Sad to see it came to people hoping for mods to fix Larian's mess, instead of Larian themselves - a company that prides itself on story details and reactivity. Not sure which desperate hope is worse, at this point Raphael will be paying a visit to us all grin

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

But yeah... the reason why everything feels the way you mentioned is because they're not interested in telling an evil story in the first place, which is why they treat any failure and evil choice as just a minor deviation of the good path, to entertain as mere eye-candy and nothing more. When in actuality evil choices should lead to opposite fully-developed story branches that offer fully unique story content, through a different perspective and path.

Naturally they don't offer any of that, which is why even these merely extended evil endings also follow their same atrocious attitude towards evil as they're just trying to visually impress while providing no content as usual. 0% story substance, 100% cool visuals. And while the general public is easily impressed, the genuine roleplayers invested in the evil story with Minthara/Astarion are watching in utter disgust as the game is defecating upon their 100 hour of playtime by disregarding the established lore, character motives, player agency and seeing their love interest discarded like trash.

This same atrocious attitude towards evil is also why Minthara got designed in the first place and as is evident ended up ultimately murdering the character. They didn't create her because they truly wanted to tell an intricate story of a companion as an Absolute's victim and in doing so provide an insightful experience and unique journey for the player to explore, but to merely create a compensation for deviation, flaunting her as some sort of secret bonus companion to impress the general public who couldn't care less. So naturally they abandoned the character created for all the wrong reasons.

"Hideous... all of it!" - laezelmad

Larian's aversion to evil became so extreme with BG3 they also rewrote their entire Early Access cast from neutral evil to neutral/good and in doing so murdered the essences of those characters. Even lazily threw Minthara into the good path mix eventually because they still can't bother themselves to do her justice. This exact atrocious attitude of theirs is also why any time the player tries to deviate from the intended story path they're met with 10 minutes of exposition LECTURING the deviating player.

  • 5 minutes of freaking exposition lecturing the player trying to side with Minthara at the Goblin Camp.
  • 2 minutes of freaking exposition lecturing the player trying to get to Moonrise with Kar'niss.
  • 10 minutes of freaking exposition lecturing the player in front of Nightsong trying to join Baltazar with Shadowheart in the party

Unless the player sticks to the intended role of a heroic, honorable, virtuous, valorous, noble, good, kindhearted, selfless, paragon hero... they will be lectured about it. And if they choose to deviate from it then their character will be portrayed as prime evil incarnate, the ultimate douche. Won't get any unique content whatsoever, in fact the player will lose content but hey... cool gory cutscenes, right?

[Linked Image from media1.tenor.com]

Not to mention they constantly keep branding her in all their interviews as EVIL, when ironically enough she does not commit a single evil deed in the entire game! She's so unfinished that there's not a single moment in the entire game where Minthara even gets a chance to do something evil. She's all bark and no bite, who are they trying to convince here?

Lae'zel tries to murder me several times throughout the game for doing the right thing, she literally ended my first ever Honour run at the very finale and doomed the entire world thanks to her stubbornness. What is she, a saint? Shadowheart tries to murder Lae'zel several times and is a massive disrespectful douchebag towards the dead (her EA leftovers), Astarion constantly keeps trying to murder people and has to be held back... oh but sure, Minthara our 'ride or die' gal is evil evil evil just because they say so.

Blows my mind that they had actual great written evil companions... like the amazing Sebille. A sweet elf abducted and dominated, turned into a slave to be used as a weapon by her Master, broke free seeking revenge upon all those who wronged her. Starts off extremely rude and distant with so many barriers up, even threatens to kill the player (just like Astarion) and ends up murdering several people without the player's say so. She's brutal. But then the barriers slowly start to come down and the roaring tigress eventually becomes a purring loving kitten by the end of the game. Such a beautifully written character with such a sweet ending. Along with the Red Prince, she is the best damn character they ever wrote.

I can't fathom they fell so embarrassingly low. From Sebille and Red Prince to... this... broken, unfinished, uncared-for companions like Minthara, Halsin and Wyll.