Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion [END SPOILS WARNING] Addressing Karlach (PLEASE PUT SPOILERS IN TAGS)

I mean yea... you can also kill the Grove and go evil. That's the nice thing about player driven games. Sure would be nice to have that kind of freedom with karlachs story instead of being railroaded

Divine intervention is another 'question that doesn't get asked'. Selune is a major power, and after both saving her daughter and dealing with the Sharran church, you'd think the party would gain her favour. But you cannot even ask Aylin about it.

Yea I didn't think about that one but you're right.

I hope larian retcons the avernus ending in the epilogue where the hell gang (aka tav/durge, karlach and wyll) find a potential solution with the forge lead, and instead just add that storyline as a quest in act 3. It would probably be much more complicated to make a post-endgame avernus story dlc anyway, and we already have a ton of set pieces in act 3 to utilize.

For instance the gondians/Steel watch factory could give clues about the enriched infernal iron and its ties to an important forge in avernus, then helsik or raphael could give information on how to get to it. Hell, make it so you have to make a deal with raphael or pay a huge amount of money to helsik to get here. A contract with raphael could then just be broken by killing raphael in the House of hope questline anyway, because fuck that guy. Finally, lock this avernus forge- quest until you finish the gortash questline so that some key scenes with karlach are still played, just to add some exposition to her quest and make it flow better (that is, itd make sense for the gang to finally look into clues to helping karlach after her intense breakdown, plus that scene is too good to ever be changed/removed). The original avernus ending we have now could still be one of her potential endings if you never pursued her quest, so the new epilogue wouldnt have to have anything necessarily removed but instead one more ending added for karlach where the forge quest was already completed.

Im not a game dev so i might be pulling out of my ass with saying how this would be easier and preferable to accomplish than creating a dlc, but larian probably believes a dlc would need to have ton of new content in it to ''justify'' its existence, unless its a free dlc. Plus developing a post-endgame dlc must be super complicated with all the endings and other story flags thatd need to be accounted for, not to mention the level scaling being a problem - adding new levels from 13-16 for instance would be challenging for larian i imagine, but being locked to level 12 would suck for the players. An updated questline for karlach in a future patch or definitie edition etc wouldnt have to be as substantial, adding maybe about 1-2 hours of new playable content and maybe a thousand or couple thousands of new lines (i contrast, i believe the new epilogue update we got in december added +3000 new voicelines). Still a lot of work, no denying that, but not comparable to how much work a dlc project would need.

Anyway, just speculating ideas lol. Despite the new epiloge adding more hope and hinting towards the idea of an avernus dlc, i think itd be an unnecessaribly large project for larian to work on when act 3 aleady has a lot of great leads and set pieces that'd make sense to use for a karlach questline, saving larian time and money on having to add tons of new characters and story exposition in a post-endgame dlc. That being said im not opposed to a dlc by any means, nor is there any confirmation if larian will ever pursue anything like this, but only time will tell i guess.

One can hope, of course, but Larian's been quite adamant with their tragedy and "it's the hope that kills you" -storytelling.

I guess I missed the memo where larian makes grimdark stories. I'll make a note of it I guess

I can imagine them doing a thing where Karlach’s quest doesn’t end at the Last Light Inn, but instead continues into the part with the Steel Watch factory and the Gondians (which I don’t know much about, tbh, because I haven’t played it yet), before concluding in a final, very obvious dead end.

For example, maybe when you first enter that overall area, you and/or Karlach would be pulled into a conversation with some important, plot-relevant NPC and you’d be able to ask them about fixing the infernal engine, and they’d be like “oh yeah, talk to this other person over in (other area of the city that you haven’t visited before), they’d definitely be able to fix the engine!” And then you make your way over there, but maybe in order to get to this person, you’d have to go through a really challenging, super high security dungeon area—like you’d have to get through a really hard stealth section or fight lots of really tough enemies or pass a bunch of high skill checks or some combination of all of those, and maybe there’d also be some sort of special environmental challenge/puzzle that you’d have to really think about, like how you had to use the lava and the hammer to defeat Grym. And then, when you finally get to the place you were told to go, you discover that something horrible happened and the entire place has been completely destroyed, and the only thing that’s left is a burnt shell of a building and a whole bunch of corpses, including the corpse of the person you were told to talk to, and that corpse just has like a single gold piece and a very brief note with some vague lore-related info about how the person doesn’t feel safe here or something, and you and Karlach and the whole party have to collectively process the heartbreak of having gotten their hopes up only for them to be crushed into dust like that.

Sorry for the run-on sentence, but that’s how I would have wrapped up the quest. I feel like it would be a good way to very clearly communicate to players that no, there actually aren’t any solutions other than Avernus or death by spontaneous combustion, while also keeping the sense of player agency.

I mean theres no way Larian decided that Karlachs companion quest is well written and fleshed out right? No way they will let it stay as barebones as it is, right? As much as I love Karlach, her questline has to be the worst companion quest I have ever played in any games. "Oh yeah how about we just find 2 infernal irons, put them in my engine, so that we can finally touch each other" I mean the touching is undoubtetly the best part, but literally just finding 2 infernal irons is her entire quest... and not like you have to actually look for them, they are spread the fuck out everywhere so that you even find them accidentally

Ikr!!! They gave her a fucking fetch quest!! I really hope they flesh it out more, because like. Yes, the story can still have a tragic/not definitely happy ending, but like in terms of game design, I know Larian can do better than a fetch quest lol T_T

It's so wild that they said in an ign interview they think this was a good idea. It's such a shit excuse for a quest for a companion as popular as her it is unreal that they'd honestly think that.

Wait, they said they thought the barebones ass fetch quest was a good idea!? How???

I'll have to find the interview but the ceo 9f larian swen and one of the other devs were on it and the other dev said this as far as he was concerned karlachs best ending was her burning alive on a random dock alone. It was so annoying to listen to

I feel like that'd be a needlessly cynical way to continue and conclude her quest, and if larian updated karlachs quest to follow this similar line of storytelling in the future after everything players have been saying in regards to karlachs railroaded, tragical ending i think hell would break loose lol. Its already depressing enough to replay the game and know that her fetch quest wont amount to granting her a different ending, if we now also would have to spend more time to do a longer quest and know it wont matter jack shit then I feel like that'd ruin the game for me even further.

If they really felt adamant on not letting us cure karlach, i'd rather they spent time on having certain npcs give us more clarification on why her heart cant be cured, like maybe its some zariel/hell related magic or something (raphael could say this maybe? or some other npcs whos more reputable than fucking dammon lol). Additionally, please give more reactivity from the party members on her situation and maybe have them give their opinions to karlach on whether she should return to avernus to find a cure or die in faerun. Hell, even just let tav/durge that doesnt romance her spend time with her and give her more comfort for gods sake, in general it just feels like nobody cares about whats happening to her.

But imo thatd still feel frustrating because ultimately she'd still have the same, railroaded ending unlike the other origin characters, and i still personally cant wrap my head around WHY she has to have a tragic ending in a game setting like this where so much other wild shit that should be killing our protagonist or companions doesnt. The argument ''karlachs story is meant to be tragic'' just sounds too dogmatic for me. So i'd still prefer a questline that allows us to fight for curing her

It's not just them. There is hardly any objective coverage on this game. Everything seems to be 'the best that ever was and ever will be' and 'the new Gold Standard'. And, if everyone is praising you for stuff - why say otherwise? Just go with it, I totally get it.

Where I see seriously awesome things in this game, and it indeed is quite an achievement.... There also happens to be some serious flaws, some rushed content compared to things that clearly have been tried and tested - and ideas that just don't work. 'Find Iron 2/2' resulting in 'Oh well.' is one of those. In this game, that is so polished in other areas, it just seems rushed in.

Did they ever explain what their reasoning was for Karlach “needing” a tragic ending? Like. I can appreciate a good tragedy, but I feel like in order to make a story like that work, the events of the story need to be more meaningful than just “here’s this super wonderful and likeable character, look at how great she is despite all the awful bullshit she’s been through… oops now she’s dead.” Like with the Karlach-dies-on-a-random-dock ending, what are they even communicating? Thematically, Baldur’s Gate 3 is all about fighting for freedom and autonomy and stuff, and sure, in the Karlach-burns-to-death ending, she dies in Faerûn instead of presumably going back to Avernus and working as a slave soldier for Zariel again, but… Idk, I feel like a better version of the “tragic ending” would be like, she’s basically accepted her imminent mortality, and players can’t persuade her to un-accept that, but maybe the player character can convince her to go back to Avernus to fight Zariel, with the sliver of a chance that if she’s able to stay alive for long enough, Zariel will give up and have her guys fix the engine? Or maybe something happens in the game that leads her to make that decision on her own. Because if she really really really “has to die”—if that’s what the CEO wants, that is—then she may as well die fighting for the future that she deserves.

I think that that’s what bothers me so much about her ending, having written all that out. It’s like she doesn’t even consider the possibility of living a long life and growing old with the people she loves and stuff, and like I know that there are millions and millions of people in real life that are in a similar situation, but this isn’t real life—this is the Forgotten Realms! There are literal magical sparkling unicorns in the Forgotten Realms! This is meant to be escapist entertainment, and goddamnit, Karlach should realize that she deserves more!

Yeah I agree. I was more complaining about how if the devs really wanted to communicate that Karlach only had those two choices, they shouldn’t have left all those other apparent loose ends in the game. It’s stupid to have Karlach explode on a random dock after the game apparently communicates to you that there should be other ways to fix her engine. But I definitely agree that she needs a happier ending.

Because bad things happens to good people, not everyone can be saved, it's dramatic and memorable, it's realistic, it's the hope that kills you etc.

That's pretty much it. And because the lead writer is a horror writer or something.

Maybe the lead writer should stick to horror games >:/

Also, I feel like the message of “it’s the hope that kills you” is a bit out of place in a game that’s so thematically focused on the concept of how freedom is worth fighting for and how it’s worth having hope. Again, what are they trying to communicate? Are they trying to say that we shouldn’t have hope?

Karlachs story ending so depressingly wouldn't be out of place in some grimdark game but then you have stuff like.
Gale who has an atom bomb in his chest and just gets to live and can even become a full fucking god.
Shadowheart who can break years of mental trauma and religious indoctrination and go on to get her happy ending.
Wyll gets a near perfect ending with his horns giv8ng him little more than a speed bump in the grand scheme of things. In spite of the fact he literally and knowingly made a deal with a devil.
I'm not sure about laezels story but she is able to uncover the grand conspiracy around her entire race and start fighting back against the literal God queen of the gith.
Nearly all the other companions get unambiguously good or great endings and for karlach to be the one single standout just because well bad things happen to good people is either trauma baiting the player or just shit writing. I'm hoping larian teasing dlc for karlach isn't more trauma baiting.