Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Justice for Minthara

Yup, 1000% character assassination.

I truly do not understand why they even made that scene to begin with because Minthara is neither a power hungry lunatic nor a genocidal maniac that only sees the Dark Urge as a weapon to be unleashed upon the world.

• When Minthara talks to Dark Urge about their urges in ACT II, she extremely disapproves any potential notion of harming her... yet when Bhaal is about to kill the Dark Urge they made her disapprove when we refuse Bhaal due to not wanting to be a danger to her since she's our FAMILY that fights with us?! Do they even play their own game?!
• Not to mention she fell head-over-heels in love with Dark Urge due to being fascinated by their love, care and devotion to her, not because they're a Slayer. The core of her romance is getting to truly know her heart and who she is, so this stupid scene entirely changes the motive behind her affection from honesty and admiration to just pure vile power objectifying hungriness. She literally ends up being worse than Bhaal now.

There are SO MANY contradictions it is insane... the only scenario I see this scene existing is if Minthara as a companion had two different paths for her character; one being her community-loved cool neutral pragmatic path and the other being this power hungry angry lunatic bitch they made her in this scene. This scene would only make sense if in such a path the Dark Urge player was constantly pushing the idea forward of wanting to reunite with their father, similarly to how Shadowheart or Astarion have their evil paths as a Dark Justiciar and Ascended Vampire.

This scene simply has no place in the game and needs to be removed. As proven with the video above it entirely contradicts Minthara as a character, her principles and her attitude throughout her whole journey, but here is even further proof @ 08:55 why it needs to get the hell out of the game because it also completely clashes against the aftermath of ACT III too;



Also yup I noticed we still technically are in a relationship and can kiss immediately after, but unfortunately it killed her as a character for me. As I mentioned in the PM, I no longer want to have her around me at all because Larian's mistreatment and butchering of the character is physically torturing me.

At this point I am close to just uninstalling the game and leaving for good, as there is nothing for me here but misery with each damn patch. Bugs, issues, inconsistencies I can handle all day long, but butchering a character like this through awful writing? Never.

So to quote Minthara directly from this horseshit scene to express how I feel about it; "Killing me would've been a mercy! At least it would've spared me of hearing this drivel!"


I'd like to add it, but unfortunately I don't have it in me to play through the entire game just to collect an inconsistent idle comment, especially now after Larian ruined the game for me.

Funny. Same but mirrored everytime killed him except one time when he admitted his vampiric nature in dialogue with Dark Urge very soon after one incident with bard.
Here's the video. I don't have save where I kill Astarion but I think I've captured the problem.

Sad to watch it. For me the whole arc of Dark Urge is a big joke (especially reaction of companions after one bard incident). I don't understand this character and don't want to. Just played him to know and that's it. So this new line of Minthara for Dark Urge just proved my point of view for me and it didn't bother me at all (and it didn't ruin Minthara for me). I'm sure they will fix it (or I hope so but looking at this tendency they will actually fix it like she will really break up with redeemed durge after rejecting Bhaal).

I have another one for your list, @rendemption, Minthara seems to "eat" companion comments. I just did dialogue encounter with Yurgir, usually your companions opt in at three points during the conversation. I had Minthara and Gale with me and two of the spots went unused, when I parked Minthi at a distance and did the scene again with only Gale for company all the comment slots were used, same with Gale and Shart.

Can't get the main story consistency right too;

When a redeemed Dark Urge completely rejects their Father, the camp conversation with Minthara after Orin's death will have a line for redeemed Dark Urge still considering themselves as 'part of the family' with Minthara acting as if Dark Urge accepted Bhaal's gift and mastered the Urge in order to dominate the world.

This line should not be available at all to a redeemed Dark Urge, as none of this is true.

*I think Orin bumped you a bit too hard on the head there Minthy*

Crimsonrider you should consider making a full length parody of Baldurs Great 3 , that video had me reel into laughter with the goblin stepping in saying "What?" this is priceless and a good way to bring issues to lightt.
Thank you for putting that together.

Thank you for the footage! It's been added to the list! I hope you've submitted a bug report to them too.
Now I wonder if she has other comments pertaining to other companions even if she never met them, aside from Astarion I mean.


I will have to test this as I remember everyone commented normally in that scene pre-patch 6. If you have any footage, that would be tremendous help. Otherwise, thanks for the heads up! I'll get around to it myself, eventually.




I decided to add the breakup to the bug list, but I highly doubt she is meant to really break up with redeemed Durge tbh. And like, not only because it's out-of-character for her and rather extreme, but also because for this dialogue to even begin to make sense, they'd have to remove these epilogue lines:



And these lines:



All evidence seems to point towards this being cut content, but I'm ready to eat my words. I have lost all faith in Larian XD


I thought the same thing. Although I do have to point out Minthara is power hungry no matter what - that is her core trait. She is just lenient in most cases, as she said in one of her endings: she is not unreasonable, and survival seems to matter more to her nearing the end of the game.

There should be more prerequisites to trigger the breakup, like low/med approval, what choices you made throughout the game, what you've said to Minthara, etc. But even then, as you said, there are way too many contradictions for this to make sense. If her anger is a kneejerk reaction, as in her fear overwhelming her and causing her to act without thought, I can see this making sense, but there has to be a follow-up and the breakup itself has to be rewritten to not revolve around "You rejected glory, and I reject you."

As of now, it hasn't ruined her character for me, because this is not the Minthara I know lol. There are several articles released about this already so maybe Larian will respond soon.

Instead of removing all those epilogue lines it would be so much easier and logical to just remove this post-Orin break up dialogue, quite literally can be done just with one simple tag.

At the end of the dialogue, there's no flags like ORI_State_PartneredWithMinthara = False and ORI_State_WasPartneredWithMinthara appearing anywhere. Those flags are the ones which set up the breakup you get with her when you sleep with Mizora. Them being missing means you do not actually breakup with her, so its clearly bugged or just half finished work.

Was told that this conversation is listed as a topical greeting in the game files, if you continue playing without interacting with Minthara for a while, you should get to a point where the dialogue is skipped altogether if anyone else feels like trying this out after Orin is killed.
I am still in Act 1 with a fresh new dark urge run as I'm curios to see if that matters anything so will give me a few days to reach to Act 3 again.

Hey Larian can we get some working content for once? Anything? No?

If Minthara is abducted by Orin, all of her camp pop-up dialogues related to Orin and the aftermath will be completely broken after she has been rescued.

*So traumatized by Orin that she can't even speak*


__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Oh my apologies for not being clear enough.

I didn't mean that she isn't power-hungry whatsoever, but that she isn't a power-hungry lunatic and a genocidal maniac. Naturally she wants to seize power where she can for the purposes of reshaping the world to make it better by rejecting all of its current flaws and being free of the gods who keep exploiting all of existence for their own whims. But despite her intentions and ambitions, she is neither a lunatic nor a maniac that will walk over all those dear to her while throwing everything away if she does not get what she wants, because she is a beautifully ambitious and incredibly reasonable person that at the end of the day is content with just her love interest and minor conquests.

So I was merely speaking in the scope of that horseshit scene where she is portrayed as a completely power-hungry lunatic and genocidal maniac whose entire personality is being portrayed as an egotistically demeaning insane psychopath who objectifies Dark Urge as a mere weapon she wants unleashed upon the world, which is completely against her character, personal journey and lore.

Like you've said it yourself quite well, that is not the Minthara we all know and love. The real Minthara does not deal in irrational ultimatums and emotional tantrums, instead she always keeps her cool and is a voice of reason for every situation. She'd be the first in line to run up to us and passionately embrace us after telling Bhaal to f*** off because if there's anything she truly admires, it's staying true to ourselves and not letting gods exploit us for their own games. After all she constantly comments about this for Shadowheart rejecting Shar and Lae'zel rejecting Vlaakith.


I've actually tested this yesterday and the video above shows a part of this test;

• The only way for Minthara to avoid this horseshit break-up scene is to intentionally let Minthara be abducted by Orin. After she is abducted she will go back to camp, have some pop-up dialogues which are all bugged too (what a god damn surprise) and she'll never again speak of Orin or anything related to her.
• If however she is not abducted by Orin, there is no way to avoid this scene unless you never speak with Minthara ever again for the rest of the game, because it's queued to trigger immediately on a normal interaction. Does not have a pop-up dialogue.

Looks like they really wanted to make the choice between Minthara and Halsin difficult, huh?

That this is just cut content that got falsely flagged together with all the other bugged dialogue flags for her is the only thing still giving me hope. Especially the fact that she'd break up directly after confessing true love (which is a pretty big deal for a drow) is mind boggling.


Agree. I'd actually like that tbh. It'd give her a new depth. She broke her cold mask in a moment after seeing DUrge die and being confronted with the fact that they might actually lose. She could even apologize for her outburst to a high approval romance.

With all the bugs it has caused I feel adding her for a good playthrough was not worth it. She was one of the few perks we got for an evil playthrough and now we don't even have that.

Big thanks to you and @Crimsomrider for compiling all the bugs!

Query: did anyone ever manage to trigger these romantic banters while romancing Minthara?

Apparently all companions have banter about our relationship with Minthara, but I honestly don't remember ever hearing any of these during my playthroughs as I'd definitely recall them, especially with Karlach. The weird thing is these apparently trigger after ACT II and ACT III romance scenes, but Minthara does not have any romance scenes at all. Was thinking of documenting these as well today by taking Gale into the party, but he had nothing to say.

SHADOWHEART


LAE'ZEL


KARLACH


GALE


WYLL


ASTARION

These interactions exist for all relationships but I never triggered any of them. Edit: I meant, that I never heard any companion comment on any relationship at all.

*imitates a goblin voice* Wait a minute.. huh.. what??

While I am undergoing a new extensive playthrough with Minthara now not once have I ever triggered any of those lines for Minthara, only having done so for Karlach related content when I romanced Karlach extensively and other active team members would have a say while out on the road after the Act relevant romance scene took place but it would be inconsitent and out of blue and not a guaranteed to happen moment.


This gives me hope that there will be two more romance scenes for Minthara in the future, maybe thats one reason I just never seen or managed to have these triggered because.. well... what romance scenes??
None currently exist for Minthara in Act 2 and Act 3, there is no structure for those lines to take place in.

(edit) Check this out, you can hear the VA delivering the Minthara lines.

She also praises Shadowheart for embracing Shar and becoming a Dark Justiciar, which she views as an honor to be fighting alongside with, and scolds Lae'zel for endangering them all for her "childish rebellion" - so there are definitely two sides to her opinion.


Allow me to play the devil's advocate and explain why a breakup itself may not be that polarizing for her character.

First of all, fear is an almost intrinsic part of Minthara's character. Her desire for power could very well be connected to that fear. When Minthara stands in front of the Netherbrain and tries to lift up your spirits, that is akin to me saying "I'm sure Larian will fix Minthara soon" while simultaneously worrying they might never truly fix her XD

We need to remember Minthara has been exiled, stripped away from all titles and privilege. She believes being feared is the only way (for someone like her) to achieve power and, in turn, safety. Upon entering the city, all she talks about is controlling it by sowing fear in people through propaganda or some other scheme so people would grow desperate and rely on her.

This doesn't mean Minthara is entirely fearless (not that anyone was saying this) but it's important to note that she hides her own fear extremely well. In fact, you would likely never even notice it if you didn't pass an insight check or choose certain dialogue options.




This is about Orin. She is utterly terrified, and asks you to promise to not let her fall into Orin's clutches ever again. When you do, she thanks you and regains the confidence she has left. Does that remove her fear? No, but she is grateful that she has you.



Her fear of Orin stems from the unpredictability and sheer savagery Orin would commit. Compare Orin to the Netherbrain, a powerful being she has never faced before and certainly not one she has fully understood. It is impossible for Minthara to not be afraid of this. Does this justify the breakup? Maybe not. Does it make sense for her to be angry at you? I think so. Hear me out here.

No matter how you play it, Minthara will try to see you as a home. This is just as much of a core part of her character as seizing power for her own gain: she longs for somewhere to belong. It is a shame that this dialogue is locked behind very low approval. I took the screenshot below from this Youtube video as I don't have the gall to do it myself.



When Durge confronts Orin and wins, imagine the relief and happiness she feels as you are one step closer to forging the future you promised together. Then you stubbornly reject Bhaal, and Bhaal takes out the blood from which he made you with, and you die. That's it. If Withers wasn't on your side, Minthara would be left alone. The person she viewed as the closest thing to a home and the focal point of all her plans, is gone. And it was caused by a choice you made from your own accord.

But you were revived, weren't you? She should be happy. But what stops you from making a similar decision in the future? On top of all that, she also warns you that you would lose her beforehand.




This is the face of someone who is afraid. According to the devnote here, this is a "warning that her romance with the player would end if they rejected a power inside themselves" and while I do not fully agree with the direction here. This particular scene could be interpreted in various ways with added context.

If it's not clear yet, I'm not supporting the breakup in its current state. I'm saying it can be rewritten or further developed to stem from a very different reasoning as Veranis and I pointed out here:


Minthara is not prone to outbursts, but when confronted with nigh impossible odds and almost losing the one she's come to value the most, I can very much see it happening. A thoughtless breakup leading to a follow up (and potentially a second, more emotional, romance scene) would solidify this as a great addition for me, but I'm aware this opinion may not be shared by many. For now, all we can do is wait. It's always fascinating to see people's different interpretations of her character :3


It is worth it, to me at least. I saw a lot of people paying more attention to my favorite character, and it got Larian to pay more attention too (albeit not that much in retrospect), so I am happy with their decision to add that possibility. I am, however, not happy about Larian's treatment of her character. As Crimsomrider has pointed out, this is completely separate :'3

That's kinda the thing for me though. Even if they massively rewrote the scene to narratively fit the scope of the game and the character, I would still not be in favor of Minthara trying to break up with the Dark Urge in any shape or form.

At best the only compromise I would be completely alright with is her potentially questioning our decision and lecturing us about it depending on how deep our bond is, as she has been doing so throughout the whole game when we make decisions which she does not entirely agree with. This I can totally see happening and would even welcome, as it would give us an opportunity to explore her way of thinking even further (this is even mentioned in my raw feedback post to have her react to Dark Urge's fate).

But breaking up over a personal quest regarding our own eternal fate, after everything we did for her? Just no.

It's an undeserved and unjustified ultimatum because as if it wasn't punishment enough having to already lose all of this massive content early-on, they'd want to also punish us with potentially losing our love interest during the game's final hours? I'm sorry, but I can't stand for that at all. It's unfair, it's disrespectful to the player's invested time into the character and to me personally sickening to the point that if she ever were to try to break up I would never again have her in my party.

Minthara as an apostate of both Lolth and the Absolute, describes herself word-for-word as an exact reflection of a redeemed Dark Urge, both being treated as mere weapons by these gods and wanting to do nothing with Bhaal after the fact... she has no legitimate reason whatsoever to throw a tantrum and break up over something she is against and has absolutely no influence on because it makes her come off as an extremely toxic, ungrateful and hypocritical love interest otherwise. Especially after everything the player has done for her by saving her life not once, not twice, but three times.

There are simply thousands of inconsistencies across the board regarding even the slightest hint of wanting to break up (both before, during and after the Bhaal choice), not just in ACT III either but in ACT II to ACT I as well.

Not to mention that one of the offered reasons to reject Bhaal is literally tied to her wanting us to protect her;

• Minthara (if romanced during ACT I) is only alive because we resisted our Urge (had she been romanceable in early ACT II, she'd would also be alive there once again only because we yet again resist our Urge)
• In ACT II she is only alive because we go out of our own way to save her and even provide shelter to her, despite everyone else questioning that decision.
• And in ACT III she is only alive because we fight Orin on her behalf, instead of her doing it herself or us doing it together (also mentioned in my raw feedback post).

So after the Dark Urge went out of their own way to save her, kept doing all the legwork, saving her life three times and looking out for her own best interests by ensuring this psychopath family can't threaten her anymore, she would have the audacity to break up with Dark Urge for doing the exact same thing she did to Lolth and the Absolute and even Bhaal? I'm sorry, but I will never be okay with that.

Regardless of whatever reasoning we might come up with here, even if lets say there was a legitimate concern for her to do so, it would make her an extremely petty character to try to break up after everything we went through as a couple, especially after she uses the term 'alurlssrin'. That's a hard founded fact unfortunately because people who truly love each other solve their issues, they do not dish out ultimatums.

I personally am of belief that this scene is simply not intended to be in the game at all and I will be the happiest Dark Urge in the world when that turns out to be true, because I tested absolutely every single scenario possible regarding this scene and she does not react whatsoever to the player being enslaved by Bhaal (if they fail the duel) or accepting Bhaal. The fact that she's okay with us being forced into servitude just like she was, but not okay with us willingly refusing to do so says all there is to know about it, especially when she herself is an exact reflection of a redeemed Dark Urge.

I cannot even begin to conceptualize an idea why this scene is in the game, but considering the facts that; it isn't even mentioned in the patch notes, directly contradicts her immediate pop-up dialogue as soon as Orin is dead, awfully breaks her story and character consistency, takes away her unrelated content afterwards and does not have any reaction if the Dark Urge is enslaved by Bhaal or even accepts Bhaal... simply tells me this scene is yet another horrible bug due to lack of any quality control regarding her character.

What sucks and bothers me is that Minthara players have to eternally suffer through bugs and blockers while being treated as mere guinea pigs to playtest the game, waiting months for things to 'potentially' get addressed and forced to sit in the corner expected to be grateful about this mistreatment... when all we want is to just play the game, enjoy it and have the time of our lives like every other player does with any other companion. Something that a single patch entirely focusing on fixing Minthara would solve in an instant.

But I am no longer welcome on these forums to speak openly about these issues, so I'll just say I enjoyed our discussions here and also apologize to everyone here for my own Urges. You and the people in this thread are a wonderful reminder of how fascinatingly constructive and passionate valuable discussions used to be on this forum during Early Access. Not surprising because Minthara is still stuck in Early Access

I had my act 2 scenes after Ketheric's defeat with Minty yesterday and the camp scene that follows garnering high approval. Most of it, as well as what you have written here, made me think that she and Gale should sit down and have a conversation. Gale too can have a very emotional outburst at the brain stem, which comes completely out of nowhere if you haven't picked up on the very subtle signs how utterly and truly terrified he is of loosing the final battle, and condemning the whole sword coast, his friends and the PC to be the Netherbrain's dominion. I thought it was a bug at first too, because it came so completely out of the blue and had some weird reasoning in it (the recent patch made it much more coherent, thankfully) but in the end it makes sense, that the guy who clings to power because he feels lost as a person, defaults back to his divine command when coming face to face with the true horror the Netherbrain's victory might entail. And for Minthara too, power also seems to be something she clings to after being rendered powerless. I can't say anything about the Dark Urge or the romance situation, but she seems to be very much on the same power-as-compensation-path as Astarion and Gale are, so the above theory about rejecting divine power resulting in the loss of what she holds dearest makes sense. Especially when compared to Gale's brainstem dialogue where he reverts back to wanting to obey the divine command to save what he holds dear - they do love their parallel themes after all.

Minthara is an awesome addition to the "good" path because she makes the good path harder. Without her, it is easy to dismiss the cultists as just that: crazy, cruel cultists. You might know that many of them were tadpoled against their will - your characters have been too after all - but the level of deceit and cruelty is never fully illustrated unless you hear Minthara's gut-wrenching tale of how she arrived at Moonrise. I do really hope they patch her up and flesh her out a bit because I don't think, I ever want to leave her dead again. (And her voice actress deserves far more recognition than she has gotten, what an awesome performance.)

I am still so MAD, in all my playthroughs I never gotten any romance banter. At. All. And I have 1k hours on this game.

How it is possible?????

I'm pretty sure it's cut content, not available in the game. At least I think so, could also just be a bug preventing them to trigger.

When I did romance Karlach which I assume would work since she's not Minthara, I also never got any of these romance banters and I definitely would remember this one;

• Karlach: Hey, Shaddy, got a quick question about the best way to treat an infernal burn.
• Shadowheart: Shaddy? Really?
• Karlach: Hearty? Shadsy? Or maybe just The Fringe?
• Shadowheart: 'Shadowheart' will do just fine, thanks. Love is making you fanciful.
• Karlach: You might be right.

I have definitely had romance banter organically triggered from Karlach and Lae'zel and some of them are presumably only triggered in a specific party composition and walking at a specific point of a map, whether its suppose to be more random or not I wouldn't know.

Two romance banters thast I remember, one requires you to have Lae'zel and Astarion as your active party members and somewhere between Blighted Village and The Grove they have a romantic banter that gets triggered.
Another instance of Karlach's romance banter is only triggered if you keep Karlach and Halsin as your active party members and walk through the halls of Stone Mason building in Act 2 and I can totally see there being unique romance banters that has not been discovered because of lack of a specific party composition at a certain point of the game given just how many variables you can mix your party composition into and walking them through in the view of the whole game.

In most of my playthroughs I admittedly always get stuck with Karlach, Lae'zel and Shadowheart as my most kept party composition so there is a lot I miss out from doing so, if you pay attention and listen to this clip.


Its been seamlessly compiled as if one massive single group banter, but hearing how certain party members response to each other gives away which ones you should keep as active if you want to enable yourself the chance of having them triggered at some point in the game, but given how there are banters between Karlach and Shadowheart I 've never managed to trigger and them being the most used in my team, is it safe to assume most of it is just unavailable in the current build of the game? I would feel inclined to agree so.

My last playthroughs for trying to discover anything new for Minthara my party composition has mostly always been " Minthara, Lae'zel, Shadowheart" withouth much thought to it, anyone cares to share what your combination has been with Minthara in your party?