Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why I effortlessly dislike Shadowheart

The god stuff is definitely one of the bigger questions as none of it has really be shown in the introduction we've got. Apparently the Dead Three are in play as well as Shar to some extent, Gale's not over Mystra so who knows where that'll go, there's a hint that Lolth may be watching to some degree and there's a chance that the Absolute may not in fact be a Mind Flayer peace circle. Sort of the problem with having only the Intro, a bunch of stuff is teased and you don't know if things will be expanded upon or left as a tidbit.

Just wait Svalr, you'll discover that Lae'zel is heir apparent to Vlaakith.

I don't find her appealing, but I don't hate her enough to rant about it on the internet. She's sort of... meh. Sorry, Shadowheart, my fellow "modern woman."

Also, I'm pretty sure Gale didn't intend to eat an evil piece of shadow magic, and wasn't planning to bring any empires crashing down. He just wanted a nice present for his ex-girlfriend and apparently had no concept that some things might be out of his league.

Does he really have a tadpol in his head? I generally don't trust wizards and didn't press convo's with this character, so I have no clue truthfully. On a side note, he was eating dirt next to the portal more times than one on my plays.

Wyll is probably my least fav character out of all of them, you know this guy if you give him the chance will talk about himself for 20minutes straight. I don't know which one is worse the wiz or the douche lock.

Gale wasn't trying anything of the kind, though.

Gale can be super sleezy, I'll grant you that, but I don't get the impression he'd commit mass murder to gain power, which seemed to be implied earlier in the thread. He'll just passively endanger the lives of everyone around him rather than isolating himself in some safe place. A pretty solidly true neutral character, I think.

Oop you got me on this, didn't know that.

Yeah there is also her telling Astarion she finds romance boring and likes flings, yet she has the most chaste and lovey dovey romance scene

Is he a psychotic mass murderer? No, not until the bomb goes off at least. But he is either an idiot or the more likely an extreme narcissist. You don't go around messing with cosmic power unless you've got a serious ego or severe inability to comprehend the kind of damage you could cause. Becoming a walking bomb capable of leveling a city is not something a neutral or good person does, at least I wouldn't think they would. At least Wyll only screwed his own soul, Gale's on a whole other level of "fuck the consequences".

The point is that Gale had no idea those would be the consequences. He knows it now and can be held accountable for what he does with that knowledge, but he didn't know it then.

I'll concede that he probably didn't know he'd turn into a doomsday weapon. However, I'm not convinced he didn't know there were significant, and I mean significant, risks with messing around with god level magic. I'll also add that the whole alignment system is not a great way to get people's moral compass, in my opinion, other than a very general idea.

Interesting that Asterion will get all kinds of interpretations about how he is not all that bad a person deep down. But when it comes to Gale or wyl, there is great focus put on their vices.

He was messing around with a small piece of the Weave - that's not quite god level magic. Though I may be misunderstanding just how powerful the control of a small piece of the Weave would make you.

And you're right, the alignment system doesn't do more than give a general idea of someone's behavior. That's more or less its entire value as far as I'm concerned - giving you a general idea of how someone behaves, which may not apply in certain circumstances and which can shift gradually over time.

Why is this dumpster fire of a post not locked yet? This is just an excuse for the OP to vomit his naked misogyny all over the forum.

If you're not going to shut this down, at least change the title from "Why I effortlessly dislike Shadowheart" to "Why I effortlessly dislike women", so people know what they're getting in to here.

I don't know if I'd describe Shadowheart's approval as inconsistent. She just doesn't easily fall into the "good deed vs bad deed" binary most people assume characters should fall into.

From my experience with her Shadowheart is a neutral good person who's trying to be neutral evil. Basically she's a fundamentally good person who is striving to be a self centered pragmatist who can do what is necessary to further her personal goals.

She likes it when you ignore people's pleas for help and dislikes it when you agree to go out of your way to help someone, but she likes it when you help people after already agreeing to do it. She dislikes it when you perform senseless acts of evil and dislikes it when you pick unnecessary fights.

Keeping that personality in mind I find I am rarely surprised by her reaction to things I do. It might seem counter-intuitive, but that is because it is. She's a bit hypocritical. Which comes from the fact that she's part of this religion that espouses virtues of selfishness and pragmatism that don't necessarily align with how she genuinely feels.

So she'll go along with attacking the grove because she rationalizes it as the pragmatic thing to do to further your goals. Then she'll get drunk as Hell because even though she's telling herself it had to be done she still feels guilty about the deed because deep down she knows it was wrong.

Honestly she's probably the most complex of the current followers.

It's just a shame she's mechanically so weak comparatively.

Hey, we've managed to have a perfectly civil, entirely off-topic conversation. That's a win - I think.

Things are not so bad here. Just gotta learn how to discern a hill not worth dying over and keep in mind that we are the vocal (and mostly negative) minority.

I did find the journey of parsing Asterion’s character interesting on a first playthrough admittedly. He started bad, looked like he may have some good, and then realized first impressions should be trusted.

In wyl and Gale’s case, I think it just comes down to the fact that, the moment a person is presented as altruistic, they are held to higher standards. Or just that the contrast in character traits will make the smaller ones stand out more.

How does dislike of one fictional female character translate to misogynism?

Personal opinions will translate into opinions of characters that's just how life is.

Honestly I figured hijacking this thread for general companion hot take discussion was the best course of action. The weave fragment that Gale was trying to get was a piece of Mystra, so it more than likely wasn't full god power but it was part of her power and so, in my mind, dangerous to mess with. How dangerous, well we know that it turned him into a bomb. Before messing with it, we don't really know unless Gale later fesses up about knowing that there were some real dangerous it's more just an assumption on my part that he should've known it was dangerous to mess with. Look at the Bhaalspawn, they all had fragments of Bhaal's power and they were fairly dangerous.

When it comes to Astarion, I've stated the point that he strikes me as aristocracy, above the peasants and all that. Combined with the eternal undeath he's developed a cruelty bent. Though he does state that he's been under Cazador's control for 200 years, so that would shape a person. Of course Cazador could be the evil that Astarion has described or he could be keeping Astarion in line, keeping him from feeding on or killing people. He also in my mind just fits a bunch of vampire tropes and doesn't really interest me. Though I suppose if he was a woman I'd probably pay more attention...so there's that.

The funny one is Lae'zel, she pretty much gets written off as an angry soldier type who needs to get to the Creche and that's about that. Or at least that's what I've seen.

Finally, the Approval and Disapproval system requires interjection on the companions part. Having them just silently like or dislike something really hurts getting a feel for the kind of person they really are.

Well, the op has written that this fictional female character "represents the modern day woman". If you hate a character who at the same time is representing to you an entire group of people, that implies you also hate this specific group.

Didn't need to read further than this sexist garbage