Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Why BG3's ending reminds me of Mass Effect 3's (ending spoilers, naturally)

I'm sorry, but just knowing his race does not count as knowing quite a bit. (Also, the githyanki cause is only fair to tolerate if you're a githyanki yourself. Otherwise you are his potential enemy and slave. But I suppose you mean the enemy of my enemy etc, ignoring that the Netherbrain IS the Emperor's enemy too.)

And I've already said previously, the reason we can't free him with Emperor on our side is because Larian wanted to force us to choose. So you're right about one thing: there's no reason to not free Orpheus in any reasonable universe. Give us persuasion checks, or whatever, but we need an option to conclude this in a reasonable manner.


Yes, the Emperor enabled us to find the source of the problem. He knew that we were up against an Elder Brain and knew that having more power would aid the cause to defeat it. He absolutely was not lying when he said he was on our side, and that he wanted us and himself to be free. He never even asked you to become an illithid (you could give the stones to him), and before that he merely encouraged you to use the powers (and the Astral tadpole).

I don't know what you were reading into the dialogue but I never felt lied to. Did he present his arguments in an appealing way? Yes. Could he be more transparent? Certainly, but that risks you refusing to work with him, and becoming enslaved to the Brain. That's not a great strategy.

Also, he killed Ansur in self-defence. That's very clear, and supported by Ansur's dialogue that Ansur was going to kill him.

Have you played a no Illithid powers game? I think we are playing two different games - he constantly berates you for not slurping up tadpoles and chastises you when you squash the astral tadpole. It's *clearly* leading us down the garden path for transformation.


I mean I appreciate your commitment to your position but come on

". . . Just like you I was infected by a mind flayer parasite. Just like you I seek to be free of it . . ."

And it later tells us the truth - even if his original body was available he wouldn't return to it. He doesn't seek to be free of the parasite he seeks to "evolve" and he seeks to "evolve" us.


It also hides the fact that Stelmane was thrall, completely misrepresenting it's relationship with her. And it doesn't reveal the killing of Ansur until it has no other choice and indeed it advises us to avoid discovering the truth of how far it's evil has spread.

It came in a false form, it misrepresented itself as the guardian and created an illusion of a sword at it's heart. In truth the sword could not kill it and the only purpose of the kabuki was to gain our trust.

It misrepresented the knights of the shield as mercantile organization when, in truth, it's front group for a devil whose real purpose is corrupt the governments of Faerun.


In sum, it's a completely manipulative relationship based on lies, misrepresentations and half truths.




Balduran's friend was clearly in the right and The Emperor's decision to kill the friend of his human host confirms that Ansur was correct. Balduran was dead and some awful pantomime of him remained - which will also be our fate / Karlach's fate if we don't opt to die at the end of the game.

We need a "no mind flayer" option and we need to be able to denounce The Emperor without sounding like a petulant child.

You're repeating everything you said previously. I disagree.


The Emperor retains some of Balduran in him, that's pretty obvious to me. But it sounds like you're just biased against all things illithid, so good for you, I guess, that you can make the Emperor the villain in your game.

To me is still very off/wrong how many reviewers in YouTube etc. claimed that they played the game, and they did not mention (so many of them), how lacking was the ending of the game. You can not review something like Game of Thrones, and then say, "well only the ending was bad", to me it is clear in BG3, that the problems in the plot happened earlier and the freedom of choice was slowly taken away after Act 1... so quality drop of the game started much earlier than Act 3. But sure, even with the ending, the lacking of epilogue and other problems of the game, BG3 is not 1/10 or 4/10, it is better than that, but not 9/10 or 10/10, those numbers seems to me the hype around this game, not reality of its curent state.

I'm restating my position while adding quotes and citing relevant examples - something you've not done. Providing evidence for your assertions is not simply repeating. I do respect being committed to the discussion but I don't respect dismal of evidence.

The Emperor: ". . . Just like you I was infected by a mind flayer parasite. Just like you I seek to be free of it . . ."

How is this not a lie?


But not a very good villain. Raphel and even Mizora make for better villains. The end game is just not well written - I kinda wish the house of hope were the final battle.

And yes I am biased against monsters who enslave, mentally dominate and eat the brains of humans. While we are the topic of 'biases' against brain eaters I'm also anti zombie and anti brain destroying protozoa. Guess I'm just full of irrational prejudices. *eye roll*

I was going to edit my previous post when the forum timed out.


I suspect I've played more than you. I've tried both endings. I suppose you will never ally with the Emperor so I guess I can spoil this for you. At the end, he never once asks you to transform. You need an illithid in the party, so it can be him or someone else. You need to ASK for him to transform you.

EDIT: Also, the reason why he wants you to absorb the tadpole is that you are objectively more powerful with illithid powers. And he wants us to win. That is all there is to it. His thinking that illithids are superior may rub you the wrong way, but that is not the reason why he asks you to do it.


Yes, he seeks to be free. It's true he doesn't at that stage tell us what he seeks to be free from. Because at that stage the game has not revealed to us about the Elder Brain.


His relationship with Stelmane was problematic, I agree. He didn't want to visit Ansur because he knew it would lead to a fight, a fight which could kill us and jeopardise the mission.


I see the Guardian as a sort of Brand Ambassador, a pretty face to put to something that you would initially recoil from. It is not dissimilar to marketing.

What I mean is that your bias is preventing you from judging the Emperor as an individual.

Reposting this response because I fear that @ledra2 's has been sidetracked by the discussion between RoseL and I.

I do hope that people who are dissatisfied by the need for a mind flayer at the end game are submitting comments to Larian's feedback portal as well as expressing it here.

https://larian.com/support/baldur-s-gate-3#modal

I'd say the endings are worse than ME3. Both have annoyingly idiotic main antagonists and a trolley meme ending, but at least in ME3 there was one option that didn't totally compromise the PCs person and even gave a shot of surviving in the end, which made the ending less bleak. Also, unlike in the endings of BG3, in ME3 you didn't win any prizes by fucking other people over.


Not really that hopeful Larian will actually change the ending into anything better. I mean, they didn't implement a early way to opt out of your subjugation to Daisy/Guardian, just tweaked a bit our mind flayer overlord into something marginally less creepy, and gave players trying to avoid the ceremorphosis pretty much the shittiest possible ending(s).

@KillerRabbit:
Thanks for reposting. I would, indeed, like to focus on how this scene with the Emperor and Orpheus breaks the story, rather than taking a side.

@all:
Meanwhile, this taking a side unfortunately presents another way this scene breaks the story, independently from "someone must become a mind flayer".

The problem is this: until this point, the "sides" of the Emperor and Orpheus remain ambiguous enough that you can rationalize taking either side. Arguably, risking that Orpheus may not be cooperative but siding with him nonetheless because he's not Cthulhu is more of a "good-ish" attitude, and sticking with the Emperor as a known quantity in spite of being Cthulhu shows more of a pragmatic/evil-ish attitude, but in the end these sides are ambiguous enough - until this point - that taking either side can be rationalized, taking either side is at least not obviously idiotic regardless of the player character's moral stance. Which means, until this point we could write our own story and take sides according to the theme of our personal story, which we set by how we deal with the tadpoles, with little constraint by the main narrative. It is very obvious that this freedom to use the game to write your story was of considerable importance in the design of the game.

However, this breaks down at this scene for any good-ish character. For simplicity's sake let's define such a character by an unwillingness to take lives without a very good reason, and an unwillingless to take the life of a bound or helpless entity without an even better reason. Such a character would never agree to the Emperor's consuming Orpheus brain, at least not without questioning the need severely and investigating how this could be avoided. We cannot question and we cannot investigate, so letting the Emperor just do this is an evil decision.

So this ruins the story of any good-ish character who would want to side with the Emperor. Which according to the game's narrative, has until this point been reasonably plausible, with no indication that we'd have to cross a moral event horizon if we want to continue with the Emperor to the end.

This could've been avoided by a simple alteration: letting us speak with Orpheus. If he did not trust us because we were too much mind flayer (ie having consumed the astral tadpole), that would've been a somewhat understandable reaction, even if strategically unsound, and then we could've told the Emperor to go along because after all, we do need to win, and sacrificing someone who refused to support us in this mission of extreme importance after giving him the chance, is rather more acceptable and also not out of character since if we do this, we're likely half illithid ourselves.

As it is, however, if you want to win with the Emperor, you are railroaded into evil. And if you want to win as a human being, you are rewarded by becoming Cthulhu. And this against the way you had been able to play the rest of the game, if you were good in the former case, and anti-Cthulhu in the latter case.

In essence, you can only be good if you're also anti-Cthulhu, but if you are, you will become Cthulhu. A kind of double-bind that's worthy of a devil's duplicity.

Yes! I really love this idea, I wish this had been an option!

Thank you. It makes absolutely no sense to me that our party is so little involved during the end. If I'm not mistaken, only Karlach and Lae'zel offer some input. If you decide to become a mind flayer, or have Karlach become one (which is a another can of worms), there's hardly any response. I just wish our band of misfits would be able to solve this without anyone becoming an Illithid.

It really frustrates me that this isn't an option. Especially when you have Lae'zel with you. By that time you already know a lot of what's going on. And you've spoken to Voss, who will tell you that Orpheus will see sense. He won't attack you because he needs you. I mean, what is he going to do? Fight the netherbrain on his own when he has a mind flayer right there who will do that for him? And surely even our pragmatic Emperor would see sense in that.