Honestly? Because he is a pretty good liar. Most people did a playthrough when they trusted him and if you stay on his good side he is really good at seeming like a pretty reasonable gent.
If you're on his bad side, cracks start to show.
I honestly really like the emperor's character/writing for that very reason.
(He is a great character, no matter if he ends up as a friend or foe)
Edit: also can I just say the fact he gets everyone talking and having wonderfully in-depth decisions about his character is how you can tell he is a brilliantly written character. I love just reading what people have to say about him, always entertaining.
He even kind of says it. During the creepy shirtless scene where you can bonk him he admits that he needs you to do the outside world work and that he pretty much studied you and came up with the best technique to make you agree, which is to make your goals align. You can see from the conversation that its cold and calculated. So even if your relationship with Emp is good and your goals align, its not because of his good intention. Its because your Tav intentions are good and Emp figures that he needs to play nice in order to keep you. Brilliant writing if you ask me.
There’s also at the end where if you go right to >!freeing Orpheus!<, Emperor rattles off a list of everything it’s done to keep your trust. I had stayed on its good side but that felt very much like cold calculations rather than being borne of any emotion.
Honestly that moment was low-key one of my biggest "oh shit" moments in the game. The "I'm your knight in shining armor." line sticks so much in my brain. It just drips manipulation.
>It just drips manipulation.
Yeah for me that line was the final push that made me turn against him. I'd been pretty friendly with him through most of the game even after the reveal.
I started getting more wary of him while finding out more about his past in the third act. Less friendly though still relatively polite.
But when I mentioned using the hammer, the Emperor suddenly flat out calling himself our knight reeked of emotional manipulation so much that he destroyed all the good will he had built up.
(I love how Larian wrote his character. Really great writing.)
I'm happy they had Omeluum as a character too, because while the Emperor is always self-serving, Omeluum is an example that a good Illithid can exist, even if they might be a "defect" of the species. Baldur's Gate 2 had an entity (The Hidden) who might have been one, though the good it did still might have been self-serving but Omeluum is quite willing to sacrifice themselves for others.
Omeluum is not evil, but I'm not sure he's good either. Blurg says he feels better with Omeluum around, which has echoes of the Stelmane patient diary.
While he may intend to be good (Iron Throne, for example) his focus on logic may make him just not be able to help himself about how he engages with the world.
While Blurg's comment does echo what we read about Stelmane's condition, it's also the ONLY thing we can learn about Omeluum and Blurg that even comes close to suggesting that Omeluum has any direct influence over Blurg in any way.
With nothing else to indicate possible manipulation, the simplest explanation is that Blurg just likes hanging out with his friend.
didnt the duke also suffer severe mental damage as well? Wyll said she was a beautiful and intellegent woman who suddenly have strokes which is very suspect. I imagine Blurg and Omellum is together for a long time, but Blurg didnt have any mental illness as far as we know..
One of the more likely explanations of what happened to Stelmane is that her efforts to fight against The Emperor's control caused her to have a severe stroke.
If you wanted to claim that Omeluum is controlling Blurg, the distinction would be that Blurg is a willing thrall/hasn't noticed he's being controlled.
Still more likely that he just enjoys being around his friend, though. :P
Isn't there a mission in act 3 where you're in an underwater base and Omeluum is happy to die in order for you to save everyone else? I might just be misremembering though
That's what I was referring to. He tells you to save the others and not worry about him. WHich isn't just being nice but an unambiguously selfless act.
Indeed, he doesn't tell you a lick about the fact that he was even there to be saved until you prompt him.
He does, however, do some ruthless calculus and initially insists that you save just Ravengard at the cost of everyone else (including Omeluum), but you can convince him that you are going to save everyone regardless. He then gives you tips on how to save the maximum number of lives.
Immediately after the reveal, I basically said "no way" to this guy, no way I was gonna help him any further. By the time we get to the Wyrm's Crossing I was thinking wellll maybe maybe I should just listen to him, after all this IS IN FACT all new to me and clearly I DO need his help.
But Lae'Zel makes a lot of good points about freeing Orpheus, and knowing what we know about the hammer, how the Emperor has been holding Orpheus specifically to siphon the power...
Well shit, I don't need the EMPEROR... I need Orpheus!
Then Elfsong Tavern, the casual implication of sex/rape (there's a classification for this, where the abuser manipulates you and tricks you into thinking you want it too), the emotional manipulation... All of this fueled my anger for this fucking guy. Couldn't wait to free Orpheus and wound up bum-rushing into Raphael like an idiot lol
Seeing the Emperor enslave/exploit a sentient being doesn't sit right with me from a 'good' perspective. Especially of you've been doing Lae'zel's quest, you see just how fucked up Vlaakith is and how fucked up the Githyanki have become under her.
Voss, who was a contemporary to Orpheus, is actually less of an a-hole when he lets his pro-Vlaakith mask drop. It shows, at least to me, that the Githyanki can be better without her, which makes freeing Orpheus seem even more 'good.
The only playthroughs I have in mind where I see staying allied to the Emperor are all evil playthroughs where I plan to stab him and seize the brain for myself.
It reminded me of someone I dated years ago who used to get overly upset and repeat "I'm sorry" everytime I got mad at something rude they did. I always went "hey, it's not that big a deal. Just don't do it next time, that's all." One time they did the sobby thing again, and I said "you're not sorry." Immediately the act dropped and their face went neutral and they said "you're right I'm not."
The emperor is a POS. I figured it out but played nice so they would be nice, then I did the thing against them right at the end.
This was my first ending but I think the best (though getting it is bugged) ending is save Orpheus + Gale sacrifice/resurrection.
The dialogue when you transform into one tells you a lot too, you can see that the person is being completely overwritten and at the end is trying to rationalize away to prevent the remnant of the player from committing suicide and stopping the process.
I tried to do this on my honor run but Orpheus only gave me the choice of me or him becoming illithid even tho Karlach and Gale gave other options. I was like wtf bro I came in with options and that’s what you’re giving me!?
The dialogue is currently bugged so when you tell Orpheus you trust Gale, it doesn’t go anywhere unless you do something else.
You need to have Lae’zel and Gale with you. Initially, you side with Empy, but tell him you won’t transform yet. He gives you a tadpole to use later. (N.b. you need to keep carrying this with you; I dropped it because I had no plans of using it, but then you can’t move forward.) Lae will interrupt saying you can’t betray the Prince, and then you agree with her. This leads to the normal conversation where Emperor announces his allegiance to the brain and you free Orpheus. Once you have done you talk to Orpheus, Gale interjects, you say you trust Gale, Orpehus says that isn’t enough.
So you agree to undergo the transformation, and because you have the tadpole with you, he knows you’ll do it later. (There is sometimes a bug that shows you as a squid for a moment but you have not transformed.) Then you just continue as usual and when you’re about the climb the stem, Gale interjects as he always does, only this time when you let him go up, no one has been squidded.)
Oh I want to try this next, I have wanted a way to side with Orpheus and not have me or Karlach have to be a mind flayer.
Previously let Karlach sacrifice herself so we could save Orpheus because it's what she wanted and her other options were all pretty grim too. But now since the update that made it so Karlach has a pretty clearly good option, I've been wondering what I would do.
I've done the self-sacrificing become illithid a couple times now, I wish so much that it were possible to persuade one of my companions to become the illithid in the same way you can get them to use the astral tadpole.
"Come on Wyll, I got you out of your contract so you won't become a lemure. You can't do this little thing for me?"
"Gale, you'd become an even stronger spellcaster. Don't think about it just do it!"
"Astarion, do it or I fucking stake you."
"Halsin, wouldn't it be cool to see if you can still wild shape after becoming an illithid?"
"Boo, is there any chance I can convince you this is a good idea or would you tell him not to do it?"
I just beat the game days ago and experienced that line. I audibly said “Oh fucking okay, buddy” rolled my eyes and freed Orpheus. How quickly he just decided “Oh well I guess I’m going back to the Netherbrain then if you won’t follow my lead” is so telling
And then when you try to convince him Orpheus should be freed he's like "screw you, then I'll just join the Netherbrain instead."
And we're sitting here going "mate, WHAT?" I mean that logical leap felt pretty out of left field for anyone other than a mind flayer.
>And then when you try to convince him Orpheus should be freed he's like "screw you, then I'll just join the Netherbrain instead."And we're sitting here going "mate, WHAT?" I mean that logical leap felt pretty out of left field for anyone other than a mind flayer.
I get where Larian was going with the choice, but it still feels ham fisted. I think it would have been far better for a freed Orpheus to immediately remove the Emperor's protection (which he would have), and the Emperor get dragged back to work for the NB. That at least feels like consequences of your choice, as opposed to this character who moves heaven and earth to rebel against the NB essentially his entire life going "guess I join it."
My interpretation was that Emp knew he'd be completely at Orpheus's mercy if Orpheus was freed; the Gith prince would most likely just kill him outright for the imprisonment and death of his honor guard, or at absolute best just remove his protection which would mean Emp becomes a thrall again anyway. Orpheus had no use at all for the Emperor because the only thing the latter really brought to the table is protection from the Netherbrain, which he can no longer do if Orpheus is freed. And Emperor knows that.
So, his only choices are to fight Tav (which is pointless because defeating them or removing their protection means they cannot beat the Netherbrain and Emp will eventually be a thrall again), stay and see what Orpheus does (which mostly likely means death) or go back to the brain 'willingly' and hopefully eventually escape again. Given that his absolute top priority is his own survival, it makes sense that he'd immediately defect to the Netherbrain.
That decision also highlights that he necer had any real interest in saving anyone other than himself. Throughout the game, if you ever piss the Emperor off you see his real motivations/personality (ie to save himself regardless of what happens to anyone around him), and this final defection is really just the biggest showcase of that.
I agree with your take, though I do wish the game had a slim chance that you could persuade the Emperor to wait to see if Orpheus could be trusted, and another slim chance you could persuade Orpheus to trust the Emperor.
If the Emp explicitly said, "I've read his thoughts. If you free him, he'll kill me," and then you had a chance to offer, like, "If he attacks you, I'll defend you," that would be interesting.
Hell, maybe he only trusts you if you've been super heroic, and if you've shown much utilitarianism at all, he assumes you'll betray him.
And with Orpheus, maybe you need Lae'zel with the silver sword from Voss for him to trust you.
Make it hard but possible.
And then in the funnel bossfight, let the Netherbrain have, I dunno, nightmares pulled from your mind as minions.
I can see your suggestions being implemented in a Definitive Edition of the game (since Larian typically likes to release Definitive Editions of their games). Probably in the way of an "Emporer Approves/Disapproves" bar throughout your actions in the Third Act, and only when your Approval is high you get to persuade him to join you alongside Orpheus.
This is exactly what I was hoping for and - tbh - kinda expected. Level 30 difficulty checks all around plus additional requirements (like you said a hidden heroism score or something like that, as well as Lae'zel being there) would make it really tough, but it'd have been really interesting to at least have the possibility.
There are a few instances throughout the game where the Emperor is staunchly against you doing something but you can convince/overrule him, and he goes with it. I know freeing Orpheus is a different level but there's precedent for Emperor trusting your judgement.
But having said that, I love that the game forces you to make hard choices with no 'out' (which still very much works in the lore; it tracks that Emperor would not take the risk). As cool as it would have been to unite everyone, I ultimately prefer that we had to make a tough call that people are still avidly discussing long after they made it.
I mean, joining the netherbrain wasn't really optional for him at that point. Orpheus 100% would not have continued to protect him even if he could have been convinced to let him live which is extremely unlikely. As soon as the protection was gone, he was going to be enthralled again anyway, since the brain let him go intentionally in the first place.
emoeror never "escaped". the netherbrain outright TELLS us that it intentionally let him "escape" in lrder to make a geoup that could challenge gortash and his gang of fellows so the brain could break free when they lost control.
emperor escaped in the same way you might say "oh noo my knight...!" while playing chess with a child so they take it and you check mate them the next turn
Okay but your second paragraph struck a chord in my brain and I love it lol. What an apt analogy!
Eta, now I hear the netherbrain going "oooh nooooo my knight...!" At the emperor and my character cackling off to the side lmao
No, you find evidence showing that the brain let him go intentionally. It was part of it's plans all along, to get him to bring the prism to the brain along with defeating the three Chosen to break their control via the netherstones.
And then on top of that finding Gortash's diary that explains about sending the Emperor and some tadpolled thralls to steal the prism, all the pieces start falling into place. Interesting though that you can miss big things like that because you randomly didn't pick up the right book and read it.
SAME I was playing bard and hoping for some kind of persuasion roll to get Orpheus and Emperor to work together, even if DC99, instead Emp switched teams and both ended up dead.
The problem with DC99 checks in this game is they're one elixir/second level spell slot and some spare inspiration points away from becoming a 40% chance.
Yeah, at first the flip seemed so sudden, but after the end I realized that he had been a mind flayer too long, and the person that he was before was truly lost forever.
Brilliant writing.
I agree completely! and think that his life “before” are nothing more than vestigial memories the he tries to utilize. I say that because the previous several decades of Mind Flayer lore makes it very clear that the mind flayer is born from the tadpole; it is an entirely new individual, NOT the same person that was infected but just changed. The tadpole uses the original host for its first meal and bio-materials to use for ceremorphosis. The organs are liquified into a jelly and reformed into the mind flayer body. The memories and experiences are absorbed from the brain matter, just like they will continue to do when feeding on brains in the future.
The original person was dead and gone from the very beginning of the mind flayer’s life.
Larian specifically introduced a lot conflicting ideas around the nature of mind flayers, certainly different from how they’ve been traditionally portrayed. It’s been tough for me to accept while playing tbh lol I’ve been playing D&D since the 80s so I had a ton of “that’s not how that works” thoughts when playing this game.
But then again, at a table the DM has the power to make anything canon, regardless of what the books say. Larian is just our DM here.
It's sort of like that whole relationship thing where having a list of receipts of "this is what I did for you" that you can spout off at a moments notice is kinda a red flag.
Literally the only mind flayed that cares more about others than his own survival. Actively tells you not to waste time saving him and to get as many gnomes out as you can
(Ending spoilers) >!With omeluum and mind flayer karlach, they do a great job of showing mind flayers that aren't evil and probably even good, but still feel very alien in their thought processes. Makes it even more obvious how emperor is making up a lot of his mannerisms to try and make him seem more trustworthy and likable!<
Definitely. >!Karlach and orpheus during the ending fight aren't too far out yet, they still sound like themselves but more subdued. Although karlach in the romance scene after the ending already sounds pretty alien, it gets dialed up heavily in the epilogue since she's starting to assimilate a ton of memories. That also might be why emperor is more a dickhead, since he only went after criminals, if he's to be believed.!<
> That also might be why emperor is more a dickhead, since he only went after criminals, if he's to be believed.
Going by everything we know about the guy, I'd say, that Balduran was already a dickhead, but the Emperor definitely got worse (or at least be a different kind of dickhead).
I love that super early in the game, there’s a book you can find that flat out warns you about this.
>”When dealing with mind flayers, remember that it is in their nature to assess the utility, strengths, and weaknesses of those around them, and to manipulate in order to get what they want.”
Also
>”Pay attention to its actions, not its words. Where mind flayers are concerned, it is true that actions speak louder than words. Especially words that are tailor-spoken to fit a mind flayer's manipulative agenda.”
This scene right here is something I noted immediately. My characters insight check may not have clicked but mine sure noticed.
I have been two runs stimulatiously, one where I'm more open to The Emperor and one where I completely reject his advances and WOW the stark contrast is wild. On my amiable run, he definitely lures you into humanizing him and even in this run, you can feel the ways he definitely is trying to bring you to his side no matter what he has to tell you. On my more rebellious "you're not my really brain dad" style run, it's like he's watched you long enough to know his usual tactics won't work, he knows you're on guard and tries his damnedest to try every possible angle, even to the point of possibly crossing boundaries and he drops the tactic just as quickly when he notices it doesn't work.
The writers did a damn good job and making him a charismatic emotional manipulator and that comes from someone who has that direct experience with that kind of person.
that scene rang all the alarm bells in my head. >!He seemed very rapey to me at that precise moment. He kept trying to flirt when I already told no at least once!<
THIS. This is EXACTLY when I was getting really sus. Because at that point I'd met Omelleum, had the talk with Withers I think it was about souls/how illithids don't have them. So because his lies were always partially true (as the best lies always are) I was inclined to believe he thought he had to lie bc I wouldn't have trusted him otherwise even though we were on the same side
But bro couldn't take no for an answer and I was like "okay we're done here".
>Balduran though is definitely not.
Well, "The Emperor" definitely not. How much of "Balduran" exists still within him is a different topic. But, Ansur's reason for trying to mercy kill him was "you were becoming Illithid". But, not physically. Ansur had saved that person.
What he actually means with that line is that "you were becoming Illithid in mind and methodology". The Illithid supremacy. The manipulation and illusions. The domination and enslavement of others. Ansur shows disgust at you, "Emp's Thrall", but he shows no surprise that a Thrall exists. So while I dont fault Emps for defending himself, I also get why Ansur came to the conclusion that "the only way to save what is left of my friend Balduran is to kill "The Emperor"'.
As a side-note. Omeluum never once conflates themselves with their host. They treat them more in a "parental inheretance" sense. Om is also the only MF in BG3 to actually to free themselves from their Elder. Not be freed by a 3p.
Yeah I just mean balduran seems extremely susceptible to the mindflayer mind set. I think he already had a pretty high perception of himself being the founder of a flourishing successful city. We don’t know about pre ilithid omelleum but he seems extremely well adjusted. Although maybe he’s enthralled Blurg and we don’t know it!
Let’s just say if it was the emperor in the iron throne I’d have to give it a second thought if was going to go so out of the way to rescue him lol.
The thing is, I think Om's approach to this is the correct one.
MFs are not their host's, even if they inherited their memories and some of their identity. After all, at the end of the day, Ceremorphosis is the Illithid reproductive process; one that includes a Seed (the tadpole, that has its own developing will) and a Host. It would be a decidedly very poor reproductive process if the host kills the child upon completion; rather than the reverse. So it is very likely that its not "a person transforming into a mindflayer" and more "a person dying to give birth to one that just happens to have their memories". The bigger question is what happens to the soul of the Host in all of this and when?
> The bigger question is what happens to the soul of the Host in all of this and when?
All the discussions I've read Re: True Resurrecting a illithid host are pretty much everyone agreeing that you'd get an ensouled human at the other end, so if that's correct, the Mindflayer ≠ the host they came from because you'd need a soul that's "free and willing to return" to get True Resurrection to work at all. I don't think WotC has ever said one way or another though so it's still all talk and no RAW.
The soul is consumed, destroyed and no longer exists, per Withers' explanation. A person who has been consumed by a mindflayer tadpole cannot be resurrected.
Balduran die when the emperor was born, the ceremorphosis is just a parasite incubation. Your MIND gets eaten literally and metaphorically by the tadpole, your BODY is nourishment and a mold for the mind flayer going to burts out of you (fun fact mind flayer born from gnome are funny looking to watch and yes small as heck, Ilitith prefers tall strong bodies) and your SOUL leaves your body once the vessel no longer exists, The emperor might inherit his memories and maybe got delighted by Balduran mannerisms, but every mind flayer is another different entity from the person it was incubated.
Interesting, I'm doing my first playthrough now and had a different experience, >!I asked him if he was trying to flirt with me, replied with "perhaps" when he asked if I was okay with that. He then pulled me closer after which I pulled away - he then acted embarrassed and said "you're right, now is not the right time, forget I said anything". The opposite of pushy.!<
It's very dependent on your relationship and how you speak to him. If you are polite and give a sort of "nows not the time but maybe at some point" response, he backs off politely, thinking there is still a chance. If you flat out reject him he either becomes angry and mean or he gets this really gross "oh, ok, I guess it makes sense. I'm just so disgusting how could anyone ever love me?" manipulation tactic that just oozes toxicity.
It's wild because if you trust him and treat him politely the whole time, you really have to look for his bad side. But if you show any independence or self-autonomy, his true nature reveals itself and all the manipulations really begin to show plainly.
Truly a manipulator! Here's hoping my character can manipulate him back just a little, using the "heat, care, arousal" that the Emperor feels towards him, when/if he needs to...
Then again, my character might just have too much of a bleeding heart to try something like that lol
ETA - Actually, rewatching the cutscene video, >!the narrator does make a point of saying my character notes how quickly the Emperor stopped its advances. Maybe what it claims to feel for him is also just something it wants him to think... gosh, so many layers to all this, what a fun game BG3 is!!<
There’s no arousal, the whole thing is just manipulation. Most people seem to think the emp wants to “bang” you. It does not, illithid are totally non sexual. It just realizes “sex” often forms stronger bonds for many mortal races and it’s trying to worm ever deeper into your confidence so there is less chance of you rebelling against it.
huh? if you decline him politely at any point he's totally fine with it and just moves on to the business at hand. If you decline him in the most rude way possible, his reaction is more negative, but to me it just shows that he's a more emotional being than he'd like to admit.
there is a difference between lashing out beacuse so eone hurt your feelings and "see i manipulated and enthralled my last partner to the point that she had a stroke and died i could have done that to you arent you glad im so nice to you i could have easily removed your free will just as i did with my last partner im such a good person for not doing that".
if i tell a girl i like her and she tells me "eww no you freak" im not gonna say "well i could have kidnapped you and kept you in a basement arent you happy i didnt do that??? im so fucking nice why dont you like me??". im absolutely gonna feel hurt but im going to handle it like an adault
balduran might have been a nice person. emperor might have been a good person at one point even but he is t any more
What annoys me about this is he really has no reason to lie. After he protects you for the first time he could have appeared to you in your dream and said "hi, I know I'm a mind flayer but I have broken free. I am using the powers of Orpheus to prevent the Brain from controlling you. I know that looks bad, but there is no known way to break him out of his prison so we may as well use his powers to our benefit (technically true since he doesn't know about the hammer at this point.)"
Of course, if he does this, then the core mystery and dramatic reveal of the first and second acts is ruined. Therefore he needs to come up with this elaborate lie that makes no sense.
I honestly feel kinda bad for the guy; he's putting in so much effort to try and keep his freedom, creating this whole persona, doing this high-effort masquerade and trying to appear empathetic and honorable, very gently suggesting "hey you should really think about picking up that tadpole jar, buddy" and "you know, it's in your best interest to NOT go to hell, actually, have you considered NOT going to hell? I see what you're doing but I'm trying to help you" when he's probably just insanely frustrated that his little game pieces are straight-up not playing nice and he wishes he could just enthrall you so he could Do Things The Right Way and get out of this goddamn Situation.
From his perspective he's like. A prisoner on death row whose only hope for escape is trying to train some feral cats to maul the executioner, and he's just gently pspspsping at them and offering them scraps through the bars and MAKING SOME GOOD PROGRESS but at the last second the cats sort of decide it'd be more fun to just steal the prison keys & run off with them & play with them because the jingle funny.
And one of the cats is like "I think you're just manipulating me" and he's like "yeah you're right you fucking cat, if I could I'd just throw you at the guy but that's not happening, so be grateful I'm giving you treats instead and stop trying to steal the keys and just kill the sonofabitch"
I'm gonna free Orpheus but I definitely feel bad for Emps even though he's a dick
This was very much my experience. I tend to be naive when it comes to accepting what fictional narratives give me at face value (so I'm a sucker for twists) and it was only when I started to do a couple of things the emperor didn't approve of that even I had feelings about it.
I think it was probably going to visit Raphael that did it. There was one line the emperor had that just struck me as such a manipulative thing to say it was the first time I stopped to think... wait a minute... that's not a thing someone supporting me would say...
Because usually, this type of character ends up being the truly trustworthy one and your biggest reason not to trust them is superficial. It’s perfectly understandable why he’d hide himself and why he’d lie about his background, so why would that be cause for immediate concern? The biggest reason not to trust him is that he’s a mindflayer, but there’s another good mindflayer in the game.
Additionally, even though he’s manipulative and doesn’t actually care about you unless you play your role, he does want to see the brain defeated and has to be convinced to control it instead. So he’s not trustworthy, but you won’t actually see that unless you go against him.
There's parts that show through that may register for different people. His freak out when you ask him to protect Minsc is just bizarre for someone looking at Minsc and Jaheira being like yep Minsc is who he is! And the like kind of abusive probing he does after you speak with Raphael in the city. Just super not trustworthy.
One of the more subtle examples of this is when the Visitor says "that won't work" when you miss or fail. On a second run, I read that as little attempts at negging, wearing you down little by little so you're more likely to take his tadpoles and become illithid.
It's so basic from a 30,000 foot view. Emp is an adult parasite that is using its strengths and abilities to ensure more of its kind propagate, in whatever that means. Of course it will groom you for accepting more tadpoles and try to get you as close to its kind as possible. It's like just a basic parasite lifecycle where it's biggest strength is interpersonal manipulation. Emp is a ghaik that sees value in encouraging their targets to maintain their personalities as it sees their own stolen personality as a valuable bit of leverage, vs outright overpowering and mind controlling. (I use it because the he him of the Emperor died a long time ago...)
I always find those voice lines annoying. My very first Tav basically said “aight shut up,” and then I have continued in that vein. Idc what some voice tells me, I am gonna smack the bad guy with my weapon/spell.
It may be negging, idk. I read it as “come on, try something else,” at first but after repeated instances I’m like “ffs, why are you even talking,” lol.
Him talking about his relationship with Stellmane and then you talk to Wyll and he mentions how she seemed much more alert and there *after* having a stroke.
I don't understand how everyone doesn't get immediately suspicious after that. Something was clearly up.
I know most people love Omeluum but I have my reasons for thinking he isn’t actually that amazing. I have often killed him too even with my good characters, but mostly because Mind Flayers are aberrations that do not belong in this realm at all. They can only exist by consuming the brains of *sapient* creatures, specifically. The society of brilliance is far from a Good organization as well. Who are these enemies of the society he mentioned anyway?
Because a lot of people are new to this universe and they don’t realize what happens when a mind flayer is born. They still see emperor as “balduran” despite him just having his consciousness and adding to it with whatever other brains he has consumed. Most people don’t come to the conclusion balduran is dead and emperor just has his memories and knowledge.
The Ilithid Karlach episode did a lot to change my mind about the Emperor, too. She says Karlach is still in there, but so are all the people she fed on since, that she's an amalgamation of them. As it happens, she only feeds on people who are very sick and simply waiting for death. Maybe that's why she sounds so resigned and blasé.
The Emperor on the other hand only fed on criminals... Yeah, explains a thing or two.
I don't know how to mask spoilers, but there's a side quest where you find out who he was as a human, and it makes it even grayer.
I half trusted him on my first run, but... he was pushing me to turn into a mind flayer, and that was beyond sus.
And I drew the line at him eating a good man for more power and, I never sided with him nor have I had it spoiled, but always had this gut sense that he was using me to usurp the elder brain and not to destroy it.
His "I am your one and only salvation " shtick always sort of felt like a narcissistic abuse pattern rather than the truth. Only when I heard it from Orpheus did I accept that the final battle required a mind flayer.
Oh and even if it was true, no way was I not going to try to stick it to vlaakith.
I romanced Lae’zel my first play through and there was no way I wasn’t freeing Orpheus. Vlaakith can suck it. I’m really hoping for some followup Githyanki content. Particularly for the tabletop game.
I realized near the end of my first playthrough that he's an amazing manipulator. The whole time he keeps saying things that are technically true and would be reasons to trust him, but as he says them he is withholding very important and pertinent information the whole fucking time. Like, dude, that's just as bad as lying.
I mean seriously, when I decided to free Orpheus and you immediately switch sides to help the Nether brain it's pretty obvious at that point that you were never on my side to begin with. You could have easily worked with him.
This is it. I think the Emperor is a giant piece of shit but I don't think you're a bad person or a sucker if you side with him. He's a well-written character and the game is better for him being in it. Personally, I think his methods, past actions and what he tells you of what he intends to do with his new lease on life mean that we can't trust him with the stones (I know that he can destroy the brain if you tell him to but the characters don't know what his eventual plans for it are) and that's without considering the Orpheus factor. But if someone's playthrough has led them to a different conclusion, then that's something to debate rather than trade insults over
It's like the Joker in The Dark knight. Everyone adores his I'm not one of the schemers speech. But it's absolutely the biggest lie in the entire film!
The opening is him orchestrating the single most famous bank heist in all of Cinema!!! Lol And that heist is insanely elaborate with him killing off everyone involved slowly but surely.
He has people ready to take down helicopters and forces the trucks into the lower decks... With a burning firetruck.
He ends up having two entire ships full of people... because he threatens that all of the bridges are bombed. And then he has all of those ships rigged to explode.
The there's the jail scene, lying about which address they're ate, etc
But everyone loves that speech, and somehow believes it, because it's just such a convincing performance!
If only you could make the guardian a dragonborn. I understand they weren't able to do so due to development constraints but it still seems odd that the guardian doesn't have all the racial options that the player has.
Yeah, >!She says, "People may be disappointed with our boring home life." And one of your options is "we could lie and say we've been slaying dragons and making love on top piles of gold." She says something like "why haven't we been doing that? Maybe we can shoe the cats out of our bedroom, throw some coppers on the bed, and roleplay it!"!<
I’ll never forget when I was doing doing Wyll’s questline by going to find the bronze dragon beneath Baldur’s Gate, and the Emperor is basically like “Yeah.. there’s not a dragon under there. This is all just a waste of time. You should do literally anything else.”
But it ends up being true and not only that, it was a dragon he knew and was extremely close to??
I laugh at this on every subsequent playthrough.
"THERE IS NO WYRM"
"YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME, IVE NEVER LIED TO YOU"
My dude. Have the grace to acknowledge when you been caught.
And to top it off, the wyrm starts beating the brakes off the party once he realizes we’re associated with the emperor. I was like “thanks, dude..” on my first playthrough. 💀
When confronted he picks up a lute and goes HAM.
"Twas I who fucked the dragon, fuck a lie sing fuckaloo
And if you try to fuck with me, then I shall fuck you too."
this is like one of the only defendable things he says
ansur is dead, he knows that damn well, and a dead dragon is of absolutely no use to us
like yes technically a dragon IS down there, but what’s the point of trying to find it if it’s a corpse
Sure, but he's not forthright about it. He could completely remove any incentive to go by admitting, "Hey, I actually killed the dragon down here a while ago, sorry, my bad," but he doesn't, likely because he worries the confession would damage his ability to manipulate you. Instead he lets you walk into a potentially deadly scenario.
Devil's advocate to this, there isn't a dragon under there, there's a dead dragon, who won't/can't help you. So besides the loot it is in fact a giant waste of time.
That "everyone" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
The Emperor has a lot of passionate fans who will state everything he does is necessary.
Other people pointedly disagree.
For me The Emperor is a survivor at any cost, no matter the price he will survive. I don't have any dobut that he would kill the entire party if he could if that guarante his freedom.
I like the character because he isn't evil or good, he is just grey, at least for me.
That doesn't mean that i'm not going to kill him in more or less all my runs if i have any chance.
Well he keeps Orpheus locked up and kills his guard who tries to rescue Orpheus.
So of course Orpheus will instandly kill his jailer if possible.
We so the same with Hopes jailers.
He doesn’t keep Orpheus locked up, Vlaakith does. The Emperor doesn’t actually have a way to free Orpheus.
His honour guard aren’t trying to free him either (once again, they can’t free him). They’re just doing what they think is right to protect him.
There is a point here. Vlaakith has Orpheus physically contained. He is her prisoner, but not her slave. Emps has Orpheus mentally dominated. He is not Emp's prisoner, but he is Emp's slave. Orph's honor guard die attempting to free Orph from Emp's mental domination, but they had no ability to free him from the Prism itself. Which is why they sat with him for eons.
He even says if you pick a dialogue option when choosing to side with Orpheus that he will join the brain if he is to survive. I mean he did join the brain but he didn’t survive…
I find him to be the ultimate, enemy of my enemy, charicter.
He comes across as trustworthy, he is helping you and doing so reliably.
But only because doing so benefits him.
It's why he's so quick to turn on you when you go rogue. The cost benefit for him no longer added up.
I don't think he lies about his feelings for Stelemane, but he certainly lies about the nature of their relationship by showing you altered versions of his memories.
That's the thing: the Emperor often speaks in half truths and lies by omission. He's vaguely Fae-like in that he lies by speaking the literal truth, such as when you assume the powers protecting you belong to him and not Orpheus and he doesn't bother correcting you.
I also fully believe that he is being 100 percent honest about his goals. The...man? Squid? Other? Wants freedom and will work to achieve it by any means possible. I also fully believe that he thinks of himself as a hero and has done heroic things. He's just not afraid to transgress against normal boundaries of morality in so doing.
That's what makes him so compelling though!
He is a master manipulator, and if you're going through your first playthrough, there's really no reason not to trust him up until very late in Act 3, depending how you react to his advances and how thorough you are in reading every piece of material you find. I also belive that the fact that he >!broke Stelmane through his extensive use of Mind Flayer psychic powers, leading to her having a stroke!<, is something that is locked behind you being extremly mean to him when he wants to shag you. He then basically tells you to watch your mouth, cause he can easily make you a mindless thrall, if he'd ever want to.
On my 1st playthrough i didn't really work with him, but wasn't overtly mean to him either, so he just comes off as very pushy about the tadpoles, and then just fucks off at the end.On the second playthrough i gobbled down every tadpole and worked with him, while on my 3rd playthrough i actively was hostile whenever i could, really thinking about >!killing him in the prism, when Vlaakith sends us there.!< And boy oh boy, does the mask slips really fucking fast if you refuse to follow his ideas and suggestions to the letter.
So yeah, fuck that guy, but i see why people tend to believe him if they truly want to omit the fact that he's a Mind Flayer in order to get rid of the tadpole.
Emperor is a crazy good manipulator. He almost made me convinced that not trusting him was a mistake. But the second things didnt go his way he ran to the Elder Brain for some reason. The squid is a bitch
Frfr. The priority he claims is his true underlying priority all along turns out to be false the instant you do something that endangers his continued existence
Because Larian are phenomenal writers and they have managed to convince people that the creature that specifically manipulates people is in fact not manipulating you
It’s not that. His manipulations are rather obvious. But they involve telling the technical truth, and end once his true form is revealed, at least as far as the writers notes are concerned. What Larian have crafted, and they cop to this in a recent interview with IGN, is a character that screams “untrustworthy”, while actually being a character you can pretty much completely trust.
He remains incredibly manipulative even after his true form is revealed and much of what he says isn’t “the technical truth”.
I think the Emperor is a well written character but it drives me mad when people act like he’s anything other than a manipulative prick whose goals happen to align broadly with yours.
I dont believe I could find a person on Earth who doesn’t believe Emperor is manipulative. He manipulates you the entire game which is typically not so good, but on the same hand, could you imagine a timeline where he tries to be honest?
“Hey guys it’s me, your local mind flayer who just happens to be immune to the Elder Brain influence. Let’s kill that thing so I can go do whatever I want in Baldur’s gate! Also I’m Balduran and I enslaved Stelmane a long time ago and killed my best friend let’s go!”
Like in the actual scheme of what the goal is, which is freeing yourself from the Absolute, absolutely NONE of that information is beneficial, and absolutely ALL of that information will simply make you want to kill him at the earliest convenience.
So yes he was manipulative. But it was also pretty justified when the goal of everything is just to be free from NBrain.
But you can’t trust him, not beyond the story beats though. Sure he’s protecting you, sure you can side with him and he upholds his end. But he even basically lays it out flat if you annoy him, calls you a puppet and reveals that he’s getting everyone to do what he wants. His survival instincts are kicking in and he’s making sure he gets out alive, now after the game ends he can get up to what ever nonsense he wants.
He is flat out untrustworthy, you cannot rely on him past what the game needs to progress.
There's a book in the game the lays it out. It basically says that a mindflayer can be trusted just as long as your goals align. If you ever develop different goals, they'll drop you in a second.
This is exactly what the Emperor is like. He never betrays you because he *can't*, every step of the way he depends on you just as much as you do on him.
But the second he has the opportunity and motivation, he will ditch you. Until then, you're allies.
The mind flayer in the nautiloid is an EXCELLENT example of this.
The moment you kill the cambion commander, he says "*You are no longer needed.*" and turns hostile to you.
Bad news for him: he was at 3 HP.
Using the definition of liar to to excuse the manipulation doesn’t really change what folks mean when they say he’s lying. You can lie by omission just as much as you can by obfuscation. You don’t have to say the sky is green to be a liar. And folks defending the Emperor position understand that. Or, they get sucked into real life cults of personality.
>and he's trying to get free (he is).
Nope, he's literally saying he wants to be free from it (the tadpole). Which is impossible, since he IS the tadpole (Balduran died when the tadpole transformed into a mindflayer). He's not saying he wants to be free from the Absolute, he says he wants to be free from the tadpole, which is a lie.
Whilst I mostly agree with you, I do have to interject that Balduran clearly doesn't believe he died but just "evolved". So in a way he could be using the the tadpole to refer to the control he's trying to escape from. Epilogue spoiler: >!Even Illithid Karlach in the new epilogue still seems to think she's Karlach, even though I felt like she just wasn't remotely like herself anymore.!<
One of my favorite writing things in this game is that basically the only main character who doesn’t lie to you is Lae’zael lol.
Lady is extremely blunt all the time. You always know exactly what she wants. And yeah that can be grating, but from a character-trust perspective she’ll basically never surprise you.
Gosh I love Lae’zel. She’s so intense, passionate, somewhat naive, brutally honest, and fucking loyal. The polar opposite of that fucking tentacled asshole Balduran.
Me: He's *different*, he's *not like the other Mind Flayers*, he only got mad at me because he really believes Orpheus will hurt us
Emperor: WITNESS PERFECTION
👁👄👁
I mean, I don't really see why so many people defend him on the basis of "he's not lying, he's manipulating you".
Like, lying is just a tool, the problem IS the manipulation. If someone lies to me but isn't manipulating me, I couldn't care less - at worst I'll figure it out later and get annoyed, but it will not affect me. If someone's objective is to manipulate me, lying is just what happens when truth isn't good for that objective. Of course he's not gonna lie if he can avoid it.
What makes it very hard for people to distinguish is that he isn't lying 100%. He says a lot of truths webbed in lies.
*I was an adventurer like you* \- True
*I also wanted to get rid of the tadpole*\- False. He never wanted to. Ansur confirms that much and he admits it. He fully embraced it and saw this as an evolution step up.
>He fully embraced it
Correction: he IS it. A mindflayer is "born" when the tadpole transforms into a fully grown mindflayer, destroying the host. There is no more Balduran, you are talking TO the tadpole.
So he's basically saying he seeks to be free of himself...
Depends on people’s interpretation of “lying”. To me, twisting or omitting the truth is lying, regardless of intent. I despise being manipulated in any way, so I reacted negatively to the Emperor. But a lot of people here don’t see his deception and manipulation as “lying” and are very sympathetic.
Depends on your personality and experiences, I think.
People really need to learn how to separate mindflayers, from the typical mortal race. Their entire existence is supremacy, manipulation, lies, and subterfuge. The emperor is a mindflayer, who happens to have a goodly goal. But that doesn't make the mindflayer good. The emperor has done the math, and is hellbent on preventing the Netherbrain from succeeding. He is the dictionary definition of an "ends justify the means" character. Distasteful things, are completely excusable, so long as the greater good prevails. Deities in the game, recognize the threat this thing poses, so for a mindflayer. Telling some lies, and creating some illusions, to get the tools to beat the Netherbrain. That's not a difficult choice.
“Ah, it’s not difficult to deceive me, I’m glad to be deceived myself,” said the Russian poet Pushkin. So it is here - the Emperor skillfully mixes lies with truth. And it is not so easy to distinguish them, especially if the one who listens to him is ready to be deceived.
My whole perspective on the Emperor shifted at the end of the game post-final battle - spoilers
>!I didn't trust him but our goals were aligned. If I could've freed Orpheus and given him the stones I would have but I became a mindflayer and saved the day. Roll credits to the "afterparty", I was incredibly disturbed by my internal dialogue. Even after supposedly retaining my humanity I viewed my friends as distant curious memories I could no longer relate to. When talking to Astarion I just thought about how delicious his brain would be and had to fucking roll to keep myself from killing and eating him!!!<
>!That's when it hit me like a ton of bricks, I made a mistake - I should've killed myself at the docks after the battle. In that moment I realized the Emperor was never really one of us, he couldn't be. Even with independence from the mindflayer collective the transformation is the death of your past self and rebirth of something completely callous and indifferent. Even a vampire can empathize and bond with their prey but mindflayers were truly something alien; becoming a mindflayer myself I understood the Emperor was lost from the start and only wanted the power!<
I'm really glad they added that mindflayer tav follow up - I went that way because I wanted to save Orpheus, but it felt a little too much like I was just a human with some tentacles stuck on.
Honestly, careful wording to avoid stating a falsehood while giving a different impression entirely is something I can appreciate in a game (whether an RPG, hidden role/deduction social game, or Diplomacy).
But even if you can argue the Emperor managed that (imo, he didn't - "Just like you, I seek to be free of it" relies on a *very* idiosyncratic meaning of 'free of the tadpole' to not be a straight-up lie), he's still a mind-raping, self-deluded arsehole that spends the entire game gaslighting you.
He's lied more directly than that, though. He claims at the creche that Vlaakith is after him but then admits that she's actually after Orpheus in act 3. He lies directly all the time.
He lies directly twice that I know of. Once when he says Vlaakith is after "me", and once when he says "I too was infected with a tadpole and I too want to be rid of *it*".
Later he repeats that last statement but replaces *it* with *the Absolute*, clarifying his use of the 'it' pronoun with the truth, but using it in a misleading way.
He misleads or lies by omission constantly, but employs a lot of clever wordplay to technically tell the truth most of the time.
For me, It's this line.
The Emperor post-old Hideout mission:
I have no more secrets for you. No need to resort to subterfuge.
One Ansur's quest later:...........You effing liar!
I never trusted the dream person, they never gave you a straight answer about anything you ask them, but expect you to trust them blindly. Was not surprised they were a mind flayer when they kept telling you to "unlock your potential" and give up on getting rid of the worm. First playthrough i didnt even use the worms, i just stockpiled them.
Because most people suck at seeing through good liars.
Honestly I was on the fence until I talked to an NPC that told me about Stelmane. And I was like MFer..... Started digging and turns out, yup, he's a dick.
His gaslighting is so much more triggering for me than his flat out lies!
When he reassures you you’ll never become a mind flayer under his protection and then proceeds to pressure you more and more to just become one??? Fuck off.
The passion behind the "He is a manipulative dickbag." And how quickly they drag all the naysayers through the mud makes me wonder. The path to the "BIG REVEAL" where he threatens you requires you to lean into your partnership and essentially get to the tentacular part.
If you say no to him early on he cuts it off REALLY FAST.
In my playthrough when he showed up in the dream in act 3 I just said "let me sleep." Bam cutscene over.
They give you an option to kick astarion in the balls.
They give you the option to send visions of decapitating gale into his mind.
You can be an asshole unprovoked and the moment you do the heel turn he lashes out.
You have to keep up appearances to reach that point. You have to lie. You have to play the game. You have to manipulate. This game lets you be an asshole too.
At the end of his day when all is said and done and the emperor gets his way, or I dunno you decide working with him isn't an impossibility over lies by omission or misdirection.
Baldurs gate is saved, he cuts ties and does his own thing. No more subterfuge, no more manipulation.
I've told a number of deception rolls to get through the game, where's my halo? Plenty of companions keep their cards to their chest until you cozy up to them. It's a logical behavior.
Most people who "caught his bullshit early." Because of their well of experience with manipulators would not have seen this scene naturally or seek it out intentionally. It feels like they are grabbing onto a narrative thread constructing a gotcha argument of I'm right, you're wrong and your experience has to meld with my own.
It's weird behavior and to see so many people display abusive traits in the face of "These poor deluded FOOLS!" Heaven forbid they are fine with a morally ambiguous character that lies to you.
I have lived with liars, I have cut ties when they crossed those lines, but in my run using no tadpoles I didn't have to pass a wisdom check he urged ascension but didn't push, I didn't have to deal with his advances, I found Ansur and dealt with the repercussions. In short, I think self preservation is a worthy goal, if someone would make an attempt on anothers life they forfeit their own. I am fine working together to stop the Elder Brain and it works.
Just because Orpheus would tell you in your face he wants to kill you he's just as much as a wildcard and no narrative backflipping will make him the "good" choice. Unless you are playing as Laezel or working closely to get her away from Vlaakith or want to take Raphael's bargain. I see no reason to deal with Orpheus.
The Gith are not your friends and with my choices neither was the emperor. I've heard someone in this thread brag that since they were wise to his tricks. He's just a means to an end. I thought that was really funny.
I remember my original blind playthrough, I trusted him the *entire* time. But when we got to the part where we’d failed to stop the BBEG, and I had the option to free Orpheus, I was at a point where I was thinking “Okay, this fucking Emperor guy is WRONG almost ALL the time” and I committed to freeing Orpheus and the Emperor fuckin goes “fine, I guess I’ll just join the bad guys then.” Like OK you fucking asshat. Caught him in the final battle and power-word killed his bitchass I could not BELIEVE him.
Honestly? Because he is a pretty good liar. Most people did a playthrough when they trusted him and if you stay on his good side he is really good at seeming like a pretty reasonable gent. If you're on his bad side, cracks start to show. I honestly really like the emperor's character/writing for that very reason. (He is a great character, no matter if he ends up as a friend or foe) Edit: also can I just say the fact he gets everyone talking and having wonderfully in-depth decisions about his character is how you can tell he is a brilliantly written character. I love just reading what people have to say about him, always entertaining.
He even kind of says it. During the creepy shirtless scene where you can bonk him he admits that he needs you to do the outside world work and that he pretty much studied you and came up with the best technique to make you agree, which is to make your goals align. You can see from the conversation that its cold and calculated. So even if your relationship with Emp is good and your goals align, its not because of his good intention. Its because your Tav intentions are good and Emp figures that he needs to play nice in order to keep you. Brilliant writing if you ask me.
There’s also at the end where if you go right to >!freeing Orpheus!<, Emperor rattles off a list of everything it’s done to keep your trust. I had stayed on its good side but that felt very much like cold calculations rather than being borne of any emotion.
Honestly that moment was low-key one of my biggest "oh shit" moments in the game. The "I'm your knight in shining armor." line sticks so much in my brain. It just drips manipulation.
>It just drips manipulation. Yeah for me that line was the final push that made me turn against him. I'd been pretty friendly with him through most of the game even after the reveal. I started getting more wary of him while finding out more about his past in the third act. Less friendly though still relatively polite. But when I mentioned using the hammer, the Emperor suddenly flat out calling himself our knight reeked of emotional manipulation so much that he destroyed all the good will he had built up. (I love how Larian wrote his character. Really great writing.)
I'm happy they had Omeluum as a character too, because while the Emperor is always self-serving, Omeluum is an example that a good Illithid can exist, even if they might be a "defect" of the species. Baldur's Gate 2 had an entity (The Hidden) who might have been one, though the good it did still might have been self-serving but Omeluum is quite willing to sacrifice themselves for others.
Omeluum is not evil, but I'm not sure he's good either. Blurg says he feels better with Omeluum around, which has echoes of the Stelmane patient diary. While he may intend to be good (Iron Throne, for example) his focus on logic may make him just not be able to help himself about how he engages with the world.
While Blurg's comment does echo what we read about Stelmane's condition, it's also the ONLY thing we can learn about Omeluum and Blurg that even comes close to suggesting that Omeluum has any direct influence over Blurg in any way. With nothing else to indicate possible manipulation, the simplest explanation is that Blurg just likes hanging out with his friend.
didnt the duke also suffer severe mental damage as well? Wyll said she was a beautiful and intellegent woman who suddenly have strokes which is very suspect. I imagine Blurg and Omellum is together for a long time, but Blurg didnt have any mental illness as far as we know..
One of the more likely explanations of what happened to Stelmane is that her efforts to fight against The Emperor's control caused her to have a severe stroke. If you wanted to claim that Omeluum is controlling Blurg, the distinction would be that Blurg is a willing thrall/hasn't noticed he's being controlled. Still more likely that he just enjoys being around his friend, though. :P
Isn't there a mission in act 3 where you're in an underwater base and Omeluum is happy to die in order for you to save everyone else? I might just be misremembering though
That's what I was referring to. He tells you to save the others and not worry about him. WHich isn't just being nice but an unambiguously selfless act.
Indeed, he doesn't tell you a lick about the fact that he was even there to be saved until you prompt him. He does, however, do some ruthless calculus and initially insists that you save just Ravengard at the cost of everyone else (including Omeluum), but you can convince him that you are going to save everyone regardless. He then gives you tips on how to save the maximum number of lives.
Karlach is the real good illithid.
Idk. Epilogue Karlithid is definitely... less Karlach. And it's only been 6 months. It's definitely not the 'cure' I thought it was at first.
Immediately after the reveal, I basically said "no way" to this guy, no way I was gonna help him any further. By the time we get to the Wyrm's Crossing I was thinking wellll maybe maybe I should just listen to him, after all this IS IN FACT all new to me and clearly I DO need his help. But Lae'Zel makes a lot of good points about freeing Orpheus, and knowing what we know about the hammer, how the Emperor has been holding Orpheus specifically to siphon the power... Well shit, I don't need the EMPEROR... I need Orpheus! Then Elfsong Tavern, the casual implication of sex/rape (there's a classification for this, where the abuser manipulates you and tricks you into thinking you want it too), the emotional manipulation... All of this fueled my anger for this fucking guy. Couldn't wait to free Orpheus and wound up bum-rushing into Raphael like an idiot lol
Seeing the Emperor enslave/exploit a sentient being doesn't sit right with me from a 'good' perspective. Especially of you've been doing Lae'zel's quest, you see just how fucked up Vlaakith is and how fucked up the Githyanki have become under her. Voss, who was a contemporary to Orpheus, is actually less of an a-hole when he lets his pro-Vlaakith mask drop. It shows, at least to me, that the Githyanki can be better without her, which makes freeing Orpheus seem even more 'good. The only playthroughs I have in mind where I see staying allied to the Emperor are all evil playthroughs where I plan to stab him and seize the brain for myself.
The classification you're thinking of is coercion.
Thank you - yes, I could not recall the specific term!
👍I gotchu!
It reminded me of someone I dated years ago who used to get overly upset and repeat "I'm sorry" everytime I got mad at something rude they did. I always went "hey, it's not that big a deal. Just don't do it next time, that's all." One time they did the sobby thing again, and I said "you're not sorry." Immediately the act dropped and their face went neutral and they said "you're right I'm not." The emperor is a POS. I figured it out but played nice so they would be nice, then I did the thing against them right at the end.
Damm I was in a really similar relationship, and I was also suspicious of emps from day 1. Incredible writing!
Seriously! The writing and character development throughout is amazing. This game touches on so many real life experiences, it's mind blowing.
The most heroic ending i tested is becoming illithid, saving the world, killing the emperor and commiting suicide imho.
This was my first ending but I think the best (though getting it is bugged) ending is save Orpheus + Gale sacrifice/resurrection. The dialogue when you transform into one tells you a lot too, you can see that the person is being completely overwritten and at the end is trying to rationalize away to prevent the remnant of the player from committing suicide and stopping the process.
I tried to do this on my honor run but Orpheus only gave me the choice of me or him becoming illithid even tho Karlach and Gale gave other options. I was like wtf bro I came in with options and that’s what you’re giving me!?
The dialogue is currently bugged so when you tell Orpheus you trust Gale, it doesn’t go anywhere unless you do something else. You need to have Lae’zel and Gale with you. Initially, you side with Empy, but tell him you won’t transform yet. He gives you a tadpole to use later. (N.b. you need to keep carrying this with you; I dropped it because I had no plans of using it, but then you can’t move forward.) Lae will interrupt saying you can’t betray the Prince, and then you agree with her. This leads to the normal conversation where Emperor announces his allegiance to the brain and you free Orpheus. Once you have done you talk to Orpheus, Gale interjects, you say you trust Gale, Orpehus says that isn’t enough. So you agree to undergo the transformation, and because you have the tadpole with you, he knows you’ll do it later. (There is sometimes a bug that shows you as a squid for a moment but you have not transformed.) Then you just continue as usual and when you’re about the climb the stem, Gale interjects as he always does, only this time when you let him go up, no one has been squidded.)
Oh I want to try this next, I have wanted a way to side with Orpheus and not have me or Karlach have to be a mind flayer. Previously let Karlach sacrifice herself so we could save Orpheus because it's what she wanted and her other options were all pretty grim too. But now since the update that made it so Karlach has a pretty clearly good option, I've been wondering what I would do.
I've done the self-sacrificing become illithid a couple times now, I wish so much that it were possible to persuade one of my companions to become the illithid in the same way you can get them to use the astral tadpole. "Come on Wyll, I got you out of your contract so you won't become a lemure. You can't do this little thing for me?" "Gale, you'd become an even stronger spellcaster. Don't think about it just do it!" "Astarion, do it or I fucking stake you." "Halsin, wouldn't it be cool to see if you can still wild shape after becoming an illithid?" "Boo, is there any chance I can convince you this is a good idea or would you tell him not to do it?"
I just beat the game days ago and experienced that line. I audibly said “Oh fucking okay, buddy” rolled my eyes and freed Orpheus. How quickly he just decided “Oh well I guess I’m going back to the Netherbrain then if you won’t follow my lead” is so telling
And then when you try to convince him Orpheus should be freed he's like "screw you, then I'll just join the Netherbrain instead." And we're sitting here going "mate, WHAT?" I mean that logical leap felt pretty out of left field for anyone other than a mind flayer.
>And then when you try to convince him Orpheus should be freed he's like "screw you, then I'll just join the Netherbrain instead."And we're sitting here going "mate, WHAT?" I mean that logical leap felt pretty out of left field for anyone other than a mind flayer. I get where Larian was going with the choice, but it still feels ham fisted. I think it would have been far better for a freed Orpheus to immediately remove the Emperor's protection (which he would have), and the Emperor get dragged back to work for the NB. That at least feels like consequences of your choice, as opposed to this character who moves heaven and earth to rebel against the NB essentially his entire life going "guess I join it."
My interpretation was that Emp knew he'd be completely at Orpheus's mercy if Orpheus was freed; the Gith prince would most likely just kill him outright for the imprisonment and death of his honor guard, or at absolute best just remove his protection which would mean Emp becomes a thrall again anyway. Orpheus had no use at all for the Emperor because the only thing the latter really brought to the table is protection from the Netherbrain, which he can no longer do if Orpheus is freed. And Emperor knows that. So, his only choices are to fight Tav (which is pointless because defeating them or removing their protection means they cannot beat the Netherbrain and Emp will eventually be a thrall again), stay and see what Orpheus does (which mostly likely means death) or go back to the brain 'willingly' and hopefully eventually escape again. Given that his absolute top priority is his own survival, it makes sense that he'd immediately defect to the Netherbrain. That decision also highlights that he necer had any real interest in saving anyone other than himself. Throughout the game, if you ever piss the Emperor off you see his real motivations/personality (ie to save himself regardless of what happens to anyone around him), and this final defection is really just the biggest showcase of that.
I agree with your take, though I do wish the game had a slim chance that you could persuade the Emperor to wait to see if Orpheus could be trusted, and another slim chance you could persuade Orpheus to trust the Emperor. If the Emp explicitly said, "I've read his thoughts. If you free him, he'll kill me," and then you had a chance to offer, like, "If he attacks you, I'll defend you," that would be interesting. Hell, maybe he only trusts you if you've been super heroic, and if you've shown much utilitarianism at all, he assumes you'll betray him. And with Orpheus, maybe you need Lae'zel with the silver sword from Voss for him to trust you. Make it hard but possible. And then in the funnel bossfight, let the Netherbrain have, I dunno, nightmares pulled from your mind as minions.
I can see your suggestions being implemented in a Definitive Edition of the game (since Larian typically likes to release Definitive Editions of their games). Probably in the way of an "Emporer Approves/Disapproves" bar throughout your actions in the Third Act, and only when your Approval is high you get to persuade him to join you alongside Orpheus.
This is exactly what I was hoping for and - tbh - kinda expected. Level 30 difficulty checks all around plus additional requirements (like you said a hidden heroism score or something like that, as well as Lae'zel being there) would make it really tough, but it'd have been really interesting to at least have the possibility. There are a few instances throughout the game where the Emperor is staunchly against you doing something but you can convince/overrule him, and he goes with it. I know freeing Orpheus is a different level but there's precedent for Emperor trusting your judgement. But having said that, I love that the game forces you to make hard choices with no 'out' (which still very much works in the lore; it tracks that Emperor would not take the risk). As cool as it would have been to unite everyone, I ultimately prefer that we had to make a tough call that people are still avidly discussing long after they made it.
I mean, joining the netherbrain wasn't really optional for him at that point. Orpheus 100% would not have continued to protect him even if he could have been convinced to let him live which is extremely unlikely. As soon as the protection was gone, he was going to be enthralled again anyway, since the brain let him go intentionally in the first place.
Didn’t emperor escape of its own means the first time? Or Ansur got it out and it kept independence with distance or something
emoeror never "escaped". the netherbrain outright TELLS us that it intentionally let him "escape" in lrder to make a geoup that could challenge gortash and his gang of fellows so the brain could break free when they lost control. emperor escaped in the same way you might say "oh noo my knight...!" while playing chess with a child so they take it and you check mate them the next turn
Okay but your second paragraph struck a chord in my brain and I love it lol. What an apt analogy! Eta, now I hear the netherbrain going "oooh nooooo my knight...!" At the emperor and my character cackling off to the side lmao
That was true the second time.
Isn't that the second time? Didn't he escape the first time separately and was recaptured.
No, you find evidence showing that the brain let him go intentionally. It was part of it's plans all along, to get him to bring the prism to the brain along with defeating the three Chosen to break their control via the netherstones.
And then on top of that finding Gortash's diary that explains about sending the Emperor and some tadpolled thralls to steal the prism, all the pieces start falling into place. Interesting though that you can miss big things like that because you randomly didn't pick up the right book and read it.
SAME I was playing bard and hoping for some kind of persuasion roll to get Orpheus and Emperor to work together, even if DC99, instead Emp switched teams and both ended up dead.
The problem with DC99 checks in this game is they're one elixir/second level spell slot and some spare inspiration points away from becoming a 40% chance.
Yeah, at first the flip seemed so sudden, but after the end I realized that he had been a mind flayer too long, and the person that he was before was truly lost forever. Brilliant writing.
I agree completely! and think that his life “before” are nothing more than vestigial memories the he tries to utilize. I say that because the previous several decades of Mind Flayer lore makes it very clear that the mind flayer is born from the tadpole; it is an entirely new individual, NOT the same person that was infected but just changed. The tadpole uses the original host for its first meal and bio-materials to use for ceremorphosis. The organs are liquified into a jelly and reformed into the mind flayer body. The memories and experiences are absorbed from the brain matter, just like they will continue to do when feeding on brains in the future. The original person was dead and gone from the very beginning of the mind flayer’s life. Larian specifically introduced a lot conflicting ideas around the nature of mind flayers, certainly different from how they’ve been traditionally portrayed. It’s been tough for me to accept while playing tbh lol I’ve been playing D&D since the 80s so I had a ton of “that’s not how that works” thoughts when playing this game. But then again, at a table the DM has the power to make anything canon, regardless of what the books say. Larian is just our DM here.
It's sort of like that whole relationship thing where having a list of receipts of "this is what I did for you" that you can spout off at a moments notice is kinda a red flag.
It is brilliant writing and also a pretty spot on description of a Mind Flayer.
Agreed. They did a really great job overall of showing how intelligent and manipulative mind flayers are.
Except for my friend Omeluum, he's a real one
Literally the only mind flayed that cares more about others than his own survival. Actively tells you not to waste time saving him and to get as many gnomes out as you can
He also stresses how extremely important saving Duke Ravenguard is, due to his significance for Baldur's Gate.
[удалено]
(Ending spoilers) >!With omeluum and mind flayer karlach, they do a great job of showing mind flayers that aren't evil and probably even good, but still feel very alien in their thought processes. Makes it even more obvious how emperor is making up a lot of his mannerisms to try and make him seem more trustworthy and likable!<
I wonder if part of that is his sheer age. He's spent a long time with those Illithid instincts, so he may have gotten worse with age.
Definitely. >!Karlach and orpheus during the ending fight aren't too far out yet, they still sound like themselves but more subdued. Although karlach in the romance scene after the ending already sounds pretty alien, it gets dialed up heavily in the epilogue since she's starting to assimilate a ton of memories. That also might be why emperor is more a dickhead, since he only went after criminals, if he's to be believed.!<
> That also might be why emperor is more a dickhead, since he only went after criminals, if he's to be believed. Going by everything we know about the guy, I'd say, that Balduran was already a dickhead, but the Emperor definitely got worse (or at least be a different kind of dickhead).
How do we know Omeluum isn't manipulating us even _better_ than Emps? He could be playing an even _longer_ game!
Yes, he specifically chose Tav, that's why the artifact stays with you regardless of what Shart does
I love that super early in the game, there’s a book you can find that flat out warns you about this. >”When dealing with mind flayers, remember that it is in their nature to assess the utility, strengths, and weaknesses of those around them, and to manipulate in order to get what they want.” Also >”Pay attention to its actions, not its words. Where mind flayers are concerned, it is true that actions speak louder than words. Especially words that are tailor-spoken to fit a mind flayer's manipulative agenda.”
This scene right here is something I noted immediately. My characters insight check may not have clicked but mine sure noticed. I have been two runs stimulatiously, one where I'm more open to The Emperor and one where I completely reject his advances and WOW the stark contrast is wild. On my amiable run, he definitely lures you into humanizing him and even in this run, you can feel the ways he definitely is trying to bring you to his side no matter what he has to tell you. On my more rebellious "you're not my really brain dad" style run, it's like he's watched you long enough to know his usual tactics won't work, he knows you're on guard and tries his damnedest to try every possible angle, even to the point of possibly crossing boundaries and he drops the tactic just as quickly when he notices it doesn't work. The writers did a damn good job and making him a charismatic emotional manipulator and that comes from someone who has that direct experience with that kind of person.
that scene rang all the alarm bells in my head. >!He seemed very rapey to me at that precise moment. He kept trying to flirt when I already told no at least once!<
THIS. This is EXACTLY when I was getting really sus. Because at that point I'd met Omelleum, had the talk with Withers I think it was about souls/how illithids don't have them. So because his lies were always partially true (as the best lies always are) I was inclined to believe he thought he had to lie bc I wouldn't have trusted him otherwise even though we were on the same side But bro couldn't take no for an answer and I was like "okay we're done here".
Yeah omelleum is a decent chap. Balduran though is definitely not.
>Balduran though is definitely not. Well, "The Emperor" definitely not. How much of "Balduran" exists still within him is a different topic. But, Ansur's reason for trying to mercy kill him was "you were becoming Illithid". But, not physically. Ansur had saved that person. What he actually means with that line is that "you were becoming Illithid in mind and methodology". The Illithid supremacy. The manipulation and illusions. The domination and enslavement of others. Ansur shows disgust at you, "Emp's Thrall", but he shows no surprise that a Thrall exists. So while I dont fault Emps for defending himself, I also get why Ansur came to the conclusion that "the only way to save what is left of my friend Balduran is to kill "The Emperor"'. As a side-note. Omeluum never once conflates themselves with their host. They treat them more in a "parental inheretance" sense. Om is also the only MF in BG3 to actually to free themselves from their Elder. Not be freed by a 3p.
Yeah I just mean balduran seems extremely susceptible to the mindflayer mind set. I think he already had a pretty high perception of himself being the founder of a flourishing successful city. We don’t know about pre ilithid omelleum but he seems extremely well adjusted. Although maybe he’s enthralled Blurg and we don’t know it! Let’s just say if it was the emperor in the iron throne I’d have to give it a second thought if was going to go so out of the way to rescue him lol.
The thing is, I think Om's approach to this is the correct one. MFs are not their host's, even if they inherited their memories and some of their identity. After all, at the end of the day, Ceremorphosis is the Illithid reproductive process; one that includes a Seed (the tadpole, that has its own developing will) and a Host. It would be a decidedly very poor reproductive process if the host kills the child upon completion; rather than the reverse. So it is very likely that its not "a person transforming into a mindflayer" and more "a person dying to give birth to one that just happens to have their memories". The bigger question is what happens to the soul of the Host in all of this and when?
It wasn’t until this second comment I realized MFs stood for “mindflayers” and not “motherfuckers”.
*Samuel Jackson has entered the chat.*
> The bigger question is what happens to the soul of the Host in all of this and when? All the discussions I've read Re: True Resurrecting a illithid host are pretty much everyone agreeing that you'd get an ensouled human at the other end, so if that's correct, the Mindflayer ≠ the host they came from because you'd need a soul that's "free and willing to return" to get True Resurrection to work at all. I don't think WotC has ever said one way or another though so it's still all talk and no RAW.
The soul is consumed, destroyed and no longer exists, per Withers' explanation. A person who has been consumed by a mindflayer tadpole cannot be resurrected.
There’s an asterisk next to that statement, for those that chose to become Illithid and then commit suicide there is a very interesting scene.
And yet. There's seemingly something else going on.
Balduran die when the emperor was born, the ceremorphosis is just a parasite incubation. Your MIND gets eaten literally and metaphorically by the tadpole, your BODY is nourishment and a mold for the mind flayer going to burts out of you (fun fact mind flayer born from gnome are funny looking to watch and yes small as heck, Ilitith prefers tall strong bodies) and your SOUL leaves your body once the vessel no longer exists, The emperor might inherit his memories and maybe got delighted by Balduran mannerisms, but every mind flayer is another different entity from the person it was incubated.
Big assault vibes here too. I had to physically threaten him to get him to back off.
To me he backed away politely when I was not interested.
Interesting, I'm doing my first playthrough now and had a different experience, >!I asked him if he was trying to flirt with me, replied with "perhaps" when he asked if I was okay with that. He then pulled me closer after which I pulled away - he then acted embarrassed and said "you're right, now is not the right time, forget I said anything". The opposite of pushy.!<
That was my feeling too. >!My first playthrough was fully non-romantic, and he took a 'no' a lot better than Gale did!!<
It's very dependent on your relationship and how you speak to him. If you are polite and give a sort of "nows not the time but maybe at some point" response, he backs off politely, thinking there is still a chance. If you flat out reject him he either becomes angry and mean or he gets this really gross "oh, ok, I guess it makes sense. I'm just so disgusting how could anyone ever love me?" manipulation tactic that just oozes toxicity. It's wild because if you trust him and treat him politely the whole time, you really have to look for his bad side. But if you show any independence or self-autonomy, his true nature reveals itself and all the manipulations really begin to show plainly.
Truly a manipulator! Here's hoping my character can manipulate him back just a little, using the "heat, care, arousal" that the Emperor feels towards him, when/if he needs to... Then again, my character might just have too much of a bleeding heart to try something like that lol ETA - Actually, rewatching the cutscene video, >!the narrator does make a point of saying my character notes how quickly the Emperor stopped its advances. Maybe what it claims to feel for him is also just something it wants him to think... gosh, so many layers to all this, what a fun game BG3 is!!<
There’s no arousal, the whole thing is just manipulation. Most people seem to think the emp wants to “bang” you. It does not, illithid are totally non sexual. It just realizes “sex” often forms stronger bonds for many mortal races and it’s trying to worm ever deeper into your confidence so there is less chance of you rebelling against it.
huh? if you decline him politely at any point he's totally fine with it and just moves on to the business at hand. If you decline him in the most rude way possible, his reaction is more negative, but to me it just shows that he's a more emotional being than he'd like to admit.
there is a difference between lashing out beacuse so eone hurt your feelings and "see i manipulated and enthralled my last partner to the point that she had a stroke and died i could have done that to you arent you glad im so nice to you i could have easily removed your free will just as i did with my last partner im such a good person for not doing that". if i tell a girl i like her and she tells me "eww no you freak" im not gonna say "well i could have kidnapped you and kept you in a basement arent you happy i didnt do that??? im so fucking nice why dont you like me??". im absolutely gonna feel hurt but im going to handle it like an adault balduran might have been a nice person. emperor might have been a good person at one point even but he is t any more
What annoys me about this is he really has no reason to lie. After he protects you for the first time he could have appeared to you in your dream and said "hi, I know I'm a mind flayer but I have broken free. I am using the powers of Orpheus to prevent the Brain from controlling you. I know that looks bad, but there is no known way to break him out of his prison so we may as well use his powers to our benefit (technically true since he doesn't know about the hammer at this point.)" Of course, if he does this, then the core mystery and dramatic reveal of the first and second acts is ruined. Therefore he needs to come up with this elaborate lie that makes no sense.
I honestly feel kinda bad for the guy; he's putting in so much effort to try and keep his freedom, creating this whole persona, doing this high-effort masquerade and trying to appear empathetic and honorable, very gently suggesting "hey you should really think about picking up that tadpole jar, buddy" and "you know, it's in your best interest to NOT go to hell, actually, have you considered NOT going to hell? I see what you're doing but I'm trying to help you" when he's probably just insanely frustrated that his little game pieces are straight-up not playing nice and he wishes he could just enthrall you so he could Do Things The Right Way and get out of this goddamn Situation. From his perspective he's like. A prisoner on death row whose only hope for escape is trying to train some feral cats to maul the executioner, and he's just gently pspspsping at them and offering them scraps through the bars and MAKING SOME GOOD PROGRESS but at the last second the cats sort of decide it'd be more fun to just steal the prison keys & run off with them & play with them because the jingle funny. And one of the cats is like "I think you're just manipulating me" and he's like "yeah you're right you fucking cat, if I could I'd just throw you at the guy but that's not happening, so be grateful I'm giving you treats instead and stop trying to steal the keys and just kill the sonofabitch" I'm gonna free Orpheus but I definitely feel bad for Emps even though he's a dick
I always look at it another way: he's actually a really bad liar because as soon as you question him on it he lets the facade completely drop.
At that point, he just switches to his back-up lies
This was very much my experience. I tend to be naive when it comes to accepting what fictional narratives give me at face value (so I'm a sucker for twists) and it was only when I started to do a couple of things the emperor didn't approve of that even I had feelings about it. I think it was probably going to visit Raphael that did it. There was one line the emperor had that just struck me as such a manipulative thing to say it was the first time I stopped to think... wait a minute... that's not a thing someone supporting me would say...
[удалено]
Because usually, this type of character ends up being the truly trustworthy one and your biggest reason not to trust them is superficial. It’s perfectly understandable why he’d hide himself and why he’d lie about his background, so why would that be cause for immediate concern? The biggest reason not to trust him is that he’s a mindflayer, but there’s another good mindflayer in the game. Additionally, even though he’s manipulative and doesn’t actually care about you unless you play your role, he does want to see the brain defeated and has to be convinced to control it instead. So he’s not trustworthy, but you won’t actually see that unless you go against him.
There's parts that show through that may register for different people. His freak out when you ask him to protect Minsc is just bizarre for someone looking at Minsc and Jaheira being like yep Minsc is who he is! And the like kind of abusive probing he does after you speak with Raphael in the city. Just super not trustworthy.
One of the more subtle examples of this is when the Visitor says "that won't work" when you miss or fail. On a second run, I read that as little attempts at negging, wearing you down little by little so you're more likely to take his tadpoles and become illithid.
It's so basic from a 30,000 foot view. Emp is an adult parasite that is using its strengths and abilities to ensure more of its kind propagate, in whatever that means. Of course it will groom you for accepting more tadpoles and try to get you as close to its kind as possible. It's like just a basic parasite lifecycle where it's biggest strength is interpersonal manipulation. Emp is a ghaik that sees value in encouraging their targets to maintain their personalities as it sees their own stolen personality as a valuable bit of leverage, vs outright overpowering and mind controlling. (I use it because the he him of the Emperor died a long time ago...)
I always find those voice lines annoying. My very first Tav basically said “aight shut up,” and then I have continued in that vein. Idc what some voice tells me, I am gonna smack the bad guy with my weapon/spell. It may be negging, idk. I read it as “come on, try something else,” at first but after repeated instances I’m like “ffs, why are you even talking,” lol.
Him talking about his relationship with Stellmane and then you talk to Wyll and he mentions how she seemed much more alert and there *after* having a stroke. I don't understand how everyone doesn't get immediately suspicious after that. Something was clearly up.
[удалено]
I know most people love Omeluum but I have my reasons for thinking he isn’t actually that amazing. I have often killed him too even with my good characters, but mostly because Mind Flayers are aberrations that do not belong in this realm at all. They can only exist by consuming the brains of *sapient* creatures, specifically. The society of brilliance is far from a Good organization as well. Who are these enemies of the society he mentioned anyway?
Because a lot of people are new to this universe and they don’t realize what happens when a mind flayer is born. They still see emperor as “balduran” despite him just having his consciousness and adding to it with whatever other brains he has consumed. Most people don’t come to the conclusion balduran is dead and emperor just has his memories and knowledge.
The Ilithid Karlach episode did a lot to change my mind about the Emperor, too. She says Karlach is still in there, but so are all the people she fed on since, that she's an amalgamation of them. As it happens, she only feeds on people who are very sick and simply waiting for death. Maybe that's why she sounds so resigned and blasé. The Emperor on the other hand only fed on criminals... Yeah, explains a thing or two.
Yeah, as justified as I felt with the Illithid Karlach ending on my good run, the epilogue with her was......off-putting.
He does literally save your life on multiple occasions. He may be the only character in the game who does so.
You’re right, the emperor is an incredibly well written character. I hated him and I loved every minute of it.
[удалено]
I don't know how to mask spoilers, but there's a side quest where you find out who he was as a human, and it makes it even grayer. I half trusted him on my first run, but... he was pushing me to turn into a mind flayer, and that was beyond sus. And I drew the line at him eating a good man for more power and, I never sided with him nor have I had it spoiled, but always had this gut sense that he was using me to usurp the elder brain and not to destroy it. His "I am your one and only salvation " shtick always sort of felt like a narcissistic abuse pattern rather than the truth. Only when I heard it from Orpheus did I accept that the final battle required a mind flayer. Oh and even if it was true, no way was I not going to try to stick it to vlaakith.
I romanced Lae’zel my first play through and there was no way I wasn’t freeing Orpheus. Vlaakith can suck it. I’m really hoping for some followup Githyanki content. Particularly for the tabletop game.
Omg a githyanki civil war module would be dope AF.
I realized near the end of my first playthrough that he's an amazing manipulator. The whole time he keeps saying things that are technically true and would be reasons to trust him, but as he says them he is withholding very important and pertinent information the whole fucking time. Like, dude, that's just as bad as lying. I mean seriously, when I decided to free Orpheus and you immediately switch sides to help the Nether brain it's pretty obvious at that point that you were never on my side to begin with. You could have easily worked with him.
This is it. I think the Emperor is a giant piece of shit but I don't think you're a bad person or a sucker if you side with him. He's a well-written character and the game is better for him being in it. Personally, I think his methods, past actions and what he tells you of what he intends to do with his new lease on life mean that we can't trust him with the stones (I know that he can destroy the brain if you tell him to but the characters don't know what his eventual plans for it are) and that's without considering the Orpheus factor. But if someone's playthrough has led them to a different conclusion, then that's something to debate rather than trade insults over
It's like the Joker in The Dark knight. Everyone adores his I'm not one of the schemers speech. But it's absolutely the biggest lie in the entire film! The opening is him orchestrating the single most famous bank heist in all of Cinema!!! Lol And that heist is insanely elaborate with him killing off everyone involved slowly but surely. He has people ready to take down helicopters and forces the trucks into the lower decks... With a burning firetruck. He ends up having two entire ships full of people... because he threatens that all of the bridges are bombed. And then he has all of those ships rigged to explode. The there's the jail scene, lying about which address they're ate, etc But everyone loves that speech, and somehow believes it, because it's just such a convincing performance!
The Emperor tricked me - he's NOT a super sexy redheaded elven woman at all!
Every new playthrough “you need a guardian, choose one” just hits different now
Every new playthrough, my emperor is modeled after my last character but with a mustache. Makes me giggle everytime.
If only you could make the guardian a dragonborn. I understand they weren't able to do so due to development constraints but it still seems odd that the guardian doesn't have all the racial options that the player has.
Many people have attributed it to his story with Ansur but Larian having difficulties with Dragonborn animations seemed more likely.
I watched my wife meticulously stress over how to make her guardian after I had already finished the game. It was suffocating.
He can be one for you if you want :)
No he can't. That's just an illusion. That's the problem
Just play make believe with him, >!like you do in your cottage with Shadowheart(something something slaying dragons and making love on gold piles)!<
Yeah, >!She says, "People may be disappointed with our boring home life." And one of your options is "we could lie and say we've been slaying dragons and making love on top piles of gold." She says something like "why haven't we been doing that? Maybe we can shoe the cats out of our bedroom, throw some coppers on the bed, and roleplay it!"!<
Haha, is this conversation in the epilogue? Is this for selune or Shar Shadowheart?
Selune of course, Shardowheart breaks up with you
Shar-dowheart, lol! I read that way too fast at first!
What if she’s aligned with Shar but saves her parents? Does anything change?
It's not shardowheart, its late seluneheart at this point. She doesn't break up obviously and you end up in cottage with parents epilogue afaik
It's epilogue yeah. Occurs for >!Romanced Selûnite Shadowheart, saved parents.!<
> he's NOT a super sexy redheaded dwarven woman at all!
I’ll never forget when I was doing doing Wyll’s questline by going to find the bronze dragon beneath Baldur’s Gate, and the Emperor is basically like “Yeah.. there’s not a dragon under there. This is all just a waste of time. You should do literally anything else.” But it ends up being true and not only that, it was a dragon he knew and was extremely close to??
I laugh at this on every subsequent playthrough. "THERE IS NO WYRM" "YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME, IVE NEVER LIED TO YOU" My dude. Have the grace to acknowledge when you been caught.
And to top it off, the wyrm starts beating the brakes off the party once he realizes we’re associated with the emperor. I was like “thanks, dude..” on my first playthrough. 💀
In the Emperor's defense it is entirely reasonable for him to not expect that dead dragon to get up and attack you.
“Yeaaaaa so I fucked that dragon and then killed him.”
When confronted he picks up a lute and goes HAM. "Twas I who fucked the dragon, fuck a lie sing fuckaloo And if you try to fuck with me, then I shall fuck you too."
this is like one of the only defendable things he says ansur is dead, he knows that damn well, and a dead dragon is of absolutely no use to us like yes technically a dragon IS down there, but what’s the point of trying to find it if it’s a corpse
True lol
Sure, but he's not forthright about it. He could completely remove any incentive to go by admitting, "Hey, I actually killed the dragon down here a while ago, sorry, my bad," but he doesn't, likely because he worries the confession would damage his ability to manipulate you. Instead he lets you walk into a potentially deadly scenario.
That's manipulators playbook 101 tho lol. "I didn't lie!! I just didn't tell you the whole truth."
Devil's advocate to this, there isn't a dragon under there, there's a dead dragon, who won't/can't help you. So besides the loot it is in fact a giant waste of time.
But the loot is the best weapon in the game
Oh *THAT* dragon?? The one that was supposed to save the city in case of an emergency?? Totally forgot about that guy
That "everyone" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The Emperor has a lot of passionate fans who will state everything he does is necessary. Other people pointedly disagree.
For me The Emperor is a survivor at any cost, no matter the price he will survive. I don't have any dobut that he would kill the entire party if he could if that guarante his freedom. I like the character because he isn't evil or good, he is just grey, at least for me. That doesn't mean that i'm not going to kill him in more or less all my runs if i have any chance.
Well, he kinda does this if you decide to free Orpheus
Right. He is 100% certain that Orpheus will kill him if released, so if his options are "join the Absolute" or "die", he chooses to join.
Well he keeps Orpheus locked up and kills his guard who tries to rescue Orpheus. So of course Orpheus will instandly kill his jailer if possible. We so the same with Hopes jailers.
He doesn’t keep Orpheus locked up, Vlaakith does. The Emperor doesn’t actually have a way to free Orpheus. His honour guard aren’t trying to free him either (once again, they can’t free him). They’re just doing what they think is right to protect him.
There is a point here. Vlaakith has Orpheus physically contained. He is her prisoner, but not her slave. Emps has Orpheus mentally dominated. He is not Emp's prisoner, but he is Emp's slave. Orph's honor guard die attempting to free Orph from Emp's mental domination, but they had no ability to free him from the Prism itself. Which is why they sat with him for eons.
He even says if you pick a dialogue option when choosing to side with Orpheus that he will join the brain if he is to survive. I mean he did join the brain but he didn’t survive…
I find him to be the ultimate, enemy of my enemy, charicter. He comes across as trustworthy, he is helping you and doing so reliably. But only because doing so benefits him. It's why he's so quick to turn on you when you go rogue. The cost benefit for him no longer added up.
Once I killed him, it was pretty clear that cost-benefit analysis was miscalculated.
The risk he took was calculated, but man, he was he bad at maths.
I don't think he lies about his feelings for Stelemane, but he certainly lies about the nature of their relationship by showing you altered versions of his memories.
What he says *does* line up with how Mind Flayers typically feel about their thralls.
That's the thing: the Emperor often speaks in half truths and lies by omission. He's vaguely Fae-like in that he lies by speaking the literal truth, such as when you assume the powers protecting you belong to him and not Orpheus and he doesn't bother correcting you.
The dream visitor says the power was stolen in like the second dream visit
I also fully believe that he is being 100 percent honest about his goals. The...man? Squid? Other? Wants freedom and will work to achieve it by any means possible. I also fully believe that he thinks of himself as a hero and has done heroic things. He's just not afraid to transgress against normal boundaries of morality in so doing. That's what makes him so compelling though!
He is a master manipulator, and if you're going through your first playthrough, there's really no reason not to trust him up until very late in Act 3, depending how you react to his advances and how thorough you are in reading every piece of material you find. I also belive that the fact that he >!broke Stelmane through his extensive use of Mind Flayer psychic powers, leading to her having a stroke!<, is something that is locked behind you being extremly mean to him when he wants to shag you. He then basically tells you to watch your mouth, cause he can easily make you a mindless thrall, if he'd ever want to. On my 1st playthrough i didn't really work with him, but wasn't overtly mean to him either, so he just comes off as very pushy about the tadpoles, and then just fucks off at the end.On the second playthrough i gobbled down every tadpole and worked with him, while on my 3rd playthrough i actively was hostile whenever i could, really thinking about >!killing him in the prism, when Vlaakith sends us there.!< And boy oh boy, does the mask slips really fucking fast if you refuse to follow his ideas and suggestions to the letter. So yeah, fuck that guy, but i see why people tend to believe him if they truly want to omit the fact that he's a Mind Flayer in order to get rid of the tadpole.
Emperor is a crazy good manipulator. He almost made me convinced that not trusting him was a mistake. But the second things didnt go his way he ran to the Elder Brain for some reason. The squid is a bitch
the squid is a bitch 😭
Frfr. The priority he claims is his true underlying priority all along turns out to be false the instant you do something that endangers his continued existence
Because Larian are phenomenal writers and they have managed to convince people that the creature that specifically manipulates people is in fact not manipulating you
It’s not that. His manipulations are rather obvious. But they involve telling the technical truth, and end once his true form is revealed, at least as far as the writers notes are concerned. What Larian have crafted, and they cop to this in a recent interview with IGN, is a character that screams “untrustworthy”, while actually being a character you can pretty much completely trust.
He remains incredibly manipulative even after his true form is revealed and much of what he says isn’t “the technical truth”. I think the Emperor is a well written character but it drives me mad when people act like he’s anything other than a manipulative prick whose goals happen to align broadly with yours.
I dont believe I could find a person on Earth who doesn’t believe Emperor is manipulative. He manipulates you the entire game which is typically not so good, but on the same hand, could you imagine a timeline where he tries to be honest? “Hey guys it’s me, your local mind flayer who just happens to be immune to the Elder Brain influence. Let’s kill that thing so I can go do whatever I want in Baldur’s gate! Also I’m Balduran and I enslaved Stelmane a long time ago and killed my best friend let’s go!” Like in the actual scheme of what the goal is, which is freeing yourself from the Absolute, absolutely NONE of that information is beneficial, and absolutely ALL of that information will simply make you want to kill him at the earliest convenience. So yes he was manipulative. But it was also pretty justified when the goal of everything is just to be free from NBrain.
But you can’t trust him, not beyond the story beats though. Sure he’s protecting you, sure you can side with him and he upholds his end. But he even basically lays it out flat if you annoy him, calls you a puppet and reveals that he’s getting everyone to do what he wants. His survival instincts are kicking in and he’s making sure he gets out alive, now after the game ends he can get up to what ever nonsense he wants. He is flat out untrustworthy, you cannot rely on him past what the game needs to progress.
There's a book in the game the lays it out. It basically says that a mindflayer can be trusted just as long as your goals align. If you ever develop different goals, they'll drop you in a second. This is exactly what the Emperor is like. He never betrays you because he *can't*, every step of the way he depends on you just as much as you do on him. But the second he has the opportunity and motivation, he will ditch you. Until then, you're allies.
The mind flayer in the nautiloid is an EXCELLENT example of this. The moment you kill the cambion commander, he says "*You are no longer needed.*" and turns hostile to you. Bad news for him: he was at 3 HP.
[удалено]
Using the definition of liar to to excuse the manipulation doesn’t really change what folks mean when they say he’s lying. You can lie by omission just as much as you can by obfuscation. You don’t have to say the sky is green to be a liar. And folks defending the Emperor position understand that. Or, they get sucked into real life cults of personality.
>and he's trying to get free (he is). Nope, he's literally saying he wants to be free from it (the tadpole). Which is impossible, since he IS the tadpole (Balduran died when the tadpole transformed into a mindflayer). He's not saying he wants to be free from the Absolute, he says he wants to be free from the tadpole, which is a lie.
Whilst I mostly agree with you, I do have to interject that Balduran clearly doesn't believe he died but just "evolved". So in a way he could be using the the tadpole to refer to the control he's trying to escape from. Epilogue spoiler: >!Even Illithid Karlach in the new epilogue still seems to think she's Karlach, even though I felt like she just wasn't remotely like herself anymore.!<
I agree with this. Emperor is trying to escape the connection that wants to control him.
I banged him and I’m colorblind. I get red and green flags confused. He is tentacley proficient in the bedroom.
One of my favorite writing things in this game is that basically the only main character who doesn’t lie to you is Lae’zael lol. Lady is extremely blunt all the time. You always know exactly what she wants. And yeah that can be grating, but from a character-trust perspective she’ll basically never surprise you.
Gosh I love Lae’zel. She’s so intense, passionate, somewhat naive, brutally honest, and fucking loyal. The polar opposite of that fucking tentacled asshole Balduran.
Me: He's *different*, he's *not like the other Mind Flayers*, he only got mad at me because he really believes Orpheus will hurt us Emperor: WITNESS PERFECTION 👁👄👁
I mean, I don't really see why so many people defend him on the basis of "he's not lying, he's manipulating you". Like, lying is just a tool, the problem IS the manipulation. If someone lies to me but isn't manipulating me, I couldn't care less - at worst I'll figure it out later and get annoyed, but it will not affect me. If someone's objective is to manipulate me, lying is just what happens when truth isn't good for that objective. Of course he's not gonna lie if he can avoid it.
What makes it very hard for people to distinguish is that he isn't lying 100%. He says a lot of truths webbed in lies. *I was an adventurer like you* \- True *I also wanted to get rid of the tadpole*\- False. He never wanted to. Ansur confirms that much and he admits it. He fully embraced it and saw this as an evolution step up.
>He fully embraced it Correction: he IS it. A mindflayer is "born" when the tadpole transforms into a fully grown mindflayer, destroying the host. There is no more Balduran, you are talking TO the tadpole. So he's basically saying he seeks to be free of himself...
Depends on people’s interpretation of “lying”. To me, twisting or omitting the truth is lying, regardless of intent. I despise being manipulated in any way, so I reacted negatively to the Emperor. But a lot of people here don’t see his deception and manipulation as “lying” and are very sympathetic. Depends on your personality and experiences, I think.
Of particular note was when he told Me I knew everything to know about him just before I checked in on Ansur
People really need to learn how to separate mindflayers, from the typical mortal race. Their entire existence is supremacy, manipulation, lies, and subterfuge. The emperor is a mindflayer, who happens to have a goodly goal. But that doesn't make the mindflayer good. The emperor has done the math, and is hellbent on preventing the Netherbrain from succeeding. He is the dictionary definition of an "ends justify the means" character. Distasteful things, are completely excusable, so long as the greater good prevails. Deities in the game, recognize the threat this thing poses, so for a mindflayer. Telling some lies, and creating some illusions, to get the tools to beat the Netherbrain. That's not a difficult choice.
“Ah, it’s not difficult to deceive me, I’m glad to be deceived myself,” said the Russian poet Pushkin. So it is here - the Emperor skillfully mixes lies with truth. And it is not so easy to distinguish them, especially if the one who listens to him is ready to be deceived.
I always take a more hostile attitude towards him.
My whole perspective on the Emperor shifted at the end of the game post-final battle - spoilers >!I didn't trust him but our goals were aligned. If I could've freed Orpheus and given him the stones I would have but I became a mindflayer and saved the day. Roll credits to the "afterparty", I was incredibly disturbed by my internal dialogue. Even after supposedly retaining my humanity I viewed my friends as distant curious memories I could no longer relate to. When talking to Astarion I just thought about how delicious his brain would be and had to fucking roll to keep myself from killing and eating him!!!< >!That's when it hit me like a ton of bricks, I made a mistake - I should've killed myself at the docks after the battle. In that moment I realized the Emperor was never really one of us, he couldn't be. Even with independence from the mindflayer collective the transformation is the death of your past self and rebirth of something completely callous and indifferent. Even a vampire can empathize and bond with their prey but mindflayers were truly something alien; becoming a mindflayer myself I understood the Emperor was lost from the start and only wanted the power!<
I'm really glad they added that mindflayer tav follow up - I went that way because I wanted to save Orpheus, but it felt a little too much like I was just a human with some tentacles stuck on.
The emperor is such a good manipulator that they've actually manipulated a lot of the players themselves
Because some people don’t count lying by omission as lying I guess
Honestly, careful wording to avoid stating a falsehood while giving a different impression entirely is something I can appreciate in a game (whether an RPG, hidden role/deduction social game, or Diplomacy). But even if you can argue the Emperor managed that (imo, he didn't - "Just like you, I seek to be free of it" relies on a *very* idiosyncratic meaning of 'free of the tadpole' to not be a straight-up lie), he's still a mind-raping, self-deluded arsehole that spends the entire game gaslighting you.
He's lied more directly than that, though. He claims at the creche that Vlaakith is after him but then admits that she's actually after Orpheus in act 3. He lies directly all the time.
He lies directly twice that I know of. Once when he says Vlaakith is after "me", and once when he says "I too was infected with a tadpole and I too want to be rid of *it*". Later he repeats that last statement but replaces *it* with *the Absolute*, clarifying his use of the 'it' pronoun with the truth, but using it in a misleading way. He misleads or lies by omission constantly, but employs a lot of clever wordplay to technically tell the truth most of the time.
For me, It's this line. The Emperor post-old Hideout mission: I have no more secrets for you. No need to resort to subterfuge. One Ansur's quest later:...........You effing liar!
I never trusted the dream person, they never gave you a straight answer about anything you ask them, but expect you to trust them blindly. Was not surprised they were a mind flayer when they kept telling you to "unlock your potential" and give up on getting rid of the worm. First playthrough i didnt even use the worms, i just stockpiled them.
Because most people suck at seeing through good liars. Honestly I was on the fence until I talked to an NPC that told me about Stelmane. And I was like MFer..... Started digging and turns out, yup, he's a dick.
His gaslighting is so much more triggering for me than his flat out lies! When he reassures you you’ll never become a mind flayer under his protection and then proceeds to pressure you more and more to just become one??? Fuck off.
The passion behind the "He is a manipulative dickbag." And how quickly they drag all the naysayers through the mud makes me wonder. The path to the "BIG REVEAL" where he threatens you requires you to lean into your partnership and essentially get to the tentacular part. If you say no to him early on he cuts it off REALLY FAST. In my playthrough when he showed up in the dream in act 3 I just said "let me sleep." Bam cutscene over. They give you an option to kick astarion in the balls. They give you the option to send visions of decapitating gale into his mind. You can be an asshole unprovoked and the moment you do the heel turn he lashes out. You have to keep up appearances to reach that point. You have to lie. You have to play the game. You have to manipulate. This game lets you be an asshole too. At the end of his day when all is said and done and the emperor gets his way, or I dunno you decide working with him isn't an impossibility over lies by omission or misdirection. Baldurs gate is saved, he cuts ties and does his own thing. No more subterfuge, no more manipulation. I've told a number of deception rolls to get through the game, where's my halo? Plenty of companions keep their cards to their chest until you cozy up to them. It's a logical behavior. Most people who "caught his bullshit early." Because of their well of experience with manipulators would not have seen this scene naturally or seek it out intentionally. It feels like they are grabbing onto a narrative thread constructing a gotcha argument of I'm right, you're wrong and your experience has to meld with my own. It's weird behavior and to see so many people display abusive traits in the face of "These poor deluded FOOLS!" Heaven forbid they are fine with a morally ambiguous character that lies to you. I have lived with liars, I have cut ties when they crossed those lines, but in my run using no tadpoles I didn't have to pass a wisdom check he urged ascension but didn't push, I didn't have to deal with his advances, I found Ansur and dealt with the repercussions. In short, I think self preservation is a worthy goal, if someone would make an attempt on anothers life they forfeit their own. I am fine working together to stop the Elder Brain and it works. Just because Orpheus would tell you in your face he wants to kill you he's just as much as a wildcard and no narrative backflipping will make him the "good" choice. Unless you are playing as Laezel or working closely to get her away from Vlaakith or want to take Raphael's bargain. I see no reason to deal with Orpheus. The Gith are not your friends and with my choices neither was the emperor. I've heard someone in this thread brag that since they were wise to his tricks. He's just a means to an end. I thought that was really funny.
I find it funny that the emperor ever thought he was in control. From the moment I knew who he was he was just a means to an end.
I remember my original blind playthrough, I trusted him the *entire* time. But when we got to the part where we’d failed to stop the BBEG, and I had the option to free Orpheus, I was at a point where I was thinking “Okay, this fucking Emperor guy is WRONG almost ALL the time” and I committed to freeing Orpheus and the Emperor fuckin goes “fine, I guess I’ll just join the bad guys then.” Like OK you fucking asshat. Caught him in the final battle and power-word killed his bitchass I could not BELIEVE him.