Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion [END SPOILS WARNING] Addressing Karlach (PLEASE PUT SPOILERS IN TAGS)

Completely random, but what I find fascinating is how an Origin companion which isn't even included in the promotional art for the game, is stealing hearts left and right and creating such massive waves among the fans

Personally I also love Karlach's character and it's sad how in comparison to all the other Origin companions, she feels mostly like a random tag-along rather than someone with purpose. Larian has a really great character on their hands whose potential doesn't feel fully realized;

• Her story journal has barely anything written in it, barely two lines... while Shadowheart and Lae'zel have an entire novel.
• Karlach's journey is literally just Infernal Iron > Infernal Iron > GG... while Lae'zel and Shadowheart basically get entire acts all for themselves which constantly span from ACT 1 to ACT 2 to ACT 3.
• Playing as Dark Urge, Karlach is also the only companion which has absolutely no comment in certain scenes for Dark Urge, despite every other companion having full dialogue for it. Which tells me they forgot about her.
• Karlach's romance is also pushed aside while all the other romances are prioritized. She was my first romance in the game, yet she was the last one triggered for me to finally fully commit to her because all the other romances took priority in trying to flirt with me. Simply why.
• Where are all the Zariel's lackeys that are supposed to find and enslave her across her journey. Something that's mentioned by her, but then completely tossed out the window and forgotten once she's recruited because Mizora says so.

This is not just an issue with Karlach's ending, this is an issue with Karlach entirely. She needs more meat in her story, more juicy content. She needs something happening between her recruitment and ACT 3 so she doesn't feel like a passive sidekick with nothing to actually do. It takes 2 whole acts before she even does anything meaningful and that's only if the player romances her. If not then she does nothing meaningful really because her story in two acts is literally just grabbing two infernal iron and that's it.

Sucks that such a captivating character received the Beast treatment from DOS2, who compared to everyone felt like an afterthought story while everyone else's was fantastically juicy and intricate.

The issue is that her quest is not complete in act3. You can see x clues, that there was a possibility to save her using gondians and new better engine. (I'm not talking about true resurrection scroll and similar, this I personally don't count as "valid" saving methods, because there have to be some limitatons). After killing Gortash you complete quest and cannot do anything more with backpack full of infernal ore and saved gondians. Dammon is silent, nobody cares until end of the game. If there will be dialogs with gondians and they will tell you. "Sorry we can't save her" then ok, but all clues lead to fixing the issue. With game like this with 17000 endings there should be possibility to save her, maybe through some difficult rolls, I don't know. It was not about writers, but about lack of time.

What I really don't understand is why you think it absolutely, 100% MUST be one or the other... Why can't it be all of them? Why can't all of the endings, both existing and desired, be available as options?

We're essentially playing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book... If you feel that Karlach works better by her then by all means, play the game as such and more power to you!

But why must we, the ones who would genuinely prefer the, as you've put it, "Build-a-Bear, live happily ever after" alternative be forced into choosing the exact opposite of such? How does the existence of that option detract in any way from how you choose to guide your particular story through the game? By your same logic, I'd say an argument can be made that Minthara's vanishing from the story after Act II is just the authors' artistic vision, yet I think we can all agree that it would be a dumb thing to argue.

In a game which, as others have pointed out time and again, allows literally each and every other character said "Build-a-Bear" ending as a choice, the absence of such a choice for just one of the characters (and, I might add, the most CLEARLY Good-aligned of them all) cannot be defended as artistic vision, but is damnably just sloppy writing. All the more so when considering that this isn't a linear story and it was never meant to be one.

Hells, if I wanted to watch everyone die at the end, I'd just stick to 40k. There's plenty grimdark in there, we really don't need D&D to be a Snyder flick...

That's my problem. It's not the fact that the bleak, grim and depressing endings exist. It's that it's ALL THAT THERE IS. And also, Larian already made an entire fucking gamemode JUST for you that you can activate in the character creation window if you want to be a fucking murder-hobo. But we still get nothing. Even this "fix" is just that, nothing. People like Raz really be out here eating a whole ass five-course banquet while we're begging for crumbs, and then they have the audacity to tell us that we're greedy and that we don't even deserve our crumbs.

I swear, most of these arguments against a truly happy ending for Karlach make even less sense than the entirety of Act III... I can't help but agree with you, that these arguments exist for no reason other than pure spite...

I mean, why doesn't Gale also just blow up? Ideally, immediately after the BBEG is dealt with, the story's settled, and the tens of hours of game time spent trying to avoid that fate for him through direct player intervention, just because it would be more flavourful if Mystra turned out to actually be a vindictive douche...

I'm being sarcastic, of course, this entire thing just... blew (pardon) my mind...

Okay folks, let's turn the heat down and accept that we are all entitled to our different perspectives without insulting or imputing bad motives to folk who disagree with us. And that applies to people arguing both sides of this question.

It's clearly a topic that can get people emotional and worked up, so let's all try to do our bit to keep the discussion friendly, constructive and welcoming of contrasting viewpoints. We can disagree and still keep things civil.

I understand you, I see you and I hear you, and I agree. I think we should all be polite and civil to each other even in disagreement. Yet queer ppl coexisting with self-described "anti-woke" people is no small feat. It's extremely difficult to have a polite disagreement with someone about video games when they proudly proclaim with their whole chest that they impolitely disagree with your very right to exist.

Anyways, I've set one person in this topic to ignore and won't be engaging with them anymore. I genuinely believe that to be the best solution to quiet things down. Hopefully the rest of the conversation can be more chill.

Why can't we have all the endings? Ignoring pragmatism, because not all of them make sense. Remember that guy that spent his entire adult life trying to ressurect a skeleton in his basement and failing, even though he had access to one of the most powerful books on Necromancy in existance? Remember Mayrina that made a deal with a hag to try and get her husband back? Remember what Ketheric Thorm had to do in order to bring his daughter back?

THAT is the world the game is set in. Why SHOULD your Tav succeed when saving Karlach isn't even Tavs main focus? Why can't one companion die because they refuse to do the one thing that will save them? Avernus was a choice, which Karlach refused in the original version, because "It would be worse than death". I would have been fine if the writers let her die with dignity after she saved Faerun and was brave enough to choose death over servitude, but now the fan-service is done and y'all can have an ending where Karlach lives and fits with the world that Larian built. What people are asking for now is the unreasonable and the unplausible.

@Nary a care: This game is a work of art, not therapy. Larian had a story to tell. Just like with everything else (including PnP D&D) - don't bring your personal trauma into other peoples lives uninvited. Karlach's story isn't yours. No one has the right to make demands of the writers.

Just saying I agree with all of this which is part of why I really feel ignored by Larian and like they don't really care about us as players.

I would completely agree with you, @Raz415, were it not for the myriad counterexamples present within the game itself.


These are, indeed, both part of the universe of D&D, but when taken as a whole, they are barely footnotes to the immensity that is the rest of it.

Bruh there's no fanfiction. All the add were already prepared in case of emergency. You can't fix all your Act 3 + add some dialogues in 2 weeks. The writers did an excellent job until Act 3 which is rushed.

No need to be that mad because people are arguing against the game with constructed arguments. That's a fact, the game is not finished and don't let the player have coherent ends. Karalch is part of the problem.

Plus this is based on DnD, and characters that the player meets see their destiny modified by the player's way of playing. That's why D&D is so appreciated. So it's completely stoobid to have one of the main characters see her story put on rails at the 2/3 of the story despite not so discrete invitation in Act 3 to find a solution.
It's even more stoobid when it concerns only one companion, and even even more when you have a real fix if Karlach is your main character.


That's not whining to expect a coherent and complete game from start to the end. No one ask them to have 17k ends. But if they want to do it anyway, they have to do it properly for the 17k ends without irregularity in the finish.


And I'm not even talking about how boring are all these "sad character" in every story, like all the tragic past HAVE to expect a tragic future and nothing more, but murderers, egoists, thieves, more or less all bad people can have a free redemption pass to the happiness. That's even more unjustified on a DnD game. You can kill Gods, doom entire races, but you can't fix a damn engine with the best blacksmiths and all the required furnitures ? Yes of course brillant story-telling and all, everyone will find this logical....

This. Very much this! I can't agree more. It's also incredibly upsetting that a lot of leads to fixing the infernal engine end up being nothing.

And yeah, it's not like I "want a happy ending for Karlach" just because I'm having an Annie Wilkes moment disagreeing with the writer's vision. I want her questline to be finished.

That's why this thread exists.

Seeing as that person is still going while I'm trying to disengage from arguing with them, I might not have many options aside from getting moderators involved...sigh...

Exactly

Feel I must apologise for this, my intent was to keep the reply as... indistinct as possible, but I failed to point it to the correct message and it got posted as general.

And yes, I gotta say; the fact that they give you an option to have a "good ending" if you PLAY as Karlach but not if you have her as a COMPANION is even more insulting and there's just no excuse for Larian not to have options for both.

This is a brilliant point. I think I genuinely repressed it due to its beyond-frustrating nature...

That's just another fact that proves that Karlach's story was rushed and needs to be finished I'm pretty sure Larian folks know about that, I only wish they will not abandon and finish it in due time.

This game is a choice based RPG, and Tav is not some prebuilt character like in The Witcher who has their own predetermined wants and goals. Tav is MY character, and I determine what his main focus is, not some arbitrary template that you have thrust upon them. Also, Larian didn't build this world, it is a world that they were given which has its own rules, which for the rest of the game Larian follows without issue. The fact in this one specific case they don't is not a good design choice. In fact it is so egregious I can only assume that it wasn't intentional and was not a design choice, but simply a matter of lack of time.

Finally, it's very disingenuous to attempt to imply that someone has mental health issues because they disagree with what you're saying.

I completely agree with you. These examples I gave were to illustrate just how desperate people are bring dead ones back. People would do anything to avoid death, even the rich and powerful. The LENGTHS people go to for staying alive is a big part of BG3 (and so it was in BG2 as well). Act 3 being subpar is just an unfortunate fact, but we have what we have for now. I'm certain Larian will make things better. The thing with Karlachs infernal engine is that it was crazy easy to fix it twice. It went about like this:

I mean... everything could have been done better. But you know what, this thread is living proof that even so Larian created a wonderful character that people love. I cried my eyes out during her dialogue after . What annoys me is that entitled people start accusing Larian of this and that while forgetting who brought them this game and this character in the first place. Yeah, by all means, give feedback. But making demands and biting the hand that gave an extra ending...