This is a bit of my sidebar, but I have to agree that despite what Larian says, the Emperor was not meant to exist. The voice actor said he was only cast about 8 months before release, and he had already been working on other voices for the game. Theres also just weird stuff about the character’s story that don’t make sense and were pretty clearly made hastily. The emperor’s backstory being tied to Moonrise Towers feels too hard to fit in with the established Ketheric timeline, and the situation with the emperor telling you not to go to the Creche and the conversation that happens with him in the prism there feel incongruous with other parts of the plot.
Having played a lot of Early Access I feel like I’ve got a good idea of what the intended good/evil paths were which we no longer see in the game. I think the old dream guardian likely would have ended up being a manifestation of the Absolute itself, urging you to engage with the old tadpole system of being given gifts (there are still lines in game about this even though the mechanics were totally changed). Building off the “evil path” of Act 1 where you raid the grove, I feel like an Evil Playthrough would’ve led to you further infiltrating the cult at Moonrise towers and then working with the elderbrain instead of against it to take out the Dead Three’s chosen and take over the world yourself. The good path likely would’ve been mostly the same, but with Orpheus being a more important character and the one providing your protection directly. The Emperor was sort of just shoved in the game as a band-aid to wrap together the new tadpole mechanics and the changed story of the Absolute.
I would really love a definitive edition that realizes Larian’s orginal visions for the game, but they seemingly don’t have an intention of ever making one because it would be a pretty big timesink for them when they’re trying to develop a whole new game, and would invalidate a lot of a story people already love dearly. I really get the motivations to fully move on from the game, but I think if enough people started a movement to tell them this is what we want, we could eventually convince them to change their minds after their next project.
If this is true then I wonder what caused them to change it, because I think it's a lot more interesting than the main story we got. The original dream figure being the Absolute would make more sense since they show you the image of the player ruling over a burning city to tempt you into using the power. I just don't know why they would lie about it.
There definitely used to be more consequences for using the tadpole than a dice roll. In the scene where you free Nere in the grymforge he used to be able to take control of you and your companions if you had used the tadpole too many times. Astarion had voiced dialogue about what it felt like to be under someone's control again.
But the Absolute vs Orpheus would have been a lot more compelling to me than the Emperor storyline. BG3 is one of my favorite games of all time but that's definitely not because of the main story which is just kind of mid imo.
And yeah I don't see them retconning the Emperor and rewriting the story to that extent even if they were to continue working on the game, and even if the Emperor wasn't always a part of things. I don't know of a game story that has ever been changed so fundamentally post release before. So that's just unfortunate if true.
But there's still a lot they can rework. I'd love for them to work Ketheric as a companion back in. My main gripe is with Gortash and Orin's quests though. The way the ultimatum with Orin's captive is handled is just terrible in pretty much every way, for example. There's no urgency surrounding it and it has no relevancy to the story or any of the quests. It's not a part of anything to the point where it might as well not have happened. The game certainly treats it like it didn't happen anyway.
