I think it might have been cool if they slid in another Act between Rivington and the City of Baldur's gate proper.
The way they got it set up right now, is sorta like if BG1 had Beregost and the Carnival area happen right before arriving arriving in the Big city. Rivington is our first actual town in BG3, but it's eclipsed by the lower city. Probably should have broken it up a bit more there, with another interlude before the crescendo.
Then they could have given Orin and the doppelgangers a bit more of a spotlight and pushed out some of the endgame plot for the pacing.
Also for the Emperor, I think an Empress would have been equally compelling.
I was kinda surprised actually that they didn't give an alternative VO for this character, like depending on the choices made in character creation for the Guardian, or to somehow carry that through into the Flayer's visualization. In the wardrobe basically, since we've seen a lot of artwork over the years showing different riffs on the same basic flayer phenotype with varying types of gear/apparel. I think something like that would have been nice just to make those initial choices feel somehow more consequential.
Once the reveal happened, I thought about how it might have been done a bit more subtly with some disorienting quick cuts. This could play two ways in the Meta, one which suggests that we're still in a pod on the Nautiloid somehow and the entire game is a delusion, the other where the Flayer reality is breaking through.
So pretty much Total Recall (1990) on that one. Like that's totally where I thought it was heading hehe. Might have been interesting to try something like that, or just another way to bridge that transition. Particularly at Wyrm's Crossing.
Speaking of bridges, so the Flayer on the Nautiloid was sorta reduxed in the visual as well right? This makes sense since that one can die, but it used to look pretty similar to the current Emperor. Since this is BG3 perhaps it could be more like a Triumvirate? So basically 3 Archetypal Flayers depending on the selections made initially. So they got this one for the Emperor already, maybe another for an Empress, and then a third would be sorta the Elder Brain itself maybe, with some crazy modulation that does both voices at once? That would sorta mirror the capitoline trinity for extra mythological flare. Just in the same way that we have the Dead 3, we could have the Flayers doing a tripartite thing too. Maybe just with different modulations on the audio, and then using the visualization stuff to kinda carry it. Just an idea.
