Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Fix that prevents Halsin and Mintara from recruiting at the same time

For me personally, such a ban seems strange, given that we are playing a game from Larians and that's why:

The developers of this studio have always tried to take into account almost any options for action on the part of the player, even those that are not entirely logical.
In this situation, the logic is present: Yes, we have the opportunity to kill the character, but also to stun, why, after being stunned, this SUBJECT (why after stunning this STORY (If it were an ordinary NPC, I would not have asked questions), the character necessarily dies and his recruitment becomes impossible precisely at the request of the scriptwriter, and not personally by us.) character necessarily dies and his recruitment becomes impossible precisely at the request of the scriptwriter, and not personally by us.

I personally had no questions when the character who opposes us ended up in prison where we could recruit him, this is logical, since we stunned him, and then he was put behind bars in an unconscious state.
The question of recruitment is again peculiar:
Is it possible? Quite
Through verification? Naturally, because we are trying to recruit a former enemy.

Satellite reaction? Should be, but again the strongest check should be between Mentara and Halsin (Similar to Karlach and Will)

At the same time, I am not against the repose of this character, but this should happen at the request of the player, and not at the behest of the script, then if I want I will stun, but I can kill this character in the same prison, or maybe leave it to rot forever, who knows, maybe with the help of this option it would be possible to change the character of Halsin



I liked this saying on the Steam forum:

Yip, that's basically the point of me saying this is an artificial construct. A real choice and consequence would be:


Detect Minthara being mindcontrolled when first encountering her at the goblins camp (tadpole interrupt which could trigger as soon as you cross the bridge)
Choice A: willingly support the Absolute and thus support her by raiding the druid camp, this could also introduce a real evil playthrough
Consequence A: Wyll and Karlach leaving no matter what, Gale needs convincing to stay. Halsin out of the picture (obiviously)

Choice B: follow the suggestion of the narrator to knock her out with non-lethal means and take her prison for further interrogation
Consequence B: after defeating the "real" goblin leaders, one can break the Absolutes grip on Minthara and helping her getting her vengeance (mostly same material as in act 2)



I understand that now there will be no one to redo anything, but maybe in the Enhanced Edition this option will be implemented if the players are interested in it.


What do you think about this?


PS: Excuse my bad English.

Halsin and Minthara multiple choice
	Such a ban suits me, I don’t see a problem.
	I would be interested in recruiting both characters at the same time, but I think this is logical in relation to the game's lore.
	The recruitment of two characters in my opinion is logical, and the fact that the developers did not take into account such a development option came as a surprise to me.
Votes accepted starting: 26/08/23 12:19 PM
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In my opinion Minthara should be a special exception and knocking her out should continue her story. She is an actual companion after all and I personally do not really believe that locking her to the inferior path is justified.

It would be a lot better if they just forsake the exclusivity of good/evil paths and have them act as intricate nuances, allowing Minthara and Halsin to have the same type of rivalry and mistrust that Shadowheart and Lae'zel initially do.

All things considered, it's just stupid for knocking any character out to ever function the same as killing them.
First of all, a knocked out person should wake back up eventually. Mechanically "eventually" may as well be "at the transition to next act", so in the current act you get the affect of defeating them, but further story continues with them alive.
Ergo you should be able to knock out all 3 goblin leaders, have that count as victory and see the tieflings survive their journey unattacked, and still find Min in act 2.

Minthara needs to be recruitable in both act 1 results, especially as her storyline is about opposing the absolute, reclaiming her identity and finding out who she can be. As she already is suitable for good parties and has content approving of 'good' choices in Acts 2&3, she is not an evil party only.
She NEEDS to be changed to be recruitable for people who side with the druids, just have her escape at the end of the fight and then nothing else changes from her storyline, she is already someone you break out of an absolute prison so her returning in failure because you defeated her, yeah that works BETTER than the current story.

And locking recruiting her out of having Karlach, Wyll and Halsin? that's just removing reason to replay the game. Also datamining shows she has dialogue with Karlach! so they made content then arbitrarily restricted it!

Does not make any sense to me to block recruitment of two characters together when Minthara's story contains elements of a redemption arc.

If she remained a hateful servant of evil I would almost understand this decision (but I still would not agree with it as it is removing player choice and agency). But since she goes through the events that she did, why on earth would you apply an arbitrary block like this?

And to remove the option to do so in the middle of players' play through, just makes me sick. I wish I hadn't bought this game now. I'll be hesitant to buy another Larian game before it's been out and properly tested a few years post launch in the future.

Very disappointed.

I find it really odd that throughout EA there weren't any/much changes to Grove vs Goblins conflict.

Even as a good-cligned Tav/DUrge I find it not only ultimately evil to murder Minthara, given the fact she was but also highly illogical given that we can dissuade
And from all used/unused content I saw, Minthara feels very organic with good-aligned Tavs (an especially redemption path DUrge Tav) and she has a ton of interactions with
Plus, I'm honestly tired of Drow (in case of Minthara the only PALADIN companion in entire game) getting short end of the stick. First , now Minthara Baenre, that, if stays exclusive would remain that evil Act 1 boss and nothing more for majority of players, since majority in absolutely any RPG ends up with walkthroughs heavily leaning towards the "good". Hells, if Liriel Baenre is capable of turning chaotic good, why can't Minthara, even with help of Tav & CO?

The closest comparison from RPG genre in terms of choice and companion focus - Dragon Age Origins, a game that was developed by very same studio as the OG Baldur's Gate games. It allowed you to recruit every possible companion in game, but also allowed you to ignore their recruitment or eventually kill them. It also had an approval system that allowed them to leave you or, in case of Zevran (if not murdered during his ambush), to betray you. Some could turn away from you if you choose certain actions: Shale attacked and died by your hand if Karidin was attacked (or leave you if you tell her about that in camp), Oghren would attack you (survives the encounter) if you go against Branka, Wynne and Leliana attack you if you choose to desecrate the Ashes of Andraste and end up dying by your hand, Alistair ends up a king/drunkard-exile/corpse depending on your choices if Loghain (primary antagonist aside from the darkspawn and Archdemon) is spared and recruited into Grey Wardens.

I'm sure something more could be done with Halsin and Minthara. Fail to find and rescue Daddy Druid in Act 1? He could be easily be transferred to Moonrise Towers, so his story and doesn't end abruptly. Minthara loses in Grove raid? Force her to retreat to Towers to stand trial/take her prisoner to give Sazza some company. If Nere was never met/killed right away - narratively we lack the information on how Even as a prisoner she'd make a valuable asset, prior to player making a decision to recruit her.

BTW, why lil' goblin lady regardless of me persuading that tiefling fool not to shoot her? If anything, were Goblins to become playable, Sazza could make a nice, say, ranger companion.

Ignoring huge chunk of content isn't really a choice. More like fast-forwarding the events/speedrunning through the game which is pretty much a no-go for RPGs. Even odd from RP point given the "tadpole" problem. It shouldn't be the only "viable" option as it still and keeps the issue of needless companion exclusivity unresolved. It's a bandaid solution, at best.

Yeah, I unfortunately do not understand what's up with Larian encouraging so much metagaming with BG3 to achieve desirable outcomes, because the same story is with Dark Urge unfortunately.

They've made 2 different fully voiced, written and thought out outcomes for that one specific camp scene which spans further than that one night, but the catch is the outcomes can only be achieved by extremely disgusting metagaming. It's like they've forgot the difference between clever gameplay outthinking based on subtle details presented to the player and outright metagaming encouragement by unavoidable events. It's not clever game design to metagame in order to unlock juicy story content, it's just terrible design period. It has to be something a player can legitimately come across in a natural way based on subtle details, without having to metagame.

As for the lil' goblin lady;

I think Minthara would be the perfect character for a redemption arc. Seeing her and Halsin getting along with each would be amazing to observe throughout the course of the game.
I really don't like the Idea to lock away such an amazing character behind crazy evil choices in act 1.
There is so much more to her story most of the playerbase will not see. Doing the things I had to do to recruit her felt so wrong and took away some of the fun out of my first playthrough and left it tainted.

I don't plan to do an evil playthrough again because I really didn't like it, but knowing how great Minthara is I can't go the good path either because I don't want to kill my favourite character.
So the only option right now is ignoring a big quest and miss out on pretty much all her romance content to recruit her without being a murderhobo.

You get penalized so much for wanting to recruit Minthara who would fit perfectly in a neutral group. She has a heart with sharp thorns, but she is still very loveable.

You guys wanna see something really terrible, search "BG3 voice actors" on Youtube and watch how many videos completely forgot to include Minthara. Fun fact; I still haven't found a single one which includes the character or her actress, but naturally Halsin is included in pretty much every single one.

Is he more interesting than Minthara? Nope. Is he more unique than Minthara? NOPE. That's what happens when you make a lackluster evil playthrough and lock a companion behind it. Imagine putting all that wonnderful work into bringing your character to life and people not even registering your character exists because 0.01% of the population will actually give up on 4 companions and meaningful content from all the tiefling NPCs for a chance to meet the intricate Nightwarden.

Imagine if in Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic 2, the amazing Visas Marr was locked only to the Dark Side players. Imagine missing out on such an awesome character with one of the best backstories and epilogues in the game because of some arbitrary thing like "EVIL PLAYTHROUGH". Anyone who played KOTOR 2 knows very well how mindblowing it was turning Visas Marr back into a Jedi after everything she went through.

Minthara's VO - Emma Gregory - actually liked one of my tweets requesting Larian to make both Halsin and Minthara recruitable in pro-tiefling run.

Got so many gatekeeping haters in the comments though. Speaking of choice and consequence... when Halsin/Minthara being potential companions doesn't become clear to a non-EA player until Act 2. It's basically making a choice based on metagaming xD

Likely, doesn't mean much. Still I love that the idea kinda has her support.

The opinions of those gatekeeping haters cease to matter when they trample on other people's opnions that differ from theirs. Idiotic narcissists the lot of them. This discussion/suggestion is about balance of choices and consequences. Right now the consequences outweight the choices. Your time and emotional investment in one or more characters/groups are not getting the returns you should expect. In the finance world any company doing so will go bankrupt real quick when investors flee.

Okay, I have no idea what brought that on and don't have time right now to look back through the thread, but insulting language like that is not okay here. No more please!

Given how much detail she has right now (even without the bug blocking 1500 prompts) she proves to be just as detailed as a origin character. I honestly feel like she should've been. It'd give us a chance to either give her redemption as her, or help her achieve her vengeance against the Absolute. Locking her behind a evil playthrough just seems like such a disservice to her, and not many will ever know who she is. No matter what, you lose so much content for one companion and not much else. It's hard playing good when you KNOW her now AND know how she will react to things in the later acts also.


I really hope they listen to all this and see she has a dedicated fanbase just as fierce as Karlach's and take these suggestions to heart. So far they've been listening and I really hope they won't just sweep her under the rug for the more popular characters. She'd be just as popular once the broader audience finds out who she is. Everyone loves a redemption arc! Sorry for the huge rant in the spoilers too x'D