I don't envy you needing to post this, Salo, but this is not a great community update. It's spin and PR talk, and all of it is very carefully worded.
People are already assuming Karlach is going to get an outright happy ending. But whoever wrote this was careful to use the word "poignant" -- that is, "evoking a keen sense of sadness or regret." While I like Karlach's ending as-is, I think it is disingenuous to imply that so many people will be getting the happy ending that's been such a source of consternation. Additionally, only "some" of Minthara's reactivity will be fixed. I don't plan on playing with Minthara, but there appear to be much more issues with her than that. There was no 'cut content' but merely "content we didn't want to release." That is to say, cut content.
As someone who was a big fan of the Baldur's Gate 3 that was presented in EA, with Daisy and the moodier storytelling and the more prickly companions, and went through release realizing that all the things that were unique had been whittled down or outright cut, I'd really been hoping to see an open and fair assessment from Larian. It's clear that something substantial took place during development, perhaps very late in development, that drastically altered the narrative meat of the game. It's more than bugs or UI issues or whatever else.
Elements like Daisy weren't little tidbits that were datamined and misrepresented -- they were big elements of early access, and so prominent that the Guardian had to inherit the "dream waifu" aspect despite it over-complicating his character. The origin system is barebones. Elements like Gale's magic hunger are now downright vestigial. I understand that Larian has always been very sensitive to criticism and feedback throughout EA, but there's merit in standing by your vision instead of pivoting like a weathervane to try and please people who haven't experienced the full product yet. Elements that are now entirely absent were being added to EA merely twelve months out from release.
I don't know whether it was scope and feature creep, or an edict from Wizards of the Coast, or a genuine-but-ill-thought-out attempt to listen to feedback, but there were severe alterations made to core elements of BG3, and I wish Larian would be open enough to talk about it and what they learned from whatever happened and how this would impact their projects going forward. The alterations to BG3 were so late that they didn't even make it into the art book.
I enjoyed my time with Baldur's Gate 3, don't get me wrong. But I think Larian should be a little more forthright about what happened, and not trying to foist the responsibility onto the players. The people who paid for your product, and who much of your media hype was based around being unlike other companies. Because in the final accounting, it doesn't feel like we got anything that's much different from any big name CRPG: a game that begins well but falls apart into a slog of endless, gruelling combat and dangling narrative threads, a victim of reach exceeding grasp.
I really appreciate you writing this. It perfectly illustrates almost every single issue I have with the game. Yes, I liked the mechanics, the combat, the interesting items that they designed, the companions, but this post speaks to me on a deeper level. After a few days of stewing on the story, and the changes from EA, little things like Gale needing specific items and if not fed he would go to Raphael to Astarion embracing the powers or wanting to, all of the more somber elements that we became familiar with in the EA were all changed, the Emperor replaced Daisy and you can see as you roll later into the game how his story comes apart due to a last minute addition. The story is...lacking, which is such a strange thing as there are only a few cRPGs I can name off hand that were truly fun but had as many plot holes, story inconsistencies, and downright immersion breaking moments due to the story. It's rare. Anyway, thanks for this write-up, it sums up how I felt perfectly.
