good chance to counter the guardian, in turn to control him/her.

if your action as astarion desire the guardian too much and too eager, and can not succeed to against his/her charm via a series of high will saving throw, you will become the guardian's slave.
i suppose this is why you say we should leave the guardian alone.

however, this isn't like the urge of the dark urge, we should always refuse and resist it.
if there is a way, we ought to gain the immunity of the urge. whenever we encounter the urge, we have the suitability and won't be affect very soul.

the guardian can be controlled by certain way aiding by the artifact ball.
just as the official site description -- "use dark against dark".

My current theory for if you choose to max out your Illithid powers is that you could end up turning into an Elder Brain. From what we see in the beginning of the game it looks like the Mindflayers on the ship are in a rush to reproduce and even have tech on board to speed up the process. Maybe they just needed more crew to man the ship or maybe the Githyanki attacks have pushed far enough into the Mindflayers' territory as to endanger the Elder Brain commanding them.

It would make sense then if the Guardian is actually the Elder Brain coaxing you along the path needed to become its successor. It wouldn't really be lying then for it to say it's protecting you as maybe in order for someone to skip along the Illithid lifecycle - from tadpole directly to Elder Brain - they first need to cultivate a great deal of psionic ability.

At the very least I think this would be pretty neat!