@Croniac
I've been enjoying your posts and mostly agree. I found this statement sad and revealing.
So, I was never actually in the astral plane when that happened. I was in my home office playing Baldurs Gate3
What you are saying is that you lost all immersion at that point. Which is the same thing I felt. Oh. I have no choice but side with the emperor, I'm traveling on rails aren't I? And chapter 3 feels like a real let down when you realize that this where the plot was going.
@CR
Just like the Emperor the main character is also manipulating, exploiting and doing what they have to in order to survive, including killing people who don't deserve it. Orpheus' Honour Guard were just defending their own Prince from ghaik wretches and our main character murdered them for their own needs and then proceeded to exploit the Prince until he either becomes an alternative or doesn't. Regardless of whether we have a choice or not, that's what our main character did and that's why they're the same as the Emperor.
There's something to that. And it's a flaw in the game. The game emphasizes player agency in acts 1 and 2 and then takes it away in act 3. I was the hero who saved the grove, freed the gnome slaves, liberated the prisoners from moonrise and went to sleep telling myself I would be the hero of Baldur's Gate. Only to wake up and find that the game is trolling me by asking me to say that line before being tricked into act of villainy.
Immersion broken. I'm human in front of a computer. My Tav would never side with the emperor and I am only siding with him because I paid to see act 3 "Turns out you are the bad guy" isn't a fun plot twist.
Now the Emperor absolutely deserves to dies for manipulating us into this confrontation. It's a scene like that one that starts the Firkraag quest in BG2. The dragon disguises some noble paladins as marauding monsters, convinces the knights that the party are monsters and Charname is forced to kill the holy warriors to save herself.
But, unlike BG3 the BG2 version has a satisfying boss fight and heroic ending.
There's a line that Tav only says if you explore every island before you go to the skull. It goes something like: "wait, the figures in those images weren't demons at all they were just githyaki warriors"
Didn't come out in the cinematic but from that line and one the emperor gives just before joining the netherbrain it seems that script called for the honor guard to look like demons when the guardian showed them to us.
