Originally Posted by Blackheifer
*snip*
Yeah...calling people 'selfish' for not being on board with Viconia's railroad/character assassination is certainly...a take.

BG 2 writers were 'humoring' you with her character arc and Viconia 'wanted to die' . Just....really?

The knots some people will tie themselves into to excuse the terrible writing around Viconia is truly astonishing.

Her status in BG 3 directly contradicts her BG 2 epilogue in specific ways obviously intended to make her less sympathetic. It's frankly just baffling that anyone can look at an ending where she explicitly is rejected and betrayed by her fellow Sharrans and loses the favor of Shar and comes to the conclusion that 'Viconia was a fanatic and butchered her fellow Sharrans (loyalty and faithfulness emphasized) without a second thought because Shar demanded it, because she lives and breathes for Shar's favor-was a natural and fair interpretation and continuation of the former.

It's literally 'well actually the exact opposite happened'.

And yeah none of this crazy string justification for her portrayal (or Sarevok, for that matter) comes close to addressing that Larian had the option to interpret them in a manner where they were included in a manner like Minsc or Jaheria that was designed to actually be a treat for their fans to see, instead of ...this. They had a choice, and a degree of artistic flexibility available to them that they were willing to exercise, clearly. But *this* is what they chose to go with. The one where S & V are one note fanatics whose character development is thrown out the window, who are narratively set up to be second fiddle to the player and the Origins (I mean hell, according to Minsc, Viconia left the BG II party after being chased off by Boo, of all things, and SH's story basically flat out makes her Vic's replacement, while Durge's makes it very clear that Sarevok is a shadow and a failure of both Orin and Durge.) ...villains whose (strongly encouraged) killing is framed as a cathartic triumph that's celebrated by everyone in your party.

A degree of extrapolation might be expected to include old characters, but for heaven's sake, Vic's portrayal could not be more tailor-fitted to PO her fans if it was a literal hate fic. It's amazing something like this got green lit, IMO.