Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Patch 7 Closed Beta Discussion

The way to talk about the current state of affairs in a borderline contemptuous manner (using words like 'butchering', 'joke', 'awful', 'imbecilic' etc...) is as pointless as correcting other players on how they should play. Which I didn't do, I corrected the misunderstanding of a concept of roleplaying, not the way they roleplay.

But that's why for the Origins, you have character specific endings (talking about the currently existing ones) and dialogue choices as well as the generic ones every Tav has. So you can choose an option unique to your character if you like or the generic ones if they feel more appropriate to you. For example during Gale's magic lesson, when prompted to picture the concept of harmony, Shadowheart can picture the perfect darkness, while Astarion can equate it with the feeling of sunshine or the memory of being alive, but everyone can think of the current moment or hum a tune.

Surely, they have their 'core' choice, yet they still have the other 'generic' options available. That means they can still be chosen, their stories tailored to the playthrough here and now. In the game where outcome is determined by the roll fo the dice, playthroughs won't be the same and choices also don't need to. For me a generic line that perfectly falls in place with the origin character's development is always preferable to an origin specific tag that feels out of place within the narrative.

Thanks for actually bringing that up Anska. That's why having these discussions is important.

Until you mentioned it yourself it completely slipped my mind (due to some of these unique Origin ending issues) that Minthara/Astarion as love interests are actually supposed to be present in every other character's Origin ending too (if they were romanced). And because of that every ending has to properly account for having them as their love interest, especially if the avatar Origin ends up becoming a vampire consort under Ascended Astarion.

But after seeing how the love interest was treated in Chosen Dark Urge's ending, I'm now even drastically more concerned how they're portrayed in other character's Origin endings. What does the love interest do if Lae'zel becomes the Absolute? What do they do if Gale becomes the Absolute? I cannot even begin to imagine Wyll or Karlach's love interest in their ending. Does the game just miserably push Ascended Astarion to the side so the Origin character can have their evil moment? Or does he interfere and say; "No, we're doing this my way precious."

I truly am curious how the romance aspect of each unique Origin ending is treated, because Minthara and Astarion are supposed to be by every Origin character's side till the very end. Had Larian spent more time and effort into these endings I would've loved if there was an actual power dynamic going on between Ascended Astarion and an avatar Origin becoming the Absolute. That would be so fun!

Because the Emperor can fully dominate the player, so I would hope Ascended Astarion can too. Would be very interesting roleplay, imagine how awesome it would be if the player romanced Ascended Astarion till the very end with a Chosen Dark Urge and then Astarion took control of him, ultimately using him as a sanguine weapon to butcher the world but deny him from fully fulfilling his purpose.

Now something like that would be awesome

You are not playing your own character when you play an origin. You are playing someone elses creation. If you want generic, you can still use the generic evil endings, at least that is my impression after watching them on yt. I'd like origin content to be consistent with their characterization as a companion, including their specific evil ending. Tailoring a playthrough to make Larian's ending make sense, like in your Wyll example, is to me closer to metagaming than roleplaying. Might be fun to you, not to me.

On an afterthought, my question would be why even play an origin character, if you are looking for generic content that fits as manyas possible options? That is what the custom characters are for. When I have played Gale, the only generic choice at the end was 'dominate the brain'. The other available choices were specific to Gale: what to do with the orb, the crown and Mystra. Origin characters already play in a more limited way than custom Tav, that is their point.

You see the vision, Crimsomrider. ^^ I have my own thoughts on what I would really love for an evil romance ending with Avatar-Gale but let's see what the game makes of it first. At the very least, I would like the scene for for romanced Astarion or Minthara to be a reflection of the Morning-after scene of the good ending. So that when the time to choose the path forward comes, you make a suggestion to your LI, "Shall we ... , my love?" instead of simply making a choice for yourself. That would at least make the romance feel present in some form.

For the first part of your post: if they keep the interpretive endings AND add the specific ones that ARE tied to specific actions/choices, thats a good thing for sure.

As for the second part, I've already explained it. Why would all your origin playthroughs lead to a singular end in a game with so many variables? It is akin to watching a movie with an inconsistent plot, where main character acts with poor recognition of the world around them. There are certain story points for origin characters that only include specific options. Let's call those 'big story puzzles', yet story won't be complete until the whole puzzle is complete, the smaller pieces are as vital. And those smaller pieces need to fit with the bigger ones. There might be three specific options to choose at the crossroads, but their interpretation and meaning can shift from one pt to another, based on other, non-origin narrative/choices.

I am sorry if I missed it in the conversation but have you played one of the Origin characters? Because it somehow feels like you have not and a lot of the confusion or disagreement might stem from this. Nobody was at any point talking about one singular outcome.

I have to second Anska here: have you played an origin character? Because your answer confuses me. The discussion was whether the origin evil ending fits their character, not whether they only get one ending. The generic evil endings I have seen on yt were from Astarion's origin run, so I assume the other companions get access to these as well. Dark urge might not, depend on the choices you make at the temple, but this is already so in the game.

Yes, I finished the game as Gale and stopped mid act 2 as Shadowheart. Can you elaborate on why you would suspect me on not playing an Origin character? It wasn't quite clear.

What I meant by 'a singular end' was a specific ending for characters that dictate their motivations, overriding other possible vision for the character and their story. Like Wyll going ham torturing demons in avernus because of *insert trauma*. I don't want a couple of 'evil' choices at the turning points to railroad the plot into a particular scenario like this.

What makes 'God Gale' ending good, for example, is that you can interprete 'Ambition' very broadly. This ending can tickle the evil box or can be perfectly suitable for a good character who just advocates for change in the world, or can be seen as falling for the 'godhood' trap and losing humanity. Thats what makes good writing, in my opinion.

I didn't say 'generic endings', I said 'interpretive endings'. If this does not clear the confusion, please feel free to repeat your question and I'll elaborate.

P.S. I didn't mean that origins have one ending, maybe I phrased that poorly. I opposed a way too specific idea for Wyll's ending. I don't like the idea of an ending that explains every tad bit of where the character went and what did he do and why it was so. This takes away player character's agency and makes it a cinematic cutscene, not an interactive gameplay element.

P.P.S. That said, I always welcome extra options on top of the existing ones. But I don't welcome when someone wants to scrap an ending because they can't fit their story into it and write it off like its the universal case scenario.

It seems we disagree on what makes an ending open, then. Gale's ambition ending already dictates the character's motivation: to become a god. I disagree that this is an open ending that fits all alignments, or even suitable for good characters. Because Gale's choice is the same gamble Karsus faced. And Karsus' gamble led to many innocent deaths. A good character advocating for a change would not risk the lives of many. Sure, you can say nothing bad happens in Gale's story, he did not destroy the weave; but that is only after playing that ending. To repeat myself, your way of roleplaying is more like metagaming to me.

What puzzled me, and I assume Saeran, was that when we talk about "Wyll's evil ending" or any of the other suggestions Crimsom made, you seemed to think those would or should be the only evil endings for the character. While the understanding of everyone else chatting here is that the character specific endings are something the characters get in addition to the unspecific ones.

Gale's Origin is - apart from being very very buggy in Gale's personal quest - probably the origin with among the least unique interactions, which I think is a shame because these unique interactions are what helps making the runs unique by adding flavour and versatility. Avatar-Astarion being able to intimidate people by showing his fangs for example, or the moment when Lae'zel tells him that controlling the tadpole isn't an option and you suddenly get a sneaky line telling you that the gith smells very tasty and you are peckish (That's how Lae'zel died in my first run.) are unique moments that add a lot to the idea of playing this specific character. And, if you flip it around, Gale as a companion is probably the character who has the most unique interactions for the other origins. Even if it's just little things like how he finds a similarity between Tara and each Origin-Avatar.

PS: I also don't think the Avatar-God ending is very open to interpretation. I found it sad under a coating of fun. The narrator tells you how you still care about your friends, but your way of interacting with them is heavily focused on asking them to worship you - and they aren't buying what you are selling. The letter God-Gale gets from Elminster as well as Tara's dialogue are also not very open to interpretation.

I can understand this perception, but aren't we all metagaming in the consequent runs? It is hard for me to pretend that I don't know what's coming, when I do. In a custom run a huge chunk of endings for origin companions is immediately spoiled. Can you please share your idea of role-playing, that is not metagaming? So that we have an anchoring point for further discussion.

Tbh, I went for the evil route in my campaign (I played Gale as a wild magic barbarian, Mystra forgive me), so that comment was spot on. If its the same for every instance, then its not ideal, but still understandable, since godhood takes a toll in terms of emotion and general perception of things. Which seems logical and narratively beautiful, if you think of it. The saddest part is Gale never knew till he tried, and I doubt there is a way back. Gale is a tricky example since there is a radical metamorphosis going on there, same as for an Ascended Astarion.

Also, narrator comments are not interpretation of the events, they are hard truths. We are still free to imagine the character as we see fit: still human at heart or on the contrary - an emotionally distant, godlike being. Maybe I misunderstood Crimsom's idea, but from what I've gathered, he portrayed some scenarios where little is left unexplained. In this route, Wyll's motivations are thus, therefore he is a torturing maniac mad on revenge and keen on making the devils suffer. Not a way to go, at least for me.

For me it is the question of whether I use my point of view vs. imaging the point of view of the protagonist character, who is not so knowledgeable, when making choices in the game. An example is letting Alfira die on the dark urge run, even though I knew of a way to save her, because my dark urge did not. That is not to say I don't metagame at all, I actually did on the run where I have tried to recruit Minthara, because I've had zero interest in destroying the grove.

I'd add at this point is that Larian has changed endings before. When I have played as Gale, it was even before they patched in the epilogue. At that point, if you chose to use the crown to obtain godhood, Gale would get obliterated by Mystra.

I tend to use the mix of both, as well, though a bit differently. I don't have a clear goal set from the start, but the general idea/direction is there. I started Gale as a wild magic barbarian to narratively distant him from the Weave in a general 'wizardy' sense and aimed at opposing Mystra, though with no clear path in front of me. At some point I decided not to absorb the tainted Weave from the Thorms because tainting the Weave with shadow was a crime against my Gale's principles (as I imagined them), not against Mystra's. Yet she reached out, and I softened my attitude. This is an example of roleplaying where I had absolute control. Now throw in some quest that gets botched by the critical miss and the course gets reversed once more. Another example is character development I imagine 'between the lines' when choosing seemingly unimportant line in a not-so-important dialogue, but the line that can drive change within the character, or at least plant an idea. I then start making choices based on that idea, slowly developing it aka stretching the Overton window. Thats ton of fun for me and makes the game hella replayable, I am almost past the 3k hours point. I still have a lot of companions to finish the game with and I hope the feeling is still there if they patch in some new endings or other plot changes further down the road.

It's the same for every Avatar-God-Gale, I just did a last minute face-heel turn to see the ending and draw my observations from that. What impressed me most about ... no, let me rephrase that: I think that Gale's endings are overall tremendously well written in the sense that they are incredibly reactive and both thoughtful as well as fun (or deeply sad or disturbing in some cases). A point the impressed me a lot was when I had to make the choice on how to continue his and Spawn-Astarion's life together. I thought that Gale would probably love to return home to Tara and his mom, but that this might not be Astarion's first choice. So I chose to help Astarion walk in the sun again. When during the epilogue I opened Elminster's letter, the old sage commented on how unusual this new lifestyle was for Gale. The game had recognised my choice as character development. This is fantastic but only makes sense if you keep the basic personality of your character in mind.

As for the metagaming, from my perspective there are different types of it. There is the metagaming that is a vague plan, like whom you want to romance and which ending you are gunning for. (I am currently playing Shadowheart and wanted to romance Lae'zel. I have no idea which ending we'll end up with, I'll see where it goes.) And there is metagaming which is meticulously planning the outcome of every possible major and a few minor events to achieve a certain ending with a specific interpretation, which is how your version of evil Wyll sounded. I find the latter very unattractive to play because that for me would be like watching a movie or following a script - that is more what I would write fanfiction about.

Crimsom, to my understanding, mostly made an sort of elevator pitch, painting an exciting picture to inspire the imagination in a certain direction.