Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Some thoughts on a few events/characters

They would if Aradin's group escaped and managed to tell the others. You know... After he made a distraction for them.


Better than sitting in the Grove doing nothing while waiting for the Goblins to come and massacre everyone.

Also, he's not relying on Tav to free him or thin the forces out. The goblins would naturally thin themselves out as they either found the Grove and started an attack, or found some other place to raid.

To say nothing about, yes, he comes into action when Tav frees him. Doesn't mean he's not working on a plan to do something himself (Sure, whatever he does come up with fails if we account for sequence breaking by going to Mountain Pass early but that doesn't mean he was completely reliant on Tav)


I actually don't. I hate the character.

But his situation regarding the goblins is not proof that he's some sort of imbecile.

1. I did not say , he is an imbecile, I said, he isn't very comptent.
2. Aradin can just leave again, which is pretty likely when he and Zevlor fight each other.
3. The goblins can thin themselves out by ... finding the grove? Wasn't that according to you the thing, oh so wise Halsin wanted to prevent?

You can look at it howevery you want, it doesn't make sense. I can get that he had an 'Oh shit' moment, got caught and waited until he found some intel and then vamoos. But just sitting there until he dies (if Tav does nothing and just goes to the mountain path) is just not a good plan. It might be a plan, but I don't have a lot of faith in it. Especially since those goblins eat everything and might look for the bear, if they get hungry again.

Why is it so important, that Halsin doesn't look incompetent in this caseP There is no evidence, that he planned to get caught or even did that to help Aradin and the rest. They all said, they lost sight of Halsin and just fled, when they realised, there are too many goblins. None of them said, that Halsin helped them flee, just that he charged and ran. So it is not clear, if he even tried to help them or make a run for the Selunite post.

I also thought at some point that having Karlach stay at the HoH as a bouncer until her heart gets fixed would be a cute inbetween ending for her - until someone pointed out that she gets hunted by Zariel. So her staying at the HoH would endanger everyone living there. But it would be nice to at least have an option to talk to the Gondians about her heart - well, high hopes for patch 7.

... They mean the same thing.


Aye. But Halsin doesn't know that. He doesn't know Aradin will get into an argument because Aradin was being chased by goblins...


Yes. But it is an example of an action that we know the goblins will take. Halsin doesn't know specifically that they will find the Grove or that his only time to act will be when they've found the Grove.

Halsin's actions only look stupid in the eyes of people who know all the eventualities from the scenario. But if you consider his position, where things are uncertain, they seem reasonable.


Because your stance is that Halsin HAS to be incompetent due to this specific scenario. While I'm pointing out that just because it looks incompetent from us, who know all eventualities, it doesn't necessarily make him incompetent.

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to listen in on the plans and get close to the actual leaders, rather than some lowly prison guards, by turning into a rat and just blend in with all the other rats that are freely scurrying about the place?

I support the theory that he is stuck in his bear form as a trauma response. He goes into fight or flight mode and when in that state he instinctively goes into his bear form because that is where he feels most comfortable and safe. The narrative strongly supports that this is something that happens to Halsin when his instincts take over.

You don't have to call it incompetence, it's a character flaw, which can also make a character more interesting.

Taril: I think, it's enough now, we can do that the whole evening and not come to an understanding. And I frankly don't care enough to do that. Btw. imbecile is much worse than being a bit incompetent, but I'm very sure, you will discuss that through to the end too and I'm not there for it. So let's move on, ok?

There is another deciding factor, and I don't know if the game actually gives the solution (I don't remember) : When exactly was Sazza captured. If Halsin was still in the grove, he could have gotten info about who the leaders were before he made his move. (She 's happy and proud to talk about Gut and the absolute to her captors) If she was captured after he left, he would have had no clue about Gut, Minthara or Razglin before going off. So then it was just trying to find out what the story was with all these tadpoles assembling here.

Edit : and here's another time-problem. Arradin arriving at the grove , fleeing from the goblins is an indicator that they left on the mission not very long ago. A few days maybe. But Kagha setting the ritual in motion as the result of increasing attacks from monsters indicates that he's left for quite some time already. Same for the druids sending out birds for news of Halsin. It shows he's gone for a long time. Longer than expected. (Arradin had not yet returned so they had no news of what happened. They were worried was just because Halsin stayed away longer than expected) Nettie doesn't mention Sazza at all, so she is unaware of the absolute and Gut. Neither are Wyll, Kagha or Rath. They know only that the goblins must have a competent leader to keep them in check but nothing more.

The reason Halsin is in the cell in bear form is because that is what the quest requires. We can choose to take on the the quest of saving Halsin “perhaps goblin-caught, perhaps dead” and we are specifically told to look out for “an elf with the presence of a bear”

Why are Rugan and Olly still cowering in the cave facing the gnolls when they could carefully sneak out the back? Because we need to have the chance to meet them.

As far as that goes why haven’t the gnolls already massacred them? Because we need to have the opportunity to interact with them.

It’s difficult to write well when you have to subvert everything to the player, more so when the player is given some agency. However that’s what you sign up for when you decide to write plots for computer games.

Also you only notice a lot of the plot inconsistencies when you’ve played the game multiple times and had time to think.


I think the writing also suffers from the committee effect since there are so many writers involved.

I'm also disappointed at the lack of companion reaction to proof of the Absolute plot, Karlach and Gale especially.

I would love to be able to realize the consequences of the Act 2 explosion in advance, if we found enough information and passed some sort of intelligence or wisdom check. I would like my character to give Gale a better reason to not explode. Lots of the dialogue options to convince him not to do it boil down to, "Trust me bro, power of friendship." The collateral being so much higher than he had been led to believe seems more persuasive to me.

Yes, it is really strange, that companions, especially Fake and Karlach, don't have a reaction to the whole stuff,we find in Moonrise. And then they act surprised, when they see the Crown and Gortash in the last scene.

While I understand the sentiment, I think that "trust in our friendship/love" is the better reason not to explode for companion Gale here. He is terrified and thinks that he has to do as Mystra commands because you mere mortals can't possibly take down such an enemy. Reason does not really combat that, it's a question of trust. Trust me that we can do this. (I dislike the "This is not your decision to make" option much more.)

But I think there should be some sort of check or quest progression for Avatar-Gale, because in Gale's Origin both Tara and Elminster tell you to use your head to figure out what's going on, so it would be neat if the quest-log reflected that. Ideally it would be cute if your companion staged an intervention and gave you a pep talk before entering the final room, or you could talk things through with Tara at some point, but I understand that's way more effort than updating the chat log at least.

Gale might have died up to a dozen times by the time you reach act 3. Especially with Withers, dieing is no big deal for you, so neither would blowing up be for Gale.
And even if you want to ignore Withers, its explicitly shown that Gale owns a True Ressurection scroll, so coming back to live after the explosion is possible.

Just another failure of Larians storytelling.

Yes, I think Halsin doesn't have full control of his wildshape ability. I'm sure if you recruit him he has all the wildshape options, but I didn't and so in my head-cannon he only does bear; and not always deliberately.
If you want to be mean, intelligence is his dump stat...

Other people have said that sometimes characters react as you read books, but before that I was thinking of another incident. In act 3, where Orin Also, do we at that point know that Gortash has taken his new position? It's not unreasonable that the characters don't know who he is yet and/or don't put enough significance into his part of the plan.

I only really remember the halfling from Ethel's Lair, Alfira and Lakrissa. The halfling seemed to recognise me as much as I'd expect given that she was presumably not fully aware of what was happening until the end. Did you save Mayrina in act 1 and then complete the mission in act 3 too? They were all pretty grateful then, although they don't have a lot of dialogue. Alfira and Lakrissa, yeah, love them. Although it glitched a little and played their conversations in the wrong order because I didn't go onto the roof early enough. So I chatted to the two of them together first, before later Alfira was alone and acted like I'd only just arrived.

I certainly don't want to take away existing dialogue options, but I would like expanded options. My more logical characters would try appealing to logic. I would love if the "trust that we can do this" option included a way to talk about how that Elminster's "be a moon Unto yourself" speech was encouraging him to find another way. Elminster thinking there's a better way seems like a big deal, both logically and emotionally.


I like these ideas. The companions have supportive dialogue when Gale first gets his orders... at least if you're not playing as Gale. I could only get Wyll or Lae'zel to react when I was playing as Gale. It would be nice if they all said something, and if they brought it up again.

Oh, I do like that idea! It might also take aways the slightly commanding character the dialogue currently can have - depending on the voice you read it with.


Yes, it is sadly bugged. I hope the next patch fixes the dialogue as well as the companion reactions to when you are a good boy in act 3 and promise Mystra the Crown/Detonation. I had a friend set the missing flags for me to activate Astarion's dialogue for the Elminster scene and enjoyed how frustrated he was with Gale only to spring his "lets take over the cult" speech on him during the next long rest. With a normal Tav, the cult-speech is a bit too chaotic for me to take it seriously, but the way it was worked into Gale's situation turns it into an interesting attempt at manipulation.

Fingers crossed for fixes in patch 7.

The absolute reveal is so baffling to me. The first time I saw those books explain the absolute, I was actually excited. I thought "whoa, if they're revealing this here, what else are they going to reveal later?" Only, there wasn't anyother twist. Why include those books at all? Why utterly ruin your twist like that for no reason?


The orb is described as being able to destroy an area the size of a small city if it explodes. So if Gale explodes, there won't be anyone around to revive him, and frankly, the scroll probably gets destroyed in the explosion too.

I agree with Ghost about the orb - besides, there will be nothing to ressurrect after the blast. So that game over makes total sense to me.

The Absolute reveal was strange, yes. I thouht, there would be more coming in act 3 - maybe an involvment by Raphael or his daddy (since Mephisto is heavily teasered throughout the game). It doesn't make the game bad, I like most of the story, though I still can't understand, what the three Stooges (aka Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul) wanted to achieve. What good is having control over the Swordcoast, when you risk loosing all the souls in the process? That is a pretty high gamble.
I mean at least Bhaal doesn't strike me as the most ... intelligent of the gods, he comes across as that whiny teenager edgelord, everyone, who played DnD during their teenage years probably knows. I didn't know much about Bane and Myrkul, but I guess, they are not much better tbh.

I got the impression that Bhaal just wants to paint the world red, and Bane - or at least Gortash - seems to see it as an efficient tool for control.

It would probably easiest to tone down the content of that book so it only vaguely hints, rather than outright tells. Still it would be nice to be able to talk to your companions about it and get input from them as your investigation progresses. In the beginning you have quite a lot of conversations about the tadpole, but as the story goes on those nearly vanish, even as you learn that the Emperor is struggling more and more to keep the influence of the Brain at bay. In act 3 there is another document detailing how the Crown was modified to be used as a tool to dominate the Brain (instead of giving the Brain all the power) and this too does not inspire comments from your team mates.

I don't know much about how the classic cosmology was resurrected for 5th edition D&D, but in the old books, some of the gods/powers/immortals just wanted to end the world or even the entire multiverse. Bhaal, who I agree isn't the brightest candle in the candelabra, is definitely in that category, Bane definitely isn't. He is about tyranny, ruling and owning everything, not destroying it. However, gods in classic AD&D weren't just about getting those souls for keeps, but were more or less powered by the reverence of mortals. This only worked if they stood for their portfolios. So in a way, Bhaal simply couldn't resist the promised carnage, and Bane's chosen successfully supplanted an at least semi-parliamentary government with the absolutist tyranny of Bane's chosen. No pun intended. The run-up to the coronation would have been a huge payout in power for Bane with many new followers. Some of the records we can find also suggest that the Absolute can't produce nearly as many tadpoles as would be necessary to turn all of Baldur's Gate into soulless mind flayers. Bane could therefore afford to see how the other power would react to Baldur's Gate and possibly Elturgard and further Sword Coast cities falling to the Absolute cult. In the best scenario, he would gain control over a vast new nation under his chosen. If the plan failed, he had sufficient high ranking clergy in the area, so a replacement for Gortash who would restore order and peace, and rebuild Baldur's Gate under the black fist, perhaps even openly, would have been quickly available. I'm not so sure about Myrkul, as he was actually killed in the switch from 1e to 2e (set ~130 years earlier) and I don't know how he was brought back, so I never made his acquaintance until now. He was lord of death as much as lord of the undead, and is described as revelling in mortal fear, so I assume until Tav crashed the Moonrise party, he had a really good time as well.

Finding information and neither Tav nor companions reacting also struck me a few times. What also happened, though, was that information that had been discussed before resurfaced somewhere else, and all of a sudden it was big news again. "Gods! Gortash has a mother?!" Of course, the game has to work for a min/maxed fighter 100h playthrough as well as for the obsessive collector who opens every crate and plucks at every thread. Sometimes, unrelated journal entries would update out of the blue, like when sending an item to another companion or reaching an area. I assumed this had to do with patches making changes, so I tended to ignore these little inconsistencies.