Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion [END SPOILS WARNING] Addressing Karlach (PLEASE PUT SPOILERS IN TAGS)

Yeah. I’m not too worried about it, but I’m still a little worried, if that makes sense.

The game has clearly done way better than they expected, and they’ve made numerous statements as to how it’s changed their approach to the game and how long they want to work on it, and what they want to do. Combine that with how vocal people are with and about Karlach, and then you can put it together that something must be coming down the pipeline for her eventually.

Yet, I also can’t help but a feel a little worried simply because. But that’s what happens when a company and actors who care do a good job.

He was a gifted child who, while clearly loving his craft, magic, was also made to feel it is the only thing valuable about him. He is also a wizard, so he did work for his great magical skill and his position. So yes, to prove himself worthy to his lady love to become and even better wizard, he tried to get something for her that turned out not to be the thing he expected. His punishment for that was, that he lost all or most of his magical skill (again the thing he worked for all his life), his lover did not talk to him anymore, he became actively dangerous to be around and spend a year alone in his tower because he had nobody to turn to but his cat. When you bring him to his good ending, he either becomes a teacher who actively tries to foster a better work-life-balance in his students, helps to rebuild the Gate or becomes an adventurer who helps people just for the sake of it. In each of his good endings, he is happy but a lot of this happiness come from helping others in some way. That is a pretty nice character arc.

I can get why people find him annoying but searching for some great "crime" to justify that dislike with morale is like saying Shadowheart should have seen through Mother Superior's game, Astarion should have stood up to Cazador more or Karlach should have not trusted Gortash.

So it has been confirmed there never was cut content for her in Act III. They did an interview with IGN (and Samantha Béart retweeted it).

Which honestly makes it kind of sad that we have all these breadcrumbs. There are just so many obvious loose ends, its weird. It might just be that it was never fully fleshed out, due to the time crunch at the end, and she was a late addition, but who knows at this point.

Yeah that is the weirdest thing. Probably the biggest plot point issue i have with the game.

thats either really lazy on larians end or really cruel to lead the pc along the whole of act 3 with enriched iron, gondians and a possible cure at the steel foundry only to get shafted, ignored, and left with a pile of useless iron outside of asking damon to make some stuff. It just makes 0 sense to go out of their way to create this enriched iron then just throw it away and give 0 chance to help her in act 3. Those are some annoying plot holes in act 3 that does taint the last act i hope we get something in a dlc for karlach.

My guess is that they had the idea of the Gondians and the Steel Watch, but made it part of the infernal engine questline when they came up with it. Because if you take out the knowledge of infernal machinery, the Steel Watch and Gondians concept still works. And the refined infernal iron used is just to show the difference between the level of tech. Which might also explain why we get a single bit of dialogue with her explaining they cannot fix the engine according to the Steel Watch.

It is certainly disappointing that's how it is. Because as we've been saying for... 140 pages, this could have been done to finish her story in a happier fashion. One that felt more complete but we ended up chasing red herrings that were not intended to be inferred that way. After all, it's easy to assume players will take something one way when you've designed it as Larian did/what I said above. But without that context of adding the infernal engine later when the Gondian quest is made, it's incredibly easy to assume the refined infernal iron was part of cut content, there was intent behind it, etc.

Ultimately, with the epilogue party, I'm content with the story as is now. My biggest issues were much the same as others had, where it doesn't feel like we actually have an impact of helping our companion like we do with others. Certainly was still emotional and well written in the bubble, but it felt very poorly done when everything was brought together. With the epilogue suggesting the engine design in avernus and the forge, it feels like our actions, and our support to go to Avernus rather than die, that we're able to keep her story going and open ended, which is really all I needed from the story, rather than a forced tragedy.

I'm still not completely satisfied because it DOES feel like we try all of 0 ideas in act 3 to fix it ourselves, but I am satisfied that they are trying to remedy that with what is offered in the epilogue. Who knows maybe they will make a DLC after all to stop a new evil high level plot, and include fixing the engine along the way to make it really feel whole.

i see your point but i have to point out shadowheart was taken as a child, brainwashed and indoctrinated into a cult for the purpose of a dark goddedd. astarion[my vampire lore knowledge is rusty at best sorry] as far as i can recall was more or less forced into what happened with cazador since cazador was so much more powerful than astarion him standing up to him wouldve led to him just getting killed, tortured, or both. Gale on the other hand was the muse of the goddess of magic and in spite of her saying to be content and just chill out he went and delved into stuff he knew nothing about and pissed her off. im not saying he commited a great crime i wont claim that but compared to every other origin gale more than earned his punishment atleast from my point of view.

i see your point but i have to point out shadowheart was taken as a child, brainwashed and indoctrinated into a cult for the purpose of a dark goddedd. astarion[my vampire lore knowledge is rusty at best sorry] as far as i can recall was more or less forced into what happened with cazador since cazador was so much more powerful than astarion him standing up to him wouldve led to him just getting killed, tortured, or both. Gale on the other hand was the muse of the goddess of magic and in spite of her saying to be content and just chill out he went and delved into stuff he knew nothing about and pissed her off. im not saying he commited a great crime i wont claim that but compared to every other origin gale more than earned his punishment atleast from my point of view.

i see your point but i have to point out shadowheart was taken as a child, brainwashed and indoctrinated into a cult for the purpose of a dark goddedd. astarion[my vampire lore knowledge is rusty at best sorry] as far as i can recall was more or less forced into what happened with cazador since cazador was so much more powerful than astarion him standing up to him wouldve led to him just getting killed, tortured, or both. Gale on the other hand was the muse of the goddess of magic and in spite of her saying to be content and just chill out he went and delved into stuff he knew nothing about and pissed her off. im not saying he commited a great crime i wont claim that but compared to every other origin gale more than earned his punishment atleast from my point of view.

Mystra was Gale's muse, not the other way around. And the "just be content" is easier said than done, if you have literally nothing else in your life but that one passion / your job and have a feeling that you just aren't good enough. (Very relatable.) They all are shaped by the environments in which they grew up or lived in and Astarion and Gale are especially messed up by this. In a way it's poetic. The guy who's ambition brought him all kinds of misery can use the burden this ambition placed on him to destroy all the instruments of human/illithid ambition (brain and crown) in one swoop, or he can redirect his ambitions and live a fuller life in which he uses his gift to help those around him. (Or he become a god, but I am not too fond of that ending.) Either way, Gale of Waterdeep dies that day.

But I am cluttering Karlach's thread with how much I like Gale. ^^

i see your point but i have to point out shadowheart was taken as a child, brainwashed and indoctrinated into a cult for the purpose of a dark goddedd. astarion[my vampire lore knowledge is rusty at best sorry] as far as i can recall was more or less forced into what happened with cazador since cazador was so much more powerful than astarion him standing up to him wouldve led to him just getting killed, tortured, or both. Gale on the other hand was the muse of the goddess of magic and in spite of her saying to be content and just chill out he went and delved into stuff he knew nothing about and pissed her off. im not saying he commited a great crime i wont claim that but compared to every other origin gale more than earned his punishment atleast from my point of view.

I just wonder if that also means that there is no chance of them expanding on her storyline in the potential DE.
It didn't really sound like they're planning any major changes, to be honest. On the other hand, this was mainly about the characters in their current state, so who knows, really.

It just irks me that the enriched infernal iron seems to have no use whatsoever - but then again we also get some other stuff that only serves the purpose of being sold to a vendor, such as the ingots.

Finally finoshed my durge play through and saw for the first time the avernus cinamatic for mama K and the epilgoues. Avoided this thread a bit to save me from spoilers.

Firstly to get it out of the way, I did not like the avernus cinamatic. And I say this with love. To the larian team that worked on that, i know you guys worked hard and got it out asap so thank you for the work. But at the end of the day the scene felt very...patch work. And as most ppl have said alrdy it didnt give what the fabs have been begging for. (A way to fix her in game)

Whivh brings me to secondly- the epilogues were fantastic. I wont get into the details but it was extremely heart warming and gave much needdd closure to the games journey very well done.

And of course the heavy ...HEAAVVYY hinting of a dlc or another adventure with some of the main cast. And the mention of the avernus forge. Was a nice thing to think about.

So Larian...if it needs to be a DLC for me to fix this fictional red bunch of pixals heart. Then please...please just take my god damn money! And let me fix the engine damn it ! Lol

Also congratz on an amazing game.

I also read the IGN article on how karlachs quest was ''never cut'', pretty infuriating to read not gonna lie. Larian doesnt seem to think karlachs questline is unfinished, maybe for PR reasons. That or they genuinely find her linear storyline with a unavoidable tragic ending to be good, despite all the other origin characters getting much more fulfilling questlines and satisfying conclusions. Sure, the avernus ending cutscene and the new epilogue give more hope to the avernus ending, and a hint that shes gonna get fixed and escape hell, but boy would i have loved to PLAY that story in the actual game larian!

Hell, larian stated that they were surprised people wanted a longer epilogue and humbly admitted they made a mistake in not creating that for the game, promising to add a proper epilogue later (which they now have). The fact that they dont seem to show a similar sentiment to karlachs story makes me fear theyre never gonna do any changes to her quest and just leave her avernus quest open ended. It sucks ass

It also doesnt help that karlach has much less dialogue in the epilogue than most other companions, especially if you accompanied her to avernus, so if this really is the last update to karlachs story that just makes this entire situation even worse.

That's just it they could've had the steel watch with infernal iron and soul coins or something like that instead of
hey you know that iron that saved karlach earlier? Here's the better version of that iron! Can I fix her engine with this better version of iron? Oh I know what you're saying. No you can't fix her.
It is such a major plot hole and the fact they looked at that and said yea that was intended.
Like I've said I'm confident that we will see the forge either in a dlc or a de around September.

It would be so annoying if karlachs story ends with a piece of paper sitting on a table that says
"Gone to the forge - mama k and tav "
I'm glad we've got what we have but she has been shafted so hard by larian. If they really choose to leave her as is and think a linear, inflexible, and unmoving storyline for such a flexible game with so many endings is fine I cant really look at act 3 the same.

After weeks of barely being able to find this place functioning and able to log in, I'm popping in to say that the IGN article really left a bad taste in my mouth. So it's even WORSE than we thought? That the stuff wasn't even cut, it was never there to begin with. The fact that she was just supposed to up and burn or leave to hell and that's all, as the main idea from the start??? How fucking terrible. You say that you create and adjust the character because of EA complaints about edgelord party, add a puppydog who has by far the harshest backstory of all in terms of trauma and physical pain, who did nothing to deserve to be sold, mutilated and enslaved, only to go "anyway she's a viking she wants to go out with a bang".

Bitch no, she if anyone deserves a good, positive ending. Adding breadcrumbs that add hope to her Avernus story is a band-aid on a still-leaking wound. A wound that never really heals for me and I just can't stand it. They affirmed that yes, hope was important. And that's what we see with Hope in House of Hope - that despite the worst circumstances, hope is alive and can even in most dire moments and against all the odds prevail.

So no, that line about "we always saw her at the dock, burning up and dying" triggered me Big Time. Act 3 is, with no cut content, even worse of a situation than us thinking it was just cut. It was made to be so? God the plotholes (read: from a DnD campaign standpoint and compared to the rest of the game)...

Yeah, I really wanna stay positivr for the company on general cause theyve aced so many other things in bg3 and other projects but that article was just like...wow i dont wanna use the term *tone deaf* caise im sure they had their reasons but its hard to see WHAT those reasons were. Its literally flys in thw face of the whole concept of their own game desogn of ,*player choice* id wish they just admitted it was a mistake on their part. But if thats a solid story element they wanna keep. Id be hard oressed to buy their next game at full price. Now if they DO fix karlachs engine in DE or dlc due to the outcry ill change my tune. But if this is it for her. Then that is just to much of a glaring inconsistency for me narrative wise

I have to agree about the article leaving a bad taste. Its also why I'm kind of giving up hope right now - I don't expect them to make any major additions to the base game. Maybe there will be a DLC, since the epilogues hint at it, but even then I just don't expect much anymore.

I have made my peace with the epilogues by now however. They're still miles better than what we had before patch 5. I take that over their original "plans" from the IGN interview.

The only benefit of a doubt I can give them here is the fact that she was a late addition, and the engine plotline was added very late in her development. So it might be more of a "well, we never did any content that was cut simply because we didn't have enough time to properly flesh out the alternatives". Although that just makes me think they should've pushed the game further back, instead of giving us an Act III that is very unpolished in a lot of aspects, and the weakest part of the game. It feels like Act I and II were done with a lot of care for major inconsistencies and plotholes, and III just was "lets wrap this up quickly".

Preach it. This is so fucking true and her story being plan ed as a hopeless story that was designed to bait the player into emotional trauma is vile. I cannot describe how annoying this and to find out there was 0 planned good ending is just depressing. It really makes the whole game look like some grim dark dnd instead of an open ended dnd style fantasy adventure. I really hope they're just saying nothing was planned and the dlc is an addition to her dtory and a final cure for her engine. She deserved none of what happened and all the plot holes, bread crumbs, and pointless trauma baiting for such a sweet red cinnamon roll. It has really dampened my enthusiasm for the game hearing this.