Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Changes to Gortash letters in Act 3

Apparently the latest Hotfix completely changed some fun letters one can find in Act 3 with correspondence between Gortash and a Franc Peartree, that a lot of Gortash fans were very fond of. I wanted to share it here because there was NO announcement in the hotfix of these being rewritten, and the new letters are, I have to say, incredibly boring and devoid of the fun word-play and charmingly unhinged personality of the originals. And going by the Twitter thread responses I'm not the only one confused and disappointed these were replaced with much more boring, staid letters (with more grammar errors/typos than the originals??)

Considering these were changed with 0 announcement or obvious reason, it makes me wonder just how many other in-game letters and books are being changed for the worse.

I want to share this here as people are discussing the changes to Gale's character, and Lae'zel's character also being rewritten to be less blunt a few hotfixes ago. For whatever reason, Larian keeps "fixing" their writing to make their characters flatter, their personalities less notable, and generally making the writing of the game more boring (in my opinion.) I don't really understand it. I really wish the character writing would be left untouched and Larian just focused on things that actually needed fixing (Shield Bash bug, Mol + Raphael chess scene bug, Minthara romance still being broken, all of the camera bugs... for example.)

The changed letters can be seen shared in tweets here:

https://twitter.com/laubritter/status/1747261030932349051
https://twitter.com/laubritter/status/1747261033566388676

New letters as of Hotfix 16:





Old letters that were in the game up until this latest hotfix:

If someone can let me know how to get image embeds to work, I'd really appreciate it, because I tried to use the option built-in to the post system but it doesn't work...

Edit: figured it out!

Genuinely flabbergasted right now. The previous letters were so iconic, and the new ones so forgettable, that I genuinely have no idea what Larian was thinking doing this. They really need to get a grip on things.

Exactly how I feel. To be perfectly honest, those letters were one of the things to really intrigue me about Gortash, because I did admittedly find his introduction flat when playing Tav (My opinion changed after playing as Dark Urge.) The letters showcase a lot of fun personality, and really emphasizes just how skilled he is at manipulating people from all parts of society. It hones in on what a good villain he is.

But his new letters just... sound like regular old business letters. There's no pizzazz. The "like the pauper said to the priest when he espied the cathedral's interior..." and "I love any man willing to birth a little more slithering, wet malice into the world" lines were so MEMORABLE, the lines literally stuck with me to this day after reading the letters for the first time. (And I thought the latter line was a genius reference to his close relationship/partnership with Dark Urge!)

Anyway, maybe I'm taking this harder than is warranted, but as a professional character writer, I just DO NOT understand Larian's decision to water down their own writing and make it much less unique and memorable. I really don't.

I actually read both of these in the game just a few days ago in my now finished playthrough and honestly... I found it odd immediately as I was reading them how a cunning and cautious diplomat such as Gortash would be so stupid to directly be writing to these people in the manner that he does, literally creating incriminating evidence against him. I understand where he comes from and what he went through in life, but that's not how one becomes an Archduke of Baldur's Gate

So having read both versions I honestly quite like the new letters. They're far more diplomatic and cautious, while still maintaining his iconic cunning between the lines.

Anyway not all developers work on the exact same things. The ones responsible for gameplay bugs are not responsible for writing the game's lore. And Baldur's Gate 3 never really left Early Access, so all these things being changed, shaped, improved and even added are simply a sign that it's still being treated as an Early Access. Which in my opinion is good, imagine if they left the game as it is right now. I dread to even imagine.

As for the images; they have to end on their file extensions such as .jpeg/.jpg/.png and such. Twitter seems to be one of the sites that use their own unique systems which don't display these urls properly, so unfortunately you can't embed those. You'd have to upload them to some other site and then embed them, or dig through the Twitter's code by clicking F12 and finding the image's direct source.

I can appreciate your opinion on the changes and how it is better, though I disagree (obviously lol.) I would say the majority of correspondence the player can find that is meant to be classified communication between major political players reads like this- overly familiar and incriminating, if this were in real life. The Guild, the Zhentarim, all sorts of Patriar communications and Fist communications around the Gate and Wyrmrock... But that never stood out to me because the original Baldur's Gate games had equally ridiculous, but ultimately very fun, writing that focused more on injecting some humor and strong character voice. That's the thing that charms me about these games.

I do understand the ones working on bugs are not going to be the same people working on writing, but it does say something about the priorities of the team and implementing these changes to in-game books/letters does take time away from other coding work, I would imagine. Resources are not finite even if it is different members of a team working on different things. And I really don't think Baldur's Gate should be treated as if it's still in Early Access, because it isn't. It's a fully-released game, albeit clearly unfinished due to rush. I understand adding things to it that were meant to be released at launch but were scrapped for time. But making major random changes to these smaller details after 5, nearly 6 months, after fans have had half a year to become attached to the writing, and after winning so many Narrative/writing awards? Makes no sense to me, personally.

Also thank you for the advice on image posting, I was able to figure out it was an issue with the Twitter URL format.

First time playing Durge I got a little jealous when I read that second letter lol. The new version wouldn't have that effect.

I think feeling jealousy just speaks to how well the writers for Gortash and Dark Urge managed to evoke an emotional connection between the players and the Gortash+Dark Urge relationship, which is another part of why I'm disappointed in the change, honestly.

I like the new letters more. They get across what's being said as well as the underlying threats.

Overall, I'd say this is an improvement to Gortash's character and personality. Something that's needed quite a bit of work considering that Gortash is known as the least interesting of the dead three chosen.

Hopefully, more Gortash changes will be soon to come.

It's also strange that they chose to rewrite his flirtatious letters with a man, while leaving the flirtatious letters to Lady Jannath untouched. Not trying to jump to conclusions, but it paints an uncomfortable picture.

The old version of the second one makes the choice to put Peartree on "the list" feel a lot more personal than the new one does. Which is a shame. The new one does not instantly make me think that Gortash is absolutely going to hate it, when he finds out what Orin did.

Agreed! Why they would change anything other than typos is beyond me. Fix the Raph/Mol lance board scene, fix bugs, fix Gale's weird, stiff-necked kissing animation- but don't change letters or books unless you are just going to add more

Hopefully they'll revert them back to the originals in a future patch and leave well enough alone. But if not, at least there are modders to save the day.

The only changes I hope they make to Gortash in the future are ones that actually do him justice.