Originally Posted by Moongerm
I dislike the Emperor (moreover the guardian) because of the forced ‘sorry I can’t tell you everything yet’ shenanigans that are basically prevalent until the start of Act 3. It feels forced and doesn’t flow narratively (there are a bunch of other instances with other characters and scenarios that suffer in this regard as well). This is amplified by the fact that when he finally reveals himself his ultimate excuse is ‘you wouldn’t have trusted a mindflayer’… which is just such a cop out because it’s forcing an opinion on the PC in a game where agency is pretty standard, add to that we have an entire quest line with trusting Omelumm well before we meet the Emperor.

+1, couldn't have said it better myself. It's the main reason I dislike the Emperor cause he's just full of these contradictions.

Originally Posted by Moongerm
Daisy on the other hand is another can of worms. So overt in its attempts to seduce you that anyone with a brain can see it’s a trap. I supposed at least you could have had the dichotomy of resisting that temptation or purely giving into it.

I don’t think either of them work narratively because plot ‘mysteries’ are incredibly hard to pull off in a game of this size and scope. Daisy simply has the benefit of the doubt because we only ever saw him/her in Act 1. The tadpoles were a lot more insipid and worrying in EA compared to what we got in the full release of the game though, so I guess Daisy makes a bit more sense in that case.

Also, hard agree with one but. I think Daisy could've worked narratively if there were more paths to her persona written. In a perfect world Larian would've toned the seductiveness of Daisy down, given her more nuance and made her less obviously evil from the get go. Iirc she went full evil after 2nd or 3rd dream, right? Make it a slow burn, the more you use the tadpole, the more power over you she exerts (and make it so the game's ending IS affected by these small choices along the way too, not the consequence free tadpole bullshit we have right now).

So make the 1st dream mandatory regardless of tadpole use, and then have multiple diverging paths - where she has to use different tactics to try to seduce you, so people who go on full 'reject the tadpole' still get dreams, but dreams that are unique to that specific path. Kind of like the original BG1 - where your Bhaaspawn dreams were tied to your alignment AND reputation. So good, neural and evil characters had different dreams and received different powers.

Look, originally I was one of those people who weren't really engaging with the tadpole and Daisy (but did have a few runs where I did just to see it in action) and I have been advocating for Larian to make different dream paths depending on your tadpole use since day 1 of EA... instead we got Emperor. Sigh.