I'm about ready to give up on BG3. Great gameplay but Teletubbies writing is Teletubbies writing, and nothing indicates they care one bit to improve upon it. And as much as I want to, I just can't make myself engage much with a railroad trip to Teletubbistan. As nice as the train is, I know where I'm going to end. And I know that I really don't want to be there.
I feel like stressing that I don't blame the writers. I'm sure they're aware and I imagine that they're probably not too happy with the end result either, but deadlines are deadlines and the job is the job. Some times you've built up a great framework but there's just too much room between where you are and where you need to be and not enough time to cover that gap. Trying to rewrite and readjust is hard and takes time that you don't have. Clapping your hands three times and magically teleporting to the end state? That's easy. And that's what they did with Karlach.
I've done more or less the same thing too, professionally. I've been part of releasing products with code that would rank a solid F- if it was ever subjected to review. I've written most of that code, even. I don't want to, I feel bad about it, but deadlines are deadlines and it's not like the customers pay extra if the code is nicer. They don't care. Investing time into code quality therefore has literally zero return.
And just like Larian isn't likely to ever go back and rework the story bits that make no sense whatsoever, my employer isn't likely to ever go back and rewrite the awful products that we've released over the years, because those products did the job they needed to do and there's no business sense in revisiting them. Similarly, what is Larian's case for revisiting Karlach? Her story arc is really damn good, right up until the point where it becomes hot garbage. But it holds up long enough to do what it needs to do, and falling off a cliff after that point doesn't really matter. Same as the rest of the writing in the game, isn't it?
It's a damn shame. The wasted potential, from an artistic perspective, is enormous. But from a business perspective, BG3 is a smash hit. The vast majority of players are the people who watched Game of Thrones, not the people who read A Song of Ice and Fire.
