Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion [END SPOILS WARNING] Addressing Karlach (PLEASE PUT SPOILERS IN TAGS)

So... You're saying that they didn't cut any of her content but should re-add it? What?

Well it's an easy guess actually, considering everything you told be, it was supposed to be same thing like her previous 2 quests, so if they removed it, it's because they didn't wanted it. Simple as. And they won't and shouldn't change their mind because few players are mad

There are no September stats. You're conflating that with the August stats where Gale is in fact ahead of her. I don't think it was surprising that he was the default pick for most players, given the player demographic. But Karlach coming in second, beating out everyone other than Gale, is a very strong testament to her appeal.

I work in a media analysis company. Social media trends are part of what we track for a living, and it's how I know Karlach is very popular to this day.

What Larian showed in their August data was that Karlach was immensely popular out of the gate. I doubt that trend has changed much, given Karlach's sustained popularity on all social media platforms.

Karlach's strongest platforms are YouTube and Twitter (I hear Tumblr as well, but I can't confirm that). Her cutscenes on YouTube have massive viewership, beating everyone else including fan favorites Astarion and Shadowheart. She is repeatedly the most requested character for fanmade content on that platform, too, having two songs produced by popular YouTube musicians (and a third one on the way). She was prominently featured in Larian's first promotional animation after the game's release. That's not an accident.

As for Twitter, fan content shows what people are excited about. Fanart is perhaps the most important metric in that regard. There's an old meme about how Overwatch's popularity is sustained by its Rule 34 content, and there's a lot of truth to that. You can draw a direct line between how popular a character or a game is and how much fan content is being made for that character or that game as a whole. If a given character consistently gets a lot of fan content that is highly liked, that shows you who the most engaged players gravitate towards.

On Reddit, Astarion and Shadowheart are unquestioningly the most popular. Lae'zel also had a very strong presence up until recently, but Karlach content is consistently seeing posts with thousands of upvotes. I haven't checked recently to see if their spots may have reversed.

I won't bring up the Discord thread, or this one, because they're a different kind of data point.

Lastly, two of the three patches have been Karlach-themed. You can chalk that up to August's excitement. However, Karlach is still the most featured character even in Patch 3.

All of these are things you can check for yourself using the corresponding search functions. You don't need to take my word for it.

So she's sooooo popular as a origin character. And like 7% of players went for origin characters, instead of creating their own? So what are you talking about exactly. And well actually I agree 2 patches were related to her. Or rather related to proving my point, unless you haven't seen the cinematic they added in patch 2. Also I don't really care about twitter or tumblr content as most of it is fetish porn, and I doubt devs care either. 2 songs are nice I guess though but I don't see how they are supposed to change anything

I would love to know how you figured that out when on any social media platform, our view is by far the most popular one regarding Karlach's predicament.


No. You're completely wrong. Here's what's happening:

Dammon's VA mentions how Dammon figured out a solution. Then he says he wasn't expecting him to come up with that solution because beforehand Dammon said he couldn't do anything else for her -- that's the second time you meet Dammon. When Sam reminds him that that is what's in the game right now, that's the moment Dammon's VA clasps his mouth having realized he said something he shouldn't have. They played it off, but the truth is out there.


It has nothing to do with complaints, and everything to do with fan content and engagement. Even if you disregard the entire user base, if you only check Larian's official Twitter, you'll see their Karlach tweets are some of the most popular ones.

Also, for the Sven about DLCs. He himself said that you'd need different protagonists, antagonists and stakes, so the point about Karlach's story being finished stays

So you're just going to ignore that she's popular then. Gotcha.

Most people went for custom characters, yes. This is why you need the other metrics to see which companions they went for and how they engaged with them. Nobody brought up fetish whatever, it's just you. I was talking about fanart, fan music, fan animations, and the like.

Oh right just like back in the day there were billions clips of Mark Ruffalo spoiling the avengers movies. If it was something he wasn't supposed to say, they would have removed it. Bro calm down with copium

Not really. Karlach getting a different antagonist tied to an engine fix after the game's ending would be a lot easier for them to do than reworking her quest. In terms of difficulty, the easiest way out is an epilogue (voicelines for which were datamined from Patch 3) where Karlach emerges from Avernus (if you picked that choice). We're yet to know in what state, because the lines were only from Withers, and he's very vague.

The next easiest pathway is a DLC with a short questline in Avernus. Couple that with some padding in her main-game storyline, and you have yourself a complete narrative without the need to rework her questline.

I'm not very active on social media (mostly reddit) and I've never seen anyone complaining about Karlach until I went here. The view I saw the most often so far is that the game is GOTY material but Emperor vs Orpheus conflict is done poorly/feels rushed. Nobody ever mentioned Karlach outside this thread. But I decided to dive into the issue and verify what you said and the biggest "complaint" I found about Karlach was that she's not coded as lesbian character (which is kinda weird because none of the companion's sexuality is pre defined) but once again, it's twitter so it doesn't surprise me.

As for VAs, no, I don't think they'd air something that could have potential spoilers, it was just a slip up about the act 2 and they played it as a joke

Who are they? Larian? They're not the Gestapo, mate. You're trolling a bit too hard here and you're starting to lose the plot.

And that's the question. Maybe some major bugs, maybe some plot holes in the story, maybe lack of time, because the release was close and even planned to be a month earlier. In my opinion it was combination of all these factors. Or maybe you right and they do not plan to fix her engine at all in the end. But all clues we have looks like it was possible to fix her. And at the end they don't have even time to remove these clues from the game.

So larian who said themselves they want to give players full experience without any microtransactions and crap like that are now supposed to release dlc where you save Karlach? What youre saying is they are supposed to admit they screwed up and then release a PAID dlc as a apology? Or maybe you expect them to give it for free

I can tell you're not active, because here's a sample of what you can find on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15mx2c8/addressing_karlach/

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/171oo18/you_did_all_you_could_to_help_her/

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1742r9h/dont_you_dare_tell_me_hes_not_favorized/

You can also check all the feedback megathreads. People agree with us, not you.

Edit: The VA slipped up and revealed something that wasn't in the game. Sam rushed to correct him. That's what happened.

That's the exact opposite of what he said. The first line of the article says it all "different protagonists, different antagonists, different stakes". Like what more do you need, if the DLC will ever be released, it won't related to the main story.There are no clues, it's just your and Kole's opinion. Nobody outside this thread thinks that her engine was ever supposed to be fixable, I was quite surprised to find out you actually think otherwise for some reason, despite the obvious writing on the wall that it was never the case

Who's talking about apologies? We're talking about more content. DLCs aren't the same as microtransactions. The Witcher is the best example of a game expanded and enriched, rather than patched by, DLCs. I don't expect them to release those for free, no.

Those are just two memes nobody takes seriously and the first one was posted by the same guy who opened this thread so it kinda doesn't count. It was also posted two months ago so around patch 2 which made sense back then, but definitely doesn't now. Especially that the two memes are also quite old.

And if VAs told something they weren't supposed to, they wouldn't be allowed to upload to video

You can have different protagonists in tandem with the original cast. Those are not mutually exclusive. When Swen says "You'd need different stakes, different environments, different protagonists, and antagonists", he's talking about how a DLC wouldn't ncessarily have to be at the end of the game but it would need an entirely new setting in order to not clash with the main game. Because if you implement new content within the main game, it's a lot of work and a lot could go wrong (as we can already see with their past few patches). But that has nothing to do with what they will or will not expand upon.


Given I just proved you wrong, you ought to concede the point. You're not active on social media, so you're not aware of the discourse. That's fine. But don't pretend like you know for a fact what the prevailing opinion is among the engaged fandom.

This idiot is starting to get on my nerves, but he's right on that one. They won't release new content for free (unless we're talking about bug fixes and other obvious things) and they already said that potential DLC won't be related to the main story

Well paying to fix "beloved" character as you described her is not exactly a full experience they promised isn't it?