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

Yet again, I have to disagree... If the main and only focus in this game were to stop the Dead Three, the game would end in Act II with Gale annihilating himself and everything around him...

Edit: and, again, the world presented suffered editing cuts, which makes its internal logic inconsistent with its very self

It's that the characters you've listed tried and failed. Took the opportunities (or what they saw as opportunities) presented to them and then failed. Struggled and failed. Sometimes horribly.

The way Karlach's quest is structured right now, the game does not let us try. Tav doesn't try to save Karlach and fail, like those characters do. Tav is forced to stay idle and watch.

Necromancy books? Hags? Well okay, where's Tav's option to make a deal with the devil for Karlach's life and THEN fail and lose their soul in the process as a lesson or whatever? Where's the option to talk to the Gondians and THEN learn they can't help for one reason or the other (i.e. because Karlach is not a robot and they're not surgeons)? Why can't Tav opt to try Gale's or Jaheira's scrolls and see how that backfires? Why can't Tav demand Wither's help and be refused?

I feel like a broken record at this point, but I just want the game to let me try. To let us both try. To feel like we've exhausted all the possible options. To feel like there was a quest to embark on.

Is healing her not Tav's main focus? Maybe yes, maybe no, that should be for me as a player to decide. If I can get out of my way to help other companions (I hardly HAVE to do Astarion's quest to heal the tadpole or save the world, I can skip like half of Lae'zel's quest, I can ignore Halsin's quest whatsoever, or Jaheira's, etc etc, OR I can DO all those things for them because I CHOOSE to), then why is the only thing I'm ever given a chance to do for Karlach is give two pieces of metal to a smith and then off a guy I was going to off anyways?

While yes, a lot of us would rather have a happy ending just because, let's not act like this 'whining' is entirely entitled or fairytale-ending-baiting. While yes, people would still be upset, there wouldn't be half as much uproar about Karlach if we weren't made to feel entirely superficially helpless in her fate. If her tragic ending felt deserved (not by her as a character, as in "worked for").

I want her questline to either make me fight tooth and nail for her (like for the others!) and succeed because I'm an overpowered world savior with savescumming abilities OR make me fight tooth and nail and feel true despair because I'm destined to fail like the characters you've listed. But as long as I'm forced to be like "Eh, made sure we can touch, surely that's enough and I can just completely give up now!" - yeah, I'm gonna be whining, it's neither here nor there.

And that's just upsetting compared to the way Karlach's character and attitude towards her affliction is written. 'Cause yes, it is beautifully written. Her cutscenes wreck my damn heart knowing that there's no cure for her. It's a tragic story about loving a doomed person (and maybe being unable to let go and going to literal Hell for them). But at the same time the game makes me feel incredibly stupid about it, 'cause what the hell am I doing about it except sit there and nod? And WHY am I not doing anything? The hell kind of a friend or a lover am I if she's a damn afterthought while I'm prancing around helping everyone else from other friends to random citizens?

And mind you, we CAN help a lot of those people. Which does make it feel like the ONLY reason why we can't save Karlach is because we aren't ALLOWED to. As long as there are still things we could've tried (the obvious ones, the in-the-plot-ones, I'm not talking adding in sunshine and rainbows) - it feels like there COULD be a happier ending IF we could only try. So until they let us try one way or another (successfully or not) - people will be asking for a happier end. Because it isn't made sufficiently unreal. It's possibility is right there one non-existent dialogue option away. There's a reason why lots of people feel like they messed up and missed a plot point when they reach her finale.

Of course, if Larian does just do a better structured quest-based tragedy, people will still be upset (because we love the character), but at least THEN the 'sometimes you can't win, stop crying' arguments will hold weight. As things stand now, I'm still waiting to be told by the game WHY exactly can't I win, except for the fact that someone is holding my hand back.

Precisely! It's an OPTION! Which means its main focus can be whatever the player wants it to be! Personally, my main focus was to help the companions, whether they wanted it or not! The Dead Three were just a part of the plethora of problems they had!

And I thank you for bringing this up! Based on this logic, why would the demonstrably intended but woefully missing happy ending for Karlach not be equally valid?

Me: "Ok, Dammon's stumped, we'll see what comes next"

Act III: arrives

Me: "Oh. Oh! The Gondians created an army with Karlach's Heart v2.0? OH, they even recognise it within her?! Awesome, clear cut, know where I'm going, good thing I can also deal with the main stuff there!"

Me: "Oh sweet, Improved Infernal Iron, these guys really know what they're doing!"

Game: "Nope."

Me: "... what? But why?"

Game: "Because."

Me: "... but why's it even here if it's useless?"

Game: "Oh, look! There's Orin, go say hi!"

It's high-fantasy, you see, because it's totally devoid of logic!

Yep. And she did survive. She survived the inferior version of the engine, at that. And it's not Karlach's body which fails due to the engine, it's the engine which fails because it's inferior.

This is exactly my point related to internal logic, no matter which string you pull to justify what there is now, you end up with a bunch of mismatched and randomly cut shoelaces.

"A character who was sold into slavery 'deserves' to die or go back to the place of her trauma" isn't the message they indented, but it's one a lot of people read and got understandably pissed.

(P.S. I will say, I personally think that in writing the whole 'The most sunshine character who's suffered some truly horrible shit doesn't have a happy ending because that's poignant or whatever' trope is kind of uninspired by this point, BUT I would definitely not be up in arms about it that much if it felt solid on all accounts. Well, a lie, I probably would still be, but I'd be writing fix-it stories, as I usually do when my favorites suffer unjustly in my opinion, not camping out on the developer's forum)

die, die but with tentacles, or three flavours of go to Hell.

for actually saving her