Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Are the companion story lines thematic or forced?

Its not only Durge. Where would that ship have picked up Astarion? Or Karlach? Wyll?

The latter two only boarded after "you" were tadpoled during the hasty escape during Avernus. And Astarion would be in Baldurs Gate (not the city in the cutscene), only come out at night and hard to move without being tadpoled first thanks to his condition.
And as the ship had a specific, high risk/value mission why would the drag untadpoled spares along?

That is where the speed tadpoling jokes a few posts above came from. I have no idea, why the Illithid would bother to tadpole Wyll and Karlach in a crisis, even if they wanted to find and tadpole them in the first place.
As for Astarion: honestly, he doesn't makes lot of sense, neither does BG based Tav. There is no mention of an Illithid ship over BG. Of course they could have been handpicked and abducted by cultists, but why some low vampire spawn and a nobody? In Astarions case, I would say the changed Cazador plot might be the reason, it doesn't make any sense. Without that ritual, he could have been sold to the cult by Cazador for a favour or something like that.

Wait, the city in the cinematic is not supposed to be Baldur's Gate? That makes no sense. The beginning with the guard in the tower is even a callback to how BG1 starts.

According to Swen it is not - the cities name was mentioned in this thread somewhere Ithink.

But doesn't that make sense then? Because Durge was added back in last minute. The Intro wasn't intended for Durge but with Tav in mind. Instead of making a new intro they just left it.

SO ... Basically it doesn't make sense for Durge because Durge wasn't the intended POV.

If you can play Durge, you should have a Durge intro. Besides, it seems, that Durge was supposed to be the protagonist from the content.
So... basically it should make sense.

It does not make sense, period for a number of reasons.
Last minute rewrites destroyed a lot of things and obviously a coherent story was a low priority for Larian anyway, so they kept the dragon battle.

Just because we want a Durge intro doesn't mean they had the money to make another intro or time and not if Durge was Cut before the intro was made.


With Tav's POV it does make sense. Yes, there are many other things after the Intro that doesn't but most things make sense if you don't play Durge. So yes the rewrite to add Durge made the story go from OK there are a few plot holes like any other game, to wtf this makes no sense now.

Which as I said before means Durge was Cut very early more then likely before the Intro Cinematic was drafted.

Not really.
How was Tav or Astarion abducted as the ship never was near Baldurs Gate? Why was Tav only tadpoled now after the ship is on the run from the Gith? It neither had time to pick up people from all over the place nor made it sense that a strike team with a specific high risk mission carries around untadpoled prisoners, some of them quite dangerous (Gale) instead of tadpoleing them before the mission?
How did both Karlach and Wyll even manage to board that ship that flew at very high speed while being attacked by dragons and got captured and tadpoled so quickly? Dont forget that according to their backstory they were quite high level before the tadpole.

Why send a mixed tadpoled - mind flayer strike team to retrieve an item that disrupts mind flayer powers and tadpole mind control instead of cultists anyway?

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that trailer (intro) made while the game was still in it's infancy 2019/2020. So the idea of trying to make sense of it is a bit, ehhh. Seeing how it presents a game that doesn't exist. (rewrites and all that)

As for the Durge thing, during the EA there were multiple datamines and in one of them it was discovered or rather implied that Tav was a Bhaalspawn. (Remember when Daisy was a thing?) So with that in mind, the og idea of Tav being a Bhaalspawn and being captured might've been different and it could've made prefect sense with what we see in the trailer/intro.

But we didn't get that game, so there are a lot of inconsistencies/ plot holes/ contradictions etc. (whatever you want to call it)

Wait... Tav as a Bhaalspawn was datamined, I just guessed he was one, since the previous PC was a Bhaalspawn, I simply figured Tav was a natural Bhaalspawn and Durge was an artificial Bhaalspawn when the Durge topic first showed up on here,

As for Durge maybe He was double tadpoled.

Durge remembers almost nothing of what happened to him before he escaped the pod. Certainly not his own tadpoling . What he remembers of his tadpoling could be a "false" memory. Projecting onto himself what he saw the mindflayers do to Lae'zel and other. And this distorted false memory is what we see in the intro.... Can't give all the durge secrets away from the beginning.

I think people are thinking way too hard about how Durge relates to the opening cutscene. The reason it doesn't match is because it was made in 2019 (EA was released pre-pandemic so that lines up) and Durge as they exist now definitely was not in mind when they made it.

Which is actually something I wanna talk about now. I think Rotsen makes a very good point; Maybe Tav as a Bhaalspawn or something akin to it was the original plan, but there's really no reason to assume that the Durge we now have, who was one of the chosen and so deeply involved in the plot, was their intent.

I think the plan was originally to only have the Bhaalspawn protagonist. But since the Durge story is very dark, they probably decided to give you a vanilla protagonist too.
I have some friends playing the game and one of them tried playing DUrge, got THAT scene and instantly deleted the character and started another Tav. So probably a good call. I like good resisting Durge, but it is not for everyone.

According to Sven its Yartar which is, depending on which map you look between 670 or 770 miles north of Baldurs Gate and has nothing to do with the game at all.

Please excuse the off topic question. Where can I find the map the picture is from please?

Where did you find this interactive map, link please

I used the interactive map from aidedd
https://www.aidedd.org/atlas/index.php?map=R&l=1

Much appreciated, thank you! <3

Well, it still has something to do with the game as allegedly the cult of the Absolute and True Souls are all around the Western Heartlands area, which includes both Yartar and Baldur's Gate and Amn and Neverwinter, etc. Which is why nearly everyone having ties to Baldur's Gate in particular seemed very off to me.