The whole "Good person who just wants to live, but doesn't have the option to" trope they have going for her is just too much for me. Hits too close to home.
It sounds stupid, but it really is one of those things which has left that terrible knot in the pit of my stomach.
I just can't bring myself to keep playing, which is so sad, because I haven't felt this invested in a game in years.
Agreed. Her story reads like a bad allegory for terminal illness, especially the hope-baiting that happens all game. It might have worked better had the setting not been a fantasy realm with fixes around every corner.
A good tragedy is supposed to invoke catharsis, not grief, which from your comment you do not sound cathartic at all.
I also hope Larian addresses these issues, it sucks too because her bad ends would be such a GOOD quest fail state if the player is the reason she didnt get fixed, but the lack of a solution, despite potential fixes being absolutely everywhere, feels like a gut punch.
Quite the opposite of catharsis indeed.
I don't even dislike "tragic" endings. I genuinely adored the tone with which Cyberpunk 2077 ends where you leave Night City with the Nomads. It's made clear that while you don't have much time, you have a little, and you'll spend it with the people you care about.
That's it. The end of CP2077 is totally what a tragic/bittersweet end is, you know V is barely dead, you leave with the nomads hoping for a solution, but you know there's 99% chance that it will end in 6 months. Also Lee in Telltale's The Walinkg Dead is a tragic character, as you know that he'll die and become a zombie real fast, but anyway he'll do everything to save Clementine.
But here Karlach's fate doesn't need to be that tragic in any way without a solution or at least an explanation. Her issue is not that bad as it shown in the game, compared to what we see, like a full region cursed, a forest spirit "cut in half", or a woman that cannot make her husband live as he's dead and rotting for months.
