Originally Posted by RoseL
Originally Posted by Vystria
While increased dialogue would go a ways to improving player reception of the character for reasons you've stated, unless they come with some sort of meaningful reactivity I doubt those complaints will subside.

I don't disagree with your point about the need for increased reactivity, though I think his role as a plot device (I don't deny he functions as a plot device, I just think his character is much more interesting than any of our companions) restricts just how much he can have.

I agree, or rather I want to, and maybe that's part of why I want to try so hard to like the Emperor as a character. For me, I don't see the Emperor as a complex character as written, but I think there's enough that people can infer complexity if they want. I think that process of interpreting a character's actions can be a ton of fun, it's just unfortunate that for a major character, players need to do a lot of the legwork. But I'll also admit that I found all of the companions to be thoroughly uninteresting, so it isn't a super high bar for me. However, I'm not sure that I'll ever really like the Emperor as a concept, mostly because it'll always represent the departure from what appeared to be a more interesting story to me - one with choices and consequences, where the weight of the player's situation felt heavy. As you and others have mentioned, due to the role the Emperor has to fill, it really is limited in what those consequences could be, so I'm not really expecting there to be any huge changes there. As I had previously mentioned, it would be absolutely shocking to me at this point if Daisy, or rather, consequences to tadpoles returned.

Originally Posted by RoseL
Letting players interact more with him would go down well with both fans and detractors, as I said. Distrustful players can be more confrontational and maybe even ask him to stay out of their heads if he bothers them that much. Perhaps interactions could take the form of players approaching him in the Prism instead, giving them a feeling of greater agency.

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To this, people would argue that the Emperor being unable to restrain itself and lash out at us would be a personality flaw - which could be believable. Except, the Emperor is an illithid, the Emperor makes it clear that it likes being illithid. It's never really made clear how much of the host's memories and personality were left in the Emperor. So for me, this would be an area that I think the game would need to expand upon to allow for the Emperor to be more reactive and also not come across simply as the game giving the players predisposed to disliking the Emperor reasons to dislike the Emperor for that final choice. It's also just one area of many in which I think the writing of the Emperor needs more work than additional dialogue.

I thought the story made it very clear he retained most of his memories and personality.

Also, I want to be clear I don't think it's necessary (or would be good writing) if the story spelled out every detail about the Emperor, but I suppose part of what feels unsatisfying to me about the character is that it feels as if the game makes a habit of using what should be "big reveals" almost as throwaway lines. For instance, I brought up that I didn't feel as though the game gave proper attention to how much the Emperor retained of its host's memories/personality because for mindflayer lore, retaining any significant portion of those should be a big deal. I guess I should go back and review just what is covered, but I believe that we really only get the Emperor itself claiming that it retained them - with the game making a few attempts at showing that the Emperor does have memories of its past life - the personality factor is a little trickier. We never actually met the Emperor's host, not even in the earlier Baldur's Gate games so there isn't much to work off there. The point I wanted to make about the Emperor liking being an illithid is that it seems ill-fitting that it would allow those personality traits to seep through, assuming what we see is that original personality, especially as doing so only undermines its goal of working with us to assure its freedom. If we don't assume this, then the Emperor is acting uncharacteristic of an illithid, just because?

Another issue I have, especially related to this, is that the game makes what should be a big deal ultimately of little or no relevance. Apparently, the Emperor having any of its host's memories or personality had zero effect on it breaking free from the elder brain and may have only played a role in it being the mindflayer the Absolute chose to retrieve the astral prism. It feels as though the choice for the Emperor to have retained its memories/personality was all to help build it up as a more trustworthy character to facilitate players consuming additional tadpoles, which feels extremely weak and a very disappointing use of what should have been a big deal.

Originally Posted by RoseL
Are you talking about the final battle
where he switches sides if you free Orpheus?
Because I think that could definitely be better explained. Better yet, we should have to choice to persuade them both to work together. Forcing us to make a choice was unnecessary here, I believe, as their immediate goals aligned.

That is one situation that I think rather than any additional explanation, it should really just be outright removed. I don't feel as though the Emperor's decision to join the Absolute makes any sense for it. Certainly what feels the worst about that situation is there's not even dialogue to offer working together, which, I do agree does make sense for both sides.

Originally Posted by RoseL
Btw, I was not part of EA, but I deeply disliked what I saw of Daisy on Youtube. And I find the idea of our dreams being just the tadpole rather uninspired. I'm very glad we got Emperor instead.

This is fair and it's not a point I disagree with people about - it's not necessarily that I think Daisy alone was going to be a more interesting character or that what Daisy was and was trying to do wasn't incredibly obvious, but I think part of the issue with examining what we got in EA with Daisy, regardless of whether or not you actually played EA, is that it only showed half of the conflict. In EA, we never met the one who would be our protector - datamining during EA showed this was likely to be Orpheus, though it's possible that they had intended to change it, maybe to the Emperor even.

On that note, I really liked that we didn't get confirmation that we were being protected in EA Act I. I think it helped create a sense of tension that made our situation feel as dire as the premise sets it out to be. Technically, this may exist to some extent still, as you need to long rest to trigger meeting the Guardian. But in the earlier version of the game, the tension lasted at least throughout the end of Act I. As others have pointed out, this doesn't really work with consequence free tadpoles so when they were removed so too was any lingering tension that really just makes the story feel bland in my opinion.