Registering as many before me just to add my voice to this in hopes Larian might be moved to do something about Karlach's storyline because like everyone here I too love the game to bits and almost played it trough in the first 10 days, clocking over 100 hours but then... I found out what Karlach's endings are and now I can't bring myself to finish it.
I have maybe a few hours of game left, the grand finale so to speak, but knowing that there is nothing I can do for the character I love the most... I just can't. And while I love drama and tragedy as much as the next drama... uh... simp, this ain't it. Just no. It grinds my gears to no end that I can
save Wyll's dad after he signed over his soul to hell, undoing literally any consequences for this man's personal arc and making it all good and daisy, and that Gale can just disobey a goddess with zero consequences but there is NOTHING I can do for my sweet girl who just wants to live so badly? Who is so relieved to finally be home? Let's be honest, I would have paid any price for this. In the first Act Raphael says something about how you will come crawling to him when all hope dies and by the tail end of Act III, I was ready to come crawling. I would have given him the crown and watched the Sword Coast burn in a heartbeat if the game would just let me. I think my biggest reason to stab him to death in the House of Hope wasn't even because it was the right thing to do, it was just the fact that he didn't offer me the one and only thing I wanted. Somehow the game made me go through the worst possible version of his point: it let me hope for all of Act II that I will surely fix it in Act III to just let me run around and try, to follow up on all the leads, while my hope is murdered by a thousand cuts. Except, there is no soul to sell at the end, nothing else to do. Would have loved all this incredible angst if it didn't end the sad and bleak way it apparently does. It just feels cruel. Not like the great tragedy it is supposed to be, but like the claws Raphael promised finally coming down on my head.
Like everyone else I love my Tav a lot, she really grew on me over those 100+ hours and this end... She tried so hard to be good, to save everyone and this is what she gets? It hurts too much. I mean I know it's silly to be this upset about an RPG character, but they do grow on you over the hundreds of hours you spend with them, and it just feels extra bad when you came all this way for a hollow victory. I mean sure, it's a story too that you didn't win the only battle you cared about and everyone celebrates you a hero while you are just dead inside but this is just not the way I want it to end for MY character and the fact that there is no way I can change this feels like all my choices are the fluff on the road to ruin. A way to make myself feel worse by achieving literally everything else but not this. Not the one and only thing that matters most to me. I love all the other characters and the city too and I want to be the hero, but this ending will not leave my character as one and it makes me so sad, I can't finish the game.
(Sorry for the long rant, I have very many feelings about this and nobody I can tell them too without spoilers.)
