Originally Posted by Adgaroth
Originally Posted by 1varangian
I don't think it's a weird take. The tadpoles and their powers are very pushed. At the end of EA we are level 5 and nowhere closer to getting them removed.

Narratively, embracing the parasite is a very compromised and risky way of becoming more powerful, even for evil power hungry characters if they have any sensibility. It's almost like the game expects the player to not care so much for the story and logic, or role-playing, and just have fun with the cool powers.

What I want to see at this point is either some kind of substantial reward for never using the powers and getting rid of the tadpole asap, or some significant punishment for giving in and having those powers.

Astarion is now able to do things vampires normally can't do because of the tadpole

Gale is a living bomb trying to get more powerful to either become a God or grab the attention of Mystra

Karlach is being chased by Zariel agents to either being killed or get back to the eternal conflict

Wyll literally made a pact with a devil to get power, this situation is more or less the same

Shadowheart and Lae'zel are by far the most anti-tadpole since one don't have that much thirst for power (or so it seems) and the other is train since birth to hate mindflayers and anything related to them.

I agree the narrative leans more to the side of ''get rid of the tadpole'' but it's not a 100% I would say is more of a 70-30 or even 60-40, there's reasons why our companions would agree with us if we tried to control and/or improve the tadpole powers.
Yes, they went to lengths to come up with crazy reasons for companions to go down a corrupt path and keep the alien parasites in their heads.

But the protagonist who matters is you.

My Tavs don't have outrageous backstories why they might desperately need to keep some dark magic altered mind flayer parasite in their head. And there lies BG3's biggest narrative weakness in my opinion. It doesn't account for Tav enough. Another side effect is that it's a bit far fetched that everyone in the party just happens to have some over the top background that give them a desperate reason to submit.