I had to check once more videos on YT about removed content and it is just heartbreaking. how it affected Karlach. If the info is really true and she had good ending before, it is really sad. Positive thing is Larian released Enhanced/Definite editions for DOS1 and 2 and also for their previous games with fixes and updated content including major story and companions updates. I'm 100% sure, BG3 will also have DE in the future and with good ending for Karlach because she has I think the biggest support over the forums in overall.
They just needed to add one quest, hell, even half of the quest. Basically let us use enriched infernal iron, make it one trigger and call it a day. Argument about "tons of new voicelines" is bullshit, not only they don't need "tons" but three or maybe four, they literally DID JUST THAT in patch 2. They added not only cutscene, new dialogues and options, they literally added voicelines across act 2 and 3 that turned her into stage 4 cancer patient that knows they are going to die
I'll just continue casually throwing in more thoughts on the topic as I'm moving along with the story, if it's okay with everyone, because I need to vent and this is, naturally, the most understanding place (plus this does count as feedback I'm pretty sure)
Spoilers for House of Hope etc etc
Geez, upon just reading everyone's thoughts and spoilers I was severely underestimating the, uh, 'not-good-ness' of the Avernus ending. It's, like, GLARINGLY obvious even before you reach the end.
Took Karlach with me to the House of Hope to steal the hammer and she basically had a small panic attack upon stepping foot in the Hells at all, immediately feeling trapped and cornered again. Just triple underline under the fact that it's her place of immense trauma, regardless of her options there. Dying DOES feel like an option preferable to ever getting stuck there again, she's not being unreasonable about that at all (not in her mind anyway). House of Hope, potential alliances, Zariel-maybe-not-being-SUCH-an-evil, not being alone anymore, it all doesn't really help when the whole landscape and the air itself are a giant trigger.
And I, as her lover, am about to convince her to go back there anyway and then call it a 'good' option? With the only alternative there being for her to die (or technically die by the virtue of becoming a mindflayer, which, no)?
Makes me feel like a selfish shit, man, and at this point it's EXTREMELY confusing which ending is supposed to be paraded as 'good' for her (at the current moment). Per the recent patch it seems to be Avernus, but uh. Uuuh.
Like. On the surface you can KINDA say that the final choice is sort of structurally the same as with the other companions. Meaning that there's one route which the character was following anyway and one route which you can try and convince them to switch to (become Justiciar/reject Shar, worship the Queen/betray the Queen, ascend/do not ascend, etc etc etc). Sometimes your character influences that switch naturally through their actions. So TECHNICALLY it's the same with Karlach - she stubbornly follows the death route, unless you convince her otherwise in the very end and your previous actions support that change (i.e. someone can go with her).
That's technically.
But narratively? While (on a good playthrough) I'm dragging every other friend AWAY from their source of trauma (whether they realize it or not) - sometimes through killing that source, sure, but we still LEAVE...
...with Karlach my 'good' option is to PUSH HER BACK into the place where she can hardly freaking breathe (at that point it doesn't even matter if Zariel can or can't get her hands on her again, Avernus itself is poison to her)??? With some vague hope for a future escape which isn't even promised and I have to headcanon that part myself?
Like yes Astarion's "good" ending is also bittersweet (and yes, lacks an epilogue), but at the very least we know that even though he can't walk in the sun anymore - he's still doing leagues better than he was before the game's events.
Karlach's 'good' ending is like. If we didn't kill Cazador at all AND Astarion lost his ability to walk in the sun AND for whatever reason he could never leave Baldur's Gate either. Or had to hide in the mansion's walls trying not to be found. Something like that. Or maybe if his quest ended the second we stepped into that mansion and the whole fight afterwards was left to our imagination.
But with a badass soundtrack for a cool barbarian exit.
Uuugh I dunno, on one hand the dilemma between "Letting her die in peace but she'll DIE" and "Convince her to live because you are unable to let go and drag her back into the worst possible place for her mentally" is, in fact, a real emotional conflict to have, but DAMN does it feel like an unfair punishment compared to EVERYONE else in the game (meaning the major characters of course, lest someone reminds me of tragic background NPCs again)...
And the severely-lacking-player-effort-questline is of course a giant insult to injury.
I am passively-aggressively stacking my giant pile of various infernal armor in the corner of my camp.
I'll just continue casually throwing in more thoughts on the topic as I'm moving along with the story, if it's okay with everyone, because I need to vent and this is, naturally, the most understanding place (plus this does count as feedback I'm pretty sure)
Spoilers for House of Hope etc etc
Geez, upon just reading everyone's thoughts and spoilers I was severely underestimating the, uh, 'not-good-ness' of the Avernus ending. It's, like, GLARINGLY obvious even before you reach the end.
Took Karlach with me to the House of Hope to steal the hammer and she basically had a small panic attack upon stepping foot in the Hells at all, immediately feeling trapped and cornered again. Just triple underline under the fact that it's her place of immense trauma, regardless of her options there. Dying DOES feel like an option preferable to ever getting stuck there again, she's not being unreasonable about that at all (not in her mind anyway). House of Hope, potential alliances, Zariel-maybe-not-being-SUCH-an-evil, not being alone anymore, it all doesn't really help when the whole landscape and the air itself are a giant trigger.
And I, as her lover, am about to convince her to go back there anyway and then call it a 'good' option? With the only alternative there being for her to die (or technically die by the virtue of becoming a mindflayer, which, no)?
Makes me feel like a selfish shit, man, and at this point it's EXTREMELY confusing which ending is supposed to be paraded as 'good' for her (at the current moment). Per the recent patch it seems to be Avernus, but uh. Uuuh.
Like. On the surface you can KINDA say that the final choice is sort of structurally the same as with the other companions. Meaning that there's one route which the character was following anyway and one route which you can try and convince them to switch to (become Justiciar/reject Shar, worship the Queen/betray the Queen, ascend/do not ascend, etc etc etc). Sometimes your character influences that switch naturally through their actions. So TECHNICALLY it's the same with Karlach - she stubbornly follows the death route, unless you convince her otherwise in the very end and your previous actions support that change (i.e. someone can go with her).
That's technically.
But narratively? While (on a good playthrough) I'm dragging every other friend AWAY from their source of trauma (whether they realize it or not) - sometimes through killing that source, sure, but we still LEAVE...
...with Karlach my 'good' option is to PUSH HER BACK into the place where she can hardly freaking breathe (at that point it doesn't even matter if Zariel can or can't get her hands on her again, Avernus itself is poison to her)??? With some vague hope for a future escape which isn't even promised and I have to headcanon that part myself?
Like yes Astarion's "good" ending is also bittersweet (and yes, lacks an epilogue), but at the very least we know that even though he can't walk in the sun anymore - he's still doing leagues better than he was before the game's events.
Karlach's 'good' ending is like. If we didn't kill Cazador at all AND Astarion lost his ability to walk in the sun AND for whatever reason he could never leave Baldur's Gate either. Or had to hide in the mansion's walls trying not to be found. Something like that. Or maybe if his quest ended the second we stepped into that mansion and the whole fight afterwards was left to our imagination.
But with a badass soundtrack for a cool barbarian exit.
Uuugh I dunno, on one hand the dilemma between "Letting her die in peace but she'll DIE" and "Convince her to live because you are unable to let go and drag her back into the worst possible place for her mentally" is, in fact, a real emotional conflict to have, but DAMN does it feel like an unfair punishment compared to EVERYONE else in the game (meaning the major characters of course, lest someone reminds me of tragic background NPCs again)...
And the severely-lacking-player-effort-questline is of course a giant insult to injury.
I am passively-aggressively stacking my giant pile of various infernal armor in the corner of my camp.
I just feel like I probably won’t get past Act 1. I don’t want to see Karlach suffer without even being able to help her... It's a terrible feeling, and I'm already on antidepressants.
You really hit the nail on the head here. For days, I've been hesitant to progress my main story and kinda been doing my side-runs because the farther into mid-late Act 2 I get, the closer I am to Act 3 and I refuse to end this game the way it currently is. I wanna play it from the moment they eventually implement a continuation of the questline without having to re-do everything. But as it stands, I can neither accept letting her die, nor accept forcing her back to the place of her trauma just for her to live. Yes they're 12 levels higher than when she got out, yes there's up to three of them now, but even she says "remember, you chose this" as she nods off to Tav, as a peek to the fact it wasn't her idea even though she chose this as much as we did.
Ceremorphosis is just an end if we wanna do some chaos options and I don't mind it being there, just like I don't mind these choices IF A PROPER BETTER LIVE ONE EXISTS to begin with urghhh Larian please ;_;
She's so vibrant and witty, it's unreal. Sam made Larian reimagine Karlach for the better. Now we need to make Larian reimagine her story for the better!
You really hit the nail on the head here. For days, I've been hesitant to progress my main story and kinda been doing my side-runs because the farther into mid-late Act 2 I get, the closer I am to Act 3 and I refuse to end this game the way it currently is. I wanna play it from the moment they eventually implement a continuation of the questline without having to re-do everything. But as it stands, I can neither accept letting her die, nor accept forcing her back to the place of her trauma just for her to live. Yes they're 12 levels higher than when she got out, yes there's up to three of them now, but even she says "remember, you chose this" as she nods off to Tav, as a peek to the fact it wasn't her idea even though she chose this as much as we did.
Ceremorphosis is just an end if we wanna do some chaos options and I don't mind it being there, just like I don't mind these choices IF A PROPER BETTER LIVE ONE EXISTS to begin with urghhh Larian please ;_;
Just treat all pre-DE playthroughs as "practice" runs for the run you really want to play eventually. There are so many bugs right now that it's impossible to have that "perfect" playthrough anyway.
When i started playing this game, I made a few different Tavs and tried a few different origin characters, eventually settling on playing as Karlach (I loved her dialogue options and passive voice lines). I almost finished Act 1 when the Reddit PSA was posted about her story being unfinished. It was a gut punch, but I still really love the game so I switched to my favourite Tav and continued the playthrough on them.
If you wanted to romance her but you don't want to be sad, just do a playthrough where you send her to hell with Wyll and romance someone else on that run. Or even going to hell with her isn't the absolute worst ending (although it obviously still blows). Obviously none of this is ideal, but my point is to treat this as one of many playthroughs so you can still enjoy the game.
The thing about treating these as practice runs is that you lose your ability to experience the story for the first time. Those are emotions best savored with the real thing.
On a related note, did Larian get rid of feedback threads on the BG3 Discord channel? I remember there were huge threads for Karlach, Astarion, and Minthara, but I can't find them anymore (I tried searching for my posts). Obviously they won't glean any feedback from those threads (they're a mess), but they were a good place to keep the discussion going, and show what issues were most important to the community (based on number of replies). I guess this thread serves the same purpose, but Discord tends to be a more popular discussion platform these days.
On a related note, did Larian get rid of feedback threads on the BG3 Discord channel? I remember there were huge threads for Karlach, Astarion, and Minthara, but I can't find them anymore (I tried searching for my posts). Obviously they won't glean any feedback from those threads (they're a mess), but they were a good place to keep the discussion going, and show what issues were most important to the community (based on number of replies). I guess this thread serves the same purpose, but Discord tends to be a more popular discussion platform these days.
They deleted them. They said prior to that that they would gather any info they could from them and then delete them. You can still post feedback on the server, but you can no longer chat in your feedback posts.
We moved here because live threads were removed. Well, now the difference is that every day there is a Karkach thread on current feedback channel and those are usually the ones that get the most upvotes so the movement is still strong. But I miss the discussions on discord
Many pages of support. Glad to see the flame still burning.
Tell me about it. I go away for work and then come back to see people are just buzzing here!
Just wanted to highlight some stuff.
@Wandering Kole - About the FourthWall dialog, I think they've just... always been present throughout the patches, never removed (unless they were removed and I didn't know about it) nor placed back in, and that maybe people are just finding out about it now. That is if I'm interpreting you correctly. Maybe I should knock down English comprehension lower on my totem pole of skills
@Chlamydia - Regarding audio voice lines, been wanting to investigate the trueness of the claim that "there is an Upper City engine fix that is completely voice recorded but was cut last-minute" from that giant cut-content megathread. In the current game files, and if they do exist, they don't seem to map to any text dialog that I can find, and I'm not sure yet if they have any corresponding metadata to show that they're part of that fix. I'm planning to train a ML model as part of a larger plan to see if I can find some unmapped Karlach voice lines in the ocean that is the 180,000+ dialog audio files, and if they do exist that would be crazy. Not holding my breath though, as to me it would be unlikely, and sadly don't have as much time as I would wish to work on it. Regardless if I find anything of note or not, I think it's an interesting side project for me.
@NomTheBurritos - ooh interesting, thanks for the link!
About the Larian BG3 Discord... I should try to be more active there... just when will I have the time to catch up to such a huge BG3 server
Edit: Happened to notice that this thread is now >1,000 posts long!
I really dont know what to take away from this interview. On the one hand it sounds like she is happy with karlachs story arc and about *acceptence* being a part of her story. On the other it doesnt sound like she knows oersonally whats all made it into the game or not. So she may not know how much of her work is actually being presented? And cirrect me if im wrong. But it does sound like she is not *done* with karlach yet? And this was after the patch 2 release and *epilogue* recordings?
The interview was yesterday so it's post pstch 2 for sure. They sound obviously very impartial, objective in the way they refer to VO work as a job and not connecting too much to it (but obviously loving how much people appreciate it, and how big it's gotten). It's a mix between, can't tell cause NDA, but also agreeing that accepting a fate that despite everything, some things cannot be changed and it's okay (chronic disability/pain or terminal illness rep in a way) being a very powerful message and rep. They obviously wanted to say a bit more but Cessup hasn't finished Arc 1 so she wanted to keep it as spoiler free as possible.
I really dont know what to take away from this interview. On the one hand it sounds like she is happy with karlachs story arc and about *acceptence* being a part of her story. On the other it doesnt sound like she knows oersonally whats all made it into the game or not. So she may not know how much of her work is actually being presented? And cirrect me if im wrong. But it does sound like she is not *done* with karlach yet? And this was after the patch 2 release and *epilogue* recordings?
More like she's professional about it and doesn't get overly attached to the characters that she voices. It's not that she's happy or sad about it, but that it's just a job for her -- she'll work with whatever they give her and do her best.
She did confirm in the interview that the Patch 2 epilogue was implemented.
The interview was yesterday so it's post pstch 2 for sure. They sound obviously very impartial, objective in the way they refer to VO work as a job and not connecting too much to it (but obviously loving how much people appreciate it, and how big it's gotten). It's a mix between, can't tell cause NDA, but also agreeing that accepting a fate that despite everything, some things cannot be changed and it's okay (chronic disability/pain or terminal illness rep in a way) being a very powerful message and rep. They obviously wanted to say a bit more but Cessup hasn't finished Arc 1 so she wanted to keep it as spoiler free as possible.
Tough one.
She also can't share how she truly feels because everything she says could hurt her relationships in the industry.
She said that some have contacted her about our concerns, asking her to relay them to Larian and she said that was the quickest way to lose her career. She has to remain impartial for her own sake.
Still continuing to support a better ending for Karlach. Everytime I start up a new game run I just can't resist this amazing character.
Of course I eventually stop playing once I hit act 3 and all those doomer lines come out, a lack of a decent ending for her just sucks all the fun out of the game; until I start a new playthrough once again so I can enjoy the best girl in the game at her best.
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