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

Interesting! So she probably still burns everything.



Oh, of course. Karlach as a character would disapprove of _everything_ related to this idea.

I was just thinking of possible loopholes that I haven’t seen explored in this thread yet. Her story has quite a few holes in the game so I was wondering if perhaps they forgot to close down some unlikely avenues. But it seems they did, even if in a sort of lazy way.

Speaking of which, I’d totally bargain with Vlaakith for the prism/Orpheus for her Wish spell to fix Karlach.

I mean, if Karlach can’t live, why should anyone? Not in my play lol

I would prefer if they scrap exploding engine plot point altogether. If they don't and introduce a fix there would be virtually no reason to go down her 'explode' route. Routes must be equal in terms of reasons why should I chose one or another.

For example if they refactor her story into power fantasy one, then there could be a valid choice between going full power demonic unhinged barbarian who clocks her engine to the moon and decides to avenge herself, kill Zariel and take the place in Avernus for herself, or stabilize the engine giving up some power and go adventuring with her friends while fighting off occasional Zariel lackeys or two, e. g. Ultimate Power vs Ultimate Frienship.

There's ABSOLUTELY a way to still have her explode ending.

If Dammon die, if the Gondians die, if Barcus Wroot doesn't become the Ironhand leader.

There's tons of ways to do it.

I do see your point, but the "take the place in Avernus for herself" route is hardly in-character for her, no matter how you slice it

General revenge - maybe, sort of (although it doesn't really satisfy her, as Gortash shows), but power doesn't seem like her style. And I wager none of us really want to see the character herself re-written - we love her for a reason, and her being different from the other companions in terms of her struggle is part of that reason, I think.

I'd say in her case the routes should me more equal in terms of "likely to happen", rather than reasons.

As in, I'd say the 'best' option should be hard to get and easy to miss or screw up, so that the 'bad' routes still bear significance. Well, that - or maybe the price should be steep, so the player theoretically has motivation to NOT go that way?

Powerin up her engine could influence her character which would make an exellent point in what would uoy give up in pursuit of power?

Don't you think it's strange that we've been doing the Larian writers' work for quite some time now?

We've been generally doing that 'work' in different directions, at this point I believe that's called writing fanfiction.

And everybody here did much better job then "bring 2x infernal ore and go back to hell"

It isn't strange considering that Larians left Karlach's 'questline' such a gaping hole it basically asks to be filled with headcanon

it's indeed nice to see so many people passionate about this.
When a story lacks proper closure you don't experience catharsis, that's the main reason most of us are here: something is missing... and i don't believe the voices will quiet down any time soon!

@ Cromwelp on Twitter/X posted a quote re: the upcoming "customization of character midgame" patch 3 feature today saying:
Perhaps the most community-requested feature is coming with Patch 3, and thankfully you don’t even need The Surgeon to help you out with this

Believe me when I say, the devs are very, VERY aware that a better end for Karlach is the most requested addition to the game. This patch is, according to Larian's and Sven's tweets, very big. I know stuff like this is sneaky af, just like the "our infernal hearts burning" tweet. But I can't shake it off.
So we just need to keep this flame going guys. We need to be civil about it and let them work but DON'T LET THE FLAME AND HOPE DIE. We'll see our girl live and happily in Faerûn yet!

I mean her character WAS re-written in the new avernus ending to some degree, where she suddenly goes full action hero, doomslayer mode and wants to take the fight against zariel despite adamantly stating throughout the game that she never wants to return to avernus. Not only did she not seem too bothered about being back after everything she said, but shes ready to march against zariels forces cigar in mouth. Its very. Strange.

I wouldnt personally be fully against this characterization, but its very jarring now as it is because we dont have any dialogue that explore this side of her. The idea aron presented of letting us choose between stabilizing or powering up her engine, and the latter leading to her becoming more angry and vengeful and wanting to take the fight against zariel(without necessarily wanting to take over zariel), is one way to make this characterization work.

Just ended my first game, it was awesome.
below my endinds and the one i picked for Karlach

Im honestly shocked to hear- changing your appearance mid game- is a top community request.

But i hope your right that they are aware and working on a solution for Karlachs ending. Theres just so much potential for her story to be fleshed out.

I mean appearance change IS a top request.

Not for me as i like my tav to be consistent, but it's cool that they listened to feedback nonetheless, i'm sure lots and lots of people will be happy with it! let's hope they are aware of everything else.

Hey guys! Sorry, I've been MIA for a couple of days though I'm glad the discussion is still really active.

Something that I created (though still very much in dev), is a dialog change tool that I primarily created to see if new Karlach dialog lines were added in a patch (add this to the pile that is myself wishing so hard for a Karlach fix addition). It works for all characters though, including lines that Larian's changed in case of misspellings, deletion of sentences, etc. There are bugs right now, but below is a sneak peek.

I'm not sure how much Larian "leaks future developments" in their game files, so unsure how helpful it will be for predicting currently-in-development additions (maybe I should delete this before anyone at Larian sees hahaha). Also, obviously don't run the tool if you don't want to spoil new dialogue for yourself, lol.

This forum thread is the first to find out since this was born out of my wanting to see if a patch had new additions for Karlach. Due to potential bugs right now the below numbers and changes are likely under-reported. Either that, or my launch-day dialog source is bad idk.

Source code repo: https://github.com/Invuska/bg3-dialogdiff, though most of the code is in this file (sorry if spaghet-code, it was programmed very quickly in my tiny free-time).
Again, compiled version not released yet. I'll also keep you guys posted if there's anything new for Karlach dialog-wise in Patch 3.

Invuska you are CRAZY in the best possible way, props!

Neato, yeah keep us posted thats pretty cool