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

I've said this before, but I have a hard time seeing it take 11 months. I don't know if anyone here remembers, but D:OS2 was a disaster at launch. You would get endings for Origin characters you weren't playing as, there were important quests that just straight up weren't in the game, missing assets, and so, so many bugs. They ended up having to rewrite the entirety of Acts 3 and 4 for the definitive edition and recorded some 125,000 new lines of dialogue.

Compare that to the current state of BG3 and it's night and day. Sure Act 3 is missing some polish and a few of the endings are a bit lacking, but the game feels mostly complete, that's why the spots where it's obviously NOT complete are so glaring.

So far the major story related complaints I've seen are:

-Karlach's Ending and questline
-Upper City (I don't see this coming back tbh, Act 3 is long enough as it is)
-Lack of Minthara content
-Asterion's Ending
-Lack of epilogues
-Bad ending choice in regards to the Emperor and Orpheus
-Adding some more romance scenes

Compare those relatively small changes mostly limited to Act3 with having to rewrite two entire acts, and I think it's reasonable to assume we won't have to wait nearly a year to see some movement on the issue.

Same. I’d rather sit and wait and get a really fulfilling story arch for Karlach, in which she gets the attention to writing and the PATH to the ending is as rich and developed as the other origins.

I see people saying “but this character’s story too…” but I suppose none of these people cared to actually look at the quest log. Try taking a look at all other origins’ quest logs after the endgame, and then Karlach’s. The difference is absurd.

Also, most of you are concerned as Karlach as a companion, but I’d like to remember how broken her writing is currently if you try and play her as avatar:

- She mentions not being able to touch, but she touches animals and people (shakes Gale’s hand, holds Thulla, pets Scratch, the list goes on)
- She can’t have sex with others - and the dialogue acknowledges that at first, but then immediately contradicts itself and says she has slept with other characters when she could not possibly have

The continuity of her writing is all over the place as avatar. If someone had played as her at least once (while paying attention), they’d immediately notice all the mistakes and contradictions… And some of those, at least, are problems that can be either fixed or at least attenuated by changing the dialogue text, or tweaking some words.

She was the second most played origin, so I hope Larian is working to fix these writing problems.

Then, for her full fleshed out quest, I truly hope they won’t decide to “die on that hill” just because they’ve already said so. Her quest as is has all the markings for another ending option, so even if it takes a year, I hope they’ll make use of it and give her a storyline as rich as the others.

Okay maybe, but do you have any proof of that? And even if there will be, do you have any proof they gonna do justice for Karlach? Right now all im asking is one more simple quest so I can relax and enjoy content to come. I will never consider it ubresonable

And I just want to enjoy the game, and im not asking for much. If I just know something will be done im fine with this, but how can I belive something will be done after patch 2? And since adding literally 30 seconds quest is supposedly too much?

Well, I can’t deny that having someone say “it’ll happen” would make me sleep better at night lol

True, also I don't know how the situation is with Halsin, Minsc and Jaheira, I'm expecting that their fans also want as much story updates as possible. This could possibly also take some time

But there is a difference between last minute additions that are basically optional companions and one of the main and most popular one. Like sorry you don't get to know Halsin or Minthara until basically act 1 ends, you get to know Karlach the second you leave the grove for the first time. If we were talking about idditional quests for Halsin or Minthara sure I would have no problem waiting for DE. We aren't though, we are talking about one very quick quest that will make Karlach's story stop feeling disrespectful

After patch 2 I just don't know if they are trolling us or what. Just straight up annouce new questline or whatever they want in the next patch, if they actually confirm we gonna get what we want I have no problem waiting month or two or even longer for next patch

Not sure about Astarion, I thought his deal was fine but also goes hand in hand with the lack of epilogues (the datamined epilogue text for him was actually really good as well). But the others there seem to be the usual suspects.

I haven't seen many people complaining about his ending specifically, more that the scene where he runs off as the sun is burning him is kinda played off as a joke for someone you just spent 70+ hours with.

Yeah, this is the exact example, where epilog is almost necessary. After I saw him run off and the game ended I said to myself: "Is he dead or did he survived and is hidden somewhere?"

Jaheira in my playthrough said that he's alive.

The problem in my opinion is the lack of the epilogue that they removed from the 6 months, if you see what the characters have been doing after the fact, you see that they are well and happy, you are satisfied and happy or sad about the decisions made. That doesn't happen here, you have nothing. Imagine for a moment that you had an epilogue where you see that yes, she is in hell, things are not perfect but she is happy and she is content, good with your Tav, that they have advanced and grown together. Isn't it so bad now? we need epilogues.


We also need to polish act three, fix Halsin (he has no content, and what he does have is quite strange and unreactive and the ending is horrible and without options),. Fix bugs with the endings, they still have problems playing, and they are frankly scarce. Fix astarion ending, I understand that he can't be in the sun, but burning, running and joking is unnecessary. More romantic scenes, more possibilities of interaction with your interest would also be nice, having the option of sleeping together... those details... Having the option of uniting Orpheus and the Emperor in battle would make sense within the story and the personality of the characters. involved, I don't know why the option is not there. I think these things are improvements that we can count on and that we can fight for, I don't think Upper City is one of them. In an expansion? We will most likely be able to see it, but I doubt that it will be viable in the main story

The thing is, Karlach barely has any development as a character. She spends entire game saying she'd rather die than go back to Avernus, only to be convinced otherwise in the last 30 seconds of the game only to then get epilogue that says "akhually she's happy there"? How the hell that isn't a spit to the face to the player that actually invested time into this character? Imagine for example, making a deal with Gortash having a choice revenge and death in the process vs letting go and living. You know, Karlach doesn't do things her way for once, but saves herself, an actual character development instead of this tragedy garbage we were served. If Larian wants to do Avernus DLC then fine, but the thing is that if they really want to push for that, we can just have Karlach with fixed engine saying that she may be free now, but can't allow Zariel to hurt anyone else like she did to her and wants to finish her. Boom we go to Avernus anyway, that's literally one line of dialogue.

Apparently, we can only wait for patch 3 and some information from Larian regarding the finalization of Act 3 (Karlach suffered the most from the cut content of Act 3), in case Larian decides to simply ignore us and does not give us at least a hint of what they know about the problems with Karlach's incredibly short quest line (which also leads us to a neutral ending as the most reasonable for a player who has played the entire game with Karlakh and does not want her to die or become an illithid), then we will be very disappointed. Especially when he sees this mocking inscription in the diary again: “We did everything we could for Karlach.” This is simply disrespectful both to the character and to the people who loved her.

Yeah I just feel disrespected when I see "we did everything we could" when we literally didn't do a SINGLE thing. Like are we trolling or it's just oversight caused by cut content?

Minthara is still bugged, and even without that she and Karlach are both starved for content. I also see a lot of Halsin enjoyers asking for more fleshed-out romance options for him. Plenty of people are asking for cut camp banter to be added back as well. There's a lot Larian can work with for a definitive edition. I just wish they would tell us if they plan on working on any of those things at all. Maybe after their break, they will.

As for a Karlach epilogue, I wouldn't be satisfied with that. Even if she and the player are skipping through the molten fields of Avernus, it still doesn't change the fact that they didn't let us do "everything we could" to help her before that.

Cut epilogue stated that she and whoever went with her actually made Zariel afraid of them, that is only ACCEPTABLE, acceptable as a band aid solution if we truly have to wait like months for them to add anything related to Karlach's good ending. Really the "we did everything we could" is just so disrespectful to the players who care about her story

The difference is that Karlach is origin, Halsin and Minthara are not. They aren't even companions for basically 1/3 of the game. Waiting for extra content for them in DE is acceptable, waiting for Karlach's ending that isn't slap to the face is not

I think the upcoming patches doesn't bring us new content. They "fixed" (in big quotation marks) Karlach and Minthara, which were both the biggest threads on forums, so now they will mainly resolve bugs and as we all hope do DE in the meantime. If they fix all the major issues mentioned in previous comments + if they add their own ideas and improvements, we can expect quite different game experience in DE.