Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Does anyone care about Thaniel?

Didn't have a strong connection to this part of the story, though I think there are probably a couple issues and reasons for that.

First, if you've just come off the Evil path, you know the one where you can say stuff like 'At least you'll die before the Goblins find the children' I think they needed to do a little more to make this material personal for the PC along that path. Easy example would have been to have all those Tief kids continue haunting us, along with Thaniel.

Chasing us up trees like the end of Flatliners. You know like Dorff and Kiefer Sutherland teaming up to throw rocks at me.

Maybe some Night sweats about what happened with Arabella and the snakes back at the grove. Little flashes of Halsin saying "Oakfather... Nooooo!" and then we just hear Kagha cackling the "mwahaha" the whole time, like with ominous reverb while the shadows give us grief.

Like honestly everything else in this Act is pretty solid for the horror set up, all the house of healing stuff. Creepy kid's doing the shinning angle. I'm on board with all that, but it was still very one sided and like if you are playing as the character who really deserves to get got, you can bypass almost all of this material or miss it.

Had the Goblin's overrun the Last Light, and Crusher or whoever is telling the gobbo kids about how the devils in the woods are real and watch out! Maybe we run into a random Ghast, but learn he's the high priest of the church of Tiax, so your villains can get a little callback to rival the Jaheira one we get on team Goodness. This could all help prop up Thaniel material, particularly with Minthara having some extra takes on this, which would cover the 3 characters you gave up to recruit her out of Act I.

Along the path where Halsin is with us, here I think what they needed is simply to make him the vehicle for a lot of this story material by accompanying us on this leg of the journey. He should hop into the party immediately after the camp celebration, and as soon as he does, he should start foreshadowing the Thaniel stuff. Basically we need a vignette that shows Halsin and Thaniel as kids. Like again, just copy Flatliners, I'm sure it'd work hehe, but then you'd really have that hook you know. He makes it all sound so personal to him, then sits out pretty much the entire quest until the end. I think that's why it doesn't work so well and didn't fully land for me. I don't know that I needed to care all that much really, but I think that would have made me care a bit more.

The way it's framed now works pretty well for the path of Goodness, it makes him seem more Papa bear I guess, cause like making sure the kids alright. But still, he's overshadowed during this whole period by Jaheira. I think he needs to come along for the end of the first Act and help to set up the transition more. He makes it sound like he's going to be there to give us aid and guidence in the Underdark, but at Camp he really doesn't have a lot of input. The whole Myconid sub-plot would have been a good time to give him the spotlight, and perhaps this could play into what happens when we reach the shadowlands ya know. They do that whole bit about voice of the circle, but then why not make use of that during the next segment when we're in the haunted forest and everyone is basically tripping balls and dropped into the Haunting. Lot to work with there.

Oliver was great! It's too bad we don't just get him if we botch that whole plotline hehe. To make it hum, we'd probably have to return to this area to give it another pass as part of the anticlimax to see what's become of all the choices we made in the second Act.

They should use this part of Act 2 to respond to what we did in Act 1, where our choices feed into it, so the shadow curse feels more like a curse I guess. Like personilzed to get us invested beyond just the healing of the land stuff or the cold case mystery detective stuff there.

ps. if you really want players to experience this part of the story at least have Halsin join the party in the Underdark or the Shadowlands as a summons (attached to the PC) who can aid us. This way the party is not penalized for taking him along, by having to trade out another party member. You know WIld shape bear, the help button, his standard kit and spells but under out control. When we unsummon him he should say something like, "I'll go scout ahead" then wildshapes bear and exits stage left. This way if you don't want the buff, you can just leave him unsummoned for the challenge, but he'd basically hop in with interjections during the intermission to do the set up on all this stuff at various points. That might also work pretty well.