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

I havnt yet read all the new aditions, I just wanted to react to the reddit post first since its already locked on reddit.

I strongly agree with just about all you have said. Let me preface this, I do not think Emperror is a bad character at all, I do think he does fulfill the role he has fairly well but that role does seem a lot more simplified, for lack of a better term, at least as far as actual roleplay goes than what it was with Daisy. Emperror is with you the entire game and more or less whatever you do, he will always help you and you can get your happy ending while eating tadpoles and everything, hell you have to actively persuade him to "betray" sort of. He isnt an entirely good character however as we learn if we are antagonistic toward him, but the issue is that it has little to no impact on anything. Dont get me wrong, it makes sense plotwise, we both need each other, but it is far less interesting than what it could have been with Daisy.

Personally I do not understand the complaints about Daisy being obviously evil or too seductive... That is the point. Both us and the characters know we have a tadpole in our heads, we are 99% sure that the dream visitor is representation of said tadpole (tho I do think innitially it was supposed to be the Elder Brain and it would have worked with us in a similar way the Emperror did to free itself, which could have been so cool) We are meant to be distrustful and find it off putting, or not, you could chose to ebrace the goodwill it seems to give because hell one way or another you should have been dead already, you are racing against the clock and anything that slows you down may as well be the end of you (personally I do not like the "timed" aspect that the game introduces in the first act, it was more severe in EA imo but getting rid of Daisy does nothing for this feeling of mine, its just a plot decision they made for the story). Everything seemed a lot more severe and making good moral decisions was just harder because it came with the unspoken promise of wasted time.

Also, in so far as I am aware, the tadpole powers were bound to your interactions and behavior towards Daisy a lot more than it does with the emperror, from a roleplay perspective, being evil and selfish, using the powers could anger your companions and should you lose them you would still have Daisy, on the contrary being selfless and staying away would make things harder via not having the powers but potentially would earn you more allies along the way. That is to say, the full release version of this gameplay feature we get via guardian feels a lot more homogenized, if that makes sense, you can still roleplay of course but using the tadpoles doesnt mean anything anymore and you get the powers either way with no setbacks, whether you are "good" or "bad", the outcome and options are pretty much the same in this regard.

For me, its clear that the loss of Daisy meant severe changes to the storyline. I am shocked that Larian removed her and changed so much even just from the early access, not to mention the rest of the game we didnt even know about, while we do not know how large a role she would have had, like you I assume that much of the soundtrack and much of the original theme of the main story was centered around this specific relationship. And I think we still do not know yet, do we? What would have been our interaction with Daisy going forward, who it truly was (maybe we even had it all wrong, who knows) how its presences would influence our characters and the story going forward. Honestly, for the life of me, I find it rather hard to believe that the Emprror was supposed to play this sort of role, given some things in the EA (if I remember correctly we could find the dead body of the mindflayer who tadpoled us whom I think became the emperror, as inconclusive as that is) I dont think the Emperror innitially even was a character, much less with this much importance.

Honestly I think Daisy made sense, I would have enjoyed playing a character that would have slowly gotten seduced by his ideal partner in his dreams when everything in the daily life was hell, or someone who stood up firmly against it believing it to be wrong and refusing to use its powers, or someone who decided to use every advantage given to him on the road to freedom and power etc., just because for the player it is obvious, doesnt mean the roleplay options were limited. Yet they are now and people dont seem to mind.
I miss Daisy and I miss the innitial feeling of BG3 and the potential we will never get to see, unless modders do some crazy stuff.

I would implore Larian to put all the failes they have into like a modders release of the game, everything voiced that was originally supposed to be there and just let the community sift through it. I do really like BG3 as it is, it isnt my favorite game of all time or anything as I personally some of its aspects and just feel of it isnt all that to my taste (I prefer something more in the style of Wrath of the Righteous for some reason, maybe it feels easier to navigate and fully explore? im not sure myself. I also dont really like the existence of Origin chacacters as they are, I just prefer them as companions solely) but I am absolutely stunned by the quality of it and the sheer production values, the talent and passion that went into it, it is undeniably a fantastic game, if not a masterpiece, but I do think that Larian was hasty in retconing what I assume was a major part of their story on a word of, lets be honest, relatively minor group of players that would eventually play it. I am elated that they are listening and engaging with fans, but some things imo just shouldnt be changed according to them because we do not and cant have the full picture, and now we will never know what the full picture could have been. (Tho if Larian at least releases the original vision for the story I would be satified)

Aditionally I would like to say that if there will be a complete edition or enhanced edition or some such, I hope that they will consider returning Daisy in some form, at least for the Durge (which seemingly was originally the main character) as there are deep hints towards Daisy being even more interactive and importan to the Durge unique storyline. In either case Im sure it would be possible to make Emperror/Daisy sort of aditional paths along the story, depending on your choices and I would love to see it.

Ill read the rest of your post and react to that as well if there is anything more I would want to say, just wanted to give my two cents first and profess my agreement and understanding if your dissapointment, especially in so far as the change from Daisy to the Emperror goes. And, just to clear it up, I did prefer being whispered sweet nothings into my ear by a character designed by me to be my ideal over the friendshipy nature of the guardian, call me horny if you want but it was just so much nicer to experience

EDIT: This was an interesting read, I sifted through most of the comments here and yea, wildly different perspectives but most seem to agree that at least being able to see what would have happened without the changes would be interesting.
I always thought that a few things regarding the Emperror were off, including his interactions with the prism, how it all works and what is and isnt neccessary, I kinda came to the conclussion that the name guardian is sort of ironic as he isnt actually guarding us himself against anything if you think about it, he is guarding himself if anything. We are not changing because we cant receive the signal from the Absolute, if the game is to be believed and there is no reason to believe that this is because of the Emperror, its Orpeus who has the power and Emperror is just said to be using his power to shield us? But its his power that already did the shielding before, hell thats how he got free and why we still dont change even when he leaves the Prism, Orpehus' powers work regardless of him being bound, tho whether its proximity to the Prism or what is left unexplained.

And a lot of his interactions make little sense when expamined thoroughly, including his outburst and showing us truth about Stellmane, or his insistence on us becoming mindflayer when clearly that would only make us more suspicious when we are desperately trying to get rid of the tadpoles in the first place, this does indeed seem, as others mentioned to be simply Larian trying to use him as a vehicle to introduce players to their gameplay feature without any setbacks, which sucks because using the powers or not should be a roleplay decision.

Ultimately, I came to the conclussion that Emperror is lying to us in just about everything, shocker I know but many even here have sympathies toward him and while I agree that having more interactivity would absolutely help I do think that, outside of him being a victim (or cause) of the rewrite issues, he is not really meant to be that interactive as we cant really inflence him as some would want. At the end of the day I think its made clear that he isnt Balduran anymore, he isnt huamn/elf whatever, he is an Ilithid and they think in ways that people simply do not, whether you are friend to him (or try to) he only seeks to use us to gain his freedom and survive. I think this is evident by his lackluster advances and how quickly he pulls back, the game even points it out, he isnt looking for emotional connection with us, merely a stable one of alliance and I think its also made clear as to why. His working "relationship" with Stalemane was ultimately his downfall as her situation only drew attention and on top of that, unlike before, now he is bound to the protection of the Prism, not being able to go out without being dominated again or losing the fight to the Orpehus' guard (tho this is very ill explained as others pointed out), I have little doubt that if he had all his options available to him, he would simply dominate us and make us do his bidding as it is hinted he did during his time with Knights of the Shield, and mind you, this wasnt long ago at all, its unlikely he has changed during that time.

All in all, he just isnt human, he doesnt think the way we do so I think its foolhardy to expect a normal relationship from him, hell he doesnt even show up at the camp celebration they added recently (at least to my knowledge) even if you are "friends" with him, which pretty much solidifies this as fact, he just isnt a companion or a friend to us and nor are we to him, Withers agrees.

Also, I do think Emperror is the one who tadpoled him, but not really because it was originally intended, just because logically it makes sense with how the story ended up being after the changes, I agree that both theories have their flaws but I think it not being him creates worse issues for the plot.

I do have a lot more to say on the topic of the changes and cuts and such, I really wish we could see the original concept with as much of what they intended as possible, but ill just stop rambling and finish it up here.

Oh and, if anyone has any newish and relevant info about the cut content and such, or if there is a content creator that does this sort of thing still (most of these videos I found are quite old by now) I would love to get a link. I may never be able to actually experience everything in the game, as it is very wide and sprawling, much less everything that was cut from it, but I would like to try. Thanks

Hmm, so something interesting is occuring to me reading your (very well written) post. I'm someone who's long said that the dream guardian is better than Daisy as a means of convincing a player to use tadpoles. At least they're better at convincing me to. I found everything about Daisy utterly untrustworthy and actively made me less likely to use a tadpole. But my main point is the seduction aspect. As far as seduction goes, I genuinely cannot understand how any character could fall for it. Honestly, I buy someone romancing the Emperor (not the guardian, the Emperor) more than someone romancing Daisy. Lke, there is nothing about her that indicates that she's interested in your character's well-being. I cannot imagine how anyone would fall in love with them. Only the most deluded of person would ever think Daisy loved them. So the idea of a character willingly choosing to spend their life in a mental paradise with her doesn't sound at all appealing. Like, sure you can have sex with her, but what are you going to do when you're not having sex? I think that's fundanemtally another reason she never worked for me. Sure she might look physically like your dream person, but as far as romance goes, she's in no way an appealing romantic partner. At least the Guardian and Daisy convincingly show tht they care for your wellbeing, they talk to you gently and express concern. Daisy was clearly only out for herself and seemingly out to transform you. The sweet nothings she whispered were about how you'd be evil and powerful. The guardian's gentle treatment was far more enticing.

Im sorry, but what is it that occured to you while reading this post? Your comment is structured as tho you have just realised something yet you say that you have always thought this way, im confused

That being said, I just wanted to give my two cents if thats ok.

I get where you are coming from, Daisy is untrustworthy and eery, very inhuman in its affections and her emotions seem manufactured. Which in my opinion is exactly the point. Daisy, as far as we know and now will likely ever know, is a representation of our tadpole or Absolute, using what they see in our head as our ideal to attempt and manipulate us given that we are impossible to be commanded thanks to the Prism. Absolute isnt human, it cant think like a human it can only mimic our emotions and try to trap us with only the top layer of what we would want, it is lying to us and yes, 99% of the players will know this, however, that doesnt mean 99% wouldnt engage with it (or experiment on further playthrough) depending on their character.

Point is, your characters decision to engage with Daisy and the tadpole powers it offers is a roleplay one, not a gameplay one, and its up to your and your character to do so at your expense. The innitial world of BG3 also seems a lot more harsh and unforgiving, in so far as items go, Gales quest can eat up important objects, companions are a lot more harsh and opinionated etc, on top of that, you are potentially moments away from dying and nowhere near anything or anyone that can help you, the harsh realities of the waking world can easily cow people into engaging in the fantasies. The song down the river illustrates this inner fight, as we are being swayed to stay down by the river, and it can even be seen from our perspective as at the end we can ask to just be left there dreaming.

Another point to this is that the Ilithid power innitially came, and should be coming with huge caviats. However this is something that Larian seemingly wanted to avoid and likely the biggest contributor (at least in my mind now) behind why there was such a dramatic shift on the portrayal of the one offering it. If you depend and trust in Daisy, or if you merely wish to use everything in your arsenal when you are already seemingly doomed, you will be punished by companions disliking you, if you are further an evil and selfish character, you can easily lose companions along the way and lose a large amount of content along with them, having Daisy there not only offsets the loss of power with the Ilithid powers, but also the loss of companions with her presence.

Further, for as much as you personally as a human do not buy into Daisy (and I already outlined how that really doesnt have to apply to your character, I am the same way after all) you have to admit that just being able to use Illithird powers, or even half turn into one without any sort of reprisal on any level is simply moronic, for me that is a FAR greater missted than my personal distrust of Daisy (which again I believe is intentional). Not only is it stupid on a logical level but it completely removes a significant and very entertaining roleplay element, where, as I previously stated, you could be led to gain power only to lose your companions or even parts of yourself, or vice versa, reject the obvious manipulations and make the life harder for yourself without the powers but be true to the games slogan, in which it states that Alone, You May Resist. But Together, You Can Overcome. Whether you believe Daisy is someone nobody could realisticall fall in love is just your perception, in fact, if this is generally how people are mind controlled by the Illithid it would seem that most succumb and most never even wake up, who knows, but I can easily imagine people being manipulated by their hearts desire, which is literally what the character is supposed to be. And if we are going speak in anecdotes, personally I would never imagine anyone romancing emperror, like, at all, honestly I cant even conceive of a character of mine that would find that appealing or somehow useful or neccessary, even if you do believe that he has your best intentions at heart and ignore the fact he is constantly trying to turn you into Illithid and have you eat more tadpoles. Frankly, I do not find him much more trustworthy than Daisy in any case, especially given that this guardian isnt really the one who guards us at all, if anything its the other way around.

All in all I think this is just a surface sort of knee jerk reaction, judging the whole of it without having the full picture. I do like the Emperror as a character, but the role he is forced to serve in the story essentially neuters him and makes him into a non entity, good if you want him to be good and bad if you want him to be bad, with nearly no agency of his own. Yes, its easier to believe him, because it is meant to be easier, if you want to believe he actually cares (tho given that he is an Illithid and it is established they simply do not behave and think the way humans do, I do not believe him to be genuine in anything beyond the fact that our alliance is a neccessity for his survival) you can, if you want to see him as manipulative and evil, you can but either way, the illithid powers are yours to take and use without any reprecussions because Larian wanted us to have the shiny toys irregardless of our roleplay limitations, even if those are intentional and self imposed and even if stepping outside of them this way doesnt make sense.

On top of that Emperror, as others have outlined here, has several issues, given the role he has to play, but that is a different discussions. Anyway, to each their own obviously, and I wouldnt be at all opposed having both Emperror and Daisy in the story as they clearly had different roles, I do like him as a character I just think he was severely hampered by his new role, similarly I do not think Daisy was by any means bad or that she limited roleplay opportunities, if anything I think the Emperror forces the player down only really one path of interactions all the way untill the very end of the story unlike Daisy and on top of that, Daisy seemingly had special connection with the Durge character, which could have truly been something very special for that origin, as the choice between being a Bhaal puppet or trying to leverage Illithid power and potentially lose yourself to a different evil is an incredibly compelling concept to me. Sadly thats just all gone. Regarding her romance, given what I have read here and the existence of different types of Daisy character (Desire and Daisy beings) I wouldnt be surprised if there was more to even that. And yes, just from a surface level, it would still be far more pleasant to receive sweet nothings from a beautiful character designed by me, even if it was ultimately unconvincing than the alternative. But thats just my two cents, to each their own of course

I apolgoize, I didn't explain myself properly. The thing I realized was that why the seduction aspect fell so flat for me. It's because Daisy isn't really the character's heart's desire. She's just very physically attractive. But she always behaves the same. Always overtly seductive and promising power and death. I think the emperor's romance as it's written is badly written, but I can understand it. He's at least not framed as being some perfect partner for my character. He's his own person approaching me in his own way. As far as trusting him, I've never played a character who fully trusted him but the one thing I felt confident of that I never felt for Daisy, is that we both wanted to defeat the Absolute. We both had that shared goal, whereas I was never convinced that Daisy was not the absolute trying to convert me. That to me is the most important thing. I can trust him on that and that alone, whereas I couldn't trust Daisy on anything at all. I don't think the Emperor and the guardian are perfect, just that they're better than what we had. They could still be improved. I'd rather have had the Guardian in place of Daisy, but have everything around them, the way the tadpole powers worked, etc, remain the same. That would have been my ideal scenario.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up, I understand now. Here are my two cents.

I think the issue you have here is that you kind of think in absolutes (haha see what I did there), I mean who says that you have to trust Daisy that she isnt trying to manipulate you? That isnt a prerequisite for anything, much less for roleplay and yes, she is likely, most likely trying to seduce us into using our powers and become Illithid (which is something Emperror also does) but that is the point, here, we can reject it, or not, if you want, thats up to you, the issue I personally have with this, is that with the Emperror this is no longer a choice we have. Regardless of whether you trust the Emperror or not doesnt change anything in regards to your roleplay and your powers, the very Illithid powers that are pretty much the main drive of the story for good half of it at least.

Moreover, you are thinking of Daisy as a completely informed player, I dont know about you but I often do suboptimal things because thats what my character would do, I do evil stuff, or stupid stuff, or act weak and such, depending on what fits my character, this is what roleplay is, you personally dont have to believe Daisy is actually trying to be a true love for you, especially given that both we and the characters do know what she most likely is, all you gotta do is engage with her if it makes sense for your character to do so. I get that this is all personal preference and whatnot, thats just fine, but we cant even conclusively say if it is poorly written or not, because we lack majority of the context. We can however conclusively say that context does nothing for the choice with the Emperror, because the choice is gone entirely.

And finally I think there is an important point you are missing in regards to Daisy, she is a dream visitor, literally coming to us in our heads at night, we are not in full control in our dreams and what we see and experience there is often hazy and ill rmembered when we wake up, unlike the Emperror or Guardian she never visits us in the waking world and innitially all characters have their own Daisy characters so we cant even pool our information with the others as to who she really is, beyond the fact that we all believe she is the tadpole of course. Point is, you are succumb to even the stupidest and most obvious lies and tricks when you are dreaming, it is a dream after all.

That being said I get you and while I dont agree with you about Daisy, as I found her perfectly servicable for roleplay purpose and I do think that the issues the repurposing of Emperror have introduced are far more damaging than Daisy not being trustworthy or belieavable enough to convince us to engage with the tadpole powers (which again, I dont think she needed to be, or was supposed to be as the characters know full well what it is) I do agree that there were definitely better ways to go about this than just scrapping Daisy entirely and pushing Emperror into this new role, leaving many issues in the aftermath.

I think your scenario would have been fine, but my ideal scenario would be a choice for our character in whom to trust or from whom to agree to take powers, it could be Daisy (Absolute), Orpheus, the Emperror, two of them or all three with varying motivations etc. Depending on your character and your choices you could be seduced by the dream visitor, or listen to Emperror as the guardian and switch to him, or even hear Orpheus and side with him early on, something to that effect.

There were even datamined information that something like this was innitially on cards, with Daisy and Desire being two different beings, likely one of them would represent the Absolute and the other someone else who would seemingly want to really help us (in so far as just more than Daisy/absolute do) but that was scrapped. To support this further, in EA we even seemingly would have had the possibility of shutting out the tadpole entirely, using ring from Omeluum in the underdark and such, further hinting that there was more to it than just what we saw on the surface.

Ultimately tho, the issue for me isnt that of the Emperror or Daisy (tho I do prefer her portrayal of the seduction of the tadpole for above stated reasons, but its all presonal preference) but the issues that these big changes introduced to the story, its consistency, reactivity etc., and making it so late in the game (as the main topic points out, even the artbooks came with just Daisy and no Guardian, so it must have been really late a classic knee jerk reaction). Emperror was likely never in the role he is now before and so his character is neutered and limited, it introduces possible plotholes and contradictions and worse yet, it led to a absolute TON of cut content including the unique Daisies and the interaction with companions about the dreams, the bad outcomes of using Illithid powers (one of the main things to be an issue you would assume) etc., and it entirely changed the tone of the game as well with only remanants of it remaining in the first act, only to dissapear completely and turn the game into a much more run of the mill adventure feel.

In any case yes, Daisy was far from perfect and it wouldnt work well for everyone, but ultimately we cant judge what it would have led to and personally I dont find the exchange for what we have now worth what we have potentially lost.

As I said above, I really hope that we will eventually get some enhanced edition and these things will be put back into game, I wouldnt mind paying for that as DLC at all but personally the more time I spend in the game the more I wonder what could have been.

Anyways, thanks for chatting, whether you agree or disagree

It was very pleasant chatting with you. I see your points and I don't think you're wrong. The one place I would really disagree with you is that I think you have your cause and effect wrong. I think that the change of theme was decided upon first and removing Daisy was part of that, rather than vice versa. It's a small distinction but I think it does matter in that I believe it's indicative of poor planning and decision making at Larian in a broader sense, as opposed to Larian purely reacting to player feedback and it just snowballing. Ultimately I just think that Daisy would have ended up being just as disappointing in a different way in the end, but really, that's neither here nor there.

..., tav can seize the control of daicy from nether-brain.

there was an illithid myth of an entity called the Adversary, an illithid whose partial personality was strong enough to subsume the mind flayer's personality and sought to overthrow illithidkind under the innocent guise of a fellow mind flayer. There was no evidence for the legend, but it was popular as a story to frighten young-adult mind flayers.
refer from https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mind_flayer

if this myth becomes true that would enable tav won't be controlled by nether-brain.

and finally, via the 3 stones to control or destory nether-brain.

however, tav must have a very strong will power. the issue is that tav's will power is from his/her nature or from a halidom.

I don't think Daisy was ever supposed to be a "love interest" for the player. Her EA incarnation was never presented as an actual person but rather a mental manifestation of your base desires. She's supposed to be a crude manipulation by an infant illithid squirming around in your brain BUT her promises are still true. She will make you strong and allow you to dominate the wills of others. She's a threatening presence but that's the only thing that makes sense given the circumstances of the plot and the fact that you have a tadpole in your brain. Yes, it's glaringly obvious but what's the alternative?

They "solved" the problem by neutering the tadpole's role in the story and turning Daisy into a benevolent mindflayer in disguise. Congratulations, you've subverted player expectations and turned a pivotal plot point into a gameplay gimmick. By rewriting Daisy they've effectively thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, the guardian makes it easier to buy into the idea of using the tadpole... but they've also eliminated all negative consequences for doing so, removing the tension that made the concept interesting to begin with. So what is gained here exactly apart from more players engaging with a game mechanic?

We went from a bad guy seducing us to do bad things to for the sake of power risking a potential bad ending to a neutral guy seducing us to do neutral things for the sake of power with no consequences whatsoever. How is that an upgrade?
It's a story arc without stakes or consequences.

I truly believe that was their main consideration. I think they were embarrassed players were actively avoiding their ultimate homebrew.

jergal can banish god gale in no time, in the fact, i think jergal is a god closest the God of gods.

and yes, even more, i think the order is from AO, and might be from AO directly, not via helm, because jergal tells tva "destiny always as the one said". i do not thikn the one is helm, the one ought to be AO.

so, tav isn't just the threat eraser, AO even want to know more --"the mortals' value in tav's heart".

in this light, tav in the fact is a very special mortal, if you run the official path(true path), tav is actual the chosen one of AO.

in the other words, baldur's gate 3 is a chess game that sets by AO to know the mortals' value via tav's behavior, and jergal also desires to know.

but, emperor is in a very embarrassing place who manipulates tav and tav's trump card -- prism. i think in AO's view, emperor is a chess game saboteur, isn't the helper.

this is the reason, i prefer the original setting daicy -- the tadpole instead of emperor.