Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion What would you have preferred instead of the Emperor?

I think the best thing would have been to have the dream visitor function as some kind of manifestation/mediator of the Absolute. That way we could have gotten a better characterisation of the Elder Brain and its goals and motives while also giving more weight and justification to the ending where you control the Elder Brain instead of destroying it. Being seduced into expanding the tadpole's power and its hold over your brain would make much more sense if there was an end goal to this beyond squid man trying to groom you into becoming Illithid against your will because he thinks it will make you more "beautiful". The Orpheus stuff wouldn't need to change much except that his aura emanating from the artefact is enough to shield from the Elder Brain's direct control (as is implied by a certain scene that is still in the game). Either way, an exploration of the inner workings of an alien intelligence like the Illithid mind would have been vastly more interesting if it wasn't constantly undermined by cringeworthy scenes about the Emperor trying to act human and making unbidden shirtless appearances in your dreams. I'm also convinced that the entire Emperor=Balduran plot contrivance that is supposed to make us care about the character completely fails to accomplish anything. Maybe if they had sown some clues about this before act 3 it could have fulfilled its purpose but the way it stands they just shell-shock the player by cramming all of those revelations into an incredibly short amount of time, never letting them gestate enough to amount to anything interesting.