- Tadpoles: so what?
Using them or not has no consequences. Neither during the game, nor in your options at the end.
During the game, the decision to take 'just one more' tadpole should have been tough, each of these bringing you closer to a mindflayer, with changes to your apparences impacting NPCs reactions. More power at the cost of greater isolation and a narrowing of your options as it gets harder to move openly and get others to cooperate.
Maybe it was too hard to implement: Fine.
But at least make it count for the endings!
No tadpoles snacks? Reward this with greater ability to resist the Netherbrain and/or an alternative option to transformation.
Someone had too many tadpoles? Makes it impossible to resist transformation and/or reduce the choices about who transforms (i.e. it has to be the character whose brain is the most corrupted).
This example highlights an overarching issue which will be my next point.
This is one area where I feel like Larian really dropped the ball. Using the Lore of the Forgotten Realms, a Cleric or Paladin that "embraced" their tadpole would risk losing access to their God. I am doing a Paladin playthrough, a warrior of Tyr, and not only will he not "eat" the Tadpole, he will not use the limited power it offers as that power comes from an Unholy source. I honestly cannot see a Cleric making use of it either, especially with how early they learn that these are tied to a cult trying to create a "new" God. Since this cult is tied directly to the Dead Three, any Paladin or Cleric should be able to sense something is wrong right away and be working to stay away from it, even seeking to destroy it, not embracing it.
They had the potential to take this amazing storyline in so many directions and they dropped the ball on the potential options. What is saddest to me about this is they completely ignored a lot of base lore to justify this approach.
[quote=Cpagrav]
- Gale: 'oh damn we forgot that option'We have to transform someone into a mindflayer no matter what, even if we intend to let Gale sacrifice himself. We don't have the option of talking to Orpheus about this plan.
A funny bug is that even if he blows-up he still show up looking for the crown. (no one tested the various endings Larian? It took me an hour...)
Feels like last minute reshuffle for an option otherwise viable as early as act 2.
Or come up with a convincing explanation why it would not work on the netherbrain.
Or even better, let us take the risk and it doesn't work... oops.[/quote[
Yeah another area where we see a story hole that was missed and should have been easy to fill. Plus why can he not explode at the very end? Why only in Act 2? People also, again ignoring the lore, look on his sacrifice as a bad thing. In death his would would be reunited Mystra and he would have her forgiveness, something he craves.
I talked about this on Reddit, the ending of the game feels like the wind down of a long running DnD campaign. The players are fatigued as they are now how level and the fights need to be over the top to challenge them. The DM is scrambling to figure out how to tie up loose ends and draw the campaign to a close. The end result is in many ways anti-climactic and muddy.
This is an amazing RPG but the game processes from a master piece of story telling and plot development, to progressively go down hill with the last bit being a mad rush to the bottom.
