Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion [END SPOILS WARNING] Addressing Karlach (PLEASE PUT SPOILERS IN TAGS)

I made an account here just to chime in as well.
I have already put an embarrassing amount of time into this game and have been loving it so far. (though i can see the time crunch and the extra bugs in act 3. but its still good.)
I knew nothing about Karlach aside from what the early accesses meetup with her explained and didn't know what to expect. I honestly ended up loving her almost immediately, perhaps even more than Astarion. They did such an amazing job with her character. the little dances she dose, the stuffed bear by her tent, the little bouts of singing- they went out of their way to make her easy to love.
She quickly became my favorite character and one of my main go-to party members for every encounter. And as other have already said, she is one of the very few characters in our party who despite everything that has happened to her, has chosen to be unabashedly good even though it would have been perfectly understandable for her to be bitter and cruel after everything that happened.
the fact that her only options are basicallyHonestly i was planning on my first playthrough to be with my og character, an evil aligned sorcerer who juuuusst scrapes by doing a little more good than bad so long as it progresses her own goals first and foremost. Basically she is very selfish and self-serving but she is willing to commit endless atrocities (or, regrettably, heroics) in order to protect her friends. So this sucks. She chose Karlach as one of her main fighters because of her combat prowess but having the persistently good-natured Mom Friend fighting by her side ended of softening her up a little bit. more than i was expecting.
So when both myself and my character learned she was on borrowed time and we got the incredibly obvious chekov's gun about theI ended up spoiling myself to Karlach's fate because i honestly thought i must have missed something obvious/ encountered a bug or maybe just picked the wrong path whenI didn't romance her, and i already freed I honestly may end up putting the game on pause and hoping for an update. I dont mind there being bad or tragic endings, but considering how everyone else can live through the ending and get some level of closure, it feels like Karlach got singled out and done dirty. Especially considering the massive amount of solutions there are to her problem. We have grown powerful, met people with the skills to stabilize similar constructs and have encounters gods and devils alike. And yet no one could find a lead? personally it boggles my mind that they would do this to her, especially since she can be romanced. People want the option to give their romanced character a happy/satisfying ending and it looked like all the parts were there and laid out for us to find a solution for her. so why did she get left behind?
I havnt lost all hope though. i know Larian has been pretty good about listening to player feedback, there are a few big patches planned and i hear they fixed up a character's ending in a different game in the past- so i really do think she has a real chance of getting something better. i truly hope so.

Ya, bittersweet isn’t really the right word for it. It just kinda irks me that the ground work for a happy ending is there, it just leads no where. Like dangling a carrot you can never reach. I know I’ve seen some people claim that not every character needs a happy ending, but in a game where each character has multiple endings, why should all of her’s be tragic? What’s so wrong with giving her a single happy ending? I hope it’s because Larian didn’t have time and may add one later, and not because they simply didn’t want to.

It's not even necessarily that it's the groundwork for a happy ending, it's the groundwork for any alternate ending. Good or bad, no matter what you do with her quest, you end up with the same options. Why would I want to re-do her quest/play with her as an origin character in another playthrough if there's no ending variation?

I think she 100% can have a happy ending and it wouldn't compromise any tragic story beat (one could make the argument for any other companion being equally tragic, and they all get freedom in choosing their endings). But even putting that aside for a second, let's run with the "she's a tragic character" thing: there can absolutely be room for different endings while still driving home a tragic characterization--they could do a little story twist of, say, "oh, your heart was the prototype, but this perfected model that'll save you runs on the souls of orphans! The choice is yours!" Suddenly, she can die as a tragic good-aligned character, AND there can be room for Karlach in an evil playthrough, if you want to go again and already torched her in a good playthrough.


In any case, we're all missing the most important grievance she's been subjected to: why is Karlach not on the official cover art???

TRUTH!

This reminds me of a game I once played called Yes Your Grace. In this game, you are urged to develop your own army to win the upcoming war. But the reality is that no matter how powerful your army is, it will have no effect on the outcome of the war. You always lose. This discovery annoyed me at the time.

I mean if you make a game just to tell a story with a fixed ending, and that ending is sad, then you shouldn't give the player the illusion that they can achieve a happy ending through their own efforts . You should not imply that players are approaching the crux of the problem by arranging various clues, let them feel that all problems will be solved in the end, and happiness will arrive, so as to give them the motivation to continue playing. At last, when they put in all their efforts to reach the ending, they suddenly found that the sad ending was fixed, and nothing they had done before made any sense. This is a deception. In a way, it's also a humiliation. It made me feel like a fool for being fooled.

And I don't understand why sad endings appear more and more in games over the years, or better yet, bittersweet. It's getting harder and harder to get joy out of games.

Going back to BG3 itself, despite the fact that there were many clues in the game that could have cured Carrack that were eventually discarded, I was actually able to be satisfied with that ending where the tav and Karlach went to hell together. But, why did that ending end so abruptly as if cut off? Even if it didn't show Tav and Karlach in Avernus, at least it should show the two disappearing from Faerun together. But none of that, the game just suddenly went black on the screen and I even thought the game was bugged. We don't even know whether the two of them went to Avernus or not.

Why? Could it be for a later plan, so Larian didn't want Tav to actually go to Avernus? Is it possible that the story after the screen turns black is that Karlach finally has to go back to Avernus by herself? because Tav has to stay in Faerun for some reasons so he can't fulfill the
promise to go back to hell with her?

Fresh inductee, you have my full support... Spoiled the game for myself last night because I was searching for workarounds to what I perceived to be progression bugs, only to find out that, no... they're not bugs. Spoiled it further by exploring the other characters and their conclusions, which dented my experience even more. I echo those who cannot bring themselves to finish the game now. I have two ongoing characters (wanted to play a Bardladin and a Ranger/Rogue, so I did), both just flowed naturally into exhausting all interactions with all characters and trying to at least improve their situations, only to find out that I might as well stop playing, because it won't matter that much...


I'm literally heartbroken right now. I've cried about this game and my, as of now, somewhat wasted investment of over 350 hours. And maybe that's my fault, maybe I have an unhealthy investment in this game, but, from my perspective, you can't put out a work of art and expect people to not have a reaction to it. Can't and don't want to imagine how I would've felt if I had to find out by finishing the game...

Welcome, and yeah, it's really rough and we can only hope to keep the voice loud, but also respectful to see the change in the future.

#JusticeForKarlach

Yeah I would also like to add that among the Act 3 stuff that generally felt more rushed than Act 1 and Act 2, they did Karlach really really dirty. Like I can't believe the Date previewed from panel from health is her last romance scene... I expected there to be more.

It certainly leaves a fair bit to be desired, I think as more people reach Act 3 the more we're seeing different people's issues with it. Hopefully with time and patience there'll be a fix to come.

Greetings,

Like many others, I also made this account specifically to chime in about justice for Karlach.
Accidentally finding out about her selection of exclusively bad endings broke my heart and killed any will I had to continue my main campaign, where my character is romancing her. I’m really very fond of her and could not stand to see any of those endings come to pass. So that’s 60ish hours of gameplay that will have to be aborted or put on hold until a good ending is added or revealed.

Karlach is the only companion I’ve found myself actually caring a lot for. I mostly like the others, but I’m not invested and would not mind a bad ending for either since to varying degrees I don’t feel like they are entirely undeserving of them. Karlach, however, has done nothing to deserve hers, and I’d argue she’s the only one that absolutely should have a good ending. She has been used and discarded with little to no agency of her own, which would’ve made for a fantastic story if she managed to get out of it, but instead she is doomed by no fault of her own. This unfairness is frankly both very upsetting and frustrating. You can come away from a tragic story with a feeling of catharsis or satisfaction, but this is not it. This feels simultaneously unfinished and just sad for sadness’ sake. Her story is presently one of futility, which, while it could ring familiar to many players, only brings misery. Think instead of the potential her story has for hope and finding your way out of an impossible situation; as an allegory for mental illness, life difficulties, etc., it works best if it could also bring inspiration and light in otherwise dark circumstances.

From what a lot of other people have been writing, it also seems like a lot of the pieces are already in place, just completely (and decievingly) unutilized.
Please Larian, help me refind my enjoyment of this otherwise immaculate game. Up until this point I’ve been playing religiously, with an investment and enjoyment I’ve not had since I was a teenager. I know you would make a lot of fans very happy if you gave Karlach the ending she deserves.

Regards,
Adolphus Gildani
Tiefling bard and fencer extraordinaire

Lots of love and care in your words, welcome to the community, and thank you Adolphus.

The reason why a lot of the pieces are already there is because Karlachs quest already existed in some form and was then cut from the game as the quest happened in the upper city that got removed.

Yeah that's seems highly probable.
I mean look at the official Upper city map presented by Larian.
Everything is here, Steel Watcher Foundry included. And there is a quest icon on the map, meaning there is at least one quest here that is, by force of circumstances, cut from the actual release.


HYPOTHESIS TIME :

The more I think about it, the more I'm conviced it's already done, quests are developed, story is already written and dialogues are recorded. And we'll have the rest of the storyline for companions that are related to Baldur's Gate like Astarion and Karlach.

But with the Starfield release and their panic PC release announce a month sooner, I think they have cut maybe half of the Act 3, thinking most of the people will be able to wait a month, or that it will took for a majority of the players more than a month to finish Act 1&2.
Then for the PS5 release we should have the full game with probably a lot of bugs fixed.


I'm pretty sure that with all the quests and the story related to Upper City, Karlach, Astarion, Gortash and all the final antagonists will take on much more depth and scope in the story.
This could explain among other things, why actual differents ending feel bland. Maybe these will be triggerable endings earlier in the full story, which necessarily takes away a lot of epicness.

And this could be a new concept invented by Larian : the Early Full Release Access.

So that's why the Lower City felt bloated with quests that made no sense urgency-wise!

Hope you're right about them intending to add the content. But, damn, if that's not a dumb and underhanded decision to make if that's what it is...

And I mean... it's a Bethesda game they were scared of... most of us know to wait a couple of months before mods will make such a game playable...

Strongly agree on opinion about endless possibilities stored in DnD and game itself, that allows to perform miracles of all sorts. There are lots of hell iron in the game, but still no love for Karlach despite player's efforts.
That is unsatisfactory: lots of ways to lose her but not a single to win.
Personally I don't find ending as good one (only if somewhere player slighly failed in the process, but not gravely) - taking into account the fact that she loves this world and we, as players, may be spared for long time from ceremorphosis, travel to another planes, but unable to fix some tech while surrounded by lots of miracles and powerful entities. Unbelievable.
So, I strongly hope that game is unfinished at the moment, and great Act 3 will be presented with endings, quests, and repaired our and Karlach hearts. JUSTICE FOR KARLACH! LOVE FOR KARLACH!
P.S. Her death ending is not bad as it is (thoughtful at least), but this makes taste her overall quest line unfinished, not solid, and stimulating players dig all corners in attempt to save her. This, IMO, proves that good ending is a must have.

In my games, Gale still has that True Resurrection scroll, which he'll no longer be needing. Couldn't he just... donate it?

Hey, all! Here's my obligatory "just made an account to join in this conversation," since I've been almost exclusively a lurker on every site I've ever used in my two decades of internet use. I figured if I didn't at least add my voice here, I wouldn't have a right to complain if Karlach's ending never gets fixed/updated/whatever your verb of choice is.

I don't have anything to add to all the logical inconsistencies of Karlach's story. They've all been mentioned. Just that I, too, was really enjoying the game until I found out about Karlach's ending choices. The ending of a game makes or breaks it for me, and while I respect that some people like the sorts of ending options we got, I'm not one of them; I am therefore choosing to hope another option will eventually be introduced, because until such a time, I can't bring myself to continue playing.

As it happens, I do like tragedies--in the classical sense, where a character's tragic flaw is ultimately their undoing. If Gale's storyline led to his death, or Wyll's led to him becoming the thing he swore to destroy--I would find artistry in that. But in Karlach's case? All I have is a lack of fulfillment.

So, here's to hoping for an amendment to Karlach's story, and the opportunity to enjoy playing BG3 in the future!

Bloody hope you're right. The best case scenario for us right now, I think.

And hey, considering those people who had to stop playing upon learning that the endings are underwhelming, and also those like me who have a duckling syndrome about their first character and only truly replay RPGs once there's new content presented for those characters (especially if I was mad about it), plus the "I wait till all the content is fixed and added before buying" players... I mean, that's not a lot, but Larian would definitely be bringing back (or keeping) a chunk of people if they released the, uh, "Extended Cut" of the ending/Act 3 Win-win!

Yeah I've seen a ton of people say they dropped the game upon realizing there is no curing Karlac's heart. It's a horrible outcome that will never satisfy anyone who invests in the character. Game is perfect if you don't give a damn about her but the second you do the story is just ruined imo.

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=883258#Post88325

^ datamined content found, THE EPILOGUE WAS IN DEVELOPMENT

Important: there is a neutral ending for Karlach. Not fun, but not hopeless and depressing!