RQ, I feel you, my first campaign was one of the best and worst storytelling experiences of all time. Every choice felt like choosing between the bad and the worse, I swear my character's facial expression even changed to a constant sad face and during harbour scene I laughed out loud when I saw a dialogue option about 'leaving this wretched city and going on a holiday to Amn'. I also had to kill Laezel since I trusted the Emperor to be the only one who can...
Endings aside, cool thing about the Emperor is this: if you choose to be somewhat trusting or neutral to him from the get go - it is EXTREMELY hard to read his predatory nature between the lines. I genuinely wasn't sure about the guy during my first PT, the Balduran lore dump made by doubts grow like wild weeds... this, is masterful storytelling, when sometimes you are so conflicted you need to take a day break from playing the game just to contemplate the choice you're about to make
