I get it now -- Gale is a writer's joke. He is a way to blow up the entire story before it lapses into incoherence.
In Act I you could write your own character and play in a well-developed sandbox. But Act II forces you to choose between its rails or the Gale Doomsday option. To play on, you probably need at least two of the following (a) schizophrenia, (b) homicidal tendencies, or (c) a yearning to be dominated by powerful women. Alternatively, you could play as a hireling -- an empty vessel transporting you through a few more hours of forgettable AAA gaming. My guess is most writers would choose the Gale option.
I was hoping BG3 would be more than that. But, based on what I see on Twitch, it seems like the financial incentives are to either keep it as is or turn it into even more of an outrageous dating simulator.
I'm not in agreement, and I think this is a very shallow take on a complex game. In any other game they wouldn't even let you take the self-destruct option because you would be on rails and there would be some rube goldberg reason it didn't work or wasn't feasible - like there would be 100 Orphans stapled to the outside of the brain or some dumb thing. (This would not stop me personally, but I digress...)
Here you get an achievement for at least exploring that path and understanding it's not a great option and here are the consequences. Same thing that happens when you mouth off to a God.
A more thoughtful analysis would recognize that Mystra's little plan wasn't very well thought out.
The entire dating aspect of Bg3 is overblown - people reveal themselves in what they choose to engage in. People reveal themselves further in what they haven't engaged in but have heard from others but haven't verified themselves because ...reasons?
