Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion POLL: Tweaks to make the good ending less of a downer? (ENDING SPOILERS)

Wow! You had the worst luck in endings!

Red Queen: Wow you had epic bad luck with your endings.

About Orpheus

I'm honestly not sure which option to pick. I despise the fact that we NEED to select someone to bite the bullet when there is Omeluum, and also that we can't convince Orpheus and the Emperor to agree to temporarily work together because the situation is too dire for petty squabbles. This whole thing in my opinion needs a total rewrite. I also dislike the fact that I need to carry Karlach in my party to be the sacrifice and can't finish the game with someone I like because of it. If we really need to keep the MF railoading in the game, I would have liked if the Astral Prism choice was done is such a way that we contacted our whole party and decided together who gets the short end of the stick. I think more people should volunteer too - for example Wyll who likes to play hero and Lae'zel could be persuaded to save her Prince. I would also like to be able to control other companions in the epilogue or just see them fighting somewhere, because it's ridiculous that the city is on fire but they are chilling at camp and you only see them at the dock once the danger has been eliminated. Thanks for nothing, lazy gits!

When it comes to the actual ending beyond that awful point in the story, I didn't see the need to change anything, only add options, for example: being able to keep Scratch, having Us stay with Tav, being able to take your LI with you and accompany Lae'zel to the Astral as a friend, as well as follow Karlach into the portal. I also want to see Astarion after battle epilogue choices be meaningful, because no matter what you decide to do, you stay in the city with AA and travel with UA if you don't go to the Underdark to be a spawn babysitter.

Overall, everyone was happy in my ending, no downer there. I was very pleased with the result.

Dragon Age Origins and real life taught me that self-sacrifice is for suckers so I'm never going for that option in a game again. What Larian did with the endings shows just that - self-sacrifice means you feel good about yourself for a moment, are branded as a saviour until people eventually forget about you and may possibly backstab you, and you have to live with bitter consequences of your decision while everyone else enjoys their life at your expense.


I agree that


For me, it's kinda all of the above when it comes to the poll.

If that series of events hadn't been quite so buggy when I played it, it probably would have been funny enough for me not to mind such an ignominious end to my poor character's journey


I agree it would be dangerous, but for me that's not a reason not to offer the player the temptation. And if it did go horribly wrong, I think it would be extra pathetic, with the character cursing themselves for their weakness when they initially knew better.


Thanks for the link! It was seeing mention of a bug with attending the party in spirit form in the patch 7 notes that had led me to retry my ending. It's good to know where that option fits in, but yes disappointing that it doesn't apply to a character who chooses not to live as a mindflayer.


You make good points about the niggles with the way that whole scene plays out. But carrying on the theme of small changes that would make the ending less frustrating for me, I just wish that the Emperor could be persuaded to at least talk to Orpheus, even if Orpheus then subsequently refused to work with the Emperor (who has, after all, been stealing his power) and we had to pick between them anyway. In that scenario, it would feel more tempting to side with the Emperor, whereas currently it feels so wrong that he won't even try talking to Orpheus that I'll struggle to pick that option with most characters.


I freely admit I'm a sucker, but his more-honourable-than-thou emotional blackmail totally works on me, and it felt as though he could do so much more good than my characters had potential for. (Especially in my first playthrough where Lae'zel hadn't turned against Vlaakith.) But I do accept that not all good characters need to be so selfless that they'd usurp others' right to self-sacrifice. It just felt wrong in the moment for either of my two characters to let Orpheus do the honours.

About Orpheus: I kind of like him, but my character did go through so much and had to fight several gods and pissed off some more, made friends along the road, maybe a new love - it's hard to go all in to sacrifice myself for a race, that is mostly known for being standoffish and racist. Of course it would be nice, if they get rid of Queen Karen ... eh... Vlaakith..., but for me it is similar to the end of Dragon Age 2, where

I still think, Omeluum should be an option, if he is alive.

Terrible luck aside, It seems to mostly be a question of what a "good ending" means to you personally:

If it means that nobody has to transform into a mind flayer, you either let the emperor do his thing or use Gale-bomb.

If it means that all your companion's resolve their character arcs, Gale-bomb isn't an option because blowing him up is just as much a confirmation of his low self esteem as claiming godhood is. But you can still bite the bullet yourself, or let the emperor or Orpheus do their thing.

If you are looking for the overall morally good path - I don't even know. It again seems to depend on personal priorities.

In the end, at least after your first run, it seems to most often become a calculated game of throwing your least favourite character under the bus - which involves a healthy dose of meta gaming if you want to sacrifice Karlach. (She won't be naturally on your team if you don't like her.)


Thinking about sacrifices, the hardest moment for me was during the run in which Gale tried to convince me that allowing him to explode was the best option right before we started climbing the brain stem. Making the choice in the Astral Prism is unpleasant but it is also a fairly quick pain, by contrast if Gale tries to guilt-trip you into allowing him to sacrifice himself, it is a lengthy conversation (three layers if you don't give in) during which you have to defend your decision to preserve the life of one person while endangering the whole world in the process. I hate this conversation and think it is brilliant because it makes the decision to not make a sacrifice suddenly very hard.

The problem is more that there is never a good reason for the sacrifices.
"There must be a mind flayer" with neither a obvious in game reason or a explanation outside of "because we said so" is just bad storytelling and leads to the choice being completely unsatisfactory.

And for Karlachs fate to be satisfying there are too many leads for there to be a better outcome which was then cut.

So imo not the ending itself needs to be changed, although it might still be required if no satisfying solution can be found, but everything leading up to the ending.

I was meaning "good" in the DnD alignment sense, but beyond that I'll admit I didn't ponder it very carefully, and was interested in others' takes on what that might be. But I suppose what I was really thinking of was an ending where the player character reluctantly turns into a mindflayer because they're not willing to sacrifice anyone else. I do accept that other endings can be thought of as "good", but for me that's the one I suspect most of my favourite good-aligned characters are going to end up experiencing and, while it's always going to be a tragedy, where I'd appreciate some *slight* mitigation of the grimness.

I'm sure I read a while ago that part of the point of the (good) story in BG3 is "are you prepared to sacrifice (things) to save the world?" As I said before, I had the Emperor sort it out so I haven't experienced the same choice as you, but I don't think being good aligned necessarily means sacrificing yourself for the greater good. To me, being good-aligned means generally having good intentions, but maybe turning into a mindflayer is just too far for your character. In my case, my character reluctantly sacrificed Orpheus. Probably not the most good thing to do, but It's what my character would do! (as all bad D&D players say ;-) )

Fair enough! My problem is that sacrificing themselves for the greater good and turning into a mindflayer is, given the choices in front of them, what my two good characters so far would had done (admittedly Karlach didn’t volunteer in either of the playthroughs so whether they’d allow her to sacrifice herself wasn’t tested - I think probably the first would have).

And while I love an HEA as much as the next softie, I have no fundamental problem with a tragic ending for my character or (despite my quibbles on the specific logic of the plotting) a setup where hard choices have to be made, and where goodness isn’t easy. But despite listening to and appreciating the other points of view in this thread, I do persist in my wish that small tweaks would be made to make the self-sacrificing choice just a little bit less of the downer it inevitably is going to be!

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

I want to drop my two cents here. I see some assumptions that Orpheus is one of the good guys. Remember that his mother Gith wanted to conquer the realms herself. Doesn’t matter her motivation. Because of the split with the followers of Zethimon and the fact Vlakath stopped her this wasn’t attempted.

As such, I do *assume* that Orpheus has similar motivations to follow his mother’s footsteps. After they defeat Vlakath, they will likely turn on their Githzerai allies. And then begins their true war.

Siding with the emperor and letting him eat Orpheus may give him the knowledge to someday begin his own grand design (obviously if you allow him to become the absolute).

The only “good” endings I see with meta knowledge is Gale nuking himself, without anyone gaining Orpheus knowledge (letting Orpheus live is still a safer bet as war among equals is much better than a unified mindflayer race). Even you or Karlach being mindflayers with that knowledge is dangerously edging the grand design.

The D&D universe still has an ace up the sleeve if the grand design were to begin. That ace is the God born Dead, Atropus. He has a thing for killing mindflayers it seems.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Atropus

Fair point that we don't know how the whole Orpheus thing will turn out. From a good-aligned perspective, my biggest problem is that we have to side with the Emperor without even talking to Orpheus and giving him a chance to help out. If we were able to let him out and he then refused to cooperate with the Emperor (or they refused to cooperate with each other) then to my mind there would be more of a choice to be made there.

From the in-game info such as what we find in the creche and what Orpheus says when freed, I do think the impression he gives is positive enough that a good-aligned character would, for me, need to be imagined to either be suspicious-minded or to have knowledge of the githyanki that's not presented in the game (both totally valid RP options!) to find it easy to side with the Emperor over Orpheus. But if the Emperor were less unreasonable about flouncing off in a huff just because we insist on talking to Orpheus, then depending on the relationship that had developed over the course of the adventure could well be enough to swing things in his favour if the two refused to work together when they both had a chance.

I must admit that I'm quite torn between "miserable, but liking it" and "miserable, but can be fixed with a few tweaks". For my Tav (Orphic Githyanki necromancer), the ending she got surely felt horrible.

From what I understand, there were a number of story elements that had to be abandoned when Russia invaded Ukraine. The entire St Petersburg studio had to be shuttered and the employees evacuated to the other studios. Doing so we lost the return to Avernus, etc. There does appear (when speaking to the gnomes and steel watchers) there was a quest line about/for karlach’s heart, that didn’t get implemented.

The staff was evacuated because Sven saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want his employees drafted in the war.

RQ, I do agree with you somewhat; however, Orpheus likely can read the Emperors motives like when he read you mind. Doing so he would have known all the false hoods the Emperor was saying and likely would have immediately attacked all of you. By betraying the Emperor first, he atleast he knew you could be either used until no longer needed (like the Emperor maybe doing), or at minimum an enemy of my enemy is “currently” my friend type scenarios.

Oh yeah for sure, Orpheus is also very clearly not good. That's why even knowing how to not have a mindflayer I still end up having Orpheus do it. Let Lae'zel after all she's learned with the party lead the Githyanki and perhaps the whole lot of them learn a little more tolerance from her example.

Thanks for the context! That does make sense.

The good ending is miserable and that's the way I like it

Yet, I don't like how they're railroaded to be that way sometimes. It's come up often enough, but there are plenty of things given to us in the game that people find absent from the choices we're given, without even a Fawkes level of lampshading.

I haven't played the game for a few months and only came back to see if the ending had been changed. Thanks @TheRedQueen for advocating for changes during the beta!

I chose "The good ending is miserable and nothing short of a complete rewrite could make it any better" because that is what I would need to play the game again. There are small tweaks that could be made to make *less* of a downer but the end game is deeply flawed.

@Sozz just introduced to the concept of lampshading and I'm going to start using that word all the time. The "someone needs to become a mind flayer" is a lampshade event. lol wut? We have just freed the Gith messiah and we have the chosen of one of the most powerful gods in Faerun on our side I think we will be okay.

So you can kinda feel okay if Orpheus decides to become ghaik once he says no Gale's offer. But that is still a downer because the rebel Gith lose their most powerful weapon against Vlaakith as well as their most powerful weapon against the mindflayers. From a practical - not moral - stance that's bad news for the multiverse because the Gith prevent the mindflayer empire from reforming. Metaknowledge tells us that the rebel Gith actually do pretty well against Vlaakith without Orpheus but Tav doesn't know that at the time. And from a moral POV sitting there saying "go ahead, destroy your soul and the hopes of your people if you want" doesn't feel right either.

Hope people don't mind if I bring this in from this thread - I'm trying respect RQ's desire to keep the conversation in this thread.


https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=949890#Post949890



Gale's ending could be better if it were rewritten to be consistent with FR lore. It would be the good aligned choice if we saw Gale get a Gawain and the Green Knight like moment where he sacrifices himself and we all get a scene where Mystra tells Gale he has redeemed himself that would nice. And Mystra would be acting like the Mystra of the forgotten realms novels, not like one of the gods from DOS2

But that's not ideal if you aren't playing Origin Gale because it takes attention away from Tav. Tav is no longer the main character, she is part of Gale's party.

Some are happy with squiding out and assuming that they will be good mind flayer. But we have sooo, so, so much in evidence in the game that tells us that is a bad assumption (all of which is backed up by FR lore)

So sacrificing your soul and committing suicide before you complete Ethel's prophecy of becoming a mind flayer that slaughters all their friends is the good ending. (good aligned, not just good for me). You avoid all the deadly sins, notably the sin of pride - Orpheus has more to offer the multiverse than does Tav. Letting him take the hit is, at best, a neutrally aligned option.