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

Larian have officialy stated that quote: [i]What’s been datamined is not really cut content but content that we didn’t want to release because we didn’t think it worked. We’re pretty strict with ourselves and our ideas. If it isn’t good - if it isn’t fun to play - it doesn’t make it into the game.[/i]

So I sincerely believe that they are not planning on adding the 6 months later stuff or any of the cut content, and with everyone treating BG3 as the second coming of Jesus even with its obvious problems I don't believe they will. Ever.

I mean why would they? The majority of their playerbase is happy with what they got, the game is sitting at 96 on Metacritic with a broken/disjointed Act 3 and a pathetic ending so why bother.

Didn't D:OS2 get a Metacritic of 93? Yes, it was relatively unheard of compared to BG3, but then again they also released a DE for D:OS2 that apparently fixed companions or whatever that others are claiming a year after. There will come a time where people will start finishing the game and feel like Act 3 is kind of a mess, and reviewers are already somewhat catching onto the fact that Act 3 is a mess.

Monetarily (and this is just me hoping, since I'm mostly speaking out of my ***), releasing a DE version in the future will bring more eyes back to the game (even if free), and if they include fixes to the story/companions/lacking things like D:OS2 DE did, then I feel it would garner some new, positive attention.

You may be right, but on the other hand, they also removed all epilogs from the same reason and now they are planning to return them back because it was a mistake to remove them. Same thing could be with other removed content which wasnt "funny". Also this official state you posted is quite old and the situation is now very different.

The why* would most likely be due to them being that kind of company. Like the doom and gloom were getting in this thread after a month from release on pc. (Not even all platforms yet)
Seems to be thinking that larian has shown they are like every other developer that does pump and dump games. And they just...dont? So i get the frustration i get the critique i get the calls for better endings/content etc- what i dont get is this idea is the *they got their money so were stuck with it* attitude. It just hasnt been their way in any of their products.

And id argue the massive succuss of the game means they wont abandon it. Swen said he was expecting what? Like 150 to 250k concurrent players in the opening week? Damn near hit 900k and its been holding steady at 250 to 350 at any given day still? Weither its DE (which i think is likely) or DLC (which for larian im happy to support) I sincerely doubt they are done with bg3 content

The ONLY thing I'm really worried about is the fact that writers can be hardheaded sometimes when they fall in love with a narrative. Even if it makes no sense.

Like when someone writes a really great speech that they want to do even if the context doesn't fit.

Well divinity needed some work right? All we need is a simple fetch quest for the story to become alright, and all we got for now was really bad hope baiting and trolling so you get my point

See, literally what a guy said few hours ago, why would they bother with obvious solution for a good ending to character if everything is cool and money flows

I'm like 99.9% sure that nobody's trolling us, it just feels that PR team is a bit disconnected and they choose their words quite poorly. I mean no disrespect but why this thread is so full of hopelessness now? Cheer up, soldiers and stop spreading panic, there's a patch coming in less than a week, let's draw some conclusions once we get a bit more information, ay?

You keep forgetting that A LOT of other things in the game need addressing and fixing too, not just Karlach. (Minthy for example or or ooor ALL THE EPILOGUES?? Or Act 3 in general)

Also, do y'all remember them saying about that datamined cut content they decided to remove due to endings being "too long"? And now they are calling all the VAs together. That means that they will what, redo the epilogues? So since they are not using the stuff that was cut, it means they are doing it from scratch. Could be a good sign too

My birthday is on the 24th.

A new Berserk episode and Phantom Liberty is coming out that week.

Would be absolutely wild if they also gave us some hope for a happy Karlach ending

Ah, so many great gifts Here's hoping that things will get clearer after patch 3.

Yep, we all gotta stay hopeful. Sure, we're unhappy with the current endings but it's too early to tell right now.


I would really hope so. That callback announcement/tweet was before Patch 2/cigar epilogue, but hopefully with the continued "outcry" it extends past that (engine fix please).

Have they actually talked about patch 3? Like a possible release date and/or what changes might bring?

I'm the type of player that simply plays the game, this is the closest I've to be in a game's community. So I don't know if they have posted something about it. But I see y'all talking like patch 3 will be out tomorrow.

Patch 3 comes out on the 21st, it probably won't have a good Karlach ending since that would be kinda soon and they already said they're working on adding epilogues to all of the characters. Beyond that they haven't said what they're going to do, but since the most requested story change after epilogues is giving Karlach a good ending (I checked), I have high hopes that will be next.

Also I have a post on the discord feedback thread asking for another Community Update to address Karlach having a good ending (among other things) and it's pretty highly rated, so hopefully they will take note and maybe give us a peek behind the curtain.

So because I'm a tad bit obsessed I poured through their feedback threads in order to get a sense of what the most requested pieces of story feedback are and here's what I came up with. Note that these are story only so QoL and bugfixes I didn't count.

Epilogues- This is by far the most requested feature for story changes, so it makes sense that they'd be working on this first. Since they came out and said they're working on it, requests for it have dropped off but they still pop up now and again.

Karlach Ending and Questline- This is the second most requested story improvement, with at least one discord post with 50+ likes on it a day, making it typically the most upvoted thread of that day. Between that and this thread only getting longer I suspect they will address this once the epilogues are done.

Orpheus and the Emperor- This also a highly upvoted request and also usually gets about one thread per day and has several threads about it on this site. However it's difficult to see this one getting addressed quickly since it will require almost the entirety of the Act 3 main story to be rewritten and they seem to be tackling problems based on ease to fix.

Minthara improvements- This has dropped off since the bugfix but it's still frequently requested, especially on reddit.

Halsin Romance- This is kind of a new development but as more people romance Halsin the general weirdness and frankly bizarre way they handle polyamory, I think this is another story beat people will want changed.

Between all of these and looking at the raw numbers of requests and upvotes, I think it's safe to say we'll be high on the priority list, unless of course they decide to dig their heels in about it but as I wrote previously I find that unlikely.

OK. Well, yep. Hopefully they'll say something about it and Karlach gets something closer to what y'all want. I'm personally neutral about her but she seems to be the most popular character.

That’s correct but there’s also this YT short where all the VAs are together and it seems quite new, so maybe they are still working on something together. Of course it could be from back then…


https://youtube.com/shorts/a4KIeqCfWzE?si=QOlmxlLuOC4TRXPT

This was recorded a couple days ago

This is something that I was discussing with some of my mates, they already got their reviews and most of them feel like they were posted by people that did not fully finish the game and were just stuck in act 1 and 2 doing everything they could. Also some parts of the fanbase are even becoming aggressive to criticism, I posted a negative review on Steam and received people talking shit like "Oh you gave a negative review because you didnt like the endings?? What are you 10??" and BS like that in other discord servers where we were debating games. I know that there are lots of trolls in the internet but at this point it almost feel like there are people that do not see the state of the game and are just idealizing the game in their minds. Some of these people may not even have reached act 3.

Not to mention that with scores this high it almost seems to imply that the game has nothing else to improve, I saw plenty of websites giving the game 10/10, 5/5 or 100/100 just after launch. It almost feel like none of these people played the game. Even though the game was released in a better state than every other game released in the last 5 to 6 years it still has many parts that they could improve on it, the endings are just one of those parts they should improve.