Look, we got bear sex, brothels and the horniest companions Faerûn has to offer -- what else do you want?!? /s
Kidding aside, I appreciate the analysis of these posts. I disliked the Illithid/Tadpole plot from my very first play, but I couldn't quite explain why; I just hated it. Threads like this actually help illuminate where some of the problem areas can arise.
It's the inability to stick to the theme it's trying to embody, and even downright contradicting it.
It seems like this goes along with the random shifts in tone as well. Is this a fantasy story? Science Fiction? Comedy? Cartoon? BG3 never made up its mind. You can mix these elements, certainly, but if there is no core 'feel' or theme to anchor the proceedings, then you end up with a junk drawer of misaligned plot moments that won't feel as meaningful or coherent as they could.
I remember when I first saw trailers for this game and saw mindflayers involved, one of my thoughts was "A Baldur's Gate game is going to focus on the illithid? That feels... strange. What about the Bhaalspawn plot?" and that feeling definitely came back big time in Act 3.
During the early game (early Act 1), I was actually starting to get into the illithid plot. Having only met Shadowheart and Lae'zel, both of whom had personal objectives closely tied to the illithid and the strange artifact related to them, on top of the shared goal of getting un-infected, it felt like maybe this game did actually have a focus, and the BG brand was just going to be about this being a new threat to the city and familiar locations, not a continued storyline. I even liked the way the party's attempt to seek out a healer for their own problems led to tripping over the tension of the Emerald Grove, which itself turned out to partly be because the cult of the unknowingly infected were being drawn to nearby ruins. Back at this stage of the game, I was genuinely very into it. (For one thing, the fact that our characters, thinking they were of sound mind, were going to head to the exact same place as the clearly-influenced cultists, was what I thought would be a nice little touch of ambiguity about how "in control" our characters really were).
But then... cracks started forming. All of the companions being double-cursed in various ways (Astarion is a vampire, Gale has his orb, Karlach has her engine, Wyll has a pact) seemed a little... distracting. Not too much, maybe, but aside from Lae'zel and initially Shadowheart, I had a big feeling of "Wait, but how did this bring you on a collision course with the tadpole plot?" Silly me, I guess -- I thought each of these characters had a reason to already be seeking out the illithid, or the same ruins as the cult, etc., and had happened to get captured in the process. But I did enjoy most of the companions, so it if their connection to the main plot was a little tenuous... fine. Honestly, I sometimes feel like being
too focused can make a story feel tiring, so having some elements designed to add variety and make the world feel a bit larger than just the main plot isn't the worst thing (It still didn't feel like the right way to set it up, but not everything has to be perfect).
Once the plot involving the Dead Three came into play, though... It honestly just feels like a mess. Suddenly the Absolute doesn't feel like the grand villain they were made out to be, but we have so little time invested into setting up the Dead Three that they don't, either -- -especially since the final boss fight is against the brain, and the two Chosen in Act 3 are sort of just like side plots you have to work through to get to the brain... And then Orpheus was maybe supposed to be a big deal, but I mainly just associate him with a single companion (Lae'zel)?
I still enjoyed the game, but the longer it went on, the more it shifted from "Actually invested in the main story" to a bit more of "bag of little substories, some of which I greatly enjoy and some where I just kinda shrugged and moved on."
