Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Petition: Let us have Minthara without mass genocide

The decision to completely hide Minthara and all the hard work of her creators (artists, voice actress and all who created her) behind the need for mass genocide is the worst decision in the history of video game bad design decisions. I knocked her down and didn't kill. I'm still in ACT 1. I don't want to use mods. I can't play further. Doesn't seem right. Please, Larian, you made a great game. Don't ruin it for thousands of players just because someone didn't think things through. Let the people who hate mass genocide or who doesn't help good people in need to suffer without Minthara. If the modders can fix her - you surely can.

+9000

Knocking Minthara out should continue her story for ACT II. She is afterall a companion and should be a special exception to the knockout mechanic. Time for the 99.9% of players to realize Minthara and her amazing voice actress actually exist in the game.

+1

While I generally support this, I would like to point out that unless you are playing Durge, there is no reward in any capacity for playing evil once you make Minthara accessible to good.

I want to note that there will also be no reward for returning the Nightsong to Ketherik Torm and completing his assignment with Isabelle.

And there will be no reward for killing Astarion, Gale, Laezel and Shadow Heart at the first meeting

I have no idea what does an "exception to the knockout mechanic" mean. I learned about it's existence in a hag's dungeon. The game offered me to spare the masked dudes. I spared them. If you remove the masks before dealing with the hag - their minds will collapse and they will die. I took their masks after the hag's death and they were alive. After a while I didn't find them upon returning to location to grab some xp for an Underdark entrance discovery.

Another awful game design decision - you'll never guess how to open the door without googling. BTW, I found it going FROM Underdark. You can't open it without a mask and I already sold the masks somewhere.

So, if I knock someone down - the game should consider them alive. They should disappear after your long rest or wake up and stay where you left them. Minthara after my long rest was alive, up and where I left her. I couldn't talk to her. But her scripts even didn't let me to check dead goblin bodies near her:) She was behaving like she sees a minor crime:) She gave me the judging stare:)

Thats not true!, as Durge you get , a great memento XD.

Sry couldnt help myself :P. I havent played durge yet myself btw, only seen video of it.

Jokes aside I agree with your sentiment (if Ive interpreted it correctly). There are a lot of bad things you can do in the game, some are rewarded, gives you interesting story beats or cinematic scenes, but not much more. And thats to be expected when you kill off characters and NPCS.

If one does not want to miss out on large parts of content/quests, then one probably should do evil/Minthara route on a later playthrough and not the first one.

I for one dont mind an option for recruiting Minthara in a "good" way. BUT it would have to only be an option. A lot of work has gone into the way it is now, and thats certainly the way I intend to recruit her, when I come around to it on my 3rd- 5th playthrough in a year or two.

It means the game shouldn't treat her as dead if she is knocked out and simply continue her story in ACT 2, because any NPC which does not have the "Temporarily Hostile" tag is dead by the game's logic and then despawned from the world.

I haven't played a game recruiting Minthara yet because I hear there's still a lot of missing content for her. But I would like to recruit her. And I hate having to senselessly kill everyone to do it.

So I'm on board with Larian giving us other options to recruit her.

No.
Let the evil playrhrough have some exclusive content.

A truly evil thing would be to kill both goblins and tieflings. But that way I guess Minthara will be bugged and unavailable if you knock her down. So it's not about good or evil. It's about bugs, options and good/bad game design.

I would keep her tied to the evil way too. And maybe even give an evil playthrough some more companions and stuff. In the Helia thread someone mentioned a goblin companion, tied to an evil Minthara playthrough, maybe that could work.

I think 'mass' is not required for the term Genocide. I also don't think genocide applies here.

Anyway. No. Let's keep *something* in the Evil playthrough, you already miss out on so much going that route. I'd *love* me a Gob-panion.

I mean, I would agree with the people saying "Keep her for the evil players" if she wasn't a good character whose best storyline is one of redemption.

That's what made no sense to me as Durge. I kept her alive (although I didn't participate in the massacre, just let it take place), and when she joins you, you discover her evil behaviour was purely down to being controlled by the Absolute, and that she's actually an exception from the usual Drow in that she's seeking to defend and avenge the helpless.

Look, the Durge and Evil storylines are so under-developed, edgelordy and unrewarding, I eventually just gave up on that playthrough.
There was nothing to keep me playing, nothing compelling me to explore the evil side of the game. And in fact, the playthrough was going to be significantly shorter, as all the quests you get in the "good" playthrough aren't replaced by evil alternatives.
Larian seriously need to take a look at Tyranny for a great example of how "Evil" should play out.

Just to reiterate, I love this game. I've played nothing else since release, and it's my favourite new game in years. Therefore, I'm criticising it to make it better.

Difficult to have genocide without the 'mass' part.

Which is why the 'mass' is not required.

This!

In BG 1 and 2 I didn't have to make a companion choice based on my good/evil playstyle. Why should I have less freedom in 3?

English is not my native language. Thanks.

Offtopic

I'm also very saddened by Mizora's absence from the evil playthrough. It's just really, really bad that only the Good Player can sleep with the devil.

I don't get this, Minthara is evil so her motivations are evil and she doesn't really need you so it makes sense that you would have to be evil and position yourself to recruit her. Just as Halsin is good and it makes sense for him to abandon you if you position yourself as evil, they are with sequences of your choices and let's not forget that this is a game of choices. For me, the game would lose all its grace and meaning without these details, and even more so when one of the things that the community asks for the most all the time is to have many more choices in all aspects of the game.

People who want to go the evil path with her still can if we have a good option to save her, you don't lose anything.
Who cares if other can recruit her on a good path, you play evil because you like to play evil, not for the exclusivity. This is some weird gate keeping.
More meaningful choices would mean to either join Minthara to raid or to save her in a way which doesn't include being a murderhobo.