Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The Emperor, The Ending, and that IGN Article (SPOILERS)

I know a lot of people have pointed out that The Emperor joining the Netherbrain in the end if you side with Orpheus makes no sense, and I think it both does and doesn’t. He has always wanted freedom, and it’s almost certain that the moment he leaves the astral prism without Orpheus’ protection, he’ll be enthralled whether he’s willing or not. The explanation given in the article by Swen and Adam, as well as The Emperor in game, as “survival” feels like a 180 when his ultimate goal has been freedom. Why they chose not to focus on the fact that it’s game over for him as far as his autonomy under this circumstance is puzzling. Which brings me to my next point.

One of my biggest problems with the ending is how contrived the choices are. Along with The Emperor’s 180 mentioned above, Swen and Adam (Chrystal doesn’t say much) seem to have rigidly held on to this plot contrivance of choosing to become a monster, and in doing so, forces a binary ending whether it works within the narrative and gameplay or not.

Swen - “One of the basic questions of the game was whether you would become a monster if it would save the world. So that’s where you get that in that moment. And then the interesting bit was, well, if you’re not going to do it, are you going to ask someone else to do it, or [are] you just going to say, ‘F*ck everybody?’ That’s essentially what that moment was.”

Adam - “There was no way to save the city, save the world without giving up your own identity.”

The thing about a binary choice is that it only works if there truly are no other options available, however, the player has a lot more power and leverage in this situation than the game is willing to let them have. The Emperor wants his freedom and will be enthralled voluntarily or otherwise if he leaves the astral prism and cedes power to Orpheus. It’s also worth mentioning that when you help him defeat the Honour Guard, there’s an option to ask him about assimilating Orpheus, to which he answers that it may not work. So, assimilating is a big risk, and should it fail, he’s back to being a thrall.

Then there’s Orpheus. He cannot leave the astral prism without the players freeing him with the Orphic Hammer and cannot take on the Netherbrain unless he or someone else turns into an illithid. The player has leverage against The Emperor to persuade and/or intimidate him to join with Orpheus, and they also have leverage against Orpheus for the same thing. The whole speech Orpheus gives about how the player should have let his Honour Guard kill them and they would have taken on the Elder Brain before it evolved and became a Netherbrain is either a lie or delusion. You don’t even need to metagame to know this, yet the player has zero dialogue available to call Orpheus on this claim. He and his Honour Guard have been imprisoned in the astral prism for millennia with no means of escape, and no way of impacting the outside world. They weren’t going to stop anything, and yet, through the dialogue choices, the game treats this as though it were a given and that The Emperor held all the cards and kept this from you. He didn’t. He truly is the reason you’re alive to face the Netherbrain. Given the gravity of being on the cusp of The Grand Design, calling Orpheus on the impotence of him and his Honour Guard, and also potentially being under threat of having his brain consumed if he does not cooperate, there is plenty to leverage against Orpheus to get him to at least temporarily ally with the player and The Emperor. If you’ve struck a deal with Voss, you have even more leverage.

Beyond the other options that I believe should be available, I don’t think becoming a monster or “f*ck everybody” comes through in the ending at all. It seems like they expect players to side with Orpheus when there are plenty of role play reasons to side with The Emperor, and then no one has to become a monster, and you still save the city. The Githyanki aren’t even doomed under this ending just like they’re not doomed if Orpheus transforms and dies in the end so he doesn’t live as a mind flayer. If anything, the theme of freedom, autonomy, and alliances, I thought, came through more strongly, both with defeating the Netherbrain and with the companion quests. Under this theme, an option to persuade/intimidate Orpheus and The Emperor to work together actually makes more sense because they have to put aside their hatred for one another to accomplish the same goal of defeating the Netherbrain and obtaining their freedom. The intention seems to have been for the player to make a significant personal sacrifice to save the world, but I just don’t think that it was executed particularly well.

“What’s unique about The Emperor is how he subverts our expectations. Yes, he’s manipulative, but he never mind controls you. He’s this supposedly asexual creature, yet he’s sexually interested in the player character and is heavily coded as a romantic male lead. He’s also supposed to be this heartless and soulless creature, but expresses care for the player character, and if you romance him, he’s sweet, vulnerable, and sincere. He’s supposed to be part of this hive mind, yet he wants his freedom and actively encourages the player character to form alliances to defeat the Netherbrain. He needs to feed off the brains of others, but avoids the innocent. He may want the player character to change into an illithid, but he leaves that choice entirely to you. He’s alien, yet very human and desires allies and companionship.”

I was under the impression from this interview that Swen largely sees The Emperor as a plot device, while the writers saw him as a character, even if he has a specific purpose in the narrative. There’s even a very awkward part of the interview in which Adam refers to The Emperor as “he,” quickly corrects himself to refer to him as “they,” only for Swen to insist that The Emperor is an “it,” even saying that “we often had this fight” when referring to his pronouns. I personally think that’s a bit revealing, though you may disagree.

For additional context, Swen, Adam, and Chrystal all agree that The Emperor is manipulative and self-serving, but that he never lies to you. Swen will later reiterate this very point when talking about Raphael:

Swen - “Raphael… a lot of what he says you can’t trust, but he is honest. And at one point, if you push him on it, he says, ‘All you are to The Emperor is a pack animal that’s carrying him to where he needs to be.’”

There’s another awkward exchange in which Adam speaks to The Emperor being terrified of going back to the Elder Brain. Swen then remarks:

Swen - “he’s not really terrified he doesn’t have that level of emotion.”

Adam - “Well, yeah, but I think that there’s a level of horror in being… Going back to what he escaped from.”

Now with all of that context laid out, I think his manipulative nature is pretty uncontroversial in the game’s text. He is self-serving - he doesn’t really hide that from you - he speaks in partial truths, and you are a means to an end. At least at first. And, this is where I think he becomes a more complex character whether Swen realizes it or not.

As a side note on how he manipulates the player: there’s this strange bit of dialogue with The Emperor in which you can call him on the fact that he’s hidden information from you throughout your entire alliance, and he responds by acknowledging that, saying that he purposefully lead you to believe that the githyanki Honour Guard were evil beings. I don’t recall this at all. He tells you that they would have killed you because to them you are already illithid, which is all true. It’s a strange bit of dialogue in the end that doesn’t follow what’s been established in the game.

That aside, I’ve heard many people hand-wave away all of his behavior as insincere and solely for the purpose of manipulating the player, however, I think that’s, at best, a shallow reading of the text. He may be manipulating the player character, but that’s hardly the only thing going on, where a character like Raphael is truly only manipulating the player character. In the interview, Swen, Chrystal, and Adam all say that he doesn’t lie, however, I think a more precise way of saying that based on what we see in the game, is that he doesn’t fabricate lies. He doesn’t make up a lie out of whole cloth, but rather omits information that he doesn’t think is relevant, or that doesn’t serve his purpose. Perhaps the most infamous example of this is his relationship with Belynne. As long as you remain on good terms with The Emperor, he frames their relationship as two allies working towards a common goal in The Knights of The Shield. However, if you become hostile, provoke, and dehumanize him, he reveals that Belynne was his unwilling thrall.

I’m hardly the first to point out that this cutscene is a bit suspicious. The timing of such a reveal and The Emperor framing it as “why hide” or “will this make you feel better” is an obvious threat to someone who seems likely to betray you the moment they can. The cutscene also has The Emperor casually revealing his identity to someone other than Belynne, much to this unnamed person’s horror. That is already out of line with how he conducts himself. After her death, we can have this interesting conversation with The Emperor in which he further discusses his relationship with her. With hindsight, it’s obvious that when he says their relationship “was not love” it was “deeper,” and that it was “unique,” he is referring to when she was his thrall. But, he also reveals in some dialogue options that she understood his needs, his desire for freedom, and that she didn’t trust a mind flayer at first, suggesting that she wasn’t initially his thrall. He even describes himself as being “haunted” by memories of her. We don’t know exactly what memories are haunting him, but we do know that the dialogue option with the thrall cutscene, he says to the pc “aren’t you glad I finessed my methods?” Even when he calls you his puppet, at no point in the game will he enthrall you or your party members.

It’s worth mentioning that it is well within DnD lore that mind flayers grow attached to their thralls and mourn their passing, but we later find documents in the game, one from a physician, that when The Emperor came to visit Belynne as her condition progressed, that it eased her “body and mind.” We also find a document suggesting that he was impersonating her through magic as one eye witness account described a floating blue figure, but that it turned out to just be Belynne smiling. I bring all this up because what I believe we’re seeing here is an incomplete portrait of their relationship. I think it suggests that they were once genuine allies before he enthralled her, and that he’s mourning more than just her passing, but also the deterioration of their relationship. I think this also helps to explain why he never enthralls the pc, even if it would mean preventing them from taking some very dangerous paths that jeopardize their mission. The Emperor is an unreliable narrator who speaks in partial truths, so I don’t believe that either version of their relationship you get from him is the whole truth, but is not entirely false either. This game very often takes a more-than-meets-the-eye approach to characters and storylines, so this is well within what we have come to expect from this game. She may have been a means to an end on some level, but she was hardly only a means to an end.

As far as that strange comment from Swen that The Emperor “does not have that level of emotion,” we actually feel his fear regarding the Elder Brain as it’s breaking free from the crown’s control. If the pc romances him, we literally feel that he cares for the pc, and in some interactions of this scene he’ll tell the pc that he enjoys their mind, and refers to their relationship as a bond of love. Before the final battle, one of the NPCs invokes Balduran’s name right before battle, and if you’ve allied with The Emperor, you feel his amusement that they have no idea who he once was. There’s even that scene with the Guardian at the beginning of Act 2 in which a successful insight check reveals that he is hiding the depth of his pain. I know there’s that note that The Emperor left for Ansur about no longer feeling his feelings, but he clearly does feel. He even describes the grief he feels over Belynne as “not entirely unwelcome.” The Emperor is an arrogant and prideful character, and he doesn’t seem to be entirely self aware as to his own humanity because he sees himself, as a mind flayer, to be superior.

For most endings, The Emperor will just depart after defeating the Netherbrain, much like the other companions who also go their separate ways. So, I don’t think this is necessarily an indication that the pc was merely a means to an end. However, and these are two big SPOILERS, there are two endings in which he does reveal his feelings for the pc. In a solo ending in which the pc doesn’t transform, he’ll tell them “you have become... important to me. And should our paths cross again, I will be glad to see you.” There’s also an ending where, if the pc transforms into an illithid, he will ask to stay together to rebuild the Knights of the Shield. There’s an option to tell him to think bigger, at which point he’ll say to them “Have I ever told you how much I enjoy you? Lead the way…”

I also want to note that right before the above mentioned exchange with The Emperor, the Narrator has a line that in being a mind flayer, all your companions becoming tools or food, but then contrasts that with:

“Perhaps you are unique among illithid-kind. Perhaps you will retain enough of who you are to resist your nature. A rogue mind flayer. Like The Emperor.”

This is a pretty straightforward acknowledgement that The Emperor does have the capacity for relationships beyond mere tools for his use.

All this is to say that there seems to be some genuine relationship building with The Emperor, which makes it, in some ways, more strange that he’s so quick to abandon the player and join the Netherbrain should you choose to free Orpheus. Many players have noted that trust is one way with The Emperor, and if that’s the angle Swen and the writers were going with him, then why have The Emperor demonstrate trust in the pc’s leadership? Yes, there are moments in the game in which he admonishes the pc, disagrees with them, attempts to persuade them away from a decision, hell even probes their mind if they lie to him about the meeting with Raphael, but he’s actually very reasonable when it comes to the pc’s autonomy and decision making. If you save the Grove, he’ll even compliment you on your leadership. He’s so hands off in so many ways, but when he does interject about certain quests like the Crèche, Ansur, or The House of Hope, those are extraordinarily dangerous quests that risk everything. They risk you, him, and anyone left behind to be subjected to the Grand Design, but he never stops you. He actually does demonstrate a lot of trust in the pc even if they’re not the most reliable at times.

I said earlier that I think the intended ending was to have the player join with Orpheus, then the pc, or one of the companions turns into an illithid. This requires a sacrifice and sets up this dramatic encounter with The Emperor in which he rides in on a red dragon and summons your dream guardians to fight you. This could have been a powerful moment, however, I think it largely falls flat when you have this forced binary decision with a character, who may be unlikable, but is actually pretty reasonable throughout. If you’ve romanced The Emperor, or are at least on friendly terms, this binary ignores the prior relationship development of the pc being more than a means to an end by not at least allowing for some kind of exchange and option for striking an alliance.

But, let’s just say you have romanced The Emperor, but the twist is that you are merely a means to an end. Well, that’s not clearly laid out either. There’s no moment to confront him, and the only acknowledgment of an intimate relationship comes when he castigates the pc and reminds them that they didn’t “reject” him, but “enjoyed” him. (If anything, that implies you used him). He just leaves and that's that. Along with everything I laid out earlier, it’s not so much a twist, as it’s incomplete writing. This isn’t even the only example of incomplete writing. Remember how your companions were able to witness your night with The Emperor but no one said anything the next morning? The so-called fix was to have The Emperor wipe their memories without any regard for the implications. The pc doesn’t have a dialogue option regarding such an action, and the only vague textual clue that this is something he does is that he may have done some memory manipulation with Belynne’s doctor. However, the doctor can still recall a lot of details of The Emperor’s visits, she just has trouble recalling his appearance. He either doesn’t or can’t completely erase her memory of his visits, even though she finds him suspicious and erasing her memory entirely might be safer for him to do. Other than that, it’s just the one line he speaks that was thrown into the game a couple of patches in. Even then the companions still don’t react to the “enjoyed me” line, or the “fornicated with a mind flayer” line if you side with Orpheus. We love hearing our companions react, so why not have that in there? It would certainly be more entertaining at the very least.