Originally Posted by Dagless
Originally Posted by Milkfred
The Emperor took the place of a character referred to as "Daisy" in Early Access. Daisy was very likely to have been The Absolute and, seemingly, Orpheus in a sort of 'devil and angel on your shoulder' situation. Daisy came to each origin character as their own unique person (Vlaakith, Cazador, Mystra, etc.) and tempted them to take the tadpole powers. Therefore, it's likely that siding against the Absolute and facing your nightmares/beloved atop the Elder Brain was likely a big part of the climax from early in the development process. When Daisy was scrapped very late in development, and the Emperor put in their place with a drastically different motivation and storyline, Larian was still too married to the concept of a dream visitor and an epic confrontation with them.

What makes you think Daisy was scrapped very late in development? They could have rewritten all that years ago and just never removed her from the early access build so the Guardian would be something new for people who played EA. They may have never fully developed Daisy's role at all, she might just have been a placeholder for a rough idea they had. We just don't know when they decided on the Guardian/Emperor story, but I'd guess they didn't cobble together all the dialogues, plot points and cut scenes together at the last minute.

Everyone still has dream visits from the Guardian who probably appears to them differently, even if they were no longer Vlaakith, Mystra, etc.

The visitor for the companions is still the idealized "Daisy" version, like the golden paladin for Karlach.

Last edited by Ixal; 29/08/23 09:14 AM.