Ah, thanks for clearing that up, I understand now. Here are my two cents.

I think the issue you have here is that you kind of think in absolutes (haha see what I did there), I mean who says that you have to trust Daisy that she isnt trying to manipulate you? That isnt a prerequisite for anything, much less for roleplay and yes, she is likely, most likely trying to seduce us into using our powers and become Illithid (which is something Emperror also does) but that is the point, here, we can reject it, or not, if you want, thats up to you, the issue I personally have with this, is that with the Emperror this is no longer a choice we have. Regardless of whether you trust the Emperror or not doesnt change anything in regards to your roleplay and your powers, the very Illithid powers that are pretty much the main drive of the story for good half of it at least.

Moreover, you are thinking of Daisy as a completely informed player, I dont know about you but I often do suboptimal things because thats what my character would do, I do evil stuff, or stupid stuff, or act weak and such, depending on what fits my character, this is what roleplay is, you personally dont have to believe Daisy is actually trying to be a true love for you, especially given that both we and the characters do know what she most likely is, all you gotta do is engage with her if it makes sense for your character to do so. I get that this is all personal preference and whatnot, thats just fine, but we cant even conclusively say if it is poorly written or not, because we lack majority of the context. We can however conclusively say that context does nothing for the choice with the Emperror, because the choice is gone entirely.

And finally I think there is an important point you are missing in regards to Daisy, she is a dream visitor, literally coming to us in our heads at night, we are not in full control in our dreams and what we see and experience there is often hazy and ill rmembered when we wake up, unlike the Emperror or Guardian she never visits us in the waking world and innitially all characters have their own Daisy characters so we cant even pool our information with the others as to who she really is, beyond the fact that we all believe she is the tadpole of course. Point is, you are succumb to even the stupidest and most obvious lies and tricks when you are dreaming, it is a dream after all.

That being said I get you and while I dont agree with you about Daisy, as I found her perfectly servicable for roleplay purpose and I do think that the issues the repurposing of Emperror have introduced are far more damaging than Daisy not being trustworthy or belieavable enough to convince us to engage with the tadpole powers (which again, I dont think she needed to be, or was supposed to be as the characters know full well what it is) I do agree that there were definitely better ways to go about this than just scrapping Daisy entirely and pushing Emperror into this new role, leaving many issues in the aftermath.

I think your scenario would have been fine, but my ideal scenario would be a choice for our character in whom to trust or from whom to agree to take powers, it could be Daisy (Absolute), Orpheus, the Emperror, two of them or all three with varying motivations etc. Depending on your character and your choices you could be seduced by the dream visitor, or listen to Emperror as the guardian and switch to him, or even hear Orpheus and side with him early on, something to that effect.

There were even datamined information that something like this was innitially on cards, with Daisy and Desire being two different beings, likely one of them would represent the Absolute and the other someone else who would seemingly want to really help us (in so far as just more than Daisy/absolute do) but that was scrapped. To support this further, in EA we even seemingly would have had the possibility of shutting out the tadpole entirely, using ring from Omeluum in the underdark and such, further hinting that there was more to it than just what we saw on the surface.

Ultimately tho, the issue for me isnt that of the Emperror or Daisy (tho I do prefer her portrayal of the seduction of the tadpole for above stated reasons, but its all presonal preference) but the issues that these big changes introduced to the story, its consistency, reactivity etc., and making it so late in the game (as the main topic points out, even the artbooks came with just Daisy and no Guardian, so it must have been really late a classic knee jerk reaction). Emperror was likely never in the role he is now before and so his character is neutered and limited, it introduces possible plotholes and contradictions and worse yet, it led to a absolute TON of cut content including the unique Daisies and the interaction with companions about the dreams, the bad outcomes of using Illithid powers (one of the main things to be an issue you would assume) etc., and it entirely changed the tone of the game as well with only remanants of it remaining in the first act, only to dissapear completely and turn the game into a much more run of the mill adventure feel.

In any case yes, Daisy was far from perfect and it wouldnt work well for everyone, but ultimately we cant judge what it would have led to and personally I dont find the exchange for what we have now worth what we have potentially lost.

As I said above, I really hope that we will eventually get some enhanced edition and these things will be put back into game, I wouldnt mind paying for that as DLC at all but personally the more time I spend in the game the more I wonder what could have been.

Anyways, thanks for chatting, whether you agree or disagree smile

Last edited by mademan2; 04/03/24 08:59 PM.