Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Daisy, the Absolute, and the Emperor [SPOILERS]

I think your opinions here are very valid. Regarding your first point about Daisy, I think they would have stayed the same because the guardian IS the second draft. Daisy staying the same would mean that they decides they got her pretty much right from the start. "Daisy" isn't the concept they were developing, the concept was a dream person connected to the tadpole and facilitating interactions with the tadpole and the powers it gave you. The Guardian was their next attempt to improve that after Daisy.

As for everything else you've said, I agree fully. Though even back in EA I honestly never imagined we would find a way to actually remove the tadpoles before the end of the game. Maybe before the last mission at EARLIEST. There's no way of knowing that, but that's just my take. I just never expected much from the writing of this game, but that's an aside.

Seems we agree more than I initially thought.

Though I can't get behind the idea of not being able to remove the tadpole for that long a time. If it was me, if I got Isekaid tomorrow into DnD and had a tadpole in my head. I would not even sleep until that thing was gone.

This is a game where we have Mystra, Elminster, Raphael, Creches, Wish spells, general magic, high level Clerics, even Mizora hangs out at our camp 24/7 in the end, and probably a million options I can't think of.

I think the guardian works well up until it turns out to be the Emperor. I just absolutely loathe this twist. I remember the dialogue option "Are you a mindflayer"? In the first encounter with the guardian, and I honestly thought to myself, "wow that would be a dumb twist" and proceeded to choose something else.

I really wish for this character to be its own character in some regard, there are so many possibilities for what you can do with her (wether we call her Daisy or Guardian doesn't really matter).

After playing through the game I honestly wish they would QA the story and rewrite Daisy-Emperor.

Daisy was literally too obvious and I specifically made my Emperor version take cues from a 'love interest in the past' because it would be a manipulative thing to do.

So I think the Emperor is a stronger character, and fairly nuanced. Could it be improved? That's pretty subjective, IMO. Yes it could, but perhaps by saying/showing less rather than giving more options.

Talk of continuity with the older games and BG3 being part of WotC's canon over in the timeline thread, made me wonder

Uh. If by "interesting" you mean "something that might've made me uninstall the game immediately"... yes? What the game has already done to two other continuity characters is bad enough.

Sozz, we see you trolling and we are amused. @Talonniel? Which ones? I thought Jaheria was spot on - Minsc was even more comedy relief than he was in BG2 but I enjoyed him. Viconia was off but I think her characterization could see rescued with an additional conversation or diary entry. Perhaps her current lowly position was penance for her failure to corrupt Gorion's Ward?

One of the reasons I think Daisy was the more persuasive character was that her seductions came in form of in game dialogues. "I guess my barbarian could try a persuasion check on Dror Ragzlin or I could just assert *authority*"

Sure Daisy was a gold bar hanging over a bottomless pit but imagine if you could make the athletics check, grab the bar and land on the other side of the pit! Doing something even when you know you shouldn't is the heart and soul of temptation. Has no one *ever* decided to reach for just one more drink whilst knowing that would be one drink too many?

Where the Guardian's attempts to seduce me never had a chance - you should "absorb" that tadpole! Lol, no, making the infection worse sounds like bad advice thank-you-very-much.

A little too off topic here perhaps, but reading all of your comments about previous characters and plots it almost scares me how little I remember of the characters and events of BG1 and BG2. I played them so much at the time of their release and I've always remembered them as some of my favorite games, but jeez how little of the actual story I seem to have been paying attention to. Shame on long me, I guess. At least I did things right this time around.

That's really interesting perspective. I suppose to me the difference between Daisy and another drink is that the drink isn't actively warning you off with over the top, transparent promises of what a good idea it would be. That's the thing for me, Daisy was only ever a sign post reminding us what a bad idea using the tadpole was. Doubly so if you're a good character because the promise of death and destruction is only a deterrence. And even for certain kinds of evil, it's not a given that you're going to want to destroy the city. It would have been better and more tempting if she weren't there. Meanwhile the guardian is more actually tempting, but the thing he's tempting us to do now is more extreme and more foolish on its face. I think that if they went back to the old way where tadpole powers only came from using tadpole dialogues but instead of Daisy we had the guardian, that would be my ideal approach.

I and others have given our thoughts here.

I really think people don't get that Daisy showing you a burning Baldur's Gate isn't a 'whoa, how cool' thing so much as it is a sign that Daisy, whoever he/she is at that point, has a drastically different idea of what we consider a good trade. That's something you neaten up with an editing pass, give the player an ability to go 'Oh, no, this is horrific, what is wrong with you!' instead of burning it down (pun intended.)

I don't know. I trusted that making a second character would be a pretty big deal, and I trusted that Larian would deliver on 'Daisy and Tav sitting by a river, K I S S I N G' and 'Tav never gives Daisy a second' as being interesting paths, and the grey area in between. Like, it was an EA version of a work in progress.

The Guardian gives off the vibe of a lot of writing I don't expect to see in a big name release, stuff you find in rougher, smaller titles. There might me multiple options presented to the player, but there's one the writer clearly expects you to take (Guardian is trustworthy, use more powers) and some others that feel perfunctory. Almost every interaction with the Guardian is like this, and you can see the breakdown in things with going into the astral prism and stabbing them.

Yea never played EA but finding the videos and hearing about it daisy seems like a much better character. The guardian has zero substance

I feel like it's worth saying that Daisy was never really a character of her own either, certainly not in act 1. Maybe she would have been developed more (though I doubt it) but in act 1 she's just as one-dimensional as the Guardian, just that she was overtly evil. At least with the Guardian there can be the slightest bit of a question meanwhile there is never a moment where you think Daisy isn't just out and out evil.

Watching the cutscenes she seems far less obvious than the guardian to me, and at least it’s actually creepy and scary whereas the guardian is just obnoxious and whiny

"Daisy" done practically the same thing with what the Emperor does in Act 1.

They lure you to use the (Illithid) Power.




I'm trying to decide whether OP (and many in this thread) is just overanalysing thing or spooked with their own active imagination.

Not to say that what is written and the opinions are Invalid, absolute (wink) ly not. It is valid, and it may as well be true, but until we see some files datamined or design document leaked, I will remain sceptical.

It is written in a way that suggests tadpoles actually had a negative drawback or were planned to. I guess you can argue the guardian does the same thing but you’d still end up with the same conclusion that he does it worse and causes tons of plot holes.

I've been keeping up with this thread a lot and thinking about it a lot and I've pretty much come down to a couple big points. Daisy's thematic resonance is just way the hell stronger, it's not even close. They built parts of the game around that version of the character and made no adjustments to those thematic elements when the Emperor got tagged in. It's a damn shame. On the other hand I do think prior to the reveal, the Emperor works better as a narrative device. It would've been nice to see more of a middle-ground with a Daisy that isn't so obviously tempting you to do evil, who doesn't get revealed to be who the Emperor is, so that we don't end up wondering why we even bothered to make the Guardian in character creation to begin with.

Idk, even as a narrative device I don’t see it. The guardian only has a leg to stand on there in terms of having a bigger tie in to the titular city. Daisy actually fits into the themes and overarching decisions much better, I mean down by the river makes no narrative sense as a song without daisy