Originally Posted by Laluzi
So much this! I loved this entire game to bits, but one of my biggest complaints about the ending sequence is that the game had previously been so adaptive to the choices you'd previously made and willing to give you unexpected ways to deal with your problems if you stopped to try weird things. Suddenly you reach the cusp of the grand finale and the game says
'nope, doesn't matter, someone's gotta be a mindflayer now.'
It was a very Fallout 3 moment after weeks of luxuriating in a Larian game, and my first thought was that I already had two friendly candidates until the game forced one away without giving me the ~DC30 persuasion check to reason with him and seemingly forgot about the other.

Omeluum's only available if you made certain choices in Act 1 and then do something particularly tricky in one of Act 3's hardest quests. I can only speak for myself, but
the forced ceremorphosis
is by and far my least favorite part of the entire narrative. Having a way around it if you went out of your way to save a character that's perfectly suited for it would have gone a long way in alleviating how forced it felt AND restoring the sense of 'stop and smell the flowers, because even the little choices matter' that was so prevalent in Act 1 and Act 2.
I've had the same thought. You would have had to do something difficult for him to be an option in Act 3, and that's only if you even meet him in Act 1. So it would really feel earned as
a Good ending.
The fact that we know he's around and it doesn't come into play feels more contrived to me than anything. It would be nice if the choices we made throughout the game had more of an impact on the main conclusion. And I personally like when it's smaller choices that you might not suspect that end up being really important.