Yeah seems like they seriously phoned it in with her quest line and don’t have plans to add to it, since the solution is represented in the epilogue
as happening in the future after the game.
I wouldn’t call it “un-Larian” though (to have some unfinished, low quality content) because Minthara’s romance for example is still pretty broken.
And also, contrary to what you might think, I have heard that the evil run is pretty empty and isolating compared to the good run. So you lose a lot of content, but don’t gain that much. There aren’t a bunch of unique evil NPCs who show up again and again like the good NPCs do. And for the character quest lines that I have completed, there are pretty dichotomous, either/or ending choices, so not a whole lot of flexibility. The 17,000 endings thing was a wild over-exaggeration in my opinion.
So the more familiar I’ve become with the game over time, the more I realize that the Karlach thing is a bit par for the course.
Also, yeah, the “tragic lesbian” thing is a huge trope in popular culture and it’s very disappointing, yes, that the most obviously lesbian-coded character, down to her sex scenes, is the one who has the most tragic ending. I will say, Shadowheart is a very queer character also and I really enjoy her if you want a slightly more pleasant sapphic ending.
