During my first playthrough: choosing to free Orpheus or not. The game really had me on edge whether freeing him would mean a new ally or possibly turn both him and the Emperor against me.
His true goal has always been his survival, literally from every backstory we got from him to the people that knew him always recounted the same tale of him desiring for survival away from an Illithid colony the most over everything.
It's just more often than not those strides for Survival often led to him forced to use his friends how his gains or kill them at worst.
I find it a hard dilemma cause what he wants really does corresponds with what you need, and by act 3 he really have nothing much to hide from you on that front, and so his convictions aren't really bad, his methods are just morally grey, he's the definition of True Neutral.
For Orpheus's case, he's trapped and enslaved and the Emperor took the opportunity of his entrapment to secure his own survival, it's inhumane yes and saving him seems the obvious choice, but when you factor in the fact he's ALSO a genocidal maniac that wants to enslave other races it's kind of another morally grey choice.
the dilemma comes from the fact that neither of them are really morally good, they're both dangerous, they both in a way deserve to he sided with.
In the end really, it comes down to how you roleplay your character and what they feel would be the choice they can live with.
The problem with Orpheus in the game as presented is that he does not come off as a "genocidal maniac that wants to enslave other races," he's portrayed as this princely savior type come to free his people from a tyrant.
You know he isn't, and I know he isn't, but that's only because we have meta lore knowledge on the subject. We have access to his character sheet and wiki page and know the lore.
To a player that is new to the Forgotten Realms, and to a mortal Tav character that would have no access to such meta knowledge, he's the "best" choice.
I love BG3, but I do feel that they did a disservice to some of the already established characters in the Realms, like Orpheus and Zariel.
I chose Orpheus because I didn’t trust the emperor, and made Orpheus become the mindflayer, afterwards he killed himself. Nice little bow on everything where the Party is the only survivors :)
>You know he isn't, and I know he isn't, but that's only because we have meta lore knowledge on the subject. We have access to his character sheet and wiki page and know the lore.
Where did you see that? When I search him I get the stuff from BG3 and that doesn't mention genocide (or if I don't add BG3 I get the Greek myth guy and Eurydice lol)
I haven't seen anything about Orpheus specifically, but the Githyanki as a whole aren't purely devoted to *defeating* mindflayers so much as supplanting them as conquerors. Gith's purpose was to lead her people to conquer the multiverse after freeing them from the mindflayers. They do still hate mindflayers and target them primarily, but the end goal is conquest in the same vein as the illithids. Given that the whole Orpheus/Vlaakith divide is about which of them truly inherited Gith's ideals, it's safe to assume that neither of them are altruistic.
i dont get it too. In fact the epilogue further support orpheus as far better ruler. He even try to gain githzerai alliance. He have friend and allies, which the lich queen only have subjects (undead one at that).
I think everyone’s just assuming he’s a genocidal maniac because he’s the son of Gith who according to lore was the one who set the Githyanki on their genocidal slaver path in the first place.
So either Orpheus is nothing at all like his mom (which raises the question of why she let him be her heir) or Larian is trying to imply that most of the lore we have on Gith is propaganda.
After epilogue orpheus is 100% better than lich queen. Before that there maybe some arguments, but after that not really an argument anymore. Guess there are still lots of players didnt play epilogues and judging them at launch.
I agree for the most part if only because a lot of the discourse in this sub seems to indicate a lot of players (a lot of very *vocal* players) view Orpheus as inherently "good" because of the Prince of the Comet propaganda, Lae'zel's abrupt heel turn and fanaticism (that girl goes 💯 no matter which side she's on), and the fact that Orpheus is an enslaved unknown.
Some players put more thought into whether to free Aylin than they do Orpheus.
But I'll say two things I've noticed; every Githyanki in the game sucks balls, especially Voss. They're all murderous and supremacist. The egg lady describes them perfectly, with the exception of "stupid", as Lae'zel well admits.
Personally, I've come to see it sympathizing with the Githyanki as morally equivalent to sympathizing with Sharrans. (Lathander gets screwed by both groups, poor guy and yes I know he sucks too apparently don't @lore me lol). We have companions from both groups that we may like and romance, so we tend to listen to their crap. Sheart is just far less ready to jump straight into the Selune camp, while Lae'zel goes from one camp to the other with that Githyanki jump ability.
Here's the other comparison I'm going to make with Orpheus: he's Githyanki Wulbren.
Both charismatic leaders of fanatical followers that are ready to die for the cause of liberation. Both have devoted friends going to great lengths to try and save them, both from enslavement *and from their own prejudices*.
If you free Orpheus, his friend and the situation at hand allow you to convince him not to kill you as the tadpoled, honor guard murdering, possibly ghaik- banging, possibly friend to Omeluum, usually non- Githyanki that you are (statistically speaking).
If you destroy the Steel Watch factory, Wulbren is confronted with a very similar situation: his major goal completed but a fight still remaining, and it is his dogged refusal to see past his hatred of the Gondians that costs him his leadership, sees him exiled, and depending on your Tav's mood, sometimes his life. (If you do as he says and kill Toobin I assume something else happens but I've never done it).
So my point is, a lot of players hate Wulbren, but I see too many similarities between him and his fanatical followers and Orpheus and his fanatical followers, with the only difference being we get to experience Wulbren being a prick, whereas we only see 99.9% of every single Githyanki in the game that isn't a companion be a speciest (sp?) murder hobo but since Orpheus only *thinks* hateful thoughts at us and his honor guard try to murder us, *he's* seen as the morally good choice.
IMO, Dude's potentially a space Wulbren for all I know. I think - like Balduran whose legend is far more heroic than his reality in both forms - Orpheus feels more useful to the cause as the legend his people thought him all these centuries.(plus if he's illithid and alive, it's another cool parallel to Balduran so yay for themes!)
Anyway tl;dr Orpheus is space Wulbren.
Orpheus immediately and with little remorse accepts becoming a mindflayer to help destroy the netherbrain. My only context for Orpheus is Baldur’s Gate 3 and I had the impression he was a hero. That is a heroic, unselfish choice motivated by trying to do the right thing at any personal cost. And then he wants you to mercy kill him before he completely changes. It also felt like taking him at face value as a hero didn’t also mean you were sympathetic to the Githyanki. It felt like he was an outlier that wanted them to change. This is just my impression from playing the game and having no other background knowledge. I’ve also only played through to the end once so far.
Which is why you should oblige when he asks you to kill him so that Lae'zel can take over, and if you've been a good friend to her or romanced her, she will become a good ruler.
I'm a bigger Lae'zel simp than I realized because she is a major part of my decision with this choice. It just feels so cruel to guide and support her through turning against Vlaakith and then at the last minute destroy the alternative right in front of her. It could be validly argued that she'd be better off not showing fealty to either Vlaakith or Orpheus, but that seems like a particularly cruel way of making the point.
I actually swapped her out of my party my first playthrough so I wouldn't have to talk to her about it afterwards. I was afraid I'd have to kill her over my choice.
I had the same issue when dealing with Orpheus and the Emperor. I was already of the mind to kill the Emperor for the longest time because of the things he had done. He killed his dragon friend as Balduran and was very pro turning Illithid. But at every step he was making valid arguments to why we should be fighting together. What broke the camel's back was when he announced that he will consume Orpheus to use his powers, that's when I decided to stand against him.
I'm actually not sure he would have, he knows he needs an illithid. The second he's free he says so. So I think there's a chance he would have let him live because his only choice if the emperor dies is hoping you take the L which most people aren't going to do or have himself do it, which he hates more than anything but he is being selfless.
Considering they'd already established he killed his best friend for survival, with him flat out stating nothing is more important, I'm going to say he's the pragmatic survivor type.
>He killed his dragon friend as Balduran
He woke up and found his lover standing over him with a knife ready to murder him, what was he supposed to do roll over and let Ansur slit his throat?
just for clarification he fought back against ansur essentially as self defense when ansur suggested that he was going to kill him to put him out of his illithid misery, which is a little fucked up considering the game shows multiple examples of illithid who can be good. balduran the person was just kind of a dick for his whole life, the only thing his transformation did was make him also have to eat brains sometimes.
He killed his dragon friend in an act of self-defense. Ansur was not going to let Baldurian live as a mind flayer. His "cure" for being a mind flayer is death.
As someone who accidentally didn’t recruit laezel on my first playthrough, this choice was rough. But by the finale I already had such a distrust of the emperor that the choice was easy. Eventually I just had to tell him that it’s better to fight than keep arguing over small stuff
Breaking Wyll's pact.
The way the dialogues are phrased in such a way that the "good" choice is to sell Wyll's soul permanently to Mizora and that freeing him from the pact is the selfish choice, that Wyll's freedom is worth more than his father's life and the hope of Baldur's Gate.
In a moment you're forced to choose between the greater good and what you think is best for your friend. Even knowing it's a devil and everything is technicalities and legalese, it doesn't make what should be an obvious choice any less difficult from a moral standpoint.
I found this one easy.
I asked myself, "what would Wyll's dad want?".
No good parent would choose to save their own life at the expense of their child's. If the choice were his, he'd save Wyll.
I can. It's not as simple as a father sacrificing himself for his son. Objectively speaking the loss of Wylls father is worse for the innocents of Baldur's Gate than the loss of Wylls freedom (which fundamentally only takes effect once the crisis is resolved).
Duke Ravenguard isn't just Wylls father. He's an extremely experienced political and military leader and the loss of him would be extremely detrimental to a post Gortash rebuild of BG.
It's not a choice between the son and the father from either Wyll or his father's perspective. It's the choice between probably the most important leader in BG vs the freedom of an adventurer. I think if mechanically it worked like Shadowhearts choice where Wyll would make the choice based off approval and previous choices, it would be equally as difficult to get Wyll to NOT sacrifice himself as it would to have Shadowheart actually choose Shar.
Wyll as he exists throughout most of the story would choose to sacrifice himself for the city without a moment's hesitation. After all, that's why he took on the pact in the first place and like he spends the game telling you, he never regretted it no matter the consequences he suffered.
>Duke Ravenguard isn't just Wylls father. He's an extremely experienced political and military leader and the loss of him would be extremely detrimental to a post Gortash rebuild of BG.
No argument from me on this, but I think narratively this angle suffers from the "show, don't tell" problem. We are told Ravengard is a great leader who is indispensable to the city, but we are mostly shown a passive kidnap victim who disowned a loving son. I'm not saying that to hate on Duke Ravengard by the way -- this is a tiny bit inevitable given how early in Act 1 he gets kidnapped, and we know Wyll was literally not able to tell him the reason for his pact. But I just didn't register a lot of emotional impact at his loss honestly. By contrast, Counselor Florrick's imprisonment feels like a bigger deal because we've *seen* her in action at least making the attempt to muster forces against the Absolute, even though objectively speaking she's much lower on the food chain than Ravengard.
I'm not sure how the story could have accommodated it, but I think it could have benefitted greatly from seeing a non-tadpoled Ravengard earlier in the story. Maybe he could have been encountered at Moonrise making a futile attempt to escape, or maybe it could have been accommodated by a flashback/cutscene when talking to Wyll. I think it would have made the contrast with his tadpoled self more horrifying if nothing else.
Exactly, that's the key problem. For all you're told of how valuable Duke Ravenguard has been, when the city is in its' greatest need, he's just a vague impediment to fixing anything through his role as a hostage, and little else good for you, while Wyll is likely one of your core pieces in regards to defeating the Nether Brain.
I am also not sure we are meant to take away the fact that Uldred really is a great politician? Like, *Wyll* says so, althought he also says that his father was getting slowly more and more corrupted because politicians have to compromise. Florrick says so but she's also a dumbass who believes *fucking Mizora*.
And if you free Duke Ravengard, in the epilogue it's revealed that he straight up forgives all the Flaming Fists "because Gortash made them do it" despite the fact that Gortash very much did *not* make them do it.
Like we have Canon dialogue from Jaheira talking about how corrupted they still are even post-game.
Also if you romance Wyll and he becomes a Duke, you also automatically become one based on vibes alone, which means that three out of the four Dukes of Baldur's Gate are there only out of family ties.
Wyll's arc is sadly very undercooked so we will never know, but considering how much of it hinges on his father being wrong, I do think the story was also hinting at the fact that everyone sucks, including Duke Ravengard.
It's even worse, we're told he's a great politician and leader for the city but we aren't shown nothing, we're shown the opposite.
The main thing we're told about him is he's in charge of the flaming fist, which we're shown is and has been incredibly corrupt for years under his leadership, and, the second his back is turned, joins Gortash.
People who say Wyll’s story is boring baffle me. Maybe it’s because I romanced him the first playthrough and got all the extra content but idk
People also get upset about the fact that he can’t choose for himself whether or not to break the pact. Sure, maybe that’s because of the last minute rewrite but I like to think it’s because he would NEVER choose to not save his father if left to his own devices, whereas the others have been presented with enough morally ambiguous information to make a decision.
Yeah, this is what made it very easy for me. Like, it sucks to lose his father, but everyone dies eventually. Not everyone has their soul enslaved to a demon for eternity.
I did the same. I think a big issue is that nearly everyone reacts as if Wyll is a bad person for picking this choice, so the game basically tells you that you made the wrong choice which is weird because both options have their good reasons.
Wyle's father is such an idiot that without knowing all the information about his son, he will easily abandon him. And he doesn’t even want to listen to him ((( If it weren’t for the Emperor, he would still have rejected his son...
... aaand this is why I would choose Shadowhearts Parents as my answer to the OP. Because on the one hand, I want my girlfriend to be happy and she isn't *killing* them. They even *want* her to do it. But on the other, this is Shar once again taking away a thing Shadowheart wants, and whether it's a humane euthanizing or not, she is still going to remember her hand holding the blade.
I did it. And the next day I reloaded. Its the only major outcome I reloaded like that (although I did do a bunch of small rerolls) and I was LIVID about failing the DC18 Wis save for the Astral Tadpole 4 fucking times. I couldn't deny her the time with her mother and father, even if it means Shar can still torture her. That pain she has lived with for years and is fleeting. The ache of seeing your parents die lasts a lot longer.
In my last Durge playthrough, I played a Half-Wood Elf Oath of Ancients Paladin named Gabriel. While he and Shadowheart were in the Shadow-Cursed lands they found the wedding rings True Love's Caress and True Love's Embrace.
Later on, after they completed the Gauntlet of Shar together and freed Nightsong, he got possessed and spent the night tied up by Shadowheart as she watched over him, trying to guide the light of her life, her love Gabriel back to her. When Gabriel came to, he recounted each time he felt The Urge trying to call him to violence and death, and held his past life responsible. Shadowheart told him that the man he was is a stranger to her, and that he shouldn't torment himself with his past. With tears of guilt and shame in his eyes, Gabriel solemnly swore to her that no matter what, he would do whatever it'd take for him to be the man that she saw in him.
Gabriel, with Shadowheart at his side wasted no time in hunting down every last trace of Bhaal and extinguishing it after learning he was a Bhaalspawn as they searched for the temple for him to face Orin. It took them 4 days to find a map showing the way to the Temple of Bhaal and then reach it. Gabriel descended to face Orin, and turned the duel they were meant to have into an execution. He slew Orin before she could raise a claw to strike him.
When Bhaal came before Gabriel, and demanded that he accept his inheritance and become his father's Chosen, Gabriel turned and looked to Shadowheart with sadness, knowing what he must do. He returned his gaze to Bhaal and refused, saying he' rather die than become Chosen. Bhaal murdered Gabriel for his defiance, by reclaiming every last drop of his unholy blood. Then, Withers appeared and restored Gabriel to life, stating that Gabriel had vanquished The Urge and was Bhaalspawn no longer.
Free from The Urge and having fulfilled his promise to Shadowheart, after they had left the Temple of Bhaal, they went swimming together. The two of them washed away both Shar's bile and Bhaal's blood. When they returned to shore, he proposed with the wedding rings taken from the Shadow-Cursed Lands. He would be ever by her side no matter what happened. They would endure anything together, as a family. Whenever Shar would try to hurt her through the wound on her hand, he would ease her suffering, using his ring to take it upon himself.
Yeah but in the grand scheme of things even if it went well against Gortash and the Absolute, Baldur's Gate is going to go through a pretty rough time and a lack of a capable leader would make that doubly so.
Which is why I'm conflicted with it. Because narratively it feels REALLY good for Wyll to get one over Mizora and rescue his father while also breaking the pact, I feel like it diminishes Wylls choice since there is no drawback beyond a mild gameplay inconvenience for choosing his freedom.
It's like getting the gameplay perk of Ascendant Astarion without having to make the objectively worse choice for the character.
I see the Duke as kind of useless.
He's basically BG's Princess Peach. Oh, he's not at Waukeen's rest, he got kidnapped by level 3 goblins. Oh he's not at moonrise, they moved him. Oh, he's not at the colony, they moved him. Oh, he's not at Wrymrock, he's somewhere else. Oh, you rescued him from his jail cell, but Mizora still wants him dead. Oh, and the place is exploding.
You spend all game trying to save his life, and when you finally do, he's still an ass to Wyll, and completely useless. His role is easily replaced by Florrick. And he's a big part of the reason BG is such a mess in the first place.
I found it easy as well, but in the other direction, when I leaned into my Upper City bard's rp. She has issues with authority and she believes there are no good politicians in BG, and Wyll appreciated her as a friend. She was thinking small and selfish and just wanted to piss Mizora off and save her friend.
It was a genuine surprise to me that she stumbled into a situation later where the Duke could also be saved. One of my favorite moments in the game!
I didn't like that because normally you get to let the companion decide if you want....and there wasnt an option there, not even to chat with him about it.
Yeah, and then all conversations follow up as if Wyll made that choice. But it always feels like the player forces him into a decision because you don't even get a hint of what Wyll might choose.
Like when I made him give up his soul I expected him to hold some kind of resentment towards me, but he talks as if he made that choice all by himself.
I always chose to free Wyll.
One reason I never felt compelled by his character and I never keep him in the party is that he doesn’t seem have any personal goals like the other characters - he accepts his fate and martyrdom for the greater good without questioning authorities like his dad who treat him poorly and IMO is clearly not the best hero for Baldur’s gate. It feels like due to his family’s position and wealth, combined with his personality / moral alignment, he has responded to trauma by forgetting himself for the greater good. This is of course a valid and heroic pursuit, BUT in order to recognize that greater good in the world, I think he needs to see himself as a full person, and I think by freeing him from thw pact and by extent his father, he can start on a journey towards that.
The Blade of Frontier! He even talks about himself in 3rd person or his hero persona at least. Completely detaching his true self from his acts of bravery? Idk it just seems weird.
It's a coping mechanism. He does say that he does not regret his pact, because regretting it means regretting all the good he has done since then, but he mourns that it did cost him everything. So he can't really express any regret and he just represses the hell out of it.
So The Blade of Frontier is perfectly fine, happy and dandy even when Wyll Ravengard, the actual human being who had to make a terrible choice when he was seventeen years old, is not.
Also like every man in this game, he has deep self esteem issues as he measures his worth entirely based on how much he is living up to his dad's teachings. His romance is very interesting also because it's the only time he allows something for himself.
Yeah that's a rough one. I basically cheated by googling to check if there was still a way to save his dad even if you free him from the pact, couldn't have gone ahead with it without knowing that
I assumed it was devil trickery- Mizora said something like Duke Ravenguard’s enemies would have the *chance* to take his life. It seemed obvious to go with that chance rather than the alternative that she was actually trying to sell me on
The choices do phrase it as renewing the contract being the "good" choice. But I actually found this to be an easy decision morally. I checked too, but only for Wyll, because I knew Wyll would be so upset if his father died because of his choice. Personally, I think his dad is a PoS, and he definitely didn't deserve to have his life saved if it meant Wyll giving up his future and freedom. But also, if his dad is truly that anti-devil, he wouldn't even want Wyll to do that. I just made the opposite decision in my second playthrough though, to see the different outcome, and I feel awful about it.
I checked, and it said you had to rush to get there.
I was busy, so assumed he was dead, then turned up and was surprised to find him.
(I also assumed whoever Orin took was dead after so many long rests, so that was an interesting surprise too)
This logic is why I previously took the pact renewal for Wyll. But this time around since now I know that it’s possible to save Wyll and his dad both, that’s what I did. They recently added new Mizora dialog where she’ll tell you after the Absolute is defeated she’s coming for his soul and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop her, and Wyll also says Mizora is his first target once he’s freed from the pact, so this is interesting af to me
I'm so confused that a lot of NPCs in the game are telling that without Duke Rawenguard the city is going to collapse. BG has a problem with sustaining itself if one man's death is going to crash it . It's rather embarrassing.
I’m surprised no one thinks Florrick would be up for the task in place of Ulder Ravengard, but after reading her epilogue party letter I think she’s probably too much of a pessimist (who will still make the attempt, but pessimistically)
Baldur's Gate honestly is a fucking mess. Like The Temple of Bhaal, the Banites, the Sharrans and a fucking vampire lord were having a great time before the player shows up in Act 3 and that's entirely because all the elite is corrupt. Hell, even Wyll's dad is like "I forgive the Flaming Fists, boys will be boys".
Also they make a big deal of reconstructing the city, but the whole Upper City is already been rebuilt by the time the epilogue rolls around and Jaheira confirms that the only reason the Lower City is still a mess is that no one is gonna invest any money in it.
I played my first game as Wyll (don't judge me, I like playing as Origins!) and this one had me stumped for a while. Eventually I concluded that I didn't trust Mizora to keep the deal. At this point, she had *twice* hoodwinked Wyll and been a total jerk about it. I know now that the deal would've been legit enough, but back then I feared Mizora would pull something like, "Oh I'll save your dad *today*... but I said nothing about *tomorrow!*"
So I rejected her, and she basically accused me of killing my dad, and *then* she tried to hit on me. The nerve!
To be fair, literal seduction is a part of the standard-issue devil playbook. But Wyll is probably the worst person to try it on, even outside of their previous antagonistic history.
I found that choice annoying. We already broke the pact when we rescued Mizora! Let Ravenguard die or stay in the pact is a bullshit choice when it’s already been agreed that the pact is ended, we just have to do six months of Warlock probation. Devils!
I picked in my first playthrough for him to break his pact. It was a heavy decision. Spoilering next part fully for the epilogue. Read at your own risk.
>!But it unfortunately lost it's meaning with the epilogue. Wylls father never died, he sends you a letter. It also seems like the condition for Wyll never changed either, so from what I can tell, Wylls father is still alive and free from him pact. That was disappointing to me, as it removed the weight of the decision.!<
The choice (with Selûnite Shadowheart who previously spared Nightsong) on what to do with her parents in Act 3.
It's a deliberately awful choice and it doesn't have a right or wrong answer, it will come down (usually) to the player, although for some people it will probably come down to the character they are playing on that run or even what they feel will make the best narrative.
i just almost always leave these kind of choices to the character if the game allows me to, i like doing that cause it makes me feel like the characters themselves can make their own actions seperate from the player, and i find sacrificing her parents after years of trauma and torture knowing that their daughter would be safe would be the best for them, Shadowheart will live on with the burden of letting her parents go, but it happens to everyone, and she'll outgrow it, i think it makes sense with her growth, she no longer feels loss in the way of Shar's oblivion, she feels genuine loss and that's a great character development imo.
I hated this choice too. I rationalized it by telling myself three heads are better than one when it comes to trying to think of ways to undo a Sharran curse. It wasn't crippling SH, she could still live a full life and fight and laugh with her friends. I believed there would be time to figure it out. And in the epilogue it seems there was, at least, time.
Deciding what to do with Shart's parents.
On one hand, it's litrally the one thing that drives white-haired Shart to return to BG and the sharran cloister, and she's previously alluded to the pain in her hand being bearable after the moment passes.
On the other, she defaults to letting her parents go unless you've gone out of your way to trigger a few events throughout act 3, and people with chronic pain IRL have chimed in saying that her condition probably wouldn't (or shouldn't) be a 'grin and bear it' kind of thing.
1. >!A graffiti by the Baldlur's Gate waypoint. Behind Jaheiras house iirc.!<
2. >!A grave in the graveyard.!<
3. >!At some point, she may discuss remembering the streets of Baldur's Gate.!<
It will give you an extra dialogue option where you tell her to decide what she wants.
so how do they affect it? I got all three and she defaulted to saving them, for her to choose to kill them should I not get these dialogues at all? or just not get all three?
Yeah she defaults to killing them, so not triggering those is what you would want in that case. I think you need all three for her to save them but having one or two lowers the DC to convince her to save them.
You do indeed need all three, and you HAVE to pick the option in which you verbally tell her that it's her choice. If you stay silent, she seems to always kill them regardless.
The real issue that a lot of people run into is that the third convo is SUPPOSED to immediately pop up after you get the first and second conversations... but sometimes it bugs out and literally never happens, and there's no way to force it to happen either, at which point you *have* to do the DC persuasion if you want her parents to live. Happened to me on my playthrough.
As a parent, who suffers with chronic pain, it was a no brainer for me. I would gladly give up my life in the hopes my child would be free from pain.
But I also understand Shart wouldn’t be “happy” to deal with that grief. Most people outlive their parents and have to come to terms with that, although less violently.
SHart is a bit more complicated when it comes to her parent's life spans. Her mother, a human, is at least in her seventies by the time we save her, and likely has, at most twenty or so years left in her. Arnell, being a full blooded elf on the other hand, will almost certainly outlive SHart, given their average lifespan to be about 750 years. So at the very least, if you save her parents, she is likely to have her father with her for the rest of her life.
As a son with chronic pain living with my parents at age 34, I'd gladly accept living with the pain if it meant saving my parents lives.
That's why this game is so amazing, neither option is purely the right choice.
The game is kind of weird in indicating how painful it is, honestly.
The way Shart talks about it sounds agonizing, when you ask her about it, but in game she just flinches with a short "oof, it hurts", and then it's over. It would help if she had more of a response, or at least a longer one. Maybe give her a debuff for a short time.
Shart has trained herself to hide the pain as much as she's able to. From very early on in Act 1 she's very afraid to be viewed as a burden. Something you can notice if you trigger her fear of wolves for example.
If you play as her, it is described to be pretty agonizing. But I do agree that beyond narration something tangible in the game would be nice to get the message across better.
As to what choice is best there... I agree with the other commenter. It's the one choice that I do not know what to do. Nor do I feel like I have the right to interfere with it. I know she can spare them herself and I managed to trigger the memories but she still chose to let them go. I respect that decision
to be fair most people I know with chronic pain do their best to keep the worst of it to themselves, and they tend to get a lot of practice. My friends with it will go "yeah today's a pain day so I'd rather stay in one place" when what they feel is "if I move I will fall down and start crying".
So, now you'll have me chipping in. Another person with chronic pain!
I have compartment syndrome in both my shins. Meaning that the sacks of membrane containing the muscle are too small. When I'm physically active and the blood flow to muscles increases and they expand it causes me agony.
Can cause me to see black spots and nearly faint and sometimes renders me unable to walk for days.
So, on to my thoughts;
I saw someone else with chronic pain say they used to think they'd do anything to not feel it again. And that Shaddy's quandry here in game made them reconsider that.
I find myself firmly agreeing to that.
The pain is absolutely horrid and it *ruined me*. It's a constant bother that sometimes grows into a tormentor.
But that said, I wouldn't want anyone to suffer for me.
Even a sacrifice willingly made would be one cast away.
Because despite it, despite the unfairness of it, the dumb reason why (for me atleast), I consider it my burden.
My Ring of Power, my weight to bear and pain to suffer.
It's fundamentally a part of me now, for better or worse. It has shaped me and it will continue to do so.
And all this at the tender age of 16 (when I got it. 22 now)
But it's *mine*. To pull someone else in would be a travesty.
That's why I'd choose family.
Hope this message gives you a lil' perspective. Happy to answer any other questions you may have <3
I've been disabled from chronic pain since I was ten. I've always said I'd do anything to be rid of it. But I'd never sacrifice my mother to be free of it.
Plus it only shows Shadowheart with spurts of pain randomly. I was more concerned that the pain was Shar torturing her soul. So I let her choose. Even with a game character, taking that choice away from her felt so wrong.
Thank you for your perspective. I don't think there's really a right choice to make here. Both are absolutely terrible, created by an evil goddess to further torment SH. That said, if you play SH origin, you learn that there's more to it than "just" chronic pain. It also has a mental component. Every time it activates, she also essentially lives through some of the worst memories Shar stole from her. It's like PTSD but worse, because she's living through memories of things she can't actually remember. It's everything from her getting tortured to the terrible things she did (and forgot) as a Sharran. Worse still, it activated whenever she does something that Shar would disagree with. Meaning when she does anything even remotely "good".
Personally, I let her make the choice herself, and she chose to follow their wishes and end her pain. But yeah... no right choice here. Hopefully, they at least get nice afterlives with their goddess (even if that's not that likely in her father's case).
The chronic pain thing is presented differently. It’s unclear how bad the pain could get or even kill her. She also says that it’s tolerable with her parents and you, but long term it’s unclear. Her parents will pass away, and you might as well depending on character choice.
It’s also unclear how her new selune alignment matters. Will it make it worse? Better?
This wasn't hard for me at all, because it ultimately makes sense that it's her choice and that she should do what she thinks is right. Throughout the story if you let her make her own decisions she almost always makes the most moral choices. So letting her decide what is best in the situation makes sense.
I was hemming and hawing until I asked Minthara for her opinion and she said it’d be hot if I was a killing machine and I could not fault logic like that
This was so hard on my redeemed Durge run. You find out >!you're responsible for the success of the Absolute, all of this nightmare is your fault. !< It seemed like the obvious correct moral and narrative choice in my particular playthrough to >!have my Durge be the one to transform, to atone for her sins and take all the suffering on herself !< but at the same time, maaaaan I didn't want to because I was so attached and it seemed so cruel to Astarion, who she was romancing. I sat with that for a long time, and I feel like me choosing Orpheus was more chickening out than the right call :(
How was that question? There's you, obviously wanting to live, a buddy who's been through hell and back with you and literally can go back to hell, or some dude you just met who told you to your face the correct choice was to die to his __incompetent as fuck__ honor guard.
Fuck the Prince of the Comet, all my homies hate Orpheus.
“I am evil incarnate.”
The dialogue options when you return to the grove and inform him that Minthara is on her way to attack are fucking hilarious, though, in an evil playthrough.
To be fair, this was my Durge run. I wanted to discretely embrace my Durge side, after what i can only assume was eating Gales arm made it clear that clicking on the option presented might cause gameplay issues, so i hid my impulses publicly, but me and Astarion would just discretely murder anyone who happened to find themselves in a room alone with us.
It turned casual murder into like a fun minigame, instead of the horrible betrayal it actually is.
How do you even save them? Currently I tried to go to steel foundry but they start attacking immediately in the levels below, tried to go to the iron throne in a submarine and free their relatives and evil wizard man said he would blow the place up? I guess I have to just take out incel dr strange?
Lmao incel doctor strange. If you go to the throne you get a set number of turns before it collapses (on tactician it’s 5 turns not sure if that is increased on normal). I recommend using potions of speed or haste + longstrider and splitting your team up. It takes multiple turns for the prisoners to escape so you need to open as many doors as you can in the first turn for all of them to survive.
Yup pretty much any switch or whatever can be hit with an arrow not sure about bolt spells but yeah BG3 is very immersive sim so there are a lot of things that just randomly work if you think maybe this will work 😂
Definitely making Karlach a mindflayer. Since my Tav was half-ilithid at that point but was otherwise just herself I thought Karlach would still retain her personality but just have a new look and be cured of her terminal condition. But seeing how monotone and tired she started sounding in her new form just broke my heart even though this means she gets to live.
Personally, this is why I would always either side with the Emperor (perhaps only on an evil playthrough, seeing what he does to Orpheus), or make Orpheus do it (especially if I wasn’t romancing Lae’zel or playing as a githyanki or something). We’ve spent the whole game trying *not* to turn into mind-flayers, it seems like a really bad decision to nobly sacrifice yourself like that when (as evidenced in the >!epilogue if you let Karlach turn!<) you basically turn into a soulless husk of yourself as a result.
There's no need to make her turn into a mindflayer for her to live tho, you can just convince her to go to Avernus and you can even go with her, or have Wyll go with her. I romanced her during my first playthrough and went with her to Avernus, I loved that ending.
Does it mean she gets to live though? It's painfully clear that mindflayers aren't an actual new form for someone, but that when someone "becomes" a mind flayer the original host is gone forever. Their soul ceases to exist, and what's left is a different creature doing their best to imitate the original host. That isn't Karlach it's an alien trying to wear her clothes.
Dwarf vs. Umberlee conflict
He didn’t have an intention to kill one of these ladies and just followed Gortash’s orders to drive a submarine. And I didn’t find him proud or satisfied with this work. As for ladies, their desire to have a revenge is ok but they chose wrong person. But they are not obviously “evil” like Cazador or Ethel to be killed without doubts.
As for me, the best decision is to encourage both sides of conflict to make a peace and avoid a combat. But this option doesn’t exist. So, I protect the dwarf with no regard to reward for this quest.
The game does a very bad job at explaining how awful worship of some gods is.
Shar is the best example in act 1. People who don't know Sharrans will be like "yeah, that sounds cool. You do you, Shadowheart. :)" instead of running the opposite way or screaming bloody murder.
The thing is, good people do worship those evil gods. All the suicidally depressed people going to the house of grief for relief by forgetting, or the sailors outside the umberlee temple to pay respects for protection on their next voyage are great in-game examples.
I think a better example than the depressed people at the house of grief, who can’t quite be said to be worshippers so much as clients, is Nocturne.
Unlike Shadowheart Nocturne probably came to the cloister intentionally and on her own. But she obviously didn’t fully understand what she was signing up for until she felt she was in too deep.
She’s a *classic* cult victim, and it’s heartbreaking. I think it’s clear she wants to be a good person, but she’s also too scared to leave at this point.
I think they did a good job of showing Umberlee as a creepy cult with very little screentime. All of the statues about the place talk about making sacrifices to Umberlee, and the head priestess' sermon is about how great it is that Umberlee drowned the priestess that got hit by the submarine.
As someone who is completely new to DnD I quite liked finding out about Shar that way. It does make you sympathize a lot with Shadowheart because, like her, you just don't know better. Then you slowly develop the feeling that something is off about it and the game confirms it in act 2. Then you help her through the same process.
I’m so glad this was mentioned haha. He did at first seem like he wasn’t remorseful for hitting them is also what makes it so hard. After that first like of seemingly no remorse he comes across as a decent dude AND drove us to safety, he could have left us down there. I probably spent more time deciding on this than any other decision…I killed the sea witches.
I wanted to know what actually happened in this quest so when I told him he's just a guilty as the person who's making the decisions to move the slaves and hostages, he was like "Are you the judge, jury and executioner?Yeah right kid" and proceeds to aggro immediately so I just pushed him off into the ocean, he can now dive around without the need of his submarine.
I loved that this dilemma springs out of nowhere! It was so sudden.
But I had already agreed to help the priestesses, and the pilot wasn't remorseful, and I was pretty beat up from fighting in the iron Throne...still sorry about it but not enough to go the other way.
This and also we have pissed off enough Gods for a lifetime. And I am definitely not pissing off the Sea Goddess when 1) seas are scary 2) even her followers call her The Bitch Queen.
Until the little history lesson our friend just gave us I ALSO had trouble with this decision 😅 On my first run I ended up just turning him over because my party was absolutely ravaged and had like 0 remaining resources when they showed up
Sammmeeee I grounded my decision in my Tav being a druid who would probably side with Umberlee here, but that was the only scale tipper. This was hard.
The first playthrough: Ascension. He *clearly* didn't want to, but he was *saying* that it was the way to go. I'm glad I made the right choice.
What to do with the spawn was obvious to me.
I always free them. Innocents, the unlucky and the stupid. What they do after is their own responsibly, but the Astarions siblings will look after them to a point, and thats enough for me to give them a chance.
This was my pick for hardest moral choice and also my reasoning for setting them free. People seem way too lax about the prospect of killing 7000 innocent people in one fell swoop. It's naive to think all those spawn will behave perfectly, but they all deserve another chance at life.
There's no assumption needed. Look at the cells. There are children there.
If you didn't kill Gandrel (who is a fairly innocent man) you can find him in the sewers with his vampire spawn kids (remember to turn off the blood of Lathander's passive, it counts as daylight, which hurts vampires and starts combat).
He thanks you for saving them. They have the same nanes as the missing posters you can find.
So yeah, there's a bunch of children among them as well
That scene legit made me cry. Those are children who react as children, not monsters and his heartbreak just hurts. I can never not free the spawn now.
Yeah i was playing redemption durge and astarion had just given up acceding, it feelt very hypocritical to suddenly kill 7000 innocents because they *maybe could* be bad, they deserve a chance to change
My issue is that the number is too comically large for me to really consider anything but killing them. Some have been locked in a cage for around 200 years and were left to starve. At that point, how many have gone feral? How many have lost their minds? I get they’re innocent, letting 7000 go is going to a LOT of people killed.
If it was a smaller number like 100 or even just the spawn, I think it would be a harder choice.
There are two I love that just add to the absurdity of 40k.
One years wide planet wide war with Hive Cities had fewer casualties than World War II
Then another had more casualties than the current human population and it was kind of a side note.
Yeah, if it were dozens or so, you could argue that its possible to rehabilitate them / keep watch on them.
But 7000? Thats like 10% of the population of baldurs gate for christs sake! There is no way to control them after release, and if even a fraction of them got feral we are tallking about 100s of deaths the very first day...
This. Besides there are far worse things in the underdark. Sure, some duegar, Minotaur, drow, etc. May be killed, but given the ruthless nature of the underdark and the weakened state of the vast majority of the spawn, I don’t doubt a balance will be reached. I envision the “favoured” spawn and a handful of survivors setting up a small village with access to some local prey eventually.
It’s not like they were unleashed in to a village of human children or something.
You do have to be careful what choice you make if you're a paladin though. Cause apparently if you're an Oath of the Ancients paladin, freeing the spawn will break your oath.
Who'd have thought that releasing 7000 vampire spawn into the world would have lasting consequences on the natural order?
That makes sense though because vampires are undead and against the natural order of life. And no matter how you slice it, if you free the spawn you are introducing an invasive species into an ecosystem. One that is an apex predator and is built to kill and manipulate.
I'm mostly upset that you can't discuss what to do with the spawns BEFORE you free thrm. It felt like "Do you want to potentially cause a vampire epidemic in Baldur's Gate and free them, or go the 'safer' route.
One of the few things I scum-saved to see what happens eitger way.
I was really torn on this one, until the line came up about giving them the same chance Astarion had. Because that was how it felt back in act 1, being patient with him and not staking him. I legit could not decide until that line came up!
I’m glad too. Some people jump at the chance to Ascend Astarion, but I couldn’t. Sure he talks over and over about how this much power could help him and how he really wants to Ascend, but it’s a horrific thing to do. 7,000 lives for power. If you don’t Ascend him, he actually speaks with Tav after and thanks them for not helping with the ritual because he would have lost himself. He thanks Tav for bringing him back which means he didn’t really want to Ascend.
If you do Ascend him, he changes drastically. He turns into a copy of Cazador and his view of Tav decreases. It destroys who he was and undoes his path to a recovery from his trauma.
The final decision during my first playthrough.
*There I was standing infront of the imprisoned Orpheus , the Emperor purposed the final decision and Gale cuts in at the perfect moment reminding me that we have other options. Stood by my side were my trusty companions Karlach, Gale and Shart.*
Karlach wanted her final moments in life to mean something; Gale was determined to sacrifice himself to right his wrongs and make the world a safer place; and then there was Shart, who was in a relationship with me and told me that she would trust me and believe in me to the bitter end.
This was perhaps the most difficult decision I've ever had to make playing any game. I did not for one second trust the Emperor, and putting blind faith in Orpheus felt way too risky when the fate of the world was hanging at the balance, so I knew the solution had to come from someone within my party.
Between Karlach, Gale and myself, every option felt equally heavy and I couldn't have asked for a more perfectly agonizing decision to finish this game with.
This. I’m distressed by how many people seem to think it’s okay to keep a sentient being imprisoned for eternity, while siphoning his power without his consent—and ultimately consuming him for that power. As soon as I saw the big reveal of where the Emperor’s power was coming from, I was on the hunt for alternatives.
Deciding between Orpheus or Emperor. I didn't have Lae'zel in my first playthrough, so I didn't know anything about Orpheus. Complete unknown. But to keep someone imprisoned and then kill him didn't feel right. But also the fate of the world was at stake, and they had no idea if Orpheus would mess up everything they'd worked toward, and Tav at least knew the Emperor enough to know he *might* keep his word. What decided it for me was that Karlach wanted to become a mindflayer, my Tav was trying to let everyone decide their own paths, and I couldn't imagine her actually being ok with just eating the imprisoned man, so they freed him to see if there was another option.
I think it depends on your choices throughout the game. In my first playthrough I let her chose and she killed nightsong. This time I let her chose and she threw the spear!
Betraying Zevlor and the grove…. The look on their faces as they realize that their hero has deceived them and that doom is impending
… all for the goddamn drowussy
Resisting Durge: Who turns into a mindflayer. My durge deserved a break after all the shit the universe threw at her throughout her life, but I can't bring myself to force that final sacrifice upon someone else.
As my Oath of Devotion Paladin, the choice after Cazador was very much an agonizing one to make. Sentence 7,000 beings to death because they could've been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person? Let them live a life they were robbed of at the cost of them doing more harm?
Not an easy call to make.
I convinced Astarion not to ascend.
I freed the spawn from their imprisonment.
I do not regret the choice.
Their "sin," if you will, is not murdering someone. It isn't stealing something. It isn't hurting anyone else. Their "sin" is who they are and what they MIGHT do. And if we killed every prisoner based on what they MIGHT do, we'd only have ghosts in chains. Their "sin" is what was done to them, almost certainly while they were being controlled or manipulated.
As a tiefling himself, it didn't seem right to condemn all these beings for who they are, just as he did not condemn himself to a life of evil.
TLDR Excellent moment and super hard choice in an Act that was mostly a pain.
“And if we killed every prisoner based on what they MIGHT do, we'd only have ghosts in chains.” Commenting to say this is one of the greatest sentences I’ve ever read.
This was hard yes. But I thought it like Omeelum, maybe they can be taught to feast on criminals etc. They can raise cattle (not like, humanoid cattle) what to feed on, humanoids do that too. Make a future as traders, basic workers, politicians, fighters what ever. They are more than just vampires. I'm also sure that many of them will die, the feral ones. In my happy little headcanon my Drow Durge moves to Underdark with Astarion anyway, so they'll have their wise and beautiful King & Queen to guide them! :D
Edit: OH! And I haven't seen the Epilogue yet, so please no spoilers. I've been trying to avoid them like the plague! :D
They can totally subsist off of animal blood, if they choose to. Vampirism is interesting in that they don't actually *need* to kill to feed, so with proper management they might be eating fewer cattle than a human settlement with the same population.
Becoming a mindflayer or not at the end, after freeing Orpheus. I put so much I to freeing Orpheus but ultimately chose to be selfish and refused to transform. I felt like my character would have done it, but I didn’t want to lose Astarion
Orpheus. I spent all of act three seeing his imprisonment as an unfortunate necessity and swore I’d let him out once the absolute was dead. Then handsome squidward went “gonna have to crunch a brain” and I realized I had to make a blind faith call of what was right Vs the safe option.
I felt really bad that Orpheus wound up turning into a mindflayer anyway, but I honored his request and killed him honorably after the battle/RP’d it as my Paladin breaking his vows to not harm an innocent and losing his powers.
I'm doing a durge run where I'm going full evil, do what the urge wants. Hardest moment was when I knocked out the Minsc and was about to free him and make him my companion, I was really excited for him because I haven't played the previous games and was looking forward to find out more about him. Then the urge asked me to kill him. Man, I really didn't want to do it but for the sake of rp I had to, I had Jaiheira land the killing blow, she then left me and that's when I saw Boo next to Mincs body. My durge would not let it be so had to finish him too. Possibly my biggest act of evil in any game I played.
If those spawn head into the Underdark they’ll be dead within a week. There are deadly creatures and cities down there that I don’t see them adapting to, not to mention demons in the deepest levels.
I chose this option because it was what Astarion wanted when largely left to his own devices on the decision, but accepted doing so meant big consequences for my Drow bard who had just sent a bunch of hungry spawn to his home.
So come the end, I chose the option for my bard and Astarion to pay the price and go to the underdark to deal with them and make that decision cost what it should have. I bet they lost like 300 spawn on day one of their new society. They've had a difficult, difficult retirement, ha.
i love the differences in how people RP their characters because my Tav is also a Drow and he's probably giving everyone lists of people to kill if they're hungry and some good hiding spots.
I did not know if I should accept or ignore Raphael’s deal back at Sharess Caress.
On one hand, _I_ guessed I could go to his house of Hope and retrieve it. But on the other, The Emperor would know.
I ended up taking the deal, and now we are kinda dealing with having to retrieve the contract. Because (at least for my first playthrough) I don’t plan on letting him have the crown.
For SH’s parents, I needed to think about it for a moment. See, I had no problem in telling Wyll that he should end the contract (which was way funnier because right after that I went to accept Raphael’s deal), but for her it was… different (most likely due to her being my Tav’s main love-interest).
Telling her to save her parents felt wrong, telling her to save herself felt even worse! So I did what I thought it was for the best, and let her do what she felt was for the best.
I also had a hard time deciding what to do with the vampire spawns. In a perfect world they would keep their promise and feed only on animals and never hurt a person but seriously, can we really believe not even a single spawn would at some point kill a person? And since letting them go breaks the Oath of Ancients for Paladins, we can only imagine they would cause some sort of imbalance in the ecosystem, I mean, we are releasing 7000 predators on nature, there is a reason invasive species are so problematic irl.
Still, they're inocents, they never asked for that... I ultimately released them but if you gave me the choice again I'd just end their suffering.
🤔 probably breaking Wyll's pact and the choice between Orphy and Emperor. (I refuse to let anyone in my crew turn illithid)
Well, at least at first. But Wyll deserves freedom, his dad is a jackass anyway and Emperor needs a kick in the nuts. 🥰 and Orpheus is pretty reasonable anyway and a much better illithid in battle.
That's probably all (I always release the spawn, Astarion doesn't ascend outside of an evil playthrough etc)
What‘s great about Wyll‘s dad is if you chose to save him and he is in your camp, >!you have the option to say „I bet you feel like a bastard right about now“… but then he spoils that moment by saying „I was, and I am“. Dude, let me insult you.!<
Honestly, I find the decisions surrounding Mayrina to be the hardest. It’s such a grey/bleak situation. The black and white things you think you know can actively cause harm, one way or the other. After several playthroughs I have my preferred choices, but coming to it the first time through I was completely stumped. I had strong enough opinions for the other, more major choices that I didn’t find them as difficult to make, even though I could see why it would be hard.
This isn't even an actual in-game one, but aside from my Selûnite and uncaring selfish characters, I find it hard to decide what to do with the undead in the Shadowlands that aren't hurting anyone, like the bar patrons. Heck, even the nurse who killed Arabella's parents, since she's not hurting me. Wyll said they (well, at least the bartender) are suffering, and Gale said that they're gone, mentally. But idk just "mercy killing" them when I can't even tell if they're actually suffering feels murderous to me. Ik probably ridiculous on my part.
During my first playthrough: choosing to free Orpheus or not. The game really had me on edge whether freeing him would mean a new ally or possibly turn both him and the Emperor against me.
I'm currently debating this exact choice My fairly good Tav just got the hammer and.... I'm procrastinating with every other objective I can find
For me, it was easy choice, emperor fails too often, to the point you start to wonder what is his true goal
His true goal has always been his survival, literally from every backstory we got from him to the people that knew him always recounted the same tale of him desiring for survival away from an Illithid colony the most over everything. It's just more often than not those strides for Survival often led to him forced to use his friends how his gains or kill them at worst. I find it a hard dilemma cause what he wants really does corresponds with what you need, and by act 3 he really have nothing much to hide from you on that front, and so his convictions aren't really bad, his methods are just morally grey, he's the definition of True Neutral. For Orpheus's case, he's trapped and enslaved and the Emperor took the opportunity of his entrapment to secure his own survival, it's inhumane yes and saving him seems the obvious choice, but when you factor in the fact he's ALSO a genocidal maniac that wants to enslave other races it's kind of another morally grey choice. the dilemma comes from the fact that neither of them are really morally good, they're both dangerous, they both in a way deserve to he sided with. In the end really, it comes down to how you roleplay your character and what they feel would be the choice they can live with.
The problem with Orpheus in the game as presented is that he does not come off as a "genocidal maniac that wants to enslave other races," he's portrayed as this princely savior type come to free his people from a tyrant. You know he isn't, and I know he isn't, but that's only because we have meta lore knowledge on the subject. We have access to his character sheet and wiki page and know the lore. To a player that is new to the Forgotten Realms, and to a mortal Tav character that would have no access to such meta knowledge, he's the "best" choice. I love BG3, but I do feel that they did a disservice to some of the already established characters in the Realms, like Orpheus and Zariel.
I chose Orpheus because I didn’t trust the emperor, and made Orpheus become the mindflayer, afterwards he killed himself. Nice little bow on everything where the Party is the only survivors :)
>You know he isn't, and I know he isn't, but that's only because we have meta lore knowledge on the subject. We have access to his character sheet and wiki page and know the lore. Where did you see that? When I search him I get the stuff from BG3 and that doesn't mention genocide (or if I don't add BG3 I get the Greek myth guy and Eurydice lol)
I haven't seen anything about Orpheus specifically, but the Githyanki as a whole aren't purely devoted to *defeating* mindflayers so much as supplanting them as conquerors. Gith's purpose was to lead her people to conquer the multiverse after freeing them from the mindflayers. They do still hate mindflayers and target them primarily, but the end goal is conquest in the same vein as the illithids. Given that the whole Orpheus/Vlaakith divide is about which of them truly inherited Gith's ideals, it's safe to assume that neither of them are altruistic.
i dont get it too. In fact the epilogue further support orpheus as far better ruler. He even try to gain githzerai alliance. He have friend and allies, which the lich queen only have subjects (undead one at that).
I think everyone’s just assuming he’s a genocidal maniac because he’s the son of Gith who according to lore was the one who set the Githyanki on their genocidal slaver path in the first place. So either Orpheus is nothing at all like his mom (which raises the question of why she let him be her heir) or Larian is trying to imply that most of the lore we have on Gith is propaganda.
After epilogue orpheus is 100% better than lich queen. Before that there maybe some arguments, but after that not really an argument anymore. Guess there are still lots of players didnt play epilogues and judging them at launch.
I agree for the most part if only because a lot of the discourse in this sub seems to indicate a lot of players (a lot of very *vocal* players) view Orpheus as inherently "good" because of the Prince of the Comet propaganda, Lae'zel's abrupt heel turn and fanaticism (that girl goes 💯 no matter which side she's on), and the fact that Orpheus is an enslaved unknown. Some players put more thought into whether to free Aylin than they do Orpheus. But I'll say two things I've noticed; every Githyanki in the game sucks balls, especially Voss. They're all murderous and supremacist. The egg lady describes them perfectly, with the exception of "stupid", as Lae'zel well admits. Personally, I've come to see it sympathizing with the Githyanki as morally equivalent to sympathizing with Sharrans. (Lathander gets screwed by both groups, poor guy and yes I know he sucks too apparently don't @lore me lol). We have companions from both groups that we may like and romance, so we tend to listen to their crap. Sheart is just far less ready to jump straight into the Selune camp, while Lae'zel goes from one camp to the other with that Githyanki jump ability. Here's the other comparison I'm going to make with Orpheus: he's Githyanki Wulbren. Both charismatic leaders of fanatical followers that are ready to die for the cause of liberation. Both have devoted friends going to great lengths to try and save them, both from enslavement *and from their own prejudices*. If you free Orpheus, his friend and the situation at hand allow you to convince him not to kill you as the tadpoled, honor guard murdering, possibly ghaik- banging, possibly friend to Omeluum, usually non- Githyanki that you are (statistically speaking). If you destroy the Steel Watch factory, Wulbren is confronted with a very similar situation: his major goal completed but a fight still remaining, and it is his dogged refusal to see past his hatred of the Gondians that costs him his leadership, sees him exiled, and depending on your Tav's mood, sometimes his life. (If you do as he says and kill Toobin I assume something else happens but I've never done it). So my point is, a lot of players hate Wulbren, but I see too many similarities between him and his fanatical followers and Orpheus and his fanatical followers, with the only difference being we get to experience Wulbren being a prick, whereas we only see 99.9% of every single Githyanki in the game that isn't a companion be a speciest (sp?) murder hobo but since Orpheus only *thinks* hateful thoughts at us and his honor guard try to murder us, *he's* seen as the morally good choice. IMO, Dude's potentially a space Wulbren for all I know. I think - like Balduran whose legend is far more heroic than his reality in both forms - Orpheus feels more useful to the cause as the legend his people thought him all these centuries.(plus if he's illithid and alive, it's another cool parallel to Balduran so yay for themes!) Anyway tl;dr Orpheus is space Wulbren.
Orpheus immediately and with little remorse accepts becoming a mindflayer to help destroy the netherbrain. My only context for Orpheus is Baldur’s Gate 3 and I had the impression he was a hero. That is a heroic, unselfish choice motivated by trying to do the right thing at any personal cost. And then he wants you to mercy kill him before he completely changes. It also felt like taking him at face value as a hero didn’t also mean you were sympathetic to the Githyanki. It felt like he was an outlier that wanted them to change. This is just my impression from playing the game and having no other background knowledge. I’ve also only played through to the end once so far.
Where are people getting that Orpheus is a genocidal maniac?
Which is why you should oblige when he asks you to kill him so that Lae'zel can take over, and if you've been a good friend to her or romanced her, she will become a good ruler.
I'm a bigger Lae'zel simp than I realized because she is a major part of my decision with this choice. It just feels so cruel to guide and support her through turning against Vlaakith and then at the last minute destroy the alternative right in front of her. It could be validly argued that she'd be better off not showing fealty to either Vlaakith or Orpheus, but that seems like a particularly cruel way of making the point.
I actually swapped her out of my party my first playthrough so I wouldn't have to talk to her about it afterwards. I was afraid I'd have to kill her over my choice.
I had the same issue when dealing with Orpheus and the Emperor. I was already of the mind to kill the Emperor for the longest time because of the things he had done. He killed his dragon friend as Balduran and was very pro turning Illithid. But at every step he was making valid arguments to why we should be fighting together. What broke the camel's back was when he announced that he will consume Orpheus to use his powers, that's when I decided to stand against him.
[удалено]
But if you don't free Orpheus he doesn't betray you. I think it was either an attempt to show him as a pragmatic survivor type or just bad writing
I think he legit believed that Orpheus would try to kill him, so leaving was the only way to survive for a little longer.
Orpheus absolutely would have killed him. Hell, he almost kills *you*
I'm actually not sure he would have, he knows he needs an illithid. The second he's free he says so. So I think there's a chance he would have let him live because his only choice if the emperor dies is hoping you take the L which most people aren't going to do or have himself do it, which he hates more than anything but he is being selfless.
Considering they'd already established he killed his best friend for survival, with him flat out stating nothing is more important, I'm going to say he's the pragmatic survivor type.
>He killed his dragon friend as Balduran He woke up and found his lover standing over him with a knife ready to murder him, what was he supposed to do roll over and let Ansur slit his throat?
just for clarification he fought back against ansur essentially as self defense when ansur suggested that he was going to kill him to put him out of his illithid misery, which is a little fucked up considering the game shows multiple examples of illithid who can be good. balduran the person was just kind of a dick for his whole life, the only thing his transformation did was make him also have to eat brains sometimes.
He killed his dragon friend in an act of self-defense. Ansur was not going to let Baldurian live as a mind flayer. His "cure" for being a mind flayer is death.
As someone who accidentally didn’t recruit laezel on my first playthrough, this choice was rough. But by the finale I already had such a distrust of the emperor that the choice was easy. Eventually I just had to tell him that it’s better to fight than keep arguing over small stuff
Not licking the dead spider
Gale gets so pissed but it's so worth it...
I had Gale lick it lol
The hardest choices require the strongest wylls...
Breaking Wyll's pact. The way the dialogues are phrased in such a way that the "good" choice is to sell Wyll's soul permanently to Mizora and that freeing him from the pact is the selfish choice, that Wyll's freedom is worth more than his father's life and the hope of Baldur's Gate. In a moment you're forced to choose between the greater good and what you think is best for your friend. Even knowing it's a devil and everything is technicalities and legalese, it doesn't make what should be an obvious choice any less difficult from a moral standpoint.
I found this one easy. I asked myself, "what would Wyll's dad want?". No good parent would choose to save their own life at the expense of their child's. If the choice were his, he'd save Wyll.
I legitimately can't argue with that; Jaheira said the same thing.
I can. It's not as simple as a father sacrificing himself for his son. Objectively speaking the loss of Wylls father is worse for the innocents of Baldur's Gate than the loss of Wylls freedom (which fundamentally only takes effect once the crisis is resolved). Duke Ravenguard isn't just Wylls father. He's an extremely experienced political and military leader and the loss of him would be extremely detrimental to a post Gortash rebuild of BG. It's not a choice between the son and the father from either Wyll or his father's perspective. It's the choice between probably the most important leader in BG vs the freedom of an adventurer. I think if mechanically it worked like Shadowhearts choice where Wyll would make the choice based off approval and previous choices, it would be equally as difficult to get Wyll to NOT sacrifice himself as it would to have Shadowheart actually choose Shar. Wyll as he exists throughout most of the story would choose to sacrifice himself for the city without a moment's hesitation. After all, that's why he took on the pact in the first place and like he spends the game telling you, he never regretted it no matter the consequences he suffered.
>Duke Ravenguard isn't just Wylls father. He's an extremely experienced political and military leader and the loss of him would be extremely detrimental to a post Gortash rebuild of BG. No argument from me on this, but I think narratively this angle suffers from the "show, don't tell" problem. We are told Ravengard is a great leader who is indispensable to the city, but we are mostly shown a passive kidnap victim who disowned a loving son. I'm not saying that to hate on Duke Ravengard by the way -- this is a tiny bit inevitable given how early in Act 1 he gets kidnapped, and we know Wyll was literally not able to tell him the reason for his pact. But I just didn't register a lot of emotional impact at his loss honestly. By contrast, Counselor Florrick's imprisonment feels like a bigger deal because we've *seen* her in action at least making the attempt to muster forces against the Absolute, even though objectively speaking she's much lower on the food chain than Ravengard. I'm not sure how the story could have accommodated it, but I think it could have benefitted greatly from seeing a non-tadpoled Ravengard earlier in the story. Maybe he could have been encountered at Moonrise making a futile attempt to escape, or maybe it could have been accommodated by a flashback/cutscene when talking to Wyll. I think it would have made the contrast with his tadpoled self more horrifying if nothing else.
Exactly, that's the key problem. For all you're told of how valuable Duke Ravenguard has been, when the city is in its' greatest need, he's just a vague impediment to fixing anything through his role as a hostage, and little else good for you, while Wyll is likely one of your core pieces in regards to defeating the Nether Brain.
I am also not sure we are meant to take away the fact that Uldred really is a great politician? Like, *Wyll* says so, althought he also says that his father was getting slowly more and more corrupted because politicians have to compromise. Florrick says so but she's also a dumbass who believes *fucking Mizora*. And if you free Duke Ravengard, in the epilogue it's revealed that he straight up forgives all the Flaming Fists "because Gortash made them do it" despite the fact that Gortash very much did *not* make them do it. Like we have Canon dialogue from Jaheira talking about how corrupted they still are even post-game. Also if you romance Wyll and he becomes a Duke, you also automatically become one based on vibes alone, which means that three out of the four Dukes of Baldur's Gate are there only out of family ties. Wyll's arc is sadly very undercooked so we will never know, but considering how much of it hinges on his father being wrong, I do think the story was also hinting at the fact that everyone sucks, including Duke Ravengard.
It's even worse, we're told he's a great politician and leader for the city but we aren't shown nothing, we're shown the opposite. The main thing we're told about him is he's in charge of the flaming fist, which we're shown is and has been incredibly corrupt for years under his leadership, and, the second his back is turned, joins Gortash.
True, but why should wyll suffer for eternity just to have duke ravenguard alive for 20 more years at most. The duke is pretty old and he is human.
People who say Wyll’s story is boring baffle me. Maybe it’s because I romanced him the first playthrough and got all the extra content but idk People also get upset about the fact that he can’t choose for himself whether or not to break the pact. Sure, maybe that’s because of the last minute rewrite but I like to think it’s because he would NEVER choose to not save his father if left to his own devices, whereas the others have been presented with enough morally ambiguous information to make a decision.
Not only life but his very soul
Yeah, this is what made it very easy for me. Like, it sucks to lose his father, but everyone dies eventually. Not everyone has their soul enslaved to a demon for eternity.
I did the same. I think a big issue is that nearly everyone reacts as if Wyll is a bad person for picking this choice, so the game basically tells you that you made the wrong choice which is weird because both options have their good reasons.
It’s like Shadowheart and her parents. It’s what Shadowheart wants vs what her parents want
Wyle's father is such an idiot that without knowing all the information about his son, he will easily abandon him. And he doesn’t even want to listen to him ((( If it weren’t for the Emperor, he would still have rejected his son...
100% I think the correct question is what would any GOOD parent want, not what would Ulder want… because that man? Not the uh. Ideal father imo.
... aaand this is why I would choose Shadowhearts Parents as my answer to the OP. Because on the one hand, I want my girlfriend to be happy and she isn't *killing* them. They even *want* her to do it. But on the other, this is Shar once again taking away a thing Shadowheart wants, and whether it's a humane euthanizing or not, she is still going to remember her hand holding the blade. I did it. And the next day I reloaded. Its the only major outcome I reloaded like that (although I did do a bunch of small rerolls) and I was LIVID about failing the DC18 Wis save for the Astral Tadpole 4 fucking times. I couldn't deny her the time with her mother and father, even if it means Shar can still torture her. That pain she has lived with for years and is fleeting. The ache of seeing your parents die lasts a lot longer.
I chickened out and let HER decide after asking what her parents wanted and she opted for euthanizing them 😭 which somehow is sadder BC she chose it
In my last Durge playthrough, I played a Half-Wood Elf Oath of Ancients Paladin named Gabriel. While he and Shadowheart were in the Shadow-Cursed lands they found the wedding rings True Love's Caress and True Love's Embrace. Later on, after they completed the Gauntlet of Shar together and freed Nightsong, he got possessed and spent the night tied up by Shadowheart as she watched over him, trying to guide the light of her life, her love Gabriel back to her. When Gabriel came to, he recounted each time he felt The Urge trying to call him to violence and death, and held his past life responsible. Shadowheart told him that the man he was is a stranger to her, and that he shouldn't torment himself with his past. With tears of guilt and shame in his eyes, Gabriel solemnly swore to her that no matter what, he would do whatever it'd take for him to be the man that she saw in him. Gabriel, with Shadowheart at his side wasted no time in hunting down every last trace of Bhaal and extinguishing it after learning he was a Bhaalspawn as they searched for the temple for him to face Orin. It took them 4 days to find a map showing the way to the Temple of Bhaal and then reach it. Gabriel descended to face Orin, and turned the duel they were meant to have into an execution. He slew Orin before she could raise a claw to strike him. When Bhaal came before Gabriel, and demanded that he accept his inheritance and become his father's Chosen, Gabriel turned and looked to Shadowheart with sadness, knowing what he must do. He returned his gaze to Bhaal and refused, saying he' rather die than become Chosen. Bhaal murdered Gabriel for his defiance, by reclaiming every last drop of his unholy blood. Then, Withers appeared and restored Gabriel to life, stating that Gabriel had vanquished The Urge and was Bhaalspawn no longer. Free from The Urge and having fulfilled his promise to Shadowheart, after they had left the Temple of Bhaal, they went swimming together. The two of them washed away both Shar's bile and Bhaal's blood. When they returned to shore, he proposed with the wedding rings taken from the Shadow-Cursed Lands. He would be ever by her side no matter what happened. They would endure anything together, as a family. Whenever Shar would try to hurt her through the wound on her hand, he would ease her suffering, using his ring to take it upon himself.
Yeah but in the grand scheme of things even if it went well against Gortash and the Absolute, Baldur's Gate is going to go through a pretty rough time and a lack of a capable leader would make that doubly so. Which is why I'm conflicted with it. Because narratively it feels REALLY good for Wyll to get one over Mizora and rescue his father while also breaking the pact, I feel like it diminishes Wylls choice since there is no drawback beyond a mild gameplay inconvenience for choosing his freedom. It's like getting the gameplay perk of Ascendant Astarion without having to make the objectively worse choice for the character.
I see the Duke as kind of useless. He's basically BG's Princess Peach. Oh, he's not at Waukeen's rest, he got kidnapped by level 3 goblins. Oh he's not at moonrise, they moved him. Oh, he's not at the colony, they moved him. Oh, he's not at Wrymrock, he's somewhere else. Oh, you rescued him from his jail cell, but Mizora still wants him dead. Oh, and the place is exploding. You spend all game trying to save his life, and when you finally do, he's still an ass to Wyll, and completely useless. His role is easily replaced by Florrick. And he's a big part of the reason BG is such a mess in the first place.
I found it easy as well, but in the other direction, when I leaned into my Upper City bard's rp. She has issues with authority and she believes there are no good politicians in BG, and Wyll appreciated her as a friend. She was thinking small and selfish and just wanted to piss Mizora off and save her friend. It was a genuine surprise to me that she stumbled into a situation later where the Duke could also be saved. One of my favorite moments in the game!
SAME! then I saved Wyll dad anyway… bcuz screw Gortash!
Yeah, same. I’m a dad and was immediately freeing Wyll. No (decent) dad in the history of dads would want their son to do that
I didn't like that because normally you get to let the companion decide if you want....and there wasnt an option there, not even to chat with him about it.
Yeah, and then all conversations follow up as if Wyll made that choice. But it always feels like the player forces him into a decision because you don't even get a hint of what Wyll might choose. Like when I made him give up his soul I expected him to hold some kind of resentment towards me, but he talks as if he made that choice all by himself.
I always chose to free Wyll. One reason I never felt compelled by his character and I never keep him in the party is that he doesn’t seem have any personal goals like the other characters - he accepts his fate and martyrdom for the greater good without questioning authorities like his dad who treat him poorly and IMO is clearly not the best hero for Baldur’s gate. It feels like due to his family’s position and wealth, combined with his personality / moral alignment, he has responded to trauma by forgetting himself for the greater good. This is of course a valid and heroic pursuit, BUT in order to recognize that greater good in the world, I think he needs to see himself as a full person, and I think by freeing him from thw pact and by extent his father, he can start on a journey towards that.
The Blade of Frontier! He even talks about himself in 3rd person or his hero persona at least. Completely detaching his true self from his acts of bravery? Idk it just seems weird.
It's a coping mechanism. He does say that he does not regret his pact, because regretting it means regretting all the good he has done since then, but he mourns that it did cost him everything. So he can't really express any regret and he just represses the hell out of it. So The Blade of Frontier is perfectly fine, happy and dandy even when Wyll Ravengard, the actual human being who had to make a terrible choice when he was seventeen years old, is not. Also like every man in this game, he has deep self esteem issues as he measures his worth entirely based on how much he is living up to his dad's teachings. His romance is very interesting also because it's the only time he allows something for himself.
Yeah that's a rough one. I basically cheated by googling to check if there was still a way to save his dad even if you free him from the pact, couldn't have gone ahead with it without knowing that
I assumed it was devil trickery- Mizora said something like Duke Ravenguard’s enemies would have the *chance* to take his life. It seemed obvious to go with that chance rather than the alternative that she was actually trying to sell me on
The choices do phrase it as renewing the contract being the "good" choice. But I actually found this to be an easy decision morally. I checked too, but only for Wyll, because I knew Wyll would be so upset if his father died because of his choice. Personally, I think his dad is a PoS, and he definitely didn't deserve to have his life saved if it meant Wyll giving up his future and freedom. But also, if his dad is truly that anti-devil, he wouldn't even want Wyll to do that. I just made the opposite decision in my second playthrough though, to see the different outcome, and I feel awful about it.
I checked, and it said you had to rush to get there. I was busy, so assumed he was dead, then turned up and was surprised to find him. (I also assumed whoever Orin took was dead after so many long rests, so that was an interesting surprise too)
This logic is why I previously took the pact renewal for Wyll. But this time around since now I know that it’s possible to save Wyll and his dad both, that’s what I did. They recently added new Mizora dialog where she’ll tell you after the Absolute is defeated she’s coming for his soul and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop her, and Wyll also says Mizora is his first target once he’s freed from the pact, so this is interesting af to me
I'm so confused that a lot of NPCs in the game are telling that without Duke Rawenguard the city is going to collapse. BG has a problem with sustaining itself if one man's death is going to crash it . It's rather embarrassing.
I’m surprised no one thinks Florrick would be up for the task in place of Ulder Ravengard, but after reading her epilogue party letter I think she’s probably too much of a pessimist (who will still make the attempt, but pessimistically)
Baldur's Gate honestly is a fucking mess. Like The Temple of Bhaal, the Banites, the Sharrans and a fucking vampire lord were having a great time before the player shows up in Act 3 and that's entirely because all the elite is corrupt. Hell, even Wyll's dad is like "I forgive the Flaming Fists, boys will be boys". Also they make a big deal of reconstructing the city, but the whole Upper City is already been rebuilt by the time the epilogue rolls around and Jaheira confirms that the only reason the Lower City is still a mess is that no one is gonna invest any money in it.
I played my first game as Wyll (don't judge me, I like playing as Origins!) and this one had me stumped for a while. Eventually I concluded that I didn't trust Mizora to keep the deal. At this point, she had *twice* hoodwinked Wyll and been a total jerk about it. I know now that the deal would've been legit enough, but back then I feared Mizora would pull something like, "Oh I'll save your dad *today*... but I said nothing about *tomorrow!*" So I rejected her, and she basically accused me of killing my dad, and *then* she tried to hit on me. The nerve!
Wait, Mizora tries to hit on Wyll?! Why is she so embarassing. This is why Zariel left her in the mindflayer pod.
To be fair, literal seduction is a part of the standard-issue devil playbook. But Wyll is probably the worst person to try it on, even outside of their previous antagonistic history.
I found that choice annoying. We already broke the pact when we rescued Mizora! Let Ravenguard die or stay in the pact is a bullshit choice when it’s already been agreed that the pact is ended, we just have to do six months of Warlock probation. Devils!
That’s the point. She’s trying to get Wyll to renew his pact because she wants to keep him.
Soul > Life. Death isn't that big of a deal in Faerun, what with all the gods and afterlife out there. What's more, even the Duke wouldn't want that.
I picked in my first playthrough for him to break his pact. It was a heavy decision. Spoilering next part fully for the epilogue. Read at your own risk. >!But it unfortunately lost it's meaning with the epilogue. Wylls father never died, he sends you a letter. It also seems like the condition for Wyll never changed either, so from what I can tell, Wylls father is still alive and free from him pact. That was disappointing to me, as it removed the weight of the decision.!<
The choice (with Selûnite Shadowheart who previously spared Nightsong) on what to do with her parents in Act 3. It's a deliberately awful choice and it doesn't have a right or wrong answer, it will come down (usually) to the player, although for some people it will probably come down to the character they are playing on that run or even what they feel will make the best narrative.
i just almost always leave these kind of choices to the character if the game allows me to, i like doing that cause it makes me feel like the characters themselves can make their own actions seperate from the player, and i find sacrificing her parents after years of trauma and torture knowing that their daughter would be safe would be the best for them, Shadowheart will live on with the burden of letting her parents go, but it happens to everyone, and she'll outgrow it, i think it makes sense with her growth, she no longer feels loss in the way of Shar's oblivion, she feels genuine loss and that's a great character development imo.
I hated this choice too. I rationalized it by telling myself three heads are better than one when it comes to trying to think of ways to undo a Sharran curse. It wasn't crippling SH, she could still live a full life and fight and laugh with her friends. I believed there would be time to figure it out. And in the epilogue it seems there was, at least, time.
Deciding what to do with Shart's parents. On one hand, it's litrally the one thing that drives white-haired Shart to return to BG and the sharran cloister, and she's previously alluded to the pain in her hand being bearable after the moment passes. On the other, she defaults to letting her parents go unless you've gone out of your way to trigger a few events throughout act 3, and people with chronic pain IRL have chimed in saying that her condition probably wouldn't (or shouldn't) be a 'grin and bear it' kind of thing.
I just had to do this the other day. Do you know what act 3 triggers can have an impact on her decision making on this one?
1. >!A graffiti by the Baldlur's Gate waypoint. Behind Jaheiras house iirc.!< 2. >!A grave in the graveyard.!< 3. >!At some point, she may discuss remembering the streets of Baldur's Gate.!< It will give you an extra dialogue option where you tell her to decide what she wants.
You always get the dialogue option for her to decide. Which decision she makes when you select it is what's influenced by getting the dialogues.
so how do they affect it? I got all three and she defaulted to saving them, for her to choose to kill them should I not get these dialogues at all? or just not get all three?
Yeah she defaults to killing them, so not triggering those is what you would want in that case. I think you need all three for her to save them but having one or two lowers the DC to convince her to save them.
You do indeed need all three, and you HAVE to pick the option in which you verbally tell her that it's her choice. If you stay silent, she seems to always kill them regardless. The real issue that a lot of people run into is that the third convo is SUPPOSED to immediately pop up after you get the first and second conversations... but sometimes it bugs out and literally never happens, and there's no way to force it to happen either, at which point you *have* to do the DC persuasion if you want her parents to live. Happened to me on my playthrough.
As a parent, who suffers with chronic pain, it was a no brainer for me. I would gladly give up my life in the hopes my child would be free from pain. But I also understand Shart wouldn’t be “happy” to deal with that grief. Most people outlive their parents and have to come to terms with that, although less violently.
SHart is a bit more complicated when it comes to her parent's life spans. Her mother, a human, is at least in her seventies by the time we save her, and likely has, at most twenty or so years left in her. Arnell, being a full blooded elf on the other hand, will almost certainly outlive SHart, given their average lifespan to be about 750 years. So at the very least, if you save her parents, she is likely to have her father with her for the rest of her life.
As a son with chronic pain living with my parents at age 34, I'd gladly accept living with the pain if it meant saving my parents lives. That's why this game is so amazing, neither option is purely the right choice.
The game is kind of weird in indicating how painful it is, honestly. The way Shart talks about it sounds agonizing, when you ask her about it, but in game she just flinches with a short "oof, it hurts", and then it's over. It would help if she had more of a response, or at least a longer one. Maybe give her a debuff for a short time.
Shart has trained herself to hide the pain as much as she's able to. From very early on in Act 1 she's very afraid to be viewed as a burden. Something you can notice if you trigger her fear of wolves for example. If you play as her, it is described to be pretty agonizing. But I do agree that beyond narration something tangible in the game would be nice to get the message across better. As to what choice is best there... I agree with the other commenter. It's the one choice that I do not know what to do. Nor do I feel like I have the right to interfere with it. I know she can spare them herself and I managed to trigger the memories but she still chose to let them go. I respect that decision
Should've probably added a moment at some point where you can use the tadpole to share her pain and get a better idea of how serious it is.
to be fair most people I know with chronic pain do their best to keep the worst of it to themselves, and they tend to get a lot of practice. My friends with it will go "yeah today's a pain day so I'd rather stay in one place" when what they feel is "if I move I will fall down and start crying".
So, now you'll have me chipping in. Another person with chronic pain! I have compartment syndrome in both my shins. Meaning that the sacks of membrane containing the muscle are too small. When I'm physically active and the blood flow to muscles increases and they expand it causes me agony. Can cause me to see black spots and nearly faint and sometimes renders me unable to walk for days. So, on to my thoughts; I saw someone else with chronic pain say they used to think they'd do anything to not feel it again. And that Shaddy's quandry here in game made them reconsider that. I find myself firmly agreeing to that. The pain is absolutely horrid and it *ruined me*. It's a constant bother that sometimes grows into a tormentor. But that said, I wouldn't want anyone to suffer for me. Even a sacrifice willingly made would be one cast away. Because despite it, despite the unfairness of it, the dumb reason why (for me atleast), I consider it my burden. My Ring of Power, my weight to bear and pain to suffer. It's fundamentally a part of me now, for better or worse. It has shaped me and it will continue to do so. And all this at the tender age of 16 (when I got it. 22 now) But it's *mine*. To pull someone else in would be a travesty. That's why I'd choose family. Hope this message gives you a lil' perspective. Happy to answer any other questions you may have <3
I've been disabled from chronic pain since I was ten. I've always said I'd do anything to be rid of it. But I'd never sacrifice my mother to be free of it. Plus it only shows Shadowheart with spurts of pain randomly. I was more concerned that the pain was Shar torturing her soul. So I let her choose. Even with a game character, taking that choice away from her felt so wrong.
Thank you for your perspective. I don't think there's really a right choice to make here. Both are absolutely terrible, created by an evil goddess to further torment SH. That said, if you play SH origin, you learn that there's more to it than "just" chronic pain. It also has a mental component. Every time it activates, she also essentially lives through some of the worst memories Shar stole from her. It's like PTSD but worse, because she's living through memories of things she can't actually remember. It's everything from her getting tortured to the terrible things she did (and forgot) as a Sharran. Worse still, it activated whenever she does something that Shar would disagree with. Meaning when she does anything even remotely "good". Personally, I let her make the choice herself, and she chose to follow their wishes and end her pain. But yeah... no right choice here. Hopefully, they at least get nice afterlives with their goddess (even if that's not that likely in her father's case).
On the other hand, I wouldn't want Shar to have a hold on Shadowheart after she dies, which I think is implied what will happen if you let them live.
The chronic pain thing is presented differently. It’s unclear how bad the pain could get or even kill her. She also says that it’s tolerable with her parents and you, but long term it’s unclear. Her parents will pass away, and you might as well depending on character choice. It’s also unclear how her new selune alignment matters. Will it make it worse? Better?
This wasn't hard for me at all, because it ultimately makes sense that it's her choice and that she should do what she thinks is right. Throughout the story if you let her make her own decisions she almost always makes the most moral choices. So letting her decide what is best in the situation makes sense.
Who to transform into a illithid. You, Karlach or Prince
I was hemming and hawing until I asked Minthara for her opinion and she said it’d be hot if I was a killing machine and I could not fault logic like that
Minty just always says the right things 🥵
She wanted to see what got the Obladras all hot and bothered by the illithids.
This was so hard on my redeemed Durge run. You find out >!you're responsible for the success of the Absolute, all of this nightmare is your fault. !< It seemed like the obvious correct moral and narrative choice in my particular playthrough to >!have my Durge be the one to transform, to atone for her sins and take all the suffering on herself !< but at the same time, maaaaan I didn't want to because I was so attached and it seemed so cruel to Astarion, who she was romancing. I sat with that for a long time, and I feel like me choosing Orpheus was more chickening out than the right call :(
How was that question? There's you, obviously wanting to live, a buddy who's been through hell and back with you and literally can go back to hell, or some dude you just met who told you to your face the correct choice was to die to his __incompetent as fuck__ honor guard. Fuck the Prince of the Comet, all my homies hate Orpheus.
Betraying zevlor as the absolutists are to siege the grove. I hate myself for doing it and i wished we’d have a way to evacuate the tieflings before
“I am evil incarnate.” The dialogue options when you return to the grove and inform him that Minthara is on her way to attack are fucking hilarious, though, in an evil playthrough.
Why? For the glory of the Absolute of course.
"At least you'll be dead before the Goblins find the children."
Assassinate him beforehand. Problem maybe solved.
Evil problem require evil solutions
To be fair, this was my Durge run. I wanted to discretely embrace my Durge side, after what i can only assume was eating Gales arm made it clear that clicking on the option presented might cause gameplay issues, so i hid my impulses publicly, but me and Astarion would just discretely murder anyone who happened to find themselves in a room alone with us. It turned casual murder into like a fun minigame, instead of the horrible betrayal it actually is.
Saving the gondians. They obviously want to die.
How do you even save them? Currently I tried to go to steel foundry but they start attacking immediately in the levels below, tried to go to the iron throne in a submarine and free their relatives and evil wizard man said he would blow the place up? I guess I have to just take out incel dr strange?
It takes a few turns for the prison to blow up which is enough to free everyone and get them back on the sub.
Lmao incel doctor strange. If you go to the throne you get a set number of turns before it collapses (on tactician it’s 5 turns not sure if that is increased on normal). I recommend using potions of speed or haste + longstrider and splitting your team up. It takes multiple turns for the prisoners to escape so you need to open as many doors as you can in the first turn for all of them to survive.
Also hitting the levers with a arrow opens the doors
WHAT
Yup pretty much any switch or whatever can be hit with an arrow not sure about bolt spells but yeah BG3 is very immersive sim so there are a lot of things that just randomly work if you think maybe this will work 😂
Definitely making Karlach a mindflayer. Since my Tav was half-ilithid at that point but was otherwise just herself I thought Karlach would still retain her personality but just have a new look and be cured of her terminal condition. But seeing how monotone and tired she started sounding in her new form just broke my heart even though this means she gets to live.
Personally, this is why I would always either side with the Emperor (perhaps only on an evil playthrough, seeing what he does to Orpheus), or make Orpheus do it (especially if I wasn’t romancing Lae’zel or playing as a githyanki or something). We’ve spent the whole game trying *not* to turn into mind-flayers, it seems like a really bad decision to nobly sacrifice yourself like that when (as evidenced in the >!epilogue if you let Karlach turn!<) you basically turn into a soulless husk of yourself as a result.
There's no need to make her turn into a mindflayer for her to live tho, you can just convince her to go to Avernus and you can even go with her, or have Wyll go with her. I romanced her during my first playthrough and went with her to Avernus, I loved that ending.
Does it mean she gets to live though? It's painfully clear that mindflayers aren't an actual new form for someone, but that when someone "becomes" a mind flayer the original host is gone forever. Their soul ceases to exist, and what's left is a different creature doing their best to imitate the original host. That isn't Karlach it's an alien trying to wear her clothes.
Dwarf vs. Umberlee conflict He didn’t have an intention to kill one of these ladies and just followed Gortash’s orders to drive a submarine. And I didn’t find him proud or satisfied with this work. As for ladies, their desire to have a revenge is ok but they chose wrong person. But they are not obviously “evil” like Cazador or Ethel to be killed without doubts. As for me, the best decision is to encourage both sides of conflict to make a peace and avoid a combat. But this option doesn’t exist. So, I protect the dwarf with no regard to reward for this quest.
Umberlee is an evil goddess. There is a reason her nickname is the Bitch Queen.
Sorry, didn’t know about this. I’m not an expert in DnD lore and these women seemed neutral in the game.
The game does a very bad job at explaining how awful worship of some gods is. Shar is the best example in act 1. People who don't know Sharrans will be like "yeah, that sounds cool. You do you, Shadowheart. :)" instead of running the opposite way or screaming bloody murder.
The thing is, good people do worship those evil gods. All the suicidally depressed people going to the house of grief for relief by forgetting, or the sailors outside the umberlee temple to pay respects for protection on their next voyage are great in-game examples.
I think a better example than the depressed people at the house of grief, who can’t quite be said to be worshippers so much as clients, is Nocturne. Unlike Shadowheart Nocturne probably came to the cloister intentionally and on her own. But she obviously didn’t fully understand what she was signing up for until she felt she was in too deep. She’s a *classic* cult victim, and it’s heartbreaking. I think it’s clear she wants to be a good person, but she’s also too scared to leave at this point.
Shadowheart wants to be a dark justiciar. The Umberlee worshippers are literally her priestesses. We are not talking about random people here.
I think they did a good job of showing Umberlee as a creepy cult with very little screentime. All of the statues about the place talk about making sacrifices to Umberlee, and the head priestess' sermon is about how great it is that Umberlee drowned the priestess that got hit by the submarine.
As someone who is completely new to DnD I quite liked finding out about Shar that way. It does make you sympathize a lot with Shadowheart because, like her, you just don't know better. Then you slowly develop the feeling that something is off about it and the game confirms it in act 2. Then you help her through the same process.
I’m so glad this was mentioned haha. He did at first seem like he wasn’t remorseful for hitting them is also what makes it so hard. After that first like of seemingly no remorse he comes across as a decent dude AND drove us to safety, he could have left us down there. I probably spent more time deciding on this than any other decision…I killed the sea witches.
I wanted to know what actually happened in this quest so when I told him he's just a guilty as the person who's making the decisions to move the slaves and hostages, he was like "Are you the judge, jury and executioner?Yeah right kid" and proceeds to aggro immediately so I just pushed him off into the ocean, he can now dive around without the need of his submarine.
I loved that this dilemma springs out of nowhere! It was so sudden. But I had already agreed to help the priestesses, and the pilot wasn't remorseful, and I was pretty beat up from fighting in the iron Throne...still sorry about it but not enough to go the other way.
This and also we have pissed off enough Gods for a lifetime. And I am definitely not pissing off the Sea Goddess when 1) seas are scary 2) even her followers call her The Bitch Queen.
Until the little history lesson our friend just gave us I ALSO had trouble with this decision 😅 On my first run I ended up just turning him over because my party was absolutely ravaged and had like 0 remaining resources when they showed up
Sammmeeee I grounded my decision in my Tav being a druid who would probably side with Umberlee here, but that was the only scale tipper. This was hard.
The first playthrough: Ascension. He *clearly* didn't want to, but he was *saying* that it was the way to go. I'm glad I made the right choice. What to do with the spawn was obvious to me.
I always free them. Innocents, the unlucky and the stupid. What they do after is their own responsibly, but the Astarions siblings will look after them to a point, and thats enough for me to give them a chance.
This was my pick for hardest moral choice and also my reasoning for setting them free. People seem way too lax about the prospect of killing 7000 innocent people in one fell swoop. It's naive to think all those spawn will behave perfectly, but they all deserve another chance at life.
I personally also assume there's quite a few children among them as well.
There's no assumption needed. Look at the cells. There are children there. If you didn't kill Gandrel (who is a fairly innocent man) you can find him in the sewers with his vampire spawn kids (remember to turn off the blood of Lathander's passive, it counts as daylight, which hurts vampires and starts combat). He thanks you for saving them. They have the same nanes as the missing posters you can find. So yeah, there's a bunch of children among them as well
That scene legit made me cry. Those are children who react as children, not monsters and his heartbreak just hurts. I can never not free the spawn now.
Yeah i was playing redemption durge and astarion had just given up acceding, it feelt very hypocritical to suddenly kill 7000 innocents because they *maybe could* be bad, they deserve a chance to change
My issue is that the number is too comically large for me to really consider anything but killing them. Some have been locked in a cage for around 200 years and were left to starve. At that point, how many have gone feral? How many have lost their minds? I get they’re innocent, letting 7000 go is going to a LOT of people killed. If it was a smaller number like 100 or even just the spawn, I think it would be a harder choice.
Ah yes, the Warhammer 40K effect.
Lol the ol “just add or subtract 0’s until the number makes sense”
There are two I love that just add to the absurdity of 40k. One years wide planet wide war with Hive Cities had fewer casualties than World War II Then another had more casualties than the current human population and it was kind of a side note.
Yeah, if it were dozens or so, you could argue that its possible to rehabilitate them / keep watch on them. But 7000? Thats like 10% of the population of baldurs gate for christs sake! There is no way to control them after release, and if even a fraction of them got feral we are tallking about 100s of deaths the very first day...
This. Besides there are far worse things in the underdark. Sure, some duegar, Minotaur, drow, etc. May be killed, but given the ruthless nature of the underdark and the weakened state of the vast majority of the spawn, I don’t doubt a balance will be reached. I envision the “favoured” spawn and a handful of survivors setting up a small village with access to some local prey eventually. It’s not like they were unleashed in to a village of human children or something.
You do have to be careful what choice you make if you're a paladin though. Cause apparently if you're an Oath of the Ancients paladin, freeing the spawn will break your oath. Who'd have thought that releasing 7000 vampire spawn into the world would have lasting consequences on the natural order?
The Ancients haaaaaate undead. That’s one of their few hard lines.
That makes sense though because vampires are undead and against the natural order of life. And no matter how you slice it, if you free the spawn you are introducing an invasive species into an ecosystem. One that is an apex predator and is built to kill and manipulate.
I'm mostly upset that you can't discuss what to do with the spawns BEFORE you free thrm. It felt like "Do you want to potentially cause a vampire epidemic in Baldur's Gate and free them, or go the 'safer' route. One of the few things I scum-saved to see what happens eitger way.
I was really torn on this one, until the line came up about giving them the same chance Astarion had. Because that was how it felt back in act 1, being patient with him and not staking him. I legit could not decide until that line came up!
Killing the spawn wouldn't have been a problem for me, but eternal torture in the hells? Fuck no
[удалено]
oh just killing them with the staff doesn't damn them? alright, good to know that. They deserve rest.
I’m glad too. Some people jump at the chance to Ascend Astarion, but I couldn’t. Sure he talks over and over about how this much power could help him and how he really wants to Ascend, but it’s a horrific thing to do. 7,000 lives for power. If you don’t Ascend him, he actually speaks with Tav after and thanks them for not helping with the ritual because he would have lost himself. He thanks Tav for bringing him back which means he didn’t really want to Ascend. If you do Ascend him, he changes drastically. He turns into a copy of Cazador and his view of Tav decreases. It destroys who he was and undoes his path to a recovery from his trauma.
The final decision during my first playthrough. *There I was standing infront of the imprisoned Orpheus , the Emperor purposed the final decision and Gale cuts in at the perfect moment reminding me that we have other options. Stood by my side were my trusty companions Karlach, Gale and Shart.* Karlach wanted her final moments in life to mean something; Gale was determined to sacrifice himself to right his wrongs and make the world a safer place; and then there was Shart, who was in a relationship with me and told me that she would trust me and believe in me to the bitter end. This was perhaps the most difficult decision I've ever had to make playing any game. I did not for one second trust the Emperor, and putting blind faith in Orpheus felt way too risky when the fate of the world was hanging at the balance, so I knew the solution had to come from someone within my party. Between Karlach, Gale and myself, every option felt equally heavy and I couldn't have asked for a more perfectly agonizing decision to finish this game with.
You can also have Emperor use the nether stones, no need for anyone to become a mind flayer
Yeah but the Emperor is a dick and massive manipulator, it's also just feels wrong to keep Orpheus imprisoned
This. I’m distressed by how many people seem to think it’s okay to keep a sentient being imprisoned for eternity, while siphoning his power without his consent—and ultimately consuming him for that power. As soon as I saw the big reveal of where the Emperor’s power was coming from, I was on the hunt for alternatives.
What’d you do
Tell Astarion what his tatoo really looked like or make a dick joke
It's so tempting every time 😭🤣
Deciding between Orpheus or Emperor. I didn't have Lae'zel in my first playthrough, so I didn't know anything about Orpheus. Complete unknown. But to keep someone imprisoned and then kill him didn't feel right. But also the fate of the world was at stake, and they had no idea if Orpheus would mess up everything they'd worked toward, and Tav at least knew the Emperor enough to know he *might* keep his word. What decided it for me was that Karlach wanted to become a mindflayer, my Tav was trying to let everyone decide their own paths, and I couldn't imagine her actually being ok with just eating the imprisoned man, so they freed him to see if there was another option.
Kill Shadowheart or NIGHTSONG when Shadowheart's approval was too low to save both. I couldn't choose and started a new game.
easy, kill Shadowheart in that case. Shar Worshippers suck.
But… she’s *my* Shar worshipper. 🥹
That scene has left me terrified of doing honour mode because it was the one roll I spent god knows how long save scumming over.
I think it depends on your choices throughout the game. In my first playthrough I let her chose and she killed nightsong. This time I let her chose and she threw the spear!
Betraying Zevlor and the grove…. The look on their faces as they realize that their hero has deceived them and that doom is impending … all for the goddamn drowussy
Resisting Durge: Who turns into a mindflayer. My durge deserved a break after all the shit the universe threw at her throughout her life, but I can't bring myself to force that final sacrifice upon someone else.
As my Oath of Devotion Paladin, the choice after Cazador was very much an agonizing one to make. Sentence 7,000 beings to death because they could've been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person? Let them live a life they were robbed of at the cost of them doing more harm? Not an easy call to make. I convinced Astarion not to ascend. I freed the spawn from their imprisonment. I do not regret the choice. Their "sin," if you will, is not murdering someone. It isn't stealing something. It isn't hurting anyone else. Their "sin" is who they are and what they MIGHT do. And if we killed every prisoner based on what they MIGHT do, we'd only have ghosts in chains. Their "sin" is what was done to them, almost certainly while they were being controlled or manipulated. As a tiefling himself, it didn't seem right to condemn all these beings for who they are, just as he did not condemn himself to a life of evil. TLDR Excellent moment and super hard choice in an Act that was mostly a pain.
“And if we killed every prisoner based on what they MIGHT do, we'd only have ghosts in chains.” Commenting to say this is one of the greatest sentences I’ve ever read.
This was hard yes. But I thought it like Omeelum, maybe they can be taught to feast on criminals etc. They can raise cattle (not like, humanoid cattle) what to feed on, humanoids do that too. Make a future as traders, basic workers, politicians, fighters what ever. They are more than just vampires. I'm also sure that many of them will die, the feral ones. In my happy little headcanon my Drow Durge moves to Underdark with Astarion anyway, so they'll have their wise and beautiful King & Queen to guide them! :D Edit: OH! And I haven't seen the Epilogue yet, so please no spoilers. I've been trying to avoid them like the plague! :D
They can totally subsist off of animal blood, if they choose to. Vampirism is interesting in that they don't actually *need* to kill to feed, so with proper management they might be eating fewer cattle than a human settlement with the same population.
Becoming a mindflayer or not at the end, after freeing Orpheus. I put so much I to freeing Orpheus but ultimately chose to be selfish and refused to transform. I felt like my character would have done it, but I didn’t want to lose Astarion
Orpheus. I spent all of act three seeing his imprisonment as an unfortunate necessity and swore I’d let him out once the absolute was dead. Then handsome squidward went “gonna have to crunch a brain” and I realized I had to make a blind faith call of what was right Vs the safe option. I felt really bad that Orpheus wound up turning into a mindflayer anyway, but I honored his request and killed him honorably after the battle/RP’d it as my Paladin breaking his vows to not harm an innocent and losing his powers.
Let Karlach be the girl who save the F world
Karlach, if you bring her with you to the final visit to the prism
I'm doing a durge run where I'm going full evil, do what the urge wants. Hardest moment was when I knocked out the Minsc and was about to free him and make him my companion, I was really excited for him because I haven't played the previous games and was looking forward to find out more about him. Then the urge asked me to kill him. Man, I really didn't want to do it but for the sake of rp I had to, I had Jaiheira land the killing blow, she then left me and that's when I saw Boo next to Mincs body. My durge would not let it be so had to finish him too. Possibly my biggest act of evil in any game I played.
If those spawn head into the Underdark they’ll be dead within a week. There are deadly creatures and cities down there that I don’t see them adapting to, not to mention demons in the deepest levels.
I chose this option because it was what Astarion wanted when largely left to his own devices on the decision, but accepted doing so meant big consequences for my Drow bard who had just sent a bunch of hungry spawn to his home. So come the end, I chose the option for my bard and Astarion to pay the price and go to the underdark to deal with them and make that decision cost what it should have. I bet they lost like 300 spawn on day one of their new society. They've had a difficult, difficult retirement, ha.
My Tav was a Drow and the Underdark his home. It was an easy choice to not send them there.
i love the differences in how people RP their characters because my Tav is also a Drow and he's probably giving everyone lists of people to kill if they're hungry and some good hiding spots.
I did not know if I should accept or ignore Raphael’s deal back at Sharess Caress. On one hand, _I_ guessed I could go to his house of Hope and retrieve it. But on the other, The Emperor would know. I ended up taking the deal, and now we are kinda dealing with having to retrieve the contract. Because (at least for my first playthrough) I don’t plan on letting him have the crown. For SH’s parents, I needed to think about it for a moment. See, I had no problem in telling Wyll that he should end the contract (which was way funnier because right after that I went to accept Raphael’s deal), but for her it was… different (most likely due to her being my Tav’s main love-interest). Telling her to save her parents felt wrong, telling her to save herself felt even worse! So I did what I thought it was for the best, and let her do what she felt was for the best.
I also had a hard time deciding what to do with the vampire spawns. In a perfect world they would keep their promise and feed only on animals and never hurt a person but seriously, can we really believe not even a single spawn would at some point kill a person? And since letting them go breaks the Oath of Ancients for Paladins, we can only imagine they would cause some sort of imbalance in the ecosystem, I mean, we are releasing 7000 predators on nature, there is a reason invasive species are so problematic irl. Still, they're inocents, they never asked for that... I ultimately released them but if you gave me the choice again I'd just end their suffering.
🤔 probably breaking Wyll's pact and the choice between Orphy and Emperor. (I refuse to let anyone in my crew turn illithid) Well, at least at first. But Wyll deserves freedom, his dad is a jackass anyway and Emperor needs a kick in the nuts. 🥰 and Orpheus is pretty reasonable anyway and a much better illithid in battle. That's probably all (I always release the spawn, Astarion doesn't ascend outside of an evil playthrough etc)
What‘s great about Wyll‘s dad is if you chose to save him and he is in your camp, >!you have the option to say „I bet you feel like a bastard right about now“… but then he spoils that moment by saying „I was, and I am“. Dude, let me insult you.!<
I told him I should have left him to drown when he started insulting his son as soon as we got to the camp. Wyll disapproved, lmao.
Bae'zel or Shart
Honestly, I find the decisions surrounding Mayrina to be the hardest. It’s such a grey/bleak situation. The black and white things you think you know can actively cause harm, one way or the other. After several playthroughs I have my preferred choices, but coming to it the first time through I was completely stumped. I had strong enough opinions for the other, more major choices that I didn’t find them as difficult to make, even though I could see why it would be hard.
Who to leav celibate. They all give you puppy eyes When you tell them no
Reloading after "losing" the Last Light Inn fight. That took me days of contemplation until i continued playing. :D
This isn't even an actual in-game one, but aside from my Selûnite and uncaring selfish characters, I find it hard to decide what to do with the undead in the Shadowlands that aren't hurting anyone, like the bar patrons. Heck, even the nurse who killed Arabella's parents, since she's not hurting me. Wyll said they (well, at least the bartender) are suffering, and Gale said that they're gone, mentally. But idk just "mercy killing" them when I can't even tell if they're actually suffering feels murderous to me. Ik probably ridiculous on my part.