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

Well, I guess it's ambitious to lock a lot of content behind a mechanic that only makes sense as a hammy 70's body horror fetish and/or fantasy version of 50 shades of gray. It's not like moving Daisy from your hearts desire to the status of a Guardian, does anything to alter or hide the only narrative reason given in chapter 1 to go down the brainworm farmer path is to get terminally screwed, body, mind and soul. Even if this plotline is partly intended to work as joking social commentary or whatever, it's not a good design choice from Larian to dedicate whole branching plotline behind enganging with fetish content.

I'd say the better games in the genre(Resident evil village, System shock etc.) that fetishize body horror, tend to leave it mostly up to the player whether or not they want to engage with this stuff or not, and leave enough room for the players to treat the story as just a horror story. In BG3 it's like we're sort of stuck with a GM that's trying to coerce the players to engage with his/her fetish.

This is just a weird take and very inaccurate. If you don't want to use the tadpoles just don't click the tiny brain symbol of the UI that is at the top right...very out of the way, barely takes any screen space at all, and so small you might miss it if you weren't actively looking for it. It's easier to miss than to notice. And if you do inserting tadpoles gives a graphic representation of your brain being eaten and/or rotting away...it's basically screaming "don't do this!". And then the guardian figure who is obviously sus and from everything she says comes across like she has a large warning sign stapled to her forehead that screams: "Do not trust a single word I say!" lol. If anything the guardian is Larian(or the DM if you will) literally warning you not to engage with the tadpole. And if that wasn't enough if you decide to trust the guardian and use the tadpole in conversation the narrator literally tells you that it took something you will never get back. All of this is the literal opposite of the "DM begging" you to engage with the content. The DM is offering you the option to do that stuff but offers about a hundred million warning signs if start following down that path and if you don't go down that path it's completely out of the way where you don't have to see it and all you're left with is a few conversations with the guardian that mostly serve a warning signs but those are few and relatively far between.

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.

People like to use the Thanos meme about gammora's death costing him "everything" when he was a psychopathic killer who tortured her.

Actual temptation, actual hard decisions, are well hard. If forgoing the tadpoles didn't feel like you were limiting yourself, then not using them would be as easy of a decision as thanos killing Gammora.

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.

This is another incredibly weird take as well. The game does everything possible to warn you off going down that path and your take is "oh, they just don't want me to think and have fun with the powers". No, if they didn't want you to think they wouldn't have designed the grewsome screen showing what it does to your brain, it would have been a simple skill tree with some lines and empty boxes and no extra animations...why bother explaining or very graphically illustrating something if they didn't want you to think? And when you use the tadpole in dialogue the narrator very specifically says that it took something that you will never get back. Why insert that warning if they didn't want you to think? Larian put A LOT of effort specifically into making sure you think and if you decide to ignore all of the million warning signs and do it anyway you REALLY can't blame the game or say the game forced you to do it...that is completely and absolutely one million percent your fault at that point.

In fairness, the "you're losing something you'll never get back" is in early access. We don't know if that line is still in full release, do we? That may have changed with some of the other rewrites.

This is why it's difficult to make these kind of calls without seeing what's in full release.

I am 99% sure that line is in the final game. I believe I have seen it recently in one of the videos from the full game though I don't have the link to that right now. But in the full game the illithid wisdom checks are largely identical to the way they were in early access. The guardian was changed and you no longer get powers from the illithid wisdom checks but otherwise they are still there as they were.

That's the problem exactly ever since the EA first started. Constant warnings - but zero consequences, and you do not get a chance to remove them either. Gameplay and storytelling are pulling in different directions. It could be that they don't want to spoil the story too much in EA, or just want to give you a lot of temptation to use the tadpoles. But I don't really trust Larian to deliver at this point either. It was a huge red flag when lead systems dev stated that the tadpole skill tree was designed to give players more progression at higher levels. That is the number one motivation for Larian's games, not some skillfully crafted narrative.

First of all it's early access so clearly not the finished game and second of all this isn't the kind of game that delivers instant consequence and then forgets you ever made that choice. No, a lot of the consequences for these actions will come MUCH later into the game. Swen specifically said in the last live stream that the city of Baldur's Gate is where you see the consequences of a lot of your choices throughout the game. That's act 3 of the game and act 1 is less than a quarter of the game. This isn't the kind of game where you can easily save scum your way out of consequences. You're given the warnings, you're free to ignore them but it won't be as simple as reload last save to get out of consequences you don't like.

And the tadpole...that's probably going to be there for most of the game. Resolution for it I wouldn't expect until late game if not at the very end.

Yeah... Part of the reason why I'm worried about the writing in this game. I know this game will be fun, but I am unsure about how high will be the quality of writing. It's impressive how much writing they have, but when someone compares them to Game of Thrones all I can think of is... Which season? And I feel like we will have probably 5-6 level that maybe sometimes will rise close to 1-4. That is my prediction. I highly doubt we have "Rival of Planescape Torment" here like some people say.

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.

''Your Tav's'' Mine might (?), that's why Tav's don't have a background and you have the DU new origin. Your Tav is what you make of it.

''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''

I suspect this might be by design and part of why those ''special'' people are infected by tadpoles in the first place. But it can be what you said too, we don't know yet.

We have no idea what those consequences are or how deep, if any, as far as the Illithid powers are concerned.

What we do know is that a lead dev stated the Illithid power skill tree was designed for high level progression. Gameplay. And no one is asking to be able to save scum important decisions, no idea why you brought that up. Far reaching consequences are expected.

The concern here is basically that systems devs are leading the game instead of writing, and the story and overall quality of the game will suffer because Larian is too much systems first, story second.

I'm not buying that. Those special people with desperate conditions are the ones who don't need to be mind controlled, because they already have a strong motivation and can be bought.

Astarion - serve us and we will free you from your master.
Karlach - serve us and we will free you from your master.
Gale - serve us and we will remove the time bomb that kills you.
etc...

For True Souls, they are much more a liability than an asset. What if Cazador / Zariel comes looking, or a Netherese orb blows up in Absolute HQ.

The absolute has divine magic, shes the big dog here, Cazador would run the other way.

I wasn't really thinking about control but more from an experimental point of view, they might make for better guinea pigs that other people, like I said I'm just offering other points of view, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying it's hard to judge the narrative when we don't know what the narrative is.

Come on now...you surely don't expect them to just lay out all of the spoilers and paths. But there WILL be consequences, that you can absolutely count on. The game has over 175 hours worth of cutscenes to account for very wild story permutations. You can't seriously complain about the lack of consequences and then backtrack to "well they haven't shown them so there might be none" given everything we know about this game. This game will easily and by far give the players the most agency over the story than any other RPG ever made. You have the freedom to do A LOT of things and those will lead to wildly different consequences.

He is the scribe of the dead, “The final Scribe”. He’s likely the oldest god in the forgotten realms (next to AO). Even though he is a lesser deity now he was once a greater one, but got board and gave his powers away to the dead three. Jergal was also exempt from AO’s banishment during the Time of Troubles. He may even be close to being an over god like AO though subservient to him. The only other potential over god in the realms is the God born Dead Atropus.

A pretty good Reddit about him here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindT...breakdown_forgotten_realms_god_of_death/

There are certain entities in the realms which seem to occupy a place between greater deities and Ao. Unlike the other gods, they were not created or formed by divine hand, but have simply always been there. They do not challenge Ao either out of a lack of ability or a lack of interest. They simply are, and like Ao, their high standing seems to remove them from most mortal affairs. But I’m all likelihood, when the Prime Material Plane is concerned, they are mostly subordinate to Ao, but not easily destroyed by him.