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

Today I started going through the Patch 2 voice lines, and lines from this scene popped up in the files. Rather than being cut content, I think this is new and a direct message from the devs to the fanbase.

Great insight to be honest, and it's a simple fact that our movent is right. Look if a god dammed dating sim gives you more choices than RPG it's a problem that can't be justified. May I add that both of those put you in a "hopeless" situation?

No, Karlach's story is either unfinished or peak of horrible writitng

Option A is correct, if not it has to be the worst writer in the world: to give you x valid ways to fixer her, then nothing, then sent her to hell and tell "we did everything we could to save Karlach"

I'm just stopping by to say that as one of the "got willingly spoiled and mad before even reaching the end themselves" crowd I'm finally home and finally reached the end of Gortash's part of the game for the first time (yup still not the whole game but I'm working on it)

So now I actually have first-hand feedback on that!


No amount of spoilers could've prepared me for the actual punch this sudden 'quest completion' gave me. 100% would've thought I horribly screwed up somewhere if I didn't know.

My big question about Karlach is: how did she end up this way? She was planned as a companion since pretty early on. They were certain enough about her that she got featured in the MtG set with the other companions. She's not like Halsin, who at least has the excuse of not being planned as a recruitable companion originally. Throughout most of EA they had her in mind, they were tweaking her look, but her actual questline... isn't really a questline. You just gather a couple pieces of metal and give it to someone. Compare that to Shadowheart and Lae'zel, even Astarion and Wyll.

Well said, my friend. Well said.

It seems people forget why we tell each other stories -- to remember our past and to imagine our future. Some are more hopeful than others, but in a game like this where anything is possible, this can't be how it ends for Karlach.

A lot of people equate Karlach's story to that of a terminal patient, but they couldn't be more different from each other.

By definition, a terminal patient has no options to survive -- they are destined to die. Karlach isn't terminal -- she can live, if only she returns to Avernus.

Karlach's story isn't that of a terminal patient, it's that of a slave fighting for freedom on the penalty of death. She's more Solomon from 12 Years a Slave than Augustus from The Fault in Our Stars.

What Solomon does is he struggles to attain his freedom. What Augustus does is he makes his final days meaningful. Karlach spends the bulk of her time doing the former, while the latter is sparse.

And what of the "ending she deserves", the fiery and poignant one?

Well, that can be a hopeful ending if we're allowed to conclude it in a definitive edition expansion or downloadable content. Her arc would then be as such:

Karlach, a tiefling slave from Avernus, escapes the pits of hell to seek freedom, only to find that the machine installed in place of her heart will explode unless she returns. Setting off to find a fix for the machine, she meets adventurers who help her find solutions. As hopeful as she is, all the avenues they pursue lead to a dead end. Karlach, now at the end of her rope, has no choice but to return to Avernus, lest she die in a fiery inferno. But that choice is no longer a hopeless one, because this time she's not alone -- she has her companions/lover by her side. Together, they will overcome insurmountable odds to win her freedom back.

That would be the true ending she deserves, but that would require Larian to pull out all the stops for Karlach and allow us to see it through and not just vaguely allude to it in a smoke-filled cinematic. I truly hope they do. Karlach's story should be one of overcoming adversity, not one of heartfelt finality.

Precisely. I was so shocked, in the worst of ways, that it prompted me to do a Karlach Origin run, believing there had to be another ending to her quest. Lol. Lo and behold, it’s worse as her.

If you look at the quest log afterwards, it still comes across as absurd. I keep looking at Shadowheart, Laezel, etc’s questline, the richly described and written twists and turns spanning all 3 acts… To then look at Karlach’s one sentences, plain and cynically written one. It makes you feel someone deliberately did it as if they hate her. It’s nuts.


On another matter, I have a question: if she decided to return to Avernus, where the heck does that portal come from? How?

It really does feel like it should be the penultimate step of the quest chain rather than the end. Like a "it's always darkest right before the dawn" moment where after she gives up all hope you find a way and we have the triumphant moment of resolution. Otherwise the story doesn't come across as a bittersweet moment like a tragic ending would have, but just plain bitter.

In my opinion, I think that would be a great time for one of the Gondians to come up and present a way, or perhaps get a hail mary option that seems hard, but worth the risk.

This is starting to feel like a tug of war. At some point I have to wonder why make Karlach playable at all if they’d neglect her story so glaringly and give her such an underwhelming questline? Putting her on the same standard as the other origins just emphasizes the gap.

Someone did decide to go ahead with this regardless, and now I feel a lot of effort to indirectly justify it.

I wouldn't call that indirectly. At launch her story felt unfinished, now it looks like they try to convince us that it was plan all along and the dramatic decision to return to avernus is the only way with all the voicelines that were specifically added in patch 2

Yeah, I just wanted to investigate that cut-content datamine thread that gained a lot of traction on the Steam forums, and that a poster in these forums that claimed something along the lines of "yeah, the Upper City Karlach stuff isn't leaked [to YouTube like the cut-content Wither dialogue] because it's in your game files." Like ??? goes without saying that making strong assumptions like that can be very dangerous and may spread potential misinformation. Right now I don't think it is, as much as I would like to continue both hoping and investigating.


Wow, this was quite a read and I resonated with so much of what you said. I think you captured the sentiment that many of us share. Thank you. You, I, and many others "will do [our] darndest to wait and hope that a fixed engine ending can happen."


Oh man... welcome to the "why the heck did we only try ONE option out of the many plausible ones to try and fix Karlach's heart" confusion club. I get that they maybe didn't have time, or it was in the upper city, or whatever is the case. But as it stands now it's so abrupt. My Larian development head-canon is that this is the Dammon 2-infernal option was the only one given to us because there was a definitive fix for Karlach's engine/heart in the works, so giving us all manners of possibilities for trying to fix Karlach was fairly moot as there was already a real fix being implemented. Then they cut it, and now what we have left is the one option that doesn't fix her.


This along with the above comment I had is really sinking in the sentiment/statement of others that Karlach was one of the if not the last Origin on the dev roadmap to have her story/questline fleshed out. It feels abrupt and empty, and getting the short end of the stick narratively being she was last seems plausible.

I wanted to make a separate post addressing the fourth wall dialog appeared after Patch 2 so they're doubling down... doesn't seem true in my case?

The launch day/1.0 release of BG3 (9,208 dialogue files) that I have access to also has the FourthWall dialog files - just checked. This is versus Patch 2 which has 9,237 dialogue files (+29 files compared to 1.0). The FourthWall file between 1.0 (extracted Aug 10) and Patch 2 (extracted Sept 3) are also identical:


Unless you've found* new audio that has popped up in Patch 2 about FourthWall, it seems Larian had planned and executed the 4th wall break dialog prior to launch, not as a response to Justice for Karlach or cigar ending.

Then again, I'm happy to look at whatever launch-day dialogs you have, but considering FourthWall existed Aug. 10th (note: this was when the file was extracted/datamined, which means it could have existed in the game prior to this date if the mining process was ran earlier) and way before Patch 2 I doubt this was reactionary. I am relying on an external source as I didn't datamine the game launch day... I actually didn't even have the game launch day (oops)

*Edit: better wording

Yes, this is very good question. In my opinion the whole idea of "slave with infernal engine escaped from hell" is quite original and definetly cool. The thing I don't understand, why they released such a poor story with bring 2x infernal ore and thats all folks. Maybe they had a different full story but during advanced development cycle they figured out, that this story doesn't work and they bring new one (the one we have now),but didn't have time to complete it and fill it with ideas and content.

I don't believe, that with such a talended team and if we compare it with other Origin companions, they are satisfied with current story line.

Guess we shall see next, I really doubt they will just leave it like that to be honest but what happened after patch 2 makes have my doubts. If we were waiting for something like Minthara fans I would have accepted waiting for DE. We just need one more quest. Come on how long can we wait for something like this? To literally make an RPG game an RPG game

I'm not talking about the fourth wall break, the dialogues that pissed me, and many other people off, are the ones about her engine where she basically gives up on life. They weren't there before patch 2 and since patch 2 was supposed to give her "ending she deserves". The problem is that she was hopeful and wanting to fix herself, now she's basically stage 4 cancer patient preparing to die. And the only way to save her is going back to hell which is supposedly "ending she deserves". Which is why I, and many people say Larian doubled down on the Karlach being the only doomed companion for some reason

If that's the case, then why did they add those lines again in Patch 2? That makes it even more curious.

Oh, okay. I was coming from the perspective that Walking said:


after quoting me and my Chubblot post, which led me to believe that he was referring to FourthWall due to it being originally thought to be cut content, whereas the new patch 2 "hopelessness" dialog... was it ever cut content? I feel like that was just new content that they quickly put together.

Anyway, if there was anyone else under the impression that FourthWall was Larian doubling down post-patch 2, at least that seems to be false. Needless to say, still ditto'ing sentiment that engine fix is actually the ending she deserves.

They probably played with cards they had available at the moment. Good ending was not prepared during the game release and will take a long time to prepare it, so they've extended an existing "best" ending available. The desperation state doesn't matter, because there is no other better ending and is just added for "effect". If (and I DO hope) they'll add new fixed engine ending, fixing her when she is really desperate will be the best reward we can get.

Sorry I think my brain is just dying and I'm failing to both interpret and convey my words very well, lol.

If you're referring to FourthWall audio files, then I am assuming those audio files had always existed since launch day, just that I don't know for sure since I haven't looked at the audio. I just didn't know if in your reply you had found a difference in audio files from launch day to Patch 2 regarding the FourthWall scene as I haven't digged through it myself (there's like 180,000+ .wem files that I'd rather programmatically process rather than listen to them manually, lol). Again, FourthWall audio could have definitely existed since launch day, just that I don't know for sure.

If your original reply to me (and this one) was actually about the "hopelessness" dialog like what Feris is talking about, sorry, I just completely misinterpret you. See above post.

If I'm still misinterpreting you... send some of your wishes to my poor brain as apparently it's ceasing to function (but send most of them to Larian and Karlach engine fix).

The question remains. Why go out of their way, add new voice lines, cut scene and all that, instead of just adding one quest and two lines of dialogue at the end? Even if it would take longer than 2 weeks or whatever they needed for patch 2, just do that instead of the whole "ending she deserves" bullshit