Also, "a bit shorter" is an understatement. Is it a crime to point out that a great character got noticeably less content than other Origins? Her current questline in its length and player's input is more comparable to Halsin (kill goblins --> fetch a lute --> protect a portal --> find a kid vs. fetch iron --> fetch iron --> kill a guy) than any others. Maybe except Wyll, who also got the shorter end of the stick due to being rewritten and therefore developed less in this iteration than other EA peeps, but even with him we can still feel like we made a difference in the end. Accomplished something. Tried, you know?
(hell, to that end even Halsin by the end of the game ends up in a new place - not in the grove anymore, curse cured, new life awaiting. Karlach is still stuck in the same place between Avernus or death as when we first met her. Giving her touch back was a great thing, beautifully written thing, no notes, but it hardly feels like a whole quest done. Isn't this the genre where our choices should affect the outcome?)
I get your point and even agree, I wish they had not bothered with Halsin personally. However this is a lot of arm chair quarterbacking on the part of the community. Developers look at various aspects of the game and make decisions at those moments based on what they think should or should not be in the game. After the game is done as a single player it is easy to say they did it wrong but did they?
I understand the passion, I have whole sections of the game and story I personally think was poorly done and even outright hate. Those feelings are cool. It is testiement to how good the writing and character acting is that people have as much passion as they do about many of the NPCs.
