I don't think it's low effort, it's rather efficient. From my point of view, the problem with Karlach is basically what makes her popular, she is that perfect cinnamon roll from the start. She has not much of a character arc because there is no need for her to have one. You can't even corrupt her because she is too decent for that. She has not much to offer apart from being heart warming or heart wrenching. I think she is wonderfully written and acted the way she is, but there is only so much you can do with a character that does not have any internal conflict.
Really, my only big issue with her ending currently is, that on certain characters, you cannot stop her from exploding in the end, despite going with Wyll being her default decision.
The trope can work in a different story setting. However, in this game and with karlach it just feels needlessly cynical to present her as the energetic sweetheart who doesn’t get cured and only gets bad endings. It doesnt congeal with the rest of the story’s/characters themes of changing fate/fighting the impossible, and just feels very out of place in the context of what world the story is set in. Not even allowing the player to pursue options to curing her is super frustrating too, it all feels very forced.
Its just a shame cos with how insanely good her voice actors performance was, it would’ve been so great to give karlach a more substantial story to explore instead of being railroaded into a tropey ''innocent character gets a cruel ending'' story. It couldve been a cool dungeon questline like a section in avernus, questline with the gondians or just anything to expand and branch out her story (like most other companions get, hell even dark urge).
That all being said, the new epilogue bringing hope to the avernus ending is nice, and arguably shows the devs are aware now that a doomer-ending for karlach sucks lmao. Just a shame that its unknown if we’ll ever get to explore the avernus/forge heist story, that would have made for an infinitely more interesting questline for karlach than the one we have now.
