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

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.

According to their tweet they already gave Karlach "The ending she deserves". And it was not worded in any way that implied that they would be working on her ending as well as the others. I feel like they just used this new garbage ending for her as a bandaid until they either announce that this is her cannon ending or until they man up and fix it for a better one. Since they didnt announce anything else about her since them I highly doubt that they will be giving us any news now. Larian is pretty tight lipped when talking about their updates and as good as it may be sometimes, this time it is only working on building more anxiety on their players. And it is as other people have mentioned before, dont put your trust in any company, remember how we were all hipped with Cyberpunk 2077 since the game was being developed by a company with a good track record of excellent games?? We all saw what came out of it, the game is only becoming trully complete and fully playable now, 3 years later. Larian dont need to make us happy with their game anymore, they already have good reviews and millions of copies sold, and they are still selling the game, just today they sold 321K copies on Steam alone(acording to SteamDB).

Dont put your hopes in a company that can abandon you like all of the other ones did before.

Exactly 10 out of 10 moments big money is involved, everything goes downhill. I'm not saying they'll just stop updating BG3, they are just likely hellbent on Karlach's garbage ending because they can go for DLC that way, just like Bethesda did with Broken Steel for Fallout 3. Like, back then we still had obvious solution to the quest that didn't require anyone to "sacrifice" and couldn't use that. Same thing here, who cares that there are like 20 obvious ways to save Karlach, Avernus DLC is what sells so you'll go there. Track record doesn't mean a anything these days

Based opinion indeed. I wrote above that I would rather get used to the idea that Karlach�s storyline and its endings would remain unchanged and that Larian decided to make her a �tragic character� absolutely deliberately, taking away the player�s opportunity to repair her engine, than to experience empty hopes that are not supported by no information, and then at the release of the Definitive Edition, having discovered that Karlach�s endings remained literally �neutral�, �bad� and �very bad�, I will feel the same emptiness inside as after �the ending that she deserves.�
In general, essentially the whole story with the �Justice for Karlach� movement is a kind of test for Larian to see whether they really listen to the opinion of the community. This is a very important turn in the history of this company; if Justice for Karlach does not achieve anything from them, Larian will most likely follow the path of CD Project.

Perhaps I�m just in a very depressed mood today, but I think that they are unlikely to plan to continue the story of Karlach even in the DLC. I mean the game is already selling great, even with Act 3 looking like it's still in early access.

OK chill lol.

If Karlach isn't fixed by this time next year, I'll be concerned about the mental state of the writers.

Play some other games in the meantime. Larian has a ton of shit to fix with Act 3

You keep peddling this narrative that they have a fixation on this "hope that kills you" trope, but it's not present in any significant storyline whatsoever. Can you name me one major character, who's not named Karlach, whose endings are all "hope that kills you" types? Gale, Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Wyll? Anyone?

That's literally the reason why the whole Justice 4 Karlach movement exists. It doesn't make any sense for her to be the only doomed companion, it doesn't make sense that her relatively easy to fix condition is unfixable despite like milion ways to do so, it doesn't make sense in the setting and it doesn't make sense in general game theme. And yet here we are, with Larian adding extra content and going out of their way to justify why she can't be fixed and going to avernus is the only option

"It's the hope that kills you" is a quote from their lead writer.

It's not hope that kills you it's the damned plotholes, they can cope all they want but it's true. Just. Plotholes

And yet none of what's written actually plays out that way. You don't suffer any consequences from the tadpoles, all your major characters pull through mostly all right (except Karlach), and you get to save the day. Where's the "hope that kills you" part?

As I understand the poster above, he means that Larian deliberately made �the hope that kills� specifically for Karlach.

I think people on this thread at this point are somewhere on the spectrum of:

• A) staying (maybe blissfully) optimistic and hopeful that Larian will backpedal their original statements considering that continued outcry, and have something to hope for until proven again otherwise
• B) leaning on the more pessimistic (maybe realistic) side that what has been said has been said and given historical events, whether money, the actions of other companies, etc., may prove for Karlach's engine fix to be unlikely. So it may be better to get used to the current reality rather than to hold onto (what is currently and seems to be) unsubstantiated hope.

People who are following this thread know that I'm in camp A. I'm not saying there is a right or wrong here, since differing opinions and perspectives is how the world goes round. I'm in A because, I dunno, I like to stay positive even if I get hurt. If you want to call me delulu because of it, so be it. We're all in this thread for the same reason in the end, lol. Whether showing Larian outcry or hope we're all expressing that we're discontent with the way Karlach is now.

That said, wasn't there another thread on these forums where this is actually the second time that Samantha B�art was called back (with all the other VAs), with the first time being to do the cigar epilogue? If true, crossing fingers that leads to, you know, *cough* fixed engine *cough*. If someone can substantiate that claim, that would be good for the hope that I'm holding onto

I'd love to hear the context of that quote, but I doubt it's that specific. Karlach was rewritten last-minute.

Supposedly VAs were called back, but there was nothing about Samantha being called twice. Personally I find it hard to believe that Larian would intentionally make only one character doomed and hopeless, double down on the decision after outrage and troll fans for no reason but I've seen companies doing things that were much more stupid. And so far it just looks like what I said is true, unless Larian has the worst social media team possible

I think calling VAs back was mainly because of readding epilogs to the game.