Baldur's Gate 3: Baldur's Gate >:3

[alias_sqbr]

Into Act 3.

This has been really fun so far! Also, I have a better grasp of what an 'evil' run of the game would look like, and while it's not right for this character, it makes more sense to me than when I was complaining in my last post.

Masterpost

CW: An image of a monster covered in blood.


So! There is a conversation between Shadowheart and Ayline. Ayline says she can sense that some part of Shadowheart is tethered to two people, much as Ayline was tethered to Thorm. Does Shadowheart also have some magic being syphoned?? Shadowheart is shown a hidden memory: watching her father, an elf DRUID who was TRANSFORMED INTO A WOLF be murdered by Shar worshippers. Ayline says Shadowheart's parents are alive somewhere. Shadowheart finds this all a lot to deal with!

There is a nice scene where Tav and the others look out at the city of Baldur's Gate, only one night's sleep away.

AND THEN. TAV WENT TO SLEEP. AND WOKE UP TO AN AMBUSH.

A bunch of hostile Githyanki shouted that Tav was "ithilid" (associated with mind flayers) while the voice of dwarf friend called from a portal to come help before the Absolute overpowered them all. Every turn of the battle, the Absolute did 1d6 psychic damage to the whole party.

Through the portal, Tav saw a distant figure with dwarf friend's voice fighting off more githyanki with the help of... a bunch of brain friends. HMM.

More githyanki were trying to destroy a magical sphere within a giant stone skull. Inside the sphere, a miserable looking githyanki was chained to two giant crystals. A mindflayer fought them off, and asked for Tav's help, saying it is the one who has been protecting Tav in their dreams all this time.

WELL THEN.

Not-actually-a-dwarf friend introduces themselves as The Emperor.

It was an adventurer who got caught by the mindflayers hidden at Moonrise Towers, and turned into a mindflayer. It managed to escape and started a new life for itself in Baldur's Gate, living off criminals and hiding it's appearance while using it's enhanced mind to become so successful a leader of merchants that it got the nickname "The Emperor". But it was captured by Karlach's old boss, Lord Gortash, and made a thrall of the Absolute, before being sent to find The Prism.

Once it encountered the prism it regained it's sense of self, and also realised what the prism is: a prison containing the powerfully psychic Githyanki prince Orpheus and his retainers, who had been made to disappear as part of some Githyanki royal power struggle.

By using the prince's power, The Emperor has been able to protect Tav and the rest of the party from the Absolute. If the prince is freed, he will kill all of them, because he REALLY hates mindflayers.

Did I mention that the reason the Githyanki hate mindflayers is that they were enslaved by them for generations...

So. Tav was not down for imprisoning an innocent man just because it's convenient. The Emporer did not take this well! First it tried to mindcontrol Tav, and when that didn't work, a fight ensued, with the Emperor and it's mindflayers AND all the Githyanki trying to kill Tav and the rest of the party.

Since the Emporer had a LOT of hit points, in the process of defending myself I ended up killing all the githyanki before the Emperor was dead.

The Emporer: I'm glad you saw reason :)
Tav: Uh...
The Emporer: So, now that the prince is safely imprisoned forever, lets see about making you stronger in our fight against the Absolute. How do you feel about becoming a mindflayer?
Tav: NO???
The Emperor: I am confident I would be able to let you keep your free will. And consider, you'd become so strong and beautiful!
Tav: Hmm, I wonder if Shadowheart is into tentacles... I MEAN NO.

And you know what? I kinda like it, as a bad path. Siding with the Absolute is clearly a bad move, but becoming a power-hungry amoral mindflayer with free will? Sure! It's not for Tav, but I can see it being a fun path for someone else.

Still, even if I was seriously considering letting Tav just live with this situation, I was curious to see what would happen if you took the Githyanki's side.

So I redid the battle. The defeated Emperor once again tries to convince you that this is suicide, and Tav has a flash of insight that it's telling the truth. But I killed it anyway, to see what would happen.

And the Absolute immediately takes over Tav's mind and turns them into a mindflayer. THE END.

Oops.

But does that mean the ONLY option is to enslave this innocent Githyanki, because he's just TOO CONSUMED by generational trauma of former slavery? That's, uh... bad? I take back my former thought that while Baldur's Gate 3 has it's problems, at least it never does a Bioware-ish "Maybe some slavery is good, actually".

Especially given the earlier moral that imprisoning Ayline to siphon off her power was Wrong and Bad. But she's an angel-coded white woman from the mainstream quasi-European culture who worships a Good God, not a green dude from a more foreign 'tribal' culture who worship a Bad God and have a history of being enslaved :/

OK I DID SOME GOOGLING and it looks like you CAN free prince Orpheus, and that IS the Good choice. OK, COOL. But now I'm wondering: did I screw it up somehow, or do you have to go along with his subjugation NOW and free him later?

*googles some more* Yep, ok. Subjugate now, free later. That's still kind of uncomfortable, but nowhere near as bad being unable to ever walk away from Omelas.

Also apparently you can have sex with the Emperor, which is amazing. Don't think it's on the cards for Tav but never say never.

The moment you get back to camp a "free Prince Orpheus" quest comes up, good good.

I checked in with Lae'zel who I expected to be all WTF WE ARE IMPRISONING ONE OF MY PEOPLE'S PRINCES ON BEHALF OF A MINDFLAYER but instead she said she was taught that Prince Orpheus was a pro-mindflayer traitor who was rightfully murdered, and even though part of that turned out to be false she's not going to question the rest. So she wants Tav to free him so she can murder him haha.

Then I played a bunch, what happened...

So! Act 3 appears to be set in and around the city Baldur's Gate, and you can't go back to the earlier areas. This is fine except for how (a) It took me a while to find anyone with enough money to buy all my excess loot and (b)I can't find anyone to restock the resurrection scrolls I used up when my characters fell off cliffs etc.

There are a whole lot of refugees thanks to the march of the Absolute's army, and they're not being let into the city thanks to Gortash. The people of the city are not all being very kind about this, and there's a lot of Sad Refugee Stories playing out around the area. In general there's heaps of NPCs having little conversations about all sorts of things, it creates a real sense of place. Everyone has heard the army of the Absolute is coming, but not everyone believes it, and those who do feel pretty hopeless about it.

I am absolutely here for this game's heavy handed BE NICE TO REFUGEES agenda.

I picked up a quest to solve the murder of a refugee-helping priest, which is currently being blamed on a (conveniently also dead) refugee by a lazy investigator not willing to look past the superficial evidence. The church, for the god Ilmater (CW: gore), was mostly pretty generic quasi-catholic but with some weird theology about the Virtues of Suffering.

I also picked up a quest to help figure out why carrier pigeons have been going missing, and why someone put EXPLOSIVES in TOYS for BABY REFUGEES, both of which have led to some charming conversations with animals who knew Clues.

My favourite new area thus far is the CIRCUS which is DELIGHTFULLY WEIRD. The weirdness starts before you even get in: the entrance is manned by a horrifying ghoul called Benji, wearing nothing but a little coloured ruff and buckets of blood, sniffing patrons to make sure they're not murderers.



He did not like my party's brain juice smell but Tav managed to talk their way in anyway.

The circus acts include a mummy who does makeup, an earth elemental couple who sell statues, a weird little dragon guy who sells 'treats' he looted from dead bodies ("But circus is very safe!!") some caged monsters who really want to murder everyone, and everyone's favourite, Dribbles the Clown. The ringmaster is a good natured necromancer who is either a drag queen or a very flamboyant trans woman. She's cool but also pretty weird, I'd say "it would be nice to have some more unobtrusive/conventional trans/gnc characters as well", except based on past experience there's even odds the game has heaps and I just didn't notice >.>

When we stopped to watch Dribbles the Clown's show he called for a volunteer, Tav sent Karlach up since she likes circuses. And then he tried to kill her! He turned out to be a doppelganger who'd stolen Dribble's identity.

Tav had one of their few voiced lines, something like "Oh, a doppelganger. Well as long as we didn't just murder a real clown in front of a bunch of children".

Luckily the other circus folk didn't assume we were enemies and instead thanked us for saving the patrons, and we were asked to try and find the real Dribbles.

A dryad offered to give Shadowheart and Tav a Love Fortune, it was cute even if Shadowheart was unexpectedly invisible, causing Tav to look affectionately at a patch of empty space.

Dryad: But your love cannot last. For your heart belongs to another.
Me: WHAT?? IS IT GALE?? HOW OFTEN DO I HAVE TO DUMP THIS GUY???
Dryad, turning into Evil Knife Lady Orin: ....THE ABSOLUTE!!!! >:D
Me: Ohhhhhh. That's ok then.

Orin gave a little speech about how like... She is Watching and we're Doomed but also she is down for us making things difficult for Gortash because she hates him too. Everyone was unsettled to know our enemy can do shapeshifting, tbh I had assumed that was a common skill given how many people turn into animals but I guess not. Astarion's reaction is pretty funny.

Shadowheart's hair has gone white?? I have decided to headcanon this as her having always had naturally white hair, but she felt obliged to dye it black to be a proper goth Shar worshipper. TBH I preferred the black but as long as she's happy.

I sent Tav off exploring and accidentally got cut off from the rest of the party in a little sea-side cave, which (as a childhood reading Enid Blyton should have prepared me for) turned out to be full of VIOLENT CRIMINALS!! Obviously I could have cheated my way to victory regardless, but so Tav didn't feel so alone I summoned brain friend, and then noticed a Summon Familiar spell I'd never used before and summoned a dog friend too.

After the battle both friends hung around so Tav said hello and Us was VERY HAPPY, saying it had no interest in the Absolute and that it could safely bounce along beside Tav in public because it is disguising itself to everyone but Tav and their closest friends as "a kitty, a small predator indigenous to this plane which can sneak in anywhere!"

So now I'm imagining little refugee children asking to pat Tav's cat and Tav not knowing if they should say yes.

Once the friends had murdered the criminals we discovered... the murder weapon used to kill the priest! Some incriminating notes! And.... the torso of a clown. RIP Dribbles. The "find Dribbles the Clown" quest updated to finding all his body parts so that's going to be FUN.

The gate into Baldur's Gate proper is guarded by one of Lord Gortash's giant steampunky police robots. When Tav attempted to enter, it LOOKED INTO THEIR MIND and declared them an enemy of the Absolute to be sent immediately to jail.

I had to option to try and escape but thought it was better to see where the plot would take me, and a bunch of gnomes showed up and blinded the robot so we could sneak in, hooray! There seems to be some sort of organised gnome political faction aiming for more power in the city, curious to see where that plot is going.

As soon as we entered the city we encountered groups of NPCs lingering outside the door to a brothel deciding if they wanted to go in. I did go in, and the madam immediately said Tav clearly needed some BDSM at the hand of a stern librarian lady dwarf.

Tav was a little taken aback by this and said no thank you, especially because they haven't had the "are we exclusive?" conversation with Shadowheart and don't want to make her uncomfortable.

They also said no thank you to the brother and sister drow asking if Tav and Shadowheart would be interested in a foursome, and the dryad who thought watching her client unexpectedly start shouting about the Absolute before turning into a mindflayer and being murdered by Tav was sexy.

I've always thought the people going on about how horny this game is were exaggerating, but that was certainly an Experience. Cam watched the Karlach romance on youtube and said she does not react well to the PC agreeing to a foursome, I suspect Shadowheart doesn't either, but I bet Astarion is up for it.

So. This is a horny game, and definitely more horny about women than men. But it's not as sleazy as other horny RPGs I've played. I really like that while the female characters are generally very conventionally attractive, and Sexy Lady characters like Orin and the hybristophiliac dryad are basically naked, female characters aren't all always in sexy boobplate etc. For example, here is Shadowheart's starting look:

The only change I'd want is for her fringe/bangs to be a little less dorky, but we can't have everything.

Further within the brothel is the murder investigator, who tipsily told Tav that finding a murder weapon doesn't prove anything without a motive and then went back to drinking.

Did I mention that the investigator is a small orange elephant with wings for ears, a monocle, and a pipe?


This is a screenshot I took earlier, in the brothel she is also holding a little martini glass.

And that's enough for now! I hear Act 3 has a lot of bugs, the only big one I've noticed so far was the Unexpectedly Invisible Shadowheart but I'm braced for everything to break at some point.

Comments

[scytale]

OMG the title in the pun.

I think Shar would approve of invisible Shadowheart. Invisible like the night!

Also oh so that's what's up with Orpheus, whose name I've seen around! It also absolutely does not surprise me that the githyanki would have been so terrible about him: Vlaakith seems like the super who would not tolerate competition!

[alias_sqbr]

I hadn't had the conversation with Us when I came up with the title, but it now retroactively is said by them :3

And yeah, Vlaakith seems like A Lot.