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

I agree with pretty much everything here. The problem with the Avernus ending is that you don't keep "pushing and pushing and pushing" her to go back there. You decide if she goes during the very last cutscene. To frame the Avernus ending as a bad ending where Tav is a manipulative, egocentric dick that only cares about their feelings, not really thinking about their romance option / companion interests, it surely needs a build up or something.

Right, its weird that larian made a new epilogue cutscene for the avernus ending that frames the situation as being super cool and sick(metal music playing, karlach smoking a cigar, them actually going to fight zariels forces headon instead of i dunno, laying low?), like it completely ignores everything that karlach had been saying before. They said they were gonna give us a new ending and instead put in a cutscene thats tonally inconsistent with everything, because they thought we hated the ending for karlach due to it being depressing, which isnt the case - players hate the ending cos we dont have any ways to explore alternate paths for her like for every other companion.

If they really wanted the new avernus epilogue scene to make sense, they needed to add conversations with karlach where she comes to terms with going back to avernus with us and seems as battleready for it as she does in the ending. THAT or have her be angry and depressed that we made her go back, but i think we all know that'd just make fans even angrier so larian couldnt do that. Although the idea of larian promising us a new ending that ''karlach deservers'' and its just an even more sour cutscene of karlach saying she hates us for making her go back, is pretty funny lol.

But personally, i kinda hate the avernus ending to begin with and just want larian to expand her questline + let us fix her engine, because whether or not the avernus ending is framed as a good or bad ending doesnt matter, her character quest is still nonexistent compared to the other companions, and i dont want her story to continue on off-screen, i want to explore it ingame.

I'm not sure if even a complex game like BG3 can count with all possibilities. I thought about "similiar thing" that gondians can't save Karlach, because they implement hearts into machines, not people, so they are more engineers but we need surgeon. There was also another very good similar example few pages back, but I cannot find it.

Oh totally, I just wanted to offer some potential insight on the engine itself, at least for what we know of it.

Yeah ... sadly as far as im concerned, i am not down for the avernus ending, or for them to change karlachs dialogue/ story for that ending* to make sense* .
Her endings currently are failed states, plain and simple. The avernus eoilogue attempts to put a positive spin on that failed state.
I also HATE being railroaded in a game like bg3. Espically as she is the only companion to suppossedly be railroaded.

Ive said once ive said it again and ill say it one more time
In a game of 17k supposed endings, you should not be forcing* a tragedy on the player with a companion character. There should be a way to save her and let her stay. To allow players the CHOICE. As with every other companion you get.

Exactly, I said the same thing from the first day I registered here. With game where everything is possible and with 17000 ending with so many clues and possibilities to fix her I'm 100% sure, that something wrong happened during the development so at the end we have such a unfinished and very empty questline without proper ending. The question is. Will they improve it? And if yes, when?

There are several lines throughout the story where you can suggest that she consider going back to Avernus, so I think the set-up is there, light as it may be. But it's still not a satisfying narrative.

Their track record says yes, with a definitive edition. Whenever it comes out.

Just to derail the thread slightly, I'm very thankful to you guys for keeping the fight alive. I haven't had as much time as I did before to obsess over Karlach with classes starting and lots of new games to play, but I do still check this thread when I think of it. I'm glad to see that instead of the discourse dying out, this thread is still alive and active, and it makes me very happy that even though the new game hype has died down, everyone is still very much thinking about the issue.

I wouldn't call people who can't bear to see their loved ones die right in front of them bad people. I don't think I would've had the heart to accept Karlach's wishes to just blow up on the pier as I watched on. Especially after I heard her lament the life she'd never have.

Sometimes being a good friend means standing up to your friends for their own good. Yes, Avernus is a place of trauma for her, but trauma can be overcome. Things are different now: She's not alone anymore. There are people who love her and believe in her. This time, the pain and the struggle are worth pushing through for the promise of a better tomorrow.

On a different note, I just refuse to believe that, in DnD of all settings, the DM can't think of a single solution other than "suffering or death" for an original character. That's just wild to me. Especially considering all the ways other characters get around their problems. Heck, Wyll can get out of his contract and save his father on a technicality. And we're not even asking for that much.

But even if we assume there was no plausible way to help her, they should've shown that to us throughout the story. Dammon's not enough. We should've heard that from the Steel Watchers and the Gondians themselves. Maybe throw in the deep gnomes, too. Then, and only then, can we come to terms with the finality of Karlach's plight.

Hi everyone! If you want to discuss all things Karlach and plan a potential social media campaign to make sure our fiery friend get the ending she truly deserves, consider joining Karlach Nation Discord

https://discord.gg/T78JUNZmy

Me:


Larian:

joined! also would recommend sharing to the reddit subreddits for balders gate 3 if you havnt alrdy

So I kind of think what happened here is that they had a more substantial questline planned for her with an ending where she gets saved, with the death and avernus endings being the bad endings. Then as release got closer and things started being cut and it became clear that they wouldn’t have time to implement the good ending, the less-bad of the two remaining ones was hastily shoehorned into the good ending role. IMO this explains the weird tonal inconsistencies, as well as the reason why going back to avernus is never presented as a real option up until the very end.

Exactly, this is probably the scenario how things happeded. Combination of time pressure, bugs and inconsistencies led to cuts.

I had to look into how exactly larian improved on a character(beast) in divinity original sin 2's definitive edition, since alot of people keep saying larian is known to ''improve'' their squandered characters in a definitive edition release. Some reddit threads i found people commented that most of his changes can be boiled down to larian having added more dialogue to beast, making him more reactive and more relevant to some storyline in act 3/4, but thats about it. Couple comments even said his changes werent that big, and there wasnt any major overhauls to his questline. This particular comment was a bit disappointing especially (spoilers for dos2, sort of?)

''I think that the four original characters received attention simply by being in EA, while Fane´s story was so complex and important that attention happened by default. Beast was just also there and it shows. Other than cracking a few lame jokes and being somewhat useful when your party interacts with the dwarven faction he does basically nothing. No meaningful change happened to that in the DE. His quest got a bit more stream lined because in act 4 Classic you could stumble upon one major plot development by accident when interacting with certain dwarves. When this got a bit more polished and focused Beast´s story was enlarged a bit more, too. It is still not enough to make it interesting.'' Link to reddit thread with this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOr...d_is_beasts_story_in_definitive_edition/

This makes me a bit more concerned about what exactly to expect larian to do with karlach in future patches/a definitive edition. They could very well just streamline her journey of ''acceptance'' by adding dialogue for the gondians who say they cant help her, and then we get the same ending for her but now with extra angst on top and letting us know we truly tried everything this time. Some players have said theyd accept her fate if we were allowed to ask for help from others even if it lead to nothing, so i guess this change would make some happy lol. I just personally hope we can get something a bit more substanstial than just ''now you can ask the gondians for help and get told no'', but based on larians so-called improvements on beast i dont know if thats realistic to hope for.

But i dunno, maybe im missing something, did anyone here play dos2 before and after the DE release that can give any insights on this, am i misinformed on how beast got changed?

I agree with how Beast's story was revamped, however there are some differences between Beast and Karlach.

First, Beast isn't nearly as popular as Karlach is, and if I recall correctly there wasn't really much outrage surrounding his questline, rather just some pointing out of how it felt lackluster. Karlach meanwhile has a massive following and is routinely cited as the biggest problem that people have with Act 3 and the game in general. You could better compare it with Fane than Beast, whose endings were legitimately bad and were also updated with the Definitive Edition.

Second, Beast's storyline wasn't really bad, it was just kinda... boring. It really only needed to be expanded, it's problems weren't really that glaring. Karlach by contrast not only contradicts in game lore and the solutions that the game provides us, but also potentially ruins other endings, like retiring with Wyll or wanting to self-sacrifice without sentencing Karlach to a miserable death.

Third, Larian is a different place than it was in 2017. BG3 is hugely successful, and Larian has far more in the way of resources and the ability to be agile about incorporating player feedback. We aren't even 2 months since release and we've gotten:
-The ability to change appearance midgame
-Better multiplayer system
-A new Karlach epilogue scene
-A (somewhat dubious) inventory upgrade
-Countless bugfixes and minor story adjustments

They are quite clearly invested in incorporating the player feedback they've received, and just deciding they want to railroad Karlach into having a bad ending despite what most people are telling them that's not what they want would be an honestly baffling decision. I'm not saying it isn't a possibility that Larian will just add some dialogue about accepting Karlach's fate and moving on, but honestly I feel like if they were going to do that they would have done it by now. There's also no reason to think that even if they did decide to go that route, that the community wouldn't loudly complain about it until it's fixed.

Here's a bit more context about why Beast got the changes that he did.

His problem was fundamentally different from Karlach's. He needed his questline to be more robust because it simply lacked content. It seems that's exactly what they did for him for the DE.

Karlach also lacks content but her problem is that she has no satisfying conclusion to her story, and a lot of loose ends lead to nowhere. There are three scenarios here:

1) They do nothing. They've already polished up the "ending she deserves". If they're happy with it, and most people are happy with it, then there's no need to spend money on a new questline or a rework of her existing one. So they decide to wholesale move on to bigger and better things.

2) They pad out her existing questline. After slapping us with the "ending she deserves", all they feel is needed now is to tie it up in a neat bow with some foreshadowing. And that's exactly what they decide to do.

They have the Gondians just flat-out tell us it's a lost cause and we'll have to take their word for it -- they're the experts after all. They can give us some plausible explanation as to why it's not possible. For example, they can tell us that any operation outside of Avernus on an unstable, experimental model like hers would be guaranteed to be fatal.

Giving us that context would add some much-needed meaning to saving them, rather than it being some optional thing you can do. It would give her speech that much more gravity and it would lend credence to all of her existing endings, making it truly "all we could do" for her.

3) They rework her questline. Despite polishing up her current "best" ending, Larian knows that's not what the fans want. They know they can safely ignore the minority, pocket their money, and just sweep it all under the rug. But that's not how they roll. Swen said so himself. So they decide to do right by the fans of the character.

They don't even have to do much to pull that off. All they would need to do is to give Karlach a few more scenes with the Gondians. Perhaps they ask you to fetch a really hard-to-get item that's needed to stabilize the engine long enough to perform whatever operation they deem fit. Doesn't even have to be in a new zone. Just a new or existing interaction modified just enough to allow for it to exist.

To keep things balanced, in exchange for her regaining her life on Faerun, the tradeoff could be that her lifespan has been dramatically decreased -- perhaps she has 10 years tops. Or perhaps she now has the wrath of Zariel hanging over her like a sword of Damocles, putting everyone she's close to in peril.

Whatever route Larian decide to go, they're a much different studio today than in the days of Divinity.

There really isny any plausible reason we *cant* fix her. Is the issue imo.
As so many ppl have said our characters are able to do some wild shit and put our companion characters on drastically different paths and for the most all of those paths feel satisfying. Depending on how you wanna do your playthrough.
Karlach gets none of that.
She really doesnt need a more justified reason for why she is boned.
She needs an option that the player can save her. Make it hard sure. If there needs* to be a trade off sure i guess. (Im kind of against that route cause ksrlachs personality seems like depending on that trade off she would be upset with it and not go for it) - but at the end of the day. She just needs a happy ending option. A satisfying conclusion. I will be pretty choked if they just add in dialogue or another quest log only for it to still end with -we did everything we could for karlach-

Yea these are really solid points, thank you for bringing them up! Im trying not to get too pessimistic, just sucks that no matter what happens we probably have to wait a year or two until karlachs questline gets changed, if it even does. Would be really helpful if larian could at least tell us soon, as in the following months, if theyre planning on revamping her story lol.