Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Opinions on the main plot writing?

It's outright nonsensical that one tadpole in your brain is a death sentence that will devour you from the inside out mind, body and soul... but putting more tadpoles in there doesn't rate a mention and I'm pretty sure no one ever mentions you have more than one. Act 1 sets up a pretty obvious choice: do you remove the tadpole that grants you neat powers or do you try to master its double-edged sword before it turns you into a monster?

And that's exactly the kind of choice that sounds simple when you're writing Act 1 without any game development experience, only to rapidly become unwieldy the longer the game goes on. It appears Act 1 would've had three 'paths.'

1. Keep the tadpole, risk falling under the Absolute's control (where Nere can even compel you)
2. Raphael removes it
3. Omeluum's ring nullifies it

That seems really easy! It seems like a simple binary. They end Act 1 and they have the tadpole or they don't. But then you hit Act 2 and, well, now you need to write a lot more Raphael content. And he got the tadpole he wanted from you, so, why should he even hang around? Shouldn't he do something with the tadpole? Wait, what if I want to go stop what he's doing with the tadpole instead of dealing with Ketheric? How does Act 3 go?

Omeluum's Ring -- what happens if the player removes it? Why can't the player get the ring and then make a deal with Raphael? Is the player going to feel 'cheated' by having to give up an equipment slot for a narrative reason? Can they use the ring then remove the tadpole? Is the ring total immunity or only partial?

Keeping the tadpole -- is that fun for the player to get mind-controlled? What if the player gets to the end the Elder Brain just takes them over? Is that a possibility? If not, then why not? What if the player keeps it and never uses the powers? What if they keep it and use it all the time? How much are you willing to punish the player for a decision they made thirty hours ago, even as signposted as an bad idea as it is? If the player can keep the tadpole but resist the bad effects, then what's the point of the ring and Raphael?

And so on, and so on. Eventually, it becomes much easier to just go 'Fuck it, they keep it, and they can use the powers without consequence.' Especially when the party members were also a. going to use the tadpoles themselves/make their own deals and b. seemingly die/be removed after Act 1. That's a ton of things to keep track of! Imagine trying to write a main storyline that accounted for all of that. IMO, the biggest weakness of BG3's main storyline as it is is that the party members barely feature because there's just too many possible permutations to track by them just being alive/dead.