I havnt yet read all the new aditions, I just wanted to react to the reddit post first since its already locked on reddit.

I strongly agree with just about all you have said. Let me preface this, I do not think Emperror is a bad character at all, I do think he does fulfill the role he has fairly well but that role does seem a lot more simplified, for lack of a better term, at least as far as actual roleplay goes than what it was with Daisy. Emperror is with you the entire game and more or less whatever you do, he will always help you and you can get your happy ending while eating tadpoles and everything, hell you have to actively persuade him to "betray" sort of. He isnt an entirely good character however as we learn if we are antagonistic toward him, but the issue is that it has little to no impact on anything. Dont get me wrong, it makes sense plotwise, we both need each other, but it is far less interesting than what it could have been with Daisy.

Personally I do not understand the complaints about Daisy being obviously evil or too seductive... That is the point. Both us and the characters know we have a tadpole in our heads, we are 99% sure that the dream visitor is representation of said tadpole (tho I do think innitially it was supposed to be the Elder Brain and it would have worked with us in a similar way the Emperror did to free itself, which could have been so cool) We are meant to be distrustful and find it off putting, or not, you could chose to ebrace the goodwill it seems to give because hell one way or another you should have been dead already, you are racing against the clock and anything that slows you down may as well be the end of you (personally I do not like the "timed" aspect that the game introduces in the first act, it was more severe in EA imo but getting rid of Daisy does nothing for this feeling of mine, its just a plot decision they made for the story). Everything seemed a lot more severe and making good moral decisions was just harder because it came with the unspoken promise of wasted time.

Also, in so far as I am aware, the tadpole powers were bound to your interactions and behavior towards Daisy a lot more than it does with the emperror, from a roleplay perspective, being evil and selfish, using the powers could anger your companions and should you lose them you would still have Daisy, on the contrary being selfless and staying away would make things harder via not having the powers but potentially would earn you more allies along the way. That is to say, the full release version of this gameplay feature we get via guardian feels a lot more homogenized, if that makes sense, you can still roleplay of course but using the tadpoles doesnt mean anything anymore and you get the powers either way with no setbacks, whether you are "good" or "bad", the outcome and options are pretty much the same in this regard.

For me, its clear that the loss of Daisy meant severe changes to the storyline. I am shocked that Larian removed her and changed so much even just from the early access, not to mention the rest of the game we didnt even know about, while we do not know how large a role she would have had, like you I assume that much of the soundtrack and much of the original theme of the main story was centered around this specific relationship. And I think we still do not know yet, do we? What would have been our interaction with Daisy going forward, who it truly was (maybe we even had it all wrong, who knows) how its presences would influence our characters and the story going forward. Honestly, for the life of me, I find it rather hard to believe that the Emprror was supposed to play this sort of role, given some things in the EA (if I remember correctly we could find the dead body of the mindflayer who tadpoled us whom I think became the emperror, as inconclusive as that is) I dont think the Emperror innitially even was a character, much less with this much importance.

Honestly I think Daisy made sense, I would have enjoyed playing a character that would have slowly gotten seduced by his ideal partner in his dreams when everything in the daily life was hell, or someone who stood up firmly against it believing it to be wrong and refusing to use its powers, or someone who decided to use every advantage given to him on the road to freedom and power etc., just because for the player it is obvious, doesnt mean the roleplay options were limited. Yet they are now and people dont seem to mind.
I miss Daisy and I miss the innitial feeling of BG3 and the potential we will never get to see, unless modders do some crazy stuff.

I would implore Larian to put all the failes they have into like a modders release of the game, everything voiced that was originally supposed to be there and just let the community sift through it. I do really like BG3 as it is, it isnt my favorite game of all time or anything as I personally some of its aspects and just feel of it isnt all that to my taste (I prefer something more in the style of Wrath of the Righteous for some reason, maybe it feels easier to navigate and fully explore? im not sure myself. I also dont really like the existence of Origin chacacters as they are, I just prefer them as companions solely) but I am absolutely stunned by the quality of it and the sheer production values, the talent and passion that went into it, it is undeniably a fantastic game, if not a masterpiece, but I do think that Larian was hasty in retconing what I assume was a major part of their story on a word of, lets be honest, relatively minor group of players that would eventually play it. I am elated that they are listening and engaging with fans, but some things imo just shouldnt be changed according to them because we do not and cant have the full picture, and now we will never know what the full picture could have been. (Tho if Larian at least releases the original vision for the story I would be satified)

Aditionally I would like to say that if there will be a complete edition or enhanced edition or some such, I hope that they will consider returning Daisy in some form, at least for the Durge (which seemingly was originally the main character) as there are deep hints towards Daisy being even more interactive and importan to the Durge unique storyline. In either case Im sure it would be possible to make Emperror/Daisy sort of aditional paths along the story, depending on your choices and I would love to see it.

Ill read the rest of your post and react to that as well if there is anything more I would want to say, just wanted to give my two cents first and profess my agreement and understanding if your dissapointment, especially in so far as the change from Daisy to the Emperror goes. And, just to clear it up, I did prefer being whispered sweet nothings into my ear by a character designed by me to be my ideal over the friendshipy nature of the guardian, call me horny if you want but it was just so much nicer to experience smile

EDIT: This was an interesting read, I sifted through most of the comments here and yea, wildly different perspectives but most seem to agree that at least being able to see what would have happened without the changes would be interesting.
I always thought that a few things regarding the Emperror were off, including his interactions with the prism, how it all works and what is and isnt neccessary, I kinda came to the conclussion that the name guardian is sort of ironic as he isnt actually guarding us himself against anything if you think about it, he is guarding himself if anything. We are not changing because we cant receive the signal from the Absolute, if the game is to be believed and there is no reason to believe that this is because of the Emperror, its Orpeus who has the power and Emperror is just said to be using his power to shield us? But its his power that already did the shielding before, hell thats how he got free and why we still dont change even when he leaves the Prism, Orpehus' powers work regardless of him being bound, tho whether its proximity to the Prism or what is left unexplained.

And a lot of his interactions make little sense when expamined thoroughly, including his outburst and showing us truth about Stellmane, or his insistence on us becoming mindflayer when clearly that would only make us more suspicious when we are desperately trying to get rid of the tadpoles in the first place, this does indeed seem, as others mentioned to be simply Larian trying to use him as a vehicle to introduce players to their gameplay feature without any setbacks, which sucks because using the powers or not should be a roleplay decision.

Ultimately, I came to the conclussion that Emperror is lying to us in just about everything, shocker I know but many even here have sympathies toward him and while I agree that having more interactivity would absolutely help I do think that, outside of him being a victim (or cause) of the rewrite issues, he is not really meant to be that interactive as we cant really inflence him as some would want. At the end of the day I think its made clear that he isnt Balduran anymore, he isnt huamn/elf whatever, he is an Ilithid and they think in ways that people simply do not, whether you are friend to him (or try to) he only seeks to use us to gain his freedom and survive. I think this is evident by his lackluster advances and how quickly he pulls back, the game even points it out, he isnt looking for emotional connection with us, merely a stable one of alliance and I think its also made clear as to why. His working "relationship" with Stalemane was ultimately his downfall as her situation only drew attention and on top of that, unlike before, now he is bound to the protection of the Prism, not being able to go out without being dominated again or losing the fight to the Orpehus' guard (tho this is very ill explained as others pointed out), I have little doubt that if he had all his options available to him, he would simply dominate us and make us do his bidding as it is hinted he did during his time with Knights of the Shield, and mind you, this wasnt long ago at all, its unlikely he has changed during that time.

All in all, he just isnt human, he doesnt think the way we do so I think its foolhardy to expect a normal relationship from him, hell he doesnt even show up at the camp celebration they added recently (at least to my knowledge) even if you are "friends" with him, which pretty much solidifies this as fact, he just isnt a companion or a friend to us and nor are we to him, Withers agrees.

Also, I do think Emperror is the one who tadpoled him, but not really because it was originally intended, just because logically it makes sense with how the story ended up being after the changes, I agree that both theories have their flaws but I think it not being him creates worse issues for the plot.

I do have a lot more to say on the topic of the changes and cuts and such, I really wish we could see the original concept with as much of what they intended as possible, but ill just stop rambling and finish it up here.

Oh and, if anyone has any newish and relevant info about the cut content and such, or if there is a content creator that does this sort of thing still (most of these videos I found are quite old by now) I would love to get a link. I may never be able to actually experience everything in the game, as it is very wide and sprawling, much less everything that was cut from it, but I would like to try. Thanks

Last edited by mademan2; 04/03/24 06:29 PM.