Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Daisy, the Absolute, and the Emperor [SPOILERS]

I assumed Moonrise Tower was older than that, and the tower and had been there a long time already, but regardless, the timeline doesn't really make sense.

Something that really gets me about Daisy as well is that in a better game, Daisy could have been utilised as a great way for the player to flesh out their character. It could have been a way for Tavs to express what they want, who they were and what their goals are. Instead if we use the tadpoles the game assumes we're evil and want to conquer and destroy, which isn't even going to be true for all evil characters. At least the guardian frames it around giving us power to solve the immediate problem in front of us. That's part of the problem with Daisy, if you used the tadpoles then you're just going to have to make peace with the game deciding you have a particular set of motives and imposing a particular type of relationship between you and Daisy.

I might be wrong but the way I pieced it togehter, is:

The guardian is just empty talk at this point. The emperor tells you you need the tadpole power, but this doesn't correlate to anything in the game. Using the tadpoles doesn't solve anything, and neither does not using them. Even the narrator lines about using them now seem to refer to nothing.
Honestly, the guardian/ emperor rewrite seems so pointless to me.

The problem I see she's so transparently evil and transparently not interested in our wellbeing that a good character wouldn't be interested in pursuing her path, because it's always framed as power to use for evil. And if the tempter character isn't there to tempt good characters, what the hell is the point then?


At least the guardian is framing it in the context of using the power against the cultand to infiltrate it, which is directly related to our ultimate goal, even if that doesn't pan out in practice.

And that is empty talk as well. My first playthrough I did no infiltrating, because that's not even required to proceed with the plot.

It's empty talk, but it's still just empty as Daisy's talk.

Daisy clearly showed that the power would be used for evil, no good MC could have played this path normally without deluding themselves.

How would you know? The original plot is no more, and it's not possible to say what was originally planned with the tadpoles, and therefore to say whether what Daisy was telling the protagonist was also empty talk. Maybe it was, or maybe there were to be consequences.

To give meaning to actions of good characters

WotR's evil options have become meme but I think even the most absurd of them enhance the experience of a good player. While I have never chosen:

8. ( evil ) I don't like you, DIE!

This cartoonishly evil option makes the experience of my chaotic good azata more meaningful because I feel like I'm resisting temptation. And a few players do go down the full murder hobo route and become a swarm of bugs that eats everyone . . .

I've played WotR more than a dozen times and never followed an evil mythic path. I've lost count of how many times I played BG2 but I never once sided with Bodhi. Yet I enjoyed having that option. I mean is Bodhi's offer really that tempting? 5K less gold in BG2?

Daisy's enticements were even more tempting than Bodhi's. Before mind reading became cost free you really wanted to know what people were thinking. In EA I read Gale's mind to see if he going to betray me to Raphael. And I did give into Daisy's temptations after Omelleum provided me with some of her powers - I had a hard time keeping everyone alive when fighting Nere and ALL the Deugar. My mage got reflecto shield which knocked out the archer with thunder arrows. Lae'zel got to pull Nere closer which eliminated his advantage over her . . .

Ultimately, I think the source of Daisy was the same source as the Guardian's. But I do tend to favor the Daisy version, and I'd like to have seen where it was going.

Just my opinion, but I can't help the feeling that Larian catered to the wrong base of players when they made that change.

I adore WotR and I too have never done an evil playthrough, but I think there's a difference between those evil options in that game and Daisy in BG3. Namely, Daisy and the tadpole are central to the game's story, and if you didn't use the powers, you would just never meet Daisy. In EA there were people who would come onto the forum and be surprised to learn about Daisy because they never used the tadpole. So good characters might never encounter her to begin with. Evil characters got to have deeper interactions with the central issue of the game while good characters got nothing. I also don't see those chaotic evil options in WotR as resisting temptation in nearly the same way. Those options aren't tempting your character to take them, they're just there to provide the player with as many options for roleplaying as possible, something I personally feel BG3 fails at, by the way. They might be tempting the player, but it's not some force tempting the characrter. And what you describe is a great scenario but I found that the fact of Daisy and her interactions with us made me as a player not want to take that because I had no way of expressing that "no, I'm not doing this because I'm evil and want to turn into whatever it is this thing wants me to turn into and want to rule the world. The guardian may not give me great options to express my character either, but at least it makes fewer assumptions about my character.

My preference would have been that they kept the behnd the scenes system the same and never introduced the tadpole absorbing mechanics, but replaced Daisy with the Guardian anyway.

There was literally a conversation with Shadowheart immediately after that scene where you could say you didn't want that at all.

*

I would also argue that it was entirely possible to interpret that scene in another way, but I feel like it might not be worth saying because I get the impression that minds are made up. It's like people saw a portion of canvas and decided what the entirety of the painting must be.

You're right, I had forgotten that bit. Better than I was giving the section credit for, but that still doesn't excuse the lack of agency within the dream itself, in my opinion. Also yeah, we were given a portion of canvas and told "hey, what do you think of this portion?" Larian clearly agreed that the final product wasn't going to be worth it either. I'd be interested to hear what your interpretation of the scene was, but you're right that my mind's made up overall. Not just about Daisy, but aboutu the game as a whole. I had various issues with the game's freedom to roleplay and develop our characters that I actually still have in the final release version. I was unimpressed with the game back then and I remain unimpressed now. I think the guardian is the lesser evil in this dichotomy, but I now no longer believe that Larian's vision for this game was ever going to align with something I found satisfactory.

Also to just give my thoughts on another seemingly popular theory on how the Daisy plot would unfurl, which is that our mind was being fought over by Orpheus and the tadpole, that seems like another plot point that's cool in theory but Larian's approach to it wouldn't have worked. For one thing, we could completely miss learning about Orpheus until act 3, because even in EA the route through the mountain and through the underdark was framed as a choicie between the two. Given Orpheus' relative lack of consequence to the plot as it is now, it's already dumb that we can just skip past learning anything about him. Imagine if he was actually more important? People think the emperor reveal was bad, imagine that; oh no, it turns out our mind was being fought over by the tadpole and... this guy we have no context for. Also, what's the fun of that struggle if we can't understand hohw the struggle itself is affecting us. Not just having the tadpole and being tempted, but being pulled between the two sides?

Tadpole powers (and the emperor) being restricted to the evil path would at least offer something for the evil path itself. Because right now you just lose out on companions, npcs and quest content if you side with the goblins (and the absolute). And you can use the authority & tadpole powers on the good path with no repercussions, since the narrator warnings don't mean anything. At the same time even if you don't use them, there is no way to avoid the emperor. Even being openly hostile to him doesn't change much (except it makes even less sense for him to stick with the protagonist, instead of trying to convert one of the companions to his side).

That was what WotR did with the mythic paths (except for the late game paths), tried to offer different content, and it was not just good against evil. Aeon and trickster were law vs. chaos on the cosmic scale, for example.

I fully agree that restricting tadpole powers to an evil path, or at least evil actions. What I don't agree with is restricting the emperor/dream visions. The dream visions are the main narrative way we interact with the tadpole, which is the driving force of the narrative. I don't think we should be able to avoid the emperor. Yes he should be far more interractive and responsive to our PC's actions, but we shouldn't be able to ignore him. I think the game's problem is that we currently can ignore far too many things that should be baked in parts of the narrative. Not being able to interact with the emperor and by extension the tadpole would be like if WotR let you choose to just not encounter the mythic powers at all. They're a central part of the narrative, and being able to create a relationship with them is the core of the game.

Why does there always need to be a path where you interact with the tadpole? It's not like it is actually required for anything, you don't need the authority or tadpole powers to complete the game. The emperor being part of the narrative is one of the reasons why the game loses on replaybility for me. I've done two playthrough and at this point I am not sure if I even want to continue past the second act, simply because of no possibility of skipping his cutscenes. I'd rather the story leaves the choice up to my character, if I want to play a protagonist who treats the tadpole like a parasitic infection to get rid of, then let me have Omeluum's ring that works. I'm fine with missing out on the dream cutscenes.

On a side note, I've done two playthroughs in WotR and I'd not describe them as creating a relationship with the mythic paths. They are not npcs, but rather the consequences of the choices the protagonist makes, and with some of them, you won't be even able to access them if you didn't make certain choices. It's an example of a narrative created in parts by the writer, and in parts by the player.

When I say create a relationship, I don't mean literally create a relationoship like between people. What I mean is the game needs to create a dynamic between the PC and the tadpole and by extension between the player and the tadpole. What is this game actually about? It's about a bunch of adventurers getting infected by mindflayer tadpoles and stumbling into a larger plot while trying to get rid of them. The thing is though, the cult of the absolute isn't the central antagonist of the game. From the beginning it's clear that they're being manipulated by the tadpoles. Then by act 2 we see who's manipulating them, the chosen of the dead three. But the dead three show up and can be interacted with for like, a total of 15 minutes. They're not characters in any meaningful degree, they're plot devices. Same with the Absolute itself, it's a plot device, not something we really interact with. And the chosen themselves? They're hollow shells of potential, interesting characters in their own right but without the screentime to let us develop a real connection to them as villains. If you take away the tadpole dreams as well, then what is the actual central thing tying this game together? It doesn't matter if we never need the tadpole powers themselves, what our character needs is some force to personally be set agains, some kind of personal antagonist, and by default that's the tadpole. The dreams should still happen because the tadpole is central to the story, it's the plot point that we keep coming back to over and over.

Comparing the tadpole to the mythic powers in wotr is appropriate because no matter what, our character HAS to deal with them constantly. Our character has to see the changes they're undergoing and have feelings about them. In the same way, I think the player always needs to be confronted by the tadpole and be set against those confrontations. Because THAT is how you create a narrative in part by the writer and in part by the player. Not by just letting the player ignore them and go through a story without any sort of focus whatsoever. The tadpole dreams should be our opportunity to show what our character is when they're alone, seperate from the rest of the party and forced to consider how much of themselves they're willing to trade for power. The dreams are metaphor made manifest, they make literal the struggle between power and freedom that is supposedly the thematic core of the narrative. What you suggest would mean good characters can just not confront that at all. The dreams should be faced by a good character because that's how the good character actively makes that choice and can express WHY they're making it, rather than just passively going through the narrative.

Sadly Larian didn't manage to pull off even a single mystic path.

You can compare them, I just don't see the similarity. To me the mythic paths are like the DU urges, if WotR had only the one choice of demonic path available.

As for the tadpole, it is not the antagonist of the game either, but a powergaming mechanics at this point. It could have been, if Daisy indeed was the manifestation of the tadpole, which was one possible explanation in the EA. That could have created a personal connection, which could become either antagonistic (if the player tried to get rid of the parasite) or embracing the power (which possibly could have resulted in the player becoming a mind flayer). But the emperor is not connected to the tadpole on a personal level. It's all about him being Balduran; I guess the writer thought it is supposed to be ironic, that the great hero and founder of Baldur's Gate is now a soulless monster running a shady organization in the city underground. Effectively, instead of a story about the tadpole and the protagonist, the emperor makes it about himself. And it's not like any of this matter for the endings. Regardless of how you deal with the dream person and tadpoles, what matters is whether you recruited Gale and if and how you got the hammer.

Yes, but depending on the origin you play the stronger the temptation is. For example, I don't see why Astarion would refuse the tadpole. Also, there's Durge, who is a slave to Bhaal without the tadpole. So you could try to play as a "good" Durge who uses the tadpole to get rid of Bhaal. And let's be real, even as a good paladin the guaranteed critical once a day is pretty tempting to me.

I agree 1000% on the dreams though. One of my earlier complaints is that the dreams should be available to everyone not just those who abuse the tadpole.

However, your point about the conquest dreams is not the fault of Daisy but rather the terrible origin system of this game. The origin system itself doesn't allow you to flesh out the goals and dreams of your character. You're right, my evil character doesn't want to burn down the city but rather rule a shadowy council behind the scenes.

Lastly, what might make Daisy simply better than the Emperor is that it wasn't shoehorned in there at the last second.