Honestly? He should, but Larian doesn’t think so. They seem hell-bent on making Halsin and Minthara mutually exclusive for some unknown reason.
I can understand why designers might want to keep some things like that exclusive, which is why I made sure to preserve state of affairs in my suggestion. You can always recruit
no matter what you did before meeting her, it seems, so there is that. Idk how much sense that makes lore-wise, and she does seem like a less fleshed-out companion. Then again, I don't have her in my party.
The datamined dialogue is interesting, if a little rough. It is good to keep in mind that datamines can be anything - content in development (that may or may not work out), placeholder content, or content that was already considered and cut from the game. But have read enough buzz in various comments about this (including Minthara's awesome voice actress going back for more lines) so I do believe that more content is coming. Which means I should not play until it arrives lol.
I agree that knocking Minthara - and only her - out to recruit her does not make sense, it is pure meta. She should retreat, although of course it should still be possible to kill her. For what it's worth, I try all the time to not be meta, but recruiting Minthara (and the cost of that) was the biggest meta decision I made. Playing durge made it a little easier. There is also an origin character that I never recruited, and another one that messed with the wrong Tav and got dealt with, so I am proud of following through with those decisions, despite obviously missing out on companions (the first one was not too obvious tbh). All that meant that, from the Grove onward, and until I got Minthara, I had Withers provide me with a fourth party member!
I am sure it is hard for the game designers to make the game they want while taking into account that most players will have available tons of meta information about everything. At the end of the day, it is up to us to read or not read guides, to reload or not reload a choice or a bad roll. But I still think that Minthara should be given at least a chance to escape the battle, and that player who fought against her should still have a chance to recruit her later. Both missable/optional. Minthara is nothing if not pragmatic, and the datamined dialogue plays into that nicely. Just don't do it by bonking her on the head
.
It also seems too much like forcing a "Good"-or-"Evil" choice on the player character, who might not be one of the two extremes; This it not only a bit much, even for old-fashioned D&D, but it clashes directly with some big points of Act 2 that, very prominently, allow the player to switch between "Good" and "Evil" freely.
Even though BG3 is this immense masterpiece that it is (bugs and all), I am sure that Larian would have crammed double the stuff in it if they had all the time and resources in the world. They sure have added a lot to their previous games after release. Let's wait and see what else is in store for Minthara and the rest of the cast.
PS: It seems that the time I would have spent playing BG3 will be spent in the forums instead! My next post will probably be about my experience at the Last Light Inn and the way I handled things there - there is something I want to discuss.
