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

This is why in patch 2 larian needed to add new dialogue for karlach where we could discuss and come to terms with going to avernus together, especially since they went with an ending cutscene that shows karlach ready to fight in hell doomslayer style that feels very out of character. As it is now the avernus ending is tonally inconsistent with how karlach has expressed her thoughts on going back to avernus and just leaves me feeling like i missed some conversation or scenes with karlach ingame.

If larian never changes her questline and let us fix her engine, they need to at the very least make the avernus ending make more sense, especially since they themselves decided to go for a 80s action flick vibe while forgetting what their own character thinks about avernus. THAT and an epilogue where the gang gets together again and tav/durge and karlach confirm they found a cure. This would still just be the bare minimum and disappointing tbh, but i would be satisfied enough that i could actually replay the game without getting depressed when i reach act 3 and drop the game lmao.

That they were able to add it this quickly just shows that those features and bugs were already being worked on and Larian just knowingly released a unfinished product.

And he is right, Larian will not do anything drastic unless their reputation is on the line. And with magazines not testing and giving out top scores after 10 hours of playing and vocal player shouting down any (valid and objective) criticism of the game nothing big will change.

Well, then let something small change. That's fine too.

At the very least it won't hurt to hype themselves up on the fact that they listened to the loudly screaming part of the fans, especially some time post-release when the overall hype dies down, so expecting something is not unreasonable. It's good marketing.

Or what, should we close the thread, flop down and give up, lest we annoy the great aware ones?

Or it shows that they're very responsive and diligent in their work.

Even if what you say is true, they still work way faster than other studios who similarly release unfinished products and take their sweet time patching things up.

And again, that Karlach scene is very difficult to do on short notice. That's not something they could've planned for, because it was in direct response to the demands of the fans. So that's a mark against this idea that all these patches were in the works prior to launch. Perhaps part of what's in them may have, but you couldn't possibly account for all of it without the necessary feedback.

And how exactly did they improve the sequence logic and writting? All I see so far are them doubling down on their trash writing and fixing bugs that prevented certain dialogues and interactions from triggering.
Because it's funny to see things happen exactly like I warner you would happen if we don't do anything, back when we actually could do something

My advise to everyone in the thread is to simply not engage with feris, either he is a troll and enjoys the attention.
Or he just likes trying to ruin the thread for the rest of us.
Either way id just ignore him. As theres a much higher chance of Karlach getting her happy ending then him stopping his toxic beheviour

Because I apparently have nothing better to do, I went out of my way to actually scroll through the whole thread and see what exactly Feris "told us" and what was his plan on what we should've done "back when we could".

The answer is: nothing.

The longer answer is that he was engaging in critiquing the way Karlach's story is handled (as we all are), seeing patch 2 as Larian doubling down on Avernus ending and a sign that nothing will be fixed (a valid opinion of it's own), and screaming about Bioware and later CDPR (irrelevant and annoying). Also providing a lot of thoughts on what Larian SHOULD do to fix Karlach's situation (which a lot of us ALSO do). And complaining about zero verbal acknowledgment of possible changes (which, you guessed it, a lot of us also want, if fruitlessly). Oh, and demanding that all of that was done yesterday. Of course.

The only call to action that I was able to find was a couple of lines about "we have to ruin Larian's reputation about listening to their players", which is a bold strategy when we still don't know if they will in our case. But also I guess go on mate, buy a newspaper article or something. A billboard on Time Square, I hear that helped some fandoms.

Also I was right about him being a Discord refugee, what with the constant irrelevant CDPR spam and ragebaiting.

So if anyone is still wondering whatever high horse he's on about with the whole "I told you what to do but you ignored me and now it's too late" spiel... He's full of it. Period.

Now we can hopefully stop derailing the thread with clear conscience, lol~

Exactly

While we don't really have anything new in terms of content to discuss, I wanted to share a thingy I found

This user on Tumblr made a proper reference for Karlach's tattoos and I thought our local artists may appreciate it for future drawings of best girl

Fellas, I have honestly never been more disappointed in a game character's ending before. I found out about Karlach's endings and Act 2 and it immediately killed my desire to continue playing the game. I eventually finished it but my enjoyment was completely diminished. I won't be replaying it again either knowing this is what happens.

The most frustrating part for me is that there are like 10 or so solutions to Karlach's problem which would fix her immediately and they are right in front of us the entire time but the game is pretending that they are not in order to railroad us to a forced tragic ending no matter what. Karlach's problem is incongruous with the world in which she is, it is simply impossible that it cannot be solved within the setting of Faerun. It's also clear as day that we were meant to be able to fix her considering the Steel Watch drops Enriched Infernal Iron, which serves no purpose whatsoever in the game and was clearly meant to be used for her final upgrade. Her quest was obviously cut short and it ruins her ending completely.

Larian expanding her Avernus epilogue scene and saying they are giving her the ending she deserves also doesn't sit right with me. That's still the same bad ending, guys. It's not what she deserves. You know it and we know it. The fact that the biggest character discussion thread by far is about the disappointment with Karlach's endings says it all really.

Baldur's Gate 3 was a delectable full course meal where I got served charcoal for dessert. When all is said and done, the main thing I will remember from it is the bitter taste I was left with in the end.

Nicely done @tarraxahum.

Stole the words out of my mouth brother.
I havnt been able to go past act 2 on my last two attempts at a playthrough.
Keep the flame alive though, I have faith larian will do something to address karlach in a more complete manner. Just doubt it will be in a patch any time soon. As theres alot of potential work to be done on her

The main problem for me is the railroading. It's the writers/devs vision, which would work in a linear game or in a non-interactive fiction, but not in a video game that proudly proclaims it's about player choice.

Also giving Karlach a happy ending does not invalidate the bad ones. It merely gives the player... a choice.

I'm calling the cops because I just witnessed a murder.

I think that's what I'm most bitter about. The badness of the ending (and not just Karlach's) has completely papered over how I felt for the first 85-90% of the game. All those good feelings, I know I felt them, but I have no memory of them. What I remember is suddenly noticing that the game was falling apart, going silent, pieces were falling off, and I wasn't going to get anything approaching an ending.

I know it's a new world from when I was a kid, and everything's more expensive now, but I remember when Blizzard was famous for delaying every game they released multiple times, but when the game finally dropped it was always flawless. Larian couldn't have kept this thing in the oven for another few months and finished Act 3?

Not a single developer is happy when they have to ship a product they haven't finished working on or haven't been able to give it proper polish, i'm sure it was internally discussed and they figured they had to one up starfield by anticipating the release date. They didn't anticipate the massive success they had though, i assure you that if they KNEW the amount of attention they were going to get + the sales figure they are currently looking at, they would've waited way more time no questions asked. But those things are impossible to know beforehand, especially for a game like baldur's gate, it was a gamble (and it paid off for them). That unfortunately means that we got what we got, but it's also the reason why most of us are hopeful and still posting: since they never had a release this big on their hands, there's a higher chance that they will not outright drop the game and call it a day. Taking a break from development? Sure thing, it makes sense. But dropping your golden goose? Doesn't make a speck of sense from a financial standpoint.

Yup same thing, first platthrough i was blown away by the game. The combat, the VA, the story the choices, the plot fwists. Only to feel horr8blt confused and sad at the ending. Cause i just coukdnt fathom that THIS is what ive worked towards. It felt hollow. And worse still it wasnt cause i messed up a quest or missed a convo. It was cause i had no choice in the matter. The character i romanced. Either was sent to hell or died traumtically infront of me.... just...ick

Kole knows what I'm talking about and if you'd take a head out of your ass, you'd know I used CDPR and BioWare because they were famous for good reputation among the players. I can also bring up blizzard, maybe ubisoft if you want or whatever else became crude parody of what it used to be. In this business everyone turns on the customers eventually

I don't know what part of "independent studio" isn't getting to you, but everything you used for a comparison was never an independent studio to begin with.

And again please remind me whats wrong with CDPR? They released CP2077 1.0 with lots of issues and now they released awesome expansion and changed many things in the original game according players feedback (The whole police system for example which was terrible in the original game). Isn't it exactly what we want here?

Larian released 8 or how many hotfixes + 3 huge content patches in a month. IN A MONTH. What more do you want?