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

I agree with everything you're saying, pretty much. My arguments are just about what a GOOD version of the story Larian presented would look like.But your evaluation here is overall spot on.


The thing about a good Durge using the tadpole is that, from what I've seen, you don't need to really use the tadpole to stay freeof Bhaal. just having it in your head is enough, you don't need to make it more powerful of give more of yourself to it. The mechanical temptations, I'm less sure about in terms of if the character would know what specificlly they get.

I think Daisy is part and parcel with the conquest dreams. She was written to be a specific type of character who would present and tempt in a specific type of way, and the dreams are part of that. As written, Daisy does not to me seem like a character that could tempt in any way beyond the most blatantly evil offerings you could think of. Obviously the origin system is part of the root cause, but I think the deeper root cause is that Larian doesn't fully understand deep character roleplay. But beyond that, this stuff is all intertwined and fully isolating them is going to miss the forest for the trees.

And lastly, how much difference in terms of quality is there between Daisy and the Guardian in act one? Really think about it. If you ignore everything past the parts of act one we get in early access, how much better or worse is either one? Wecan say the guardian is worse because we know where it ends up (I too think that the stuff surrounding the emperor is less than great) but I think if we judge what we had of Daisy against wht we get of the guardian in that same stretch, the difference isn't that drastic and the Guardian does a better job at what Daisy was intended to do, which is tempt characters into using the tadpole.

Well, for me the guardian was less convincing than Daisy, because now you have access to the authority options in dialogue anyway. That was what interested my evil character in the EA, the ability to control and look into the mind of others, not some combat abilities. I might have even considered it with a neutral character, but she was a githyanki.

My good characters would never be tempted into using illithid powers in the first place. As long as it was clear the source of abilities are of mind flayer origin, it would not matter what guise the dream person would use, they'd not be tempting. Which is also why I've found these guardian interactions annoying, because there is no way to avoid them. Not that different from when Mizora decides to stay in your camp, just so she pester the player, and you can't get rid of her.

All this talk of goals reminds me a bit of Sunless Skies.

At the beginning of the game, you declare your goals. It might be Wealth, in which case your win condition is about acquiring a bunch of money, purchasing a fancy house, and collected rare treasure to show off. Or it could be pursuing secret knowledge, and you get a letter from an academic frenemy, which leads down a quest to find out what they learned. You'd travel the same world regardless, but the game knew your specific win condition and could present some story options tailored to what you first chose. And not in generic ways, either, but knowing that you have very specific objectives to meet.

I think that's a problem with the temptations in BG3. They so often offer generic power, or maybe combat abilities. But the combat abilities carry little narrative weight, and they're not strictly necessary for any combat encounters. The Dream Visitor is basically flying blind when trying to figure out what your character needs/wants aside from needing to defeat the main bosses.

Plus, so much of the early narrative is written to assume you want to get rid of the tadpole. And that's it. That's your only goal. It's really hard for the tadpole to tempt characters whose goal is to get rid of the tadpoles, although the Emperor does try it... by arguing it'll help us get rid of them in the long run?

I feel like if the Dead Three or some other faction had been set up as an enemy earlier, then the tadpole powers could be presented as a tempting option to characters whose goal is to defeat this enemy. The tadpole-advocate needs the chance to present itself as the solution to your problems, not the cause of them.

I think as far as motivation goes, the 'get rid of the parasite' works. Survival as motivation is more universal than the 'give into using the evil powers' temptation angle. The issue is that by the time act three rolls in, everyone seems to have forgotten about it.

Act 3? The tadpole gets redeclared as a benign powerup gimmick in the middle of act 1.
The very last point where the tadpole is seen as a problem by the story is the optional creche.

I agree with this. I think Larian simply didn't understand this and expected us all to go for the parasite powers. The story is written with an evil protagonist in mind, and becomes inconsistent and jarring if you play from a good perspective. For a good pc, the Emperor becomes annoying and unconvincing, and though it is unclear what Daisy would have become past Act 1, she seemed easier to ignore. The Emperor cements himself as evil by encouraging you to take extra parasites. The better "play" from the Emperor would be to wait and see if you put an extra tadpole in your head on your own: if you did, then encourage you to go mind flayer for pragmatic reasons (i.e. use the power to fight evil); but if you don't he should understand that you never will, position himself as a victim trying to fight back and encourage you not to use them. This would make him more sympathetic to good pcs.

Well, the thing is Durge gets rid of Bhaal when they get resurrected by Withers otherwise they just end up as Bhaal's pawn even after killing the Elder Brain. There's also the implications from early access that the Tadpole and Urge were in conflict. So, there could be a temptation for a good but naive character to stay down by the river over being a mass murdering psycho. Maybe I'm thinking of "Daisy done right" but I really think even done wrong it's better than Emp. In my opinion, what the guardian does isn't temptation (the desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise) because there is no drawback to accepting the tadpole powers like with accepting the Urge.

To be honest, I don't know if she was written just for a "conquest minded" character because there are different dreams for every other character. Sure, maybe conquest for the custom character which goes back to the terrible origin system of this game and your point about Larian's incomprehension of RP.

Also, I'm fine with it just being an evil path after all this is a setting with chaotic evil crazy characters, just like how a lot of previous games gave you pretty much two paths. Look at MOTB for example, which is by far the best DnD story expansion, there is no reason for a good character to accept the curse. Yet, accepting the curse path is pretty badass and gives a satisfying big F you to everyone out there.

So, I would love to see a deeper romance option for The Emperor. You’ll have to forgive that I haven’t read everything on this forum as there’s sixteen pages and my browser has a lot of trouble loading them for some reason. Having now played through the entire game, I have to commend the developers, writers, actors, everyone who worked on this game. It’s a remarkable achievement. The biggest addition I would like to see if there is ever an expansion pack, or something like that in the future, would be a fully fleshed out romance with The Emperor.

I didn’t play early access with Daisy, so I’m not going to comment on her except to say that I’m looking at this character without any attachments to earlier conceptions that didn’t make it into the final product. BIG SPOILERS AHEAD. Please only read further if you have beaten the game and are familiar with The Emperor’s storyline and history.

I love this character, and he is by far my favorite. He touches a nerve for a lot of people, and I was genuinely surprised to find so many people online hate him, believing him to be the most evil character in the game, and often get in-game lore about him wrong when trying to articulate why he’s the worst of the worst. I personally find the reveal




This relationship would, in some ways, work similarly to how we build relationships with the other companions, but there’s also plenty of room to develop new dynamics because he can't be recruited into the party, and we don’t get to see our approval rating with him. It’s also one that happens away from the other companions, and could be discrete for quite some time before the rest of the camp finds out.

I know this is a long post, and I don’t normally post to forums, but I just think there’s so much potential here that I wanted to share my thoughts. I don’t know exactly why the romance with him isn’t further developed. It may have been due to time and late stage rewrites. It’s also possible that a smaller minority of players romance the character. I don’t think the latter one is as important as it may seem. Monster romances have two target audiences: women and lgbtq people. They make up a minority of players, not everyone in those groups would be interested anyway, and it’s a romance that develops later, likely when a player is already romancing another character. However, the potential for a compelling and nuanced twist on an old theme, I believe, is worth it. As I said earlier, if there’s ever an expansion pack in the future, I would love to see this. BG3 is such a great game, and I think this would elevate it even more.

The mix of reactions to the Emperor has been interesting to me, too. I notice some people seem to hate him for being villainous and manipulative, but I honestly feel like with what we see in the game, he isn't able to deliver on that. On the other hand, I also feel like there isn't much payoff for trying to build a relationship with him. As you described, it feels a little like they wanted to make him work a bit more like a companion, but he really doesn't.

And I agree with you on
There's another thread on the idea of getting him to team up with Orpheus that might interest you. A lot of similar thoughts to what you've expressed are there, too.

Personally, I would like to see a more fleshed out storyline including both the chance for a more hate-worthy version of the Emperor with a real fight at the end (the way siding against him goes now is... not exactly a satisfying experience) and one where you feel like your efforts to reach out to him are actually rewarded in the end. Right now, it feels to me like he's just caught in the middle of trying to be multiple things at once, but without the branching storylines to back up any of them.

I hadn’t thought about There’s just so much here worthy of additional writing.

I think exploring Stelmane's whole part in this could be interesting. However I honestly think we should just disregard the opening cinematic. It's not the Emperor who tsdpoled us, we weren't plucked from Yartar during the attack which makes no sense, ignoring that honestly is the best thing for the story.

Except someone else tadpoling us makes even less sense.
But yes, the entire intro cinematic is a mess.

What makes the least sense though? The major secondary character of the story tsdpoling us and it never coming up, or some random other person doing it and it just not being relevant to know who specifically did it? This is one of those moments where I think the specifics don't actually matter and could be disregarded without negatively impacting the story.

I think it's obvious that the Emperor did tadpole us, which makes complete sense.

As for Yartar, I'm not sure what you're saying. The Yartar scene happens after the character is tadpoled. Nothing suggests the character was abducted in Yartar.

In the situation the nautilod is in the absolute has no reason to stop, tadpole some people and then attack a city to harvest more. It would only make sense for the Emperor to create his pawns he would then control with the artifact this way.

It would make perfect sense, but that's not what the game says happened. The game doesn't even imply that, from what I've experienced of it. So he didn't do that. That's what seems obvious, but it's not what Larian actually wrote, and clearly not what they intended. Don't give them more credit than they deserve, they've gotten too much of that already.

I would argue that some storytelling can be subtle and complicated. Not everything has to be explicitly stated out loud. Some things can be embedded for discovery.

Giving credit where it isn't due may be an issue at times, but taking away credit when it is due is also a thing.

I think that’s what happened. He’s trying to gain strength in numbers but gets interrupted by the githyanki.

My problem, if Larian actually intended that (which I'm still not convinced is the case) is that our character can't react to it and it would be a truly massive aspect of our interaction and relationship with the Emperor, one which our Tav's feelings about should really define our interactions going forward. If we've been interacting with the person who caused our problems to begin with, we should get a say in that, we should have an opinion and be able to voice it. Leaving something like this entirely unsaid would be a massive failure of role-playing on their part, denying us the full agency our characters should have in their stories. Which honestly would be in line with the rest of the game anyway so maybe it's not so unbelievable.

Depends which character you play as. Karlach and Wyll get on the ship in Avernus, and only then get tadpoled.