Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion [ENDING SPOILERS] Small clarification about the Absolute

[spoiler]Hello everyone, I hope you're doing well, because I am not.

So I finished the game yesterday, and yes the ending is awful, clearly unfinished, hopefully will be extended upon in the future etc., but there was something that left me confused.

When you confront the Netherbrain (Elder Brain) it mentions that you coming to it with the netherstones, the Dark God's conspiracy and the Emperor freeing himself was all part of its grand plan (it freed the Emperor on purpose) and that basically by extension everything you did was part of its plan (since you were basically just doing the Emperor's bidding all along by following his infallible master plan which turned out to be the Brain's infallible master plan).

Now the confusion comes from the fact that after that incredible piece of information is revealed the Emperor acts as if I was the problem all along (because I chose not to partake in the tadpole buffet that was offered to me throughout the game), while clearly he was, and expects me to follow his new plan and become an illithid [i]"to be able to take more than one action at a time"[/i] (very funny Larian) or give him the stones.

It seemed to me obvious that following his plan [i]again[/i] is a trap and that the Emperor (an illithid himself) is being foiled [i]again[/i] (the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that). Why would the Netherbrain be able to foil him once and not twice, and what would be difference now, or actually ever, whether the wielder of the netherstones is an illithid or any other race. It is implied that the Brain's computational power is unmatched, so I assumed the only way to actually beat it, would be to free Orpheus and introduce him as a wild card that might be too much for the Brain to deal with due to his nature.

Ignoring the fact that the Emperor joins the Brain if you decide to free Orpheus for the sake of my sanity, in both cases, wether you free Orpheus or the Emperor consumes him, you still get the same result, and for some reason Orpheus insists that someone needs to be an illithid too? Is everyone just going crazy at this point? Is the ending just a power fantasy that the Elder Brain puts into the characters minds and everyone is actually just laying in a pod on their way to ceremorphosis? That would explain why Gale can just walk up to it, make a snide remark, then proceed with his detonation at his leisure, while if you go there yourself there's a dominated dragon, possibly the Emperor, 50 tentacles and 4 other illithids trying to stop you + a nautiloid shows up to the party providing infinite and unreleting air support. Did they just not show up for Gale because they tought the guy with a nuke in his heart (his condition/presence was also allegedly a part of the Brain's plan btw) was just having a casual stroll atop the Brain?

So what happened with the Brain's master plan? Why did the Brain just sit on top of High Hall waiting to be scaled? Did the Brain get an aneurysm because it broke the 4th wall with its genius and red the script of the game? I guess we'll never know for sure.

Feel free to share your thoughts on the Netherbrain and illuminate me where necessary, as I am deeply confused by this plot point and unsure what to make of this, did my 180 hour adventure even matter? Was I just a pawn in a 12D game of chess, all my choices and decision known in advance and plotted by a litteral giant brain? Is the giant brain a self-insert for Larian's writers? What? [/spoiler]

I agree with you, and I have the same conclusions.

I definitely preferred act 1 and 2 - It felt like choices mattered.

Act 3 won me over but the whole end mission did not, especially with some of the choices - which narratively did not make any sense to me. Also, if they really do decide to do a DLC they've hamstrung themselves to tying it to before the ending of act 3 which given the urgency makes no sense, unless we're going with a whole different roster of characters ?

+1
I completely relate: I also had to make a post about these endings when finishing the game to evacuate the frustration of such non-sense.
A bit like I had to pinch myself to confirm how absurd it is...

Just laughed out loud when reading "Did the Brain get an aneurysm because it broke the 4th wall with its genius and red the script of the game?"

yeah, the worst and most nonsensical part of all this bullcrap.

You are completely right. The more I think about the ending and the plot of the story, the less sense it makes.

Also it saddens me that our range of choices and freedom is reduced gradually through the game:

In Act I there would be like 10-15 different ways to solve a quest/do stuff - all of them would be fun and interesting = Amazing and immersive.

In Act II there would be around 5-10 ways to solve stuff - you get a clear feeling that the narrative gets thinner and less open compared to Act I, but still amazing compared to most other games (just not compared to Act I of the same game!)

And then you hit Act III - which for most people is probably the part they looked forward to the most, and yes the city looks AMAZING, but the story/main plotline slowly falls apart and with most quests you are left with 1-5 ways to solve them (most of it is just fighting your way through no matter what, not nearly as fun or immersive as Act I), and most of the time it doesn't really matter how you do stuff and you also start realizing that most of the stuff you did in Act I and II also doesn't really matter and didn't really have any relevance in the overall plot of the story.

The ending has all your deeds reduced to who shows up as "summons" in the final battle. The amount of different ways to go about things is now almost down to 1. Nothing is good or bad, nothing really gets explained, characters can now suddenly just enter into ceremorphosis without being tadpoled, characters that have aligned goals suddenly feel the need to fight each other with no apparent reason, all your efforts to not allow the tadpole to effect you in 200+ hours of gameplay is made redundant and you are left with more questions than answers. And when you ask those questions you are not left with the feeling that the answer is out there - you are left with the feeling that there is indeed no answer, 'cause it's just not thought through. It's just not made properly.

The clumsy, illogical and just downright stupid ending made me forget how epic a game I just played. And that is by far the biggest shame off this game.