Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Please Larian, Rewrite or Delete [ACT 3 SPOILERS] (very long with spoilers)

No, that's not at all what the phrase means and at this point I'm going to encourage people actually look it up to understand how different it actually is. Character assassination is about having who you are as a person attacked in an effort to ruin how others perceive you. It's more similar to defamation/libel. Even the Shar cult betraying her wasn't that. A retcon is just a change the reasons for which can vary.

And the reason I continue to correct this is because REAL character assassination when it happens is actually pretty horrific for victims of it. I'm not saying anyone can't be disappointed with the retcon, but Viconia isn't being victimized by a writer who hates her to make others hate her, the people working for the Intellectual Property just decided they wanted her canon to be a little different. It's just an adjustment to her characterization that is no more false than her old characterization, the degree and acceptability of which is going to differ between players who know it happened at all.

In my eyes the main problem is similar to the general Act 3 problem. A good chunk of content would've benefitted from more ability to explore the situations with the kind of time and care you do in Acts 1 and 2. Viconia not being able to exposit about herself much at all is unfortunate.

Like exactly this. Though I think one of the bigger problems in the way of this is the nature of the endgame villains. Based on Early Access Shadowheart and the history of the Grove/Shadowlands I sort of expected Shar to be much closer to the main villain than she is and then I think Viconia would've had a lot more time to shine, or at least have a more active role in one plot or another for us to learn more about the why and how of who she is in BG3 in a more immersive way.

So here is the visualization for Viconia in BG3...

I put a few glances together in a quick image like a character sheet

Heavy Spoilers*


I love the character's visualization and her voice is great too! Main prob for me was that we really only got a handful of voiced lines. Just not enough at all. I'd really like options to give our companions some hair and makeup adjustments and have the portraits update accordingly, sensible stuff like that, but she's lookin' rad in BG3 for the template. Just feels like that should have been an option, recruitment into the fold, and then they could have done more a lot more with her.

I was not being reductionist with Sav. I was stating his motivations for his evil. I even gave context for exactly what I was talking about. What is reductionist is pretending the comparison of evil wasn't in my reply, so you could dismiss it. If in BG4 Minthara was around, but she was slavishly following the orders of her mother, that would be a retcon of similar quality. And anyone complaining about the retcon being poorly done doesn't need the explanation of 'but it's canon' or your other variant 'well Drow are matriarchal and she's lived a long time in it and you know how difficult it is to just abandon your culture like that? Maybe her mother caught up to her between games.'

Why are you bothering to lay out the path? There is no path from A to B to C with a retcon. Because claiming A was C all along is what a retcon does.

There is really no point in claiming you weren't saying it wasn't a retcon, only to muddy the waters by saying people fall back into cults all the time or was doing light speculation on the timeline as if it were a logical extension of events instead of a retcon. And then only to then flip back to saying you didn't say it wasn't a retcon when pressured on these justifications you have no reason to give.

As I said earlier, how does that address the problem? How does that pertain to this thread and why it was created?

I would be thrilled if others could and would accurately point of logical fallacies! Recognizing and avoiding them can only improve discourse in general, like recognizing faulty arguments made in politics, not just in debate class. It makes no difference if I say insulting people doesn't prove your point, or if I say an ad hominem of attacking the person and not the argument is counterproductive. I'm not sure why you are so particular about the definition of Character Assassination, but this terminology is a problem.

It is quite consistent of me. Your light speculation and my light speculation are equally unable to be disproven. It becomes a fallacy if I was saying my scenario was equally as likely, in which the absurd nature of it would be a mark against it. However, I did not say that. Just that there was an equal amount of evidence for it. Which is none and the absurdity was to highlight that the blade you were using cuts both ways. The argument in question, that using "time skip" as a reason for why BG3 characterization makes sense in absentia of any actual background is a poor justification, remains intact. Because if it made sense, it wouldn't need a retcon.

In extension of that, you have gone on to argue as if I was saying having a time skip where things develop is not possible or is bad, complete with a lecture on how adventure modules work. When the actual argument is that your rationale was basically the Step 1. Use Viconia, Step 2 ??? Step 3. Profit! meme in order to simultaneously argue that Viconia's situation is a logical progression because 100 years of mysterious character development and also say it's a retcon WOTC/Larian did for their own reasons, take it or leave it.

Pick one.

My main issue is that Vic and Sav are used as stepping stones for Larian's characters. It does not matter what events in the backstory are established (or not) because Vic's sole purpose in the game is either to be replaced by Shadowheart, or defeated as the big bad abuser on SH's behalf and her character was retconned accordingly. Giving her more time on screen doesn't change her role as a prop. The same goes for Sav. I'm pretty sure the incest isn't in Boo's Journal of Villainy. Making him and the cultists pathetic lackies (with altered personalities and motivations) for the sole purpose of being stomped by Durge, Daddy's favorite and the special Bhaalspawn, is aggrandizement of Larian's creations at the expense of Bioware's. As far as legacy characters go, this is one of the most poorly handled examples I've seen.

WOTC having their canon does not oblige Larian to use them, at all, or in this 'mine is better than yours' way. I am as interested in 'this is how things work' as a defense as I am in 'Rey Skywalker is canon' arguments. It doesn't address the argument. It doesn't address the problem. It answers questions no one asked.

I thought I was pretty clear I wasn't here to score points by seeing who can most insufferably twist a discussion with intentionally ridiculous false equivalences and more or less meaningless appeals to a type of logic that in practice doesn't exist outside of debate. So this is goodbye between us, I think.

A thread on reddit reminded me that they included incest as a part of Sarevok's new characterization. Honestly intentional character assassination to prime players to absolutely despise Sarevok and Viconia is really the only way to explain it. If Larian's motivations weren't to elicit such a response from players who encounter them with such portrayals, then their drastic changes to their previously established endings and characterizations really don't make a lick of sense

Well, thanks again Rahaya, basically summed up my thoughts and said them in a more logical way. And the incest part, yeah...During last week I read some WotC books as research while playing other games, and boy oh boy they're god awful, however I didn't find anything about Sav doing incest, so I really don't know where that part came from in-game.

I agree with every word! Because of this, I quit playing BG3, I'm waiting, hoping that someone will create a mod that changes Sarevok and Vikonia and make her a companion. Unfortunately, as I understand it, Larian is not going to correct this shameful misunderstanding. That's why I keep playing BG 1 and BG 2.

To tell you the truth I haven't even noticed that this Viconia was the same as in BG2. I played through that game at least 2 times that I can remember but she must have slipped my mind. Oh well, that was 20 years ago. Sarevok I remember as a brute and he's still that here.

What I was disappointed by were Jaheira and Minsc. These two I remember very well from previous games and while I love their addition I feel like they weren't done justice. The two of them should be on a much higher power level than they are in this game. After all they've been through lore vise making them as powerful or, due to their starting stats, less powerful than the player is a joke. I especially dislike the addition of Minsc so late in the game, it feels pointless.

It would have been better if they were high level NPCs that help you if you're good or oppose you if you're evil. Help could be in the form of information and being there for the final fight while oppose could be a mini boss battle. As is their character is not done justice.

For someone who didn't like the term fallacy, and apparently doesn't like rationality, you sure are quick to accuse others of false equivalencies as an excuse to not address anything when you are the one that equated how TTRPG modules for tabletop campaigns with randoms handles story to a CRPG video game made by professionals should be handling story. Logic has great relevance in fields such as science, for example, forming and supporting hypothesis, conclusions and peer review papers of PhDs.

'Doesn't exist outside of debate.'

Good grief.

This puts my feelings into words exactly. Larian's writers should not have been so insecure about their own characters (Shadowheart and Orin/Durge, respectively) that they had to trash Viconia and Sarevok to make their characters look more sympathetic.

The deliberateness of it particularly gets my goat too. I have read/watched enough media to recognize the little tricks being used to elicit desired emotional reactions from players, and I have played the earlier games enough that I can pretty readily recognize Larian's deviations from those games. It really bothers the hell out of me knowing that their depictions weren't accidental or the result of the team not being familiar with the source material, there would have had to be actual discussions taking place about how to make the characters produce such a visceral dislike in the playerbase that they'd *want* to kill them, so that they'd have a feeling of cathartic triumph after finally vanquishing them.

You can see similar writing/acting tricks used with other antagonists like Cazador and Lorroakan in the game, the difference being that those aren't existing beloved characters from a franchise that the game is purportedly paying homage to.

Yup. For example, if Larian really wanted Vic to still be a high ranking Sharran involved with SH's story? Off the top of my head, SH could have been in a Stockholm Syndrome situation with Vic as someone she would want to aspire to in order to serve Shar instead of making Vic an abuser. They could have made finding memorabilia from the previous games something you could confront Viconia with, so that instead of having to fight her its a case of having to choose to, because she willingly steps aside. Could even have her shrug off Shar's chastisement as a callback to the epilogue WOTC retconned.

Still want Sav as a Bhaal cultist? First, get rid of the fucking incest, WTF? Second, make it clear since Bhaal rezzed him, he has no choice but to bide his time following orders and has reactions to a Resist Durge story instead of literally being author insert with a handwave for why they fucked up the BG continuity.

That's just off the top of my head, done in five minutes. All it takes is treating the characters, their backgrounds and the players of BG 1 and 2 with respect.

The issue with both Sarevok and Viconia is that Larian are clearly fans of the previous BG games and do understand the characters. In fact, we have in game evidence that supports this idea.


While we can argue about what Jaheira actually means when it comes to Viconia it's pretty clear that the following description of Sarevok matches with what we know of him from the previous games.


So I don't get why they had to shove these characters and change them just for the sake it. In my opinion, they should've been used been used to show that you can have a dark past and still somehow overcome it, where Viconia would've shown a Sheart a more neutral path perhaps and Sarevok would've been the ex-Bhaalspawn inspiration for Durge.

But nope.

I agree with Night Lunatic above.

However. I don't think this warrants a rewrite, as, all things considered, both characters have only but a few lines If one character *needs* removal and/or rewriting, it is the Emperor. Thanks to this Emperor, the entire main plot is hot garbage. And that's not even taking into account the 'revelation' during Wyll's dragon quest, which makes it all even more absurd and unbelievable.

It's not just the Emprah. There are many plot holes, inconsistencies and contradictions because of late rewrites(and different conflicting visions for the characters and story?) which show up at the end of act 2.

An example: Balthazar doesn't know where the Nightsong is imprisoned even though he is the one who drains her power for Ketheric? Why? Well, because originally the Nightsong was a pretty different character.
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Aylin#Datamined_content

Another example would be romanced Shadowheart. From act 1 Shadowheart is supposed to be the "sheltered girl with overly strict parents" which is why during the Tiefling party even though she was happy she said lady Shar doesn't approve of it. Enter evil Shadowheart who tells you that Shar's teachings didn't allow for flings but she still did it in secret anyways. Then cheat with Mizora and Shadowheart tells you flings were encouraged so which one is it??

Sure, the Emprah is most guilty of this especially since he robbed us of a Durge vs Orpheus vs Tadpole three way battle. I don't understand why they added him in the first place to be honest. Just make the tadpole dreams pop up even if you don't use the powers?

Also, add in an unnecessary origin system with only one real origin that makes sense which sadly isn't even fleshed out. Yeah, the more I think about it the more I think a rewrite would be nice.

I have to support the OP post. The characters in this game are so amazingly bad and so much worse than the quality of almost everything else in the game, but the Viconia treatment seems almost intentionally bad. I know Larian said they were really into the originals when they designed this game, but you can't tell. I assuming they always went with Aerie in their playthroughs, as Shadowheart's romance is just Aerie 2.0 anyway. Not only are the BG3 companions some of the least likable and boring of any game with companions I have played in years, they totally trashed all of the BG original companions. Larian should really consider seeking outside help with scripting and characterization for future BG games, it does not appear to be where their strength is.

Wait.... This is a little ott-topic, but Shart's romance is Aerie 2.0?
How do you figure? I honestly can't draw the connection. Gale, maybe, who is whining and moaning about his condition, just like Aerie, until it's unconditional love.

Maybe they just mean that the "optimal" SH path has you But that is a fairly superficial similarity. I can see where they might think that, IF SH's writer played BG2 (if he did I can't tell), he saw the arguments between Aerie and Viconia and thought "Oh wow, Viconia is such a meanie, I bet she would enjoy literally torturing a sweet innocent girl." Which would be a conclusion that only takes one sliver of Viconia's character into account and doesn't understand her at all.

Also, IMO Aerie has a lot more reasons to "whine" than Gale. She tried to help a child (when she was probably little more than a child herself) and for that, had her freedom and wings painfully taken away from her. She can be moody and irrational, but I can see why. Meanwhile, Gale He got hit with a reversible curse; Aerie lost two of her body parts, forever.

Yeah, that's very well said. Looking back at it, Viconia has one function and one function only in BG3: to be Shadowheart's stepping stone and punching bag. I really can't find any "respect" in the portrayal of her (even though the lead writer claimed they wanted to "pay respect" to the classic series in an interview), only resentment and insecurity.

Thank you, couldn't agree more. Honestly, some parts reminded me of how Neil Druckmann wrote characters in TLOU2. For example, to prove Ellie and Joel are "evil" and deserve to suffer plus his new characters are better, Druckmann would put lengthy scenes of Abby's father saving an animal, Abby playing catch with a dog, and a pregnant woman having an adventure in zombie post-apocalyptic warzones, etc. Then later he would let Ellie kill all of them and scream: "You see? You see? Ellie is evil! Now watch Abby beat the shit out of her."

BG3's portrayal of old characters is a bit less clumsy than that (it's Neil Druckmann after all), but has similar manipulative energy and intentions. The writers even let Shadowheart say "nobody will remember you" to Viconia, well pardon my language, but fuck off.