meeting The Emperor. Rewriting "Daisy" into the Guardian was a mistake, and it really hurt Baldur's Gate 3's overall narrative. The unusual relationship between Daisy/The Emperor was obviously supposed to be a pillar of the storyline, and the Guardian rewrite simplified it and removed the interesting edge of it. The Guardian is too trustworthy, which makes some of the choices to side against him feel more like gimmicks and less like actual things your character might choose to do under the circumstances. It's a real shame that the origin characters have lost their unique Daisies, as implied by dialogue with them after the first dream sequence in EA, and instead just get a Guardian. Toward the end, the connection between the dream figure and the Emperor is made explicit in a really underwhelming way, too. "Oh no," says your party members, "It's the figure from my dreams!" And out come a quad of vaguely similar people in armor -- none of whom were the Guardian character I actually created.
I understand that people found Daisy to be violating and creepy, but I'd say that having a parasite in your brain that someone is using to communicate with you is supposed to be violating and creepy, and your relationship with the figure was supposed to be unbalanced and off-putting. Likewise, the elimination of Illithid powers from your relationship with Daisy, reducing it to the honestly inexplicable choice on the part of the player to put more parasites in your brain so you can parasite while you parasite (note, however, that no one ever actually comments about having more than one) is disappointing. Gone, too, are the unique powers that your characters received from Daisy, instead everyone gets the same array. And I think gone as well is the fact that some characters would embrace the powers, and some would not. Now, you have to convince all of them.
There's also weird remnants of the Daisy version. You stab the Guardian through their metal armor without issue (Daisy did not wear armor), and there's a scene where the Guardian is wearing the Daisy dress and you don't get to comment on it, and that just feels like a scene they forgot to alter. And I think the song 'Down by the River' was supposed to reflect Daisy and the protagonist, but now there's no dreams down by the river.
Honestly, I wished I hadn't played the early access build because that was the story I ended up wanting to see continued. There's nothing particularly wrong with the Guardian, but it's just so bland and simple. A knight in shining armor shows up and goes, hey, you can use the tadpole powers without a problem, please use them, do it for me, help me. And as much as the game wants you to think there's something going on there, something underhanded, it's really hard to reconcile that with the fact that all the Guardian really conceals from you is their status as a Mind Flayer. Which, funnily enough, is one of the things people didn't like about Daisy -- that they thought it was a Mind Flayer or the tadpole trying to talk them into seeing their side of the story. Well, I mean, isn't that what we got?
While I think most of the early access changes in response to fan feedback have been generally okay, I think there's a significant argument to be made that Larian flinched before players had seen the whole picture, and should've stood by their original vision more than they did. As I got closer to the end, I've thought that all the things they've changed would've worked as a wonderful whole when players had the whole thing to digest, and it's a damn shame we'll never see that version of the story.
