Disclaimer- I hope fantastic people from Larian will read this and maybe consider expanding ending of the game
Finally after more then 90h of playing, I have reached the "No return point" and was really excited to see if my decisions will bring the hoped result. And... unfortunately I was really disappointed. For now I do not see any option that "My ending" will be the one that is satisfying for me so I wanted to share my thoughts about what would be great if could be expanded.
To give a bigger view on my playthrough, I was really trying to role play and make decisions that would be consistent with my beliefs- "experimentation" and "checking the other options" was left for other characters. If I could describe the choices that I made I would compare them to "Paragon" (just like in Mass Effect series)- doing everything to help everyone, and give all my companions "in my opinion" best possible endings. That included helping the githyanki revolt under Orpheus leadership. I was really determined to save him and convinced him to help fight the Elder Brain next to the Emperor. I even took Lae'zel to the final party, for her to be a part of this. And what I got completely destroyed me in some way.
Firstly, I could not persuade an alliance between those two sides. The Emperor just drops me and joins the enemy. In some way this shows I and the companions were just the pawns in his masterplan, but on other hand the whole game he was against the Absolut and was doing everything to defeat it. This move was completely out of character for him. I should be able to convince him to give at least try for this alliance to be even possible, and then same to convince the Prince that we should at this moment work together. He is just "I join the Elder Brain, see ya punk".
The above makes the next thing very irritating. Because we "lose" a Mindflayer ally, now someone needs to become one. In my playthrough, I just had the one initial tadpole, I didn't injected more and didn't wanted to "evolve" into Illith. And now I am still pushed to become or let the Orpheus transform (which I do not want). Of course we can say this is the beauty of it, that we need to make the hard decisions like in real life, but the Alliance between Emperor and Githyanki should be an option, maybe available behind very strict requirements (do not still the Egg, do not have more the X tadpoles injected). Other thing is why we can not agree that Gale sacrifice himself and no-one needs to become Illith? Why I can not try to persuade Orpheus to trust him?
And the last one that really made me mad- Lae'zel. I think this was the biggest disappointment of this whole ingame scene. On the whole course of the game there were several situations were I could just kill her/let her be killed, and then I would not have this dilemma in the first place. Instead I stayed true to my character and pushed for good ending for her too. She was so focused to save the Prince, to revolt against Vlakith, if needed to die for him, and all she says after him making the decision to become Mindflayer is "No My Prince don't do it!". Really???? No "Let me do it"????? Nothing??? She should say something, offer herself, not just stand there and observe. In case of assimilating the Prince, she opposes the decisions and wants to fight with us, but here she is submissive and really says/do nothing? Why? She should have at least a declaration that she is ready to do it for her Prince, after which we "decide" to agree to that or persuade her to let Orpheus/us do it. After that I checked and know that only Karlach offers herself as she is dying, but I think that aside of her, at least few characters should come with the same proposition (for example Wyll, if he signs another contract with Mizora).
I really love this game, I was not this engaged in a story and characters for a loooooong time, since probably Mass Effect and Dragon Age. And because of that for sure this is my first run from the multiple to come. However, this ending feels like "choose the beam color". I would love to see more options how to handle the final dilemma. It would be great if this could be explored and extended to really give players reach this point were they will be satisfy with the result. There should be an option to get this "Happy Ending", at least closed by the some of decisions that need to be made and passed throw checks.
