Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Vincke & lead writers IGN Interview: a look at weak character writing in BG3

Not every day you see a pretty picture and think "I would like to unsee that."

The Emperor dialogs did not go the way I thought they should, and the sex scene diverted away from what could have been a very poignant conversation. I think Larian rushed into sex too quickly. Be careful if you go on a date with Larian!

** SPOILER BELOW **

The Emperor backstory is very interesting: a human with a famous namesake becomes infected and eventually turns into a Mindflayer. Through some chance or luck, it acquires immunity to the hive mind control and regains its lost human memories. It knows it cannot ever become human again, and so embraces the illithid form, but yet it has the human desires for freedom, self-worth, and most especially, acceptance. I suspect this character may even be "The Hidden" from BG II.

We also have Omeluum, who through the arts of magic has also attained an independence not normal to illithid kind. It also has the same basic desires as the Emperor. In fact, in the underwater Iron Throne scene, depending on how you play it, Omeluum will choose to sacrifice itself in order to save others. There is no lie or manipulation there!

Withers said that illithids do not have (apostolic) souls. What would the Emperor or Omeluum say to that, and how might they be able to prove otherwise? Why does the Absolute call its tadpole thralls, "True Souls"? I would have much preferred more thematic development along those lines. Perhaps in the sequel?

If the rumours about literal fanfiction writers being hired to handle the characters are indeed true, then I guess it's just the natural outcome that it comes down to such a freaking mess in the end.

I will still maintain the headcanon that the Emperor's "memories" have been implanted by either the Elder Brain or the Chosen for the purpose of using the Knights of the Shield to their benefits, but he just managed to slip the yoke and used said memories as a tool. Considering the one throwaway (because it doesn't affect anything) line of dialogue you can get if you annoy him enough, he was lying and manipulating all along and the PC is nothing but a tool to potentially get rid of the brain with so that he can enjoy his freedom and continue illithiding (read: manipulating from behind the scenes to his benefit) on his own.

Dumbing down the "otherness" argument to just sexuality is also something I personally loathe, as it's as boring and banal as it gets. People can be odd ones out not just because they don't conform to the biologically-driven societal norms, there are plentiful other reasons (especially nowadays, when one can become othered by whom they thought to be aligned with if they try to behave the slightest bit out of enforced tenets of a particular clique).

To be honest, there are some very good writers writing fanfiction, and there are some terrible ones too.

When I first read this thread I thought "homophobic bait post, not worth engaging" but I find it hilarious that people have decided to hijack it with subtantive discussion.

On fanfiction - I think it's great that they hired fanfic authors. There are real Forgotten Realms fans at work in chapter 2 and it shows. In fact fanfic is the way DnD works - Ed Greenwood was just someone who kept sending in articles to Dragon magazine and then got he hired by TSR . . .

On the recent interview: I found it interesting that the writers acknowledge that Wyll was a disadvantage because he was in the grove. This is partially true but Larian has failed to acknowledge that this itself is a failure of their decision to cap the party at 4.

Warlock is just not a great class but works best as a MC class. You get to pass all those persuasion checks, you can have a human that sees in the dark, a gish that is as good with sword as it is with spell.

But most people want Tav to be the voice of the party and as a party member a warlock is just have someone who casts elritch blast repeatedly and that's a) really boring and b) easily replaced. But, having said that, Wyll is always in my party but I make him into a thief since I need someone to disarm traps and open doors - I don't need someone to cast eldritch blast (again)

Wyll is my number one, followed by Gale and Halsin. I don't know what people have... Wyll is a real hero and so good and loyal. Just the right companion for a good MC.

Fanfiction gets a badrap, but there's absolutely nothing inherently bad about it. It's just that there's a stereotype of what fanfiction is that mainly exists among people who don't interact with it on more than a casual level. There's a lot of bad fanfic out there, but there's a lot of bad media out there in general, of course it's going to be relatively greater when the barrier to entry is non-existant. Fanfic is also an easy point of entry for people who are just starting out trying to write and be creative, since by defenition it provides them with a starting point that they can easily build off off. Everyone's gotta start somewhere, and I remember that on an episode of his podcast, Brandon Sanderson was talking to a friend of his and they admitted that they basically started out by doing what amounted to fanfiction. But good fanfic is still just good writing, and it's good writing born from a particular type of passion and personal investment.

But generally I think that the character writing is the place this game shines. I suspect that if it weren't quite as good, or the performances not quite as strong, then people would more clearly see all the faults and issues with this game. But having read the article, it kind of seems like the writing there worked in spite of Larian's style and creative instincts, not because of it. I keep having to rein my opinions in on their negativity and remind myself that creating anything is hard, creating games is hard, creating a game this big and objectively ambitious and having it work at all is HARD. For all its flaws and problems, the fact they managed to produce a thing that works this well at all is something to be appreciated. They worked hard to create this, there was a lot of passion and effort behind this game, and that should be recognized. All that being said... the results do feel remarkably sloppy in a lot of place, and it's hard for me to feel much regard for Larian and their skills as creators. It feels like they failed at what they were actually trying to do, stumbled into something else that works, and don't realize they failed in the first instance. But that's an ungenerous assessment because this wasn't just pure luck, this was people putting a lot of time and work into doing a thing.

Except BG3 confirms all steteotypes about it. From special snowflake self inserts where half of the origin characters are among the most powerful characters in the world to sex obsessed thirsting and general low quality of writing with lots of plotholes and lots of plagiarism by copying and slightly altering existing stories (Gale, Wyll)

The reason BG3 works is because it attracted all the thirsters who do not care about much else and their hype made all magazines overlook all the flaws BG3 has.
How often had I to read variations of "I played BG3 and tried out <other RPG> but oh god that is so much reading!"

BG3 is basically the Twilight of video games

I have enjoyed some of the npc mods for BG1&2, and these would count as fanfiction too, since they were made by fans. So frankly I would not care if someone hires a 'professional' or a fanfiction writer to do the job. And anyway, my guess would be that fanfic writers were writing small parts like side characters, while it was professional writers that created the main story. And it is the main story I think is badly written.

Exactly. They have lead writers who were in charge of various characters. You can look them up. I'm quite certain that Larian didn't entrust the main characters of their make or break game to a bunch of randoms hired off of the internet. They had writers who worked for them BEFORE this game. And from what I've heard, some of these writing issues were around in their prior game, D:OS2. Much as you might think otherwise, there are people who love other rpgs that love this game. People who played the original Baldur's Gate games think this game is good. You can't simply say that a demographic of players you disaprove of are the reason it's held up and enjoyed.

My assessment is even more ungenerous.

I think they DO realize it failed, but are in saving face/bullshit mode emboldened by all the acclaim. That's why you have them saying shit like the evil route being empty was intentional as a moral lesson in direct contrast to their EA promises on how it would be as rewarding as good and 2 decs, including Smith, said Durge is great as a first playthrough in the 2nd Panel from Hell. Them claiming the Emperor was always planned so Daisy is apparently a placeholder in the artbook for reasons or that Karlach's lack of content was 100% written exactly as they wanted from the beginning.

What they are doing is literally revisionist history, realigning "reality" with what their most ardent shills have been saying instead of actually addressing criticism as deserved. 'You're wrong for not liking X because actually it's cool like that' will never not be disgusting.

Coming back to this briefly, I have to say I was rather pleased with the end of the animated short they released today. Not surprisingly, Astarion gets clothes. But perhaps surprisingly, given the track record, they were not of the revealing, sexy variety. It was nice.

It was overall cute - and did they make fun of always presenting poor Wyll in context with Maryzora?

He looted Santa's robe lol.

Well, it's Astarion. That seems to be his thing.



I guess so? They seemed to imply he's secretly sexually attracted to her, which I don't think is actually a thing in the game anymore - but I could be wrong. Ick.

I took that more in the vein of "you don't give away your loot/presents, even if it's really bad", Karlach's motor oil wasn't very nice either. Bad Santa gives bad presents but good loot. ^^

Wouldn't be a surprise. It Larian after all, all they can write is cheap, immature sex stories.

"It's mine now."


That was a cheap joke but I still chuckled at Wyll's blush.

My impression was that their relatioship is abusive, not that Wyll is into her. Mizora's voice actress did a great job, you can practically hear the glee in her voice whenever she gets to hurt him. So if they made a joke like that in the cartoon, then yeah, icky indeed. But very Larian.

Not reading through this whole thread, because there’s too much of the same old ‘homophobic’ without actually saying what’s homophobic.

That was the main ask about the original content, and it was never explained by anyone with some kind of logic/rationale.

By sexually harassed – which is the bodily groping I mentioned – I mean that which is illegal and disgraceful, whether it’s a man doing it to a man, or a man doing it to a female. I’ve been through the ‘man doing it to a man’ thing, several times.

I never even went on a rant about it in the original post. But it’s not ‘homophobic’ to say that physical violation is criminal evil. Gay men have absolutely 100% authority to walk up to me and ask me for a date. That’s called ‘civil’.

I’ll reject, but have obviously no issue with it.

I quote the dude above to confirm I feel the same way.

They could’ve easily made a great narrative from the emperor’s ‘condition’, in that he’s still capable of human thought despite looking like a freak. It’s The Fly in the Forgotten Realms.

But unlike that film, everything is so rushed in BG3’s narrative that it never develops organically, and ends up being another ‘wtf’ moment, among many, because they’re trying to tell 1000 different stories at once.

Even the synopsis of the original BG3 story, The Black Hound, knocks this hyperactive tripe out of the water. It’s confident in its lowkey yet intriguing premise. And I would’ve loved to have played that game, as I loved the brilliance of BG1 and BG2.

PS: shout out to Raze who reversed the ‘ban’, which was unfairly applied for many provable reasons. This dude is a shining example of what Larian used to be, and could be again – pretty fucking cool.