Baldur's Gate 3: THE (provisional) FINALE
Sep. 1st, 2023 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI finished it!! I'm not sure exactly how long it took me but my save in the middle of the last battle was at 66 hours and there was more fighting and then some cutscenes etc after that. My total playtime is at 90 hours which includes a second character as well as replaying some sections.
I overall liked it well enough, but can see why people have problems with the ending. It is pretty abrupt, and I am looking forward to seeing the fully expanded epilogues once that's done. The ending I got was bittersweet but I didn't finish all the sidequests and just followed my gut instead of Optimising My Outcomes.
Ok I just looked it up and there is a much less bittersweet ending possible, phew!
So! My plan now is to play my new character more slowly, and then when I get the impression the developers are done tweaking the endings, replay the end of the game with Tav making Better Choices and then see the Full Happy Ending. But the story as I experienced it was still pretty good, and this is overall a great game.
I encountered two significant bugs where the plot didn't move forward correctly after a major boss battle. In one case I had to "escape" back to camp then return to the battle area for the game to realise the fight was over. In the second case I had to replay the battle and this time not unlock a plot-relevant lock mid-battle, since that seemed to be what confused the game, and then again return to camp then back to the battleground. Other than that I had a few dialogues fire incorrectly but they didn't undermine my experience too badly. Anyway: Let this be your reminder to save often!
Masterpost
Content note: Child harm, abuse, suicide
THE END IS SO CLOSE I CAN FEEL IT.
(I have felt that way for seven hours of gameplay, and distracting myself from playing any more by writing this up. EDIT: And then it took me another like 5 hours haha)
SO. As I edited my previous post to say, I totally flinched on losing Astarion. I started walking past the cage of sad children trying to convince each other their parents were coming soon and went NOPE.
Astarion's response when you persuade him he doesn't need to be a Super Vampire to be happy was really sweet. He's really free now.
And then Tav let SEVEN THOUSAND imprisoned vampires into the world. Astarion told the other head thralls to lead the others into the Underdark and presumably teach them to eat Underdark oxen and spider blood. I'd forgotten that the children's parents were monster hunters, they were not SUPER happy about their children being vampires now but thanked Tav anyway.
We looted some nice clothes from Cazador's mansion, I felt uncomfortable putting Astarion in any of it but found a nice green and red outfit for Shadowheart, who had said she wanted to wear more colour after so much time in black and purple.
God what else did I do it has been a Lot...
Ha, that's right. I really wanted to do Shadowheart's personal quest but the instructions on how to find the Baldur's Gate Temple of Shar were really vague. So I decided to just do all the 'Investigate Mysterious Events' sidequests I'd activated, in case one of them turned out to be it.
The first was a mystery about missing letters. A pigeon said a Horrible Terrifying Beast lurked on the roof of the church where the priest was murdered. So I was all prepared for some sort of eldritch being... and it was Gale's beloved flying cat, who'd been eating the carrier pigeons. I sent Gale up to talk to her and the game didn't even give me the option for him to tell her to stop.
The second was just footprints... which turned out to lead to the hideout of Underdark gnomes who Tav rescued from the Absolute, and who had rescued Tav in return.
The good news was that they had a plan to destroy the factory where Gortash made and controlled his creepy steampunk robot soldiers. The bad news was that their plan involved killing all the enslaved gnome workers, who the underdark gnomes hated for worshipping the wrong god.
So obviously I now had to go rescue all the enslaved gnome workers!
In the factory, a cutscene reveals that the gnomes are all wearing slave collars connected to a kill switch held by all the overseers.
And then very quickly I discovered that if you kill an overseer the associated kill switch will "wait one turn" before detonating, which is like...a couple of seconds if you're not in battle/turn-based mode.
Guess who killed the overseer right at the end of the fight and a few seconds later was left in a smouldering crater of dead gnomes!
So I did the fight again and killed the overseer first and disabled the kill switch while still in battle, phew!
The gnomes explain that their family members are all in a secret prison and will be killed if the gnomes rebel. They agreed to rebel if Tav could rescue their families first.
Getting through the factory without setting off a kill switch was pretty stressful even with cheats. But eventually I learned how to get to Gortash's secret underwater prison, home to many sad gnomes... and Wyll's dad. Woot! Also the friendly mindflayer from the Underdark.
I was still team "rescue the slaves" but finding the prison sounded very involved and I really wanted to do Shadowheart's quest. So I looked up a walkthrough and turns out you have to talk to this one random guy who's just standing around not saying anything off to the side of the map :/
BUT I DID THAT and Shadowheart was summoned to the "House of Grief", a pretty, mildly goth temple in the main city which carefully avoids mentioning the name Shar and kinda felt like a scientology recruitment centre, full of people offering vague yet weirdly off-putting platitudes about Helping With Your Pain. Every time they spoke to Shadowheart the facade slipped and they gave her shit for 'abandoning Shar'.
And of course downstairs it was all very gothic architecture and violent cultists. I feel like Astarion and Shadowheart could bond about being kidnapped into death cults by abusive quasi-parental goth mass murderers who they found catharsis by murdering. Killing Shadowheart's mother superior was much less fraught and lacking in difficult choices, though. Before she died the Mother Superior said Shar had murdered a whole other temple of Shar worshippers to set up Shadowheart's indoctrination, because Shadowheart had been born to have some sort of important role for Selune, and Shar wanted to prove her power by turning Shadowheart into the next Shar Mother Superior.
Downstairs were Shadowheart's actual parents, who had been chained here since Shadowheart was a child, their life force being used as the power binding Shadowheart to Shar. Shadowheart had been brainwashed into repeatedly torturing them, not knowing who they were D: But they didn't blame her, they were just glad to see her as herself. Apparently her original name is Jen which is kinda boring but I didn't say that to her.
And then Shar herself showed up, a massive dark blue woman who laughed that she had stolen Shadowheart from her sister Selune, and Shadowheart could never escape: the only way to totally break Shar's hold on her was to kill her parents.
Which they were totally down for, all "We are old! Now we've seen you we can be at peace! You were born to be the light of Selune!". Tav felt weird getting involved (this was NOT their ideal 'meet the girlfriend's parents' scenario) so said Shadowheart would know the right thing to do, and she double checked it was really what they wanted then let them go. They'll always be sorta with her as spirits or something? I am fuzzy on how that works.
Afterwards, Tav found Shadowheart at a statue of Selune, saying she felt directionless and alone. There was the option to say she should be a Selunite now but Tav said she didn't have to and Shadowheart agreed. She said she is going to stick with the name "Shadowheart" because it's as much part of the person she is now as "Jen", and you can't have shadow without light.
And now it was time to UNKILL someone's parent.
The quest to rescue everyone from the undersea prison was EVEN MORE stressful than the one to get through the factory: Gortash sets off a bomb and you have 6 rounds to walk to each cell, open the door, untie anyone if necessary, and get back to the submarine, killing any fish guys in the way. Hoorayyyy for cheats.
When Wyll's dad got out, Wyll's patron Mizora showed up saying "I made an agreement with Wyll that you would die, I can hardly go back on it ^_^" and summoned a bunch of spiders before vanishing. But we rescued him anyway and he and Wyll had a sweet reunion, finally able to speak freely. And afterwards Mizora was STILL IN CAMP HANGING OUT NEXT TO WYLL, that woman has NO SHAME.
Gortash was now very pissed at Tav, so it seemed like a good time to go kill him! Unfortunately everyone in his palace had become an enemy, including the guards, all the nobles, and all the noble's bodyguards. Also there's grenade launchers and land mines. The nobles were just cowering in terror so I tried to avoid killing them but ACCIDENTS HAPPEN OK. Anyway, after getting lost a few times and maybe killing more people than was entirely necessary we made it to the top. Gortash is definitely a Boss, I might look up strategies next time to be more clever at dealing with his various complexities, but this time I just gave Karlach an unlimited ability to hit him with a big sword until he was finally dead.
Annoyingly, the game didn't consider the fight over, even though there were no enemies left onscreen, maybe because there were some left on the floor below? I found a distant battlement from which I was able to "run from battle", and then came back so Karlach could have her "Oh god he's really dead" scene. And then she got overcome for a while by all the sadness she'd been repressing under a drive for revenge, about how she'd been betrayed, and how her only choices are return to hell or die young, and how everyone in the party will probably die thanks to the Absolute regardless. After a little while she felt better, and said she's just going to live while she can, all she wants is for Tav to be with her to the end. Anything is better than going back to the hells.
Guess where our next quest took us!!
(OH WOW SO AT THIS POINT I STOPPED WRITING AND JUST SAT DOWN AND FINISHED THE GAME IT TOOK ME LIKE 5 HOURS AND I HAVE FEELINGS BUT LET'S WAIT TIL WE GET THERE)
Ok, so! As a reminder, at one point I explored the Emporer's old underground lair and ended up bumping into Orin, who had kidnapped Lae'zel and said she would die unless Tav killed Gortash. I hadn't wanted to commit to killing Gortash yet so replayed to avoid that conversation, and never went that deep underground again, despite encountering hatches leading underground at various locations.
But now that Tav had killed Gortash without talking to Orin, she decided to bring the conversation to Tav. The next time Tav had a long rest, they woke to Lae'zel holding a knife to the neck of the little orphan girl, who Lae'zel said she'd seen transform from a woman. The girl cried out that she had no idea what Lae'zel was talking about, and even though I'd suspected her of being a shapeshifter from the start, I told Lae'zel not to kill her until Tav could double check.
But Tav failed the persuade check, so Lae'zel killed her anyway... and turned out to be Orin in disguise! Because she'd kidnapped Lae'zel when Tav was asleep!
I felt pretty bad about the girl dying so replayed the scene a few times until I could save her. But to save Lae'zel Orin demanded we do a whole convoluted thing with a Murder Tribunal and Holy Fight To The Death In The Temple of Baal.
At around the same time, I finally learned how to break into the devil Raphael's lair to get the hammer to save Prince Orpheus from his imprisonment.
I was clearly approaching the end of the game at this point, and both of these quests seemed big enough that I might only be able to do one of them (though hopefully not). I thought about it and decided Lae'zel would much rather we save her people's rightful king. Having her die was a sad thought, but I knew I'd likely be replaying a lot of this anyway.
So down into Hell we went.
Raphael's "House of Hope" was creepy, an opulent manor with a table overflowing with rotten food, and full of sad muttering souls who he had tempted into making a bargain. As we arrived we were approach by the mental projection of a halfling woman who called herself Hope and was clearly very mentally unstable from years of torture but who said she would do her best to help us.
The pass-phrase to the hammer turned out to be in Raphael's safe, written in his diary, which seems like bad Opsec. It was guarded by a Sexy Raphael Clone in skimpy BDSM gear, who said he'd let us pass if we played a game which involved Tav taking off their clothes. Tav said no.
Once we stole the hammer the party had to run away from a Giant Flaming Hell Rock while fighting off angry doomed souls, and then rescue Hope. I'd been thinking she was some trick by Raphael or a metaphor or something but no, she is a perfectly nice Actual Halfling who Raphael imprisoned for reasons I don't entirely follow, possibly related to her sister being Raphael's second in command. We killed off Raphael and the sister and Hope took over the House of Hope, saying she'll make it a genuine place of hope now. Maybe she has magic powers on par with devils?
Anyway! We left, and Karlach said she hated how much better physically she felt in the hells, because it tempted her to go back there, but she was absolutely determined not to, and after making a little effort to persuade her Tav respected her choice.
And hooray, saving Lae'zel was still available, though I got the sense I only had until my next long rest.
At some point the Emporer hit on Tav, but took the rejection well. He again suggested Tav turn into a mindflayer but didn't actually offer the choice to change their mind. Which they wouldn't have done, I just found it odd, maybe I'm missing something.
So I did the whole Murder Tribunal thing (I murdered them, which I think means I passed) but still wasn't sure how to get to the Temple of Baal. I later realised I'd managed to miss looting the map, but at first decided to try out the place below the Emporer's Lair that I'd bumped into Orin last time.
In the Emporer's digs I encountered a book about mindflayers, saying they can never be trusted and however nice they seem they are inherently manipulative and deadly.
And beyond that was... a WHOLE ENTIRE UNDERCITY MAP. It's huge, with connection to places all over the surface city. I even encountered a secret entrance to Cazador's vampire lair, and the path to the Absolute, which was overflowing with creepy little rats which, when spoken to, formed sentences one word at a time saying Tav should submit to the Absolute. So we turned back from that!!
It took a LOT of exploring to find the entrance to the temple of Baal, during which I encountered a number of little personal dramas going on amongst the sewer dwellers. And then it turned out I couldn't enter without an amulet I'd left back at the murder tribunal, and in the process of finding that I also encountered the map I'd presumably been meant to have been following. OH WELL.
The temple of Baal was kind of boring, lots of long winding rock paths without much to look at except piles of skulls and creepy statues muttering about the Baalspawn. Baalspawn are descendants of Baal who were the driver of the plot of the previous two Baldur's Gate games. Apparently Orin is the granddaughter of a Baalspawn who was the villain of one of the previous games. Not all Baalspawn are evil, since the hero of both previous games is one too, and apparently even the villainous one can be redeemed. But you wouldn't really know that from this game.
At the end was Lae'zel chained to a big altar, with Orin poised to strike since Tav stole her chance to kill her grandad. I had to take a couple of tries to pass a persuasion check to save Lae'zel, and then there was a pretty difficult battle. Even with cheats, I haven't figured out how to reliably deal with enemies who cast 'invisible' at the end of their turn, making them hard to find and hit. So I freed Lae'zel mid-battle, allowing her to help.
And as I said at the start of this post, that broke the game! It classified Lae'zel as a summoned fighter during the fight and then wouldn't let her got back to being a regular companion afterwards. So I redid the persuasion roll until it worked AGAIN, then did the fight AGAIN without freeing Lae'zel, then returned to camp and then back to the temple and THEN finally had Lae'zel back at camp, phew!!! The way she begrudgingly said thank you was very endearing.
There was the option to go directly to fight the Absolute but I decided to take a final look at my remaining sidequests.
The two most significant ones were for Wyll and Gale. Wyll's was to recruit a dragon, which sounded risky since afaict they're evil in this setting. Gales was to find a book about the crown controlling the Absolute which sounded boring, but less difficult and risky.
The moment Tav gave him the book he got all I COULD USE THIS TO GAIN THE POWER OF A GOD which Tav was not a huge fan of. There was no option to go "I am not against mortals gaining godlike powers as a group, but if you personally gain them that's just making a new god, and I feel like we have enough". I couldn't figure out what next step to take and wasn't sure I even wanted to. Still, it was interesting to learn that the crown was created not as a way to control the wearer, but as a way for the wearer to become much more powerful.
I also said hello to the mindflayer scientist from the Underdark, who is happily settled in an Underdark researcher collective. Bah to you, book, mindflayers can be nice!
I was hoping Lae'zel would have some idea how to free Orpheus now we had the hammer, but she said we just needed to wait until we ended up inside the astral prism again somehow.
So I decided to just go fight the Absolute and see what happened!!
The path to the Absolute was skittering with brain friends, and littered with the headless bodies of the Absolute's jailors that they had popped from D: The Absolute had almost entirely broken free of it's bonds, and was poised to take over the world.
When Tav confronted it, it said this had all been it's plan, that it used the prospect of power to get Gorlach etc to give it access to the power of the crown and a pre-brainwormed
army with which to strike. It even freed the Emporer on purpose, to create the situation where Tav killed all three holders of the stones of the crown, and brought the stones to this place.
There were a sequence of ability checks to oppose the Absolute's will, where I got to choose which ability was checked. The way ability checks work is you roll a 20 sided die, and then add any bonuses. Tav's max bonuses are usually like... 10.
The first check was a 15, and I passed easily. The second was a 25 and I didn't quite pass. The third was a 30 and I was like "Uh. Is there some way I could vastly increase Tav's intelligence or something? I guess Astarion SOMETIMES pass 30+ checks if they hit his strengths." And then the fourth check was 99.
Things were looking dark but the the Emperor rescued everyone and took them... inside the astral prism.
He started making some speech about how sometimes, to do the right thing, you have to make a Sacrifice. But before he'd even finished talking Karlach had taken the hammer and smashed Orpheus out of his chains. The Emperor was PISSED and vanished.
Orpheus was also kinda pissed! Tav argued that they hadn't WANTED to murder all of Orpheus's bodyguards and use Orpheus as a tool, it had been self defence, and Orpheus said "you could have let my guards kill you, the only acceptable path for one who has been infected by mindflayers". Geeze. But he agreed that for now he had no choice but to ally with us.
He also said that based on the last fight, the Elder Brain has gained power from the Netherese Crown to become... a Nether Brain!! Which is a silly name, I felt like snickering any time someone said it.
Anyway. The only way to defeat the Absolute now is with the abilities of a Mindflayer. There is the choice for Orpheus to take that role (and presumably, kill himself afterwards out of sheer self hatred), or Tav.
I thought for a moment, and chose Tav. I don't like Orpheus, but he'll be much better for the Githyanki than their current queen. And Tav is the self sacrificing type.
AND SO TAV BECAME A MINDFLAYER
I spent so long making that beautiful face ;_; My two other thoughts were "Well, I did want a way to increase Tav's intelligence" and "I hope Shadowheart likes tentacles".
Mindflayer!Tav looks a little different to the usual sort, their tentacles are shorter and their face a little different, but still very... squishy and evil looking.
I accidentally screenshot them blinking, they usually have small but visible dark eyes.
There were some cutscenes of the Absolute ascending above the city and summoning a bunch of nautiloid warships before turning the brainwormed people below into mindflayers, causing widespread terror and destruction.
The party escapes the astral plane into a burning city. They met with the allies we've recruited over the game: Halsin, the monster hunters, the tieflings etc, all of whom can be called on in battle. The dialogue with each was pretty short, considering that it turns out you never seen most of them again.
And then there was a medium length and not especially exciting "travel through a burning city filled with huge numbers of enemies" sequence, followed by climbing a giant brainstem to the surface of the giant brain to fight through tentacles and the minions of the (now Absolute controlled) Emporer to use the stones to finally control the Absolute into killing itself.
Which Tav did! Hooray!!
There were shots of mindflayers stumbling and being killed by brave Baldur's Gate citizens, and then the Absolute falling into the bay before the party emerged, triumphant.
Then followed some pretty short reactions from everyone, I can see why people want more. I didn't even get to say goodbye to Halsin at all.
What I saw was:
Gale says he's going to find the pieces of the crown and then give them to Mystra because he's realised chasing power is a bad idea.
Wyll says he can feel Mizora's powers fading, and he's happy.
Astarion says he's happy before realising that without the brainworm he's burning in sunlight and so he just...runs away? >:(
Orpheus says he's going to go free the Githyanki, and invites Lae'zel to join him. Tav encouraged her to go since she seemed pretty gung ho.
Shadowheart says we should all go for a drink, I think maybe Halsin agreed.
And then Karlach started burning up and so Tav stayed by her side and she DIED and TURNED TO ASH D: It was actually a pretty well done scene but still sad.
The narrator said Tav could feel themself being influenced by being a mindflayer. They had the option to lean into being evil, kill themself, or decide to stay alive as long as they still feel like themself. They took the last option and the narrator was cautiously hopeful.
There was a scene set later with Shadowheart, where the two of them had apparently just had tentacle sex which she found a bit strange but not bad. She worried that people would hurt Tav now that they are a mindflayer, Tav was all "Lets run away together" but she said she needed some time to figure herself out and they needed to part?? She said she wanted to believe they could find some way to be together in the future, which is something I guess??
THE END.
So yeah. That was ok, but not the best ending ever.
I looked it up, and if Orpheus becomes a mindflayer and then dies then Lae'zel takes over the Githyanki, which might actually be a step up for everyone (except Orpheus, lol, sorry Orpheus). Also if you finish Wyll's personal quest he can make a place for Karlach in hell or something. AND if you have the conversation with Orpheus as Karlach then there is the option for HER to become a mindflayer, which saves her life AND doesn't kill Orpheus. I mean then she has to deal with all the issues with being a mindflayer, but at least she isn't dead!
So! I will have options when I replay the ending! But I might as well wait to do that since the devs have said they're going to beef up the endings. And in the meantime I am headcanoning that Shadowheart and tentacle!Tav and Halsin and all their pets still do get that little house in the country. Though idk what Tav is going to do the first time they have to eat someone's brain to survive :( Maybe the scientist guy will find a vegetarian alternative. And Tav is DEFINITELY not going to turn evil because I SAY SO.
EDIT: Forgot to say: Shadowheart says she's still regaining her memories in general, but Shar made sure to return all her bad memories, the ones of torturing and being tortured :( Also every now and then her hand still pains her and she mutters "Are the gods really so petty".
I overall liked it well enough, but can see why people have problems with the ending. It is pretty abrupt, and I am looking forward to seeing the fully expanded epilogues once that's done. The ending I got was bittersweet but I didn't finish all the sidequests and just followed my gut instead of Optimising My Outcomes.
Ok I just looked it up and there is a much less bittersweet ending possible, phew!
So! My plan now is to play my new character more slowly, and then when I get the impression the developers are done tweaking the endings, replay the end of the game with Tav making Better Choices and then see the Full Happy Ending. But the story as I experienced it was still pretty good, and this is overall a great game.
I encountered two significant bugs where the plot didn't move forward correctly after a major boss battle. In one case I had to "escape" back to camp then return to the battle area for the game to realise the fight was over. In the second case I had to replay the battle and this time not unlock a plot-relevant lock mid-battle, since that seemed to be what confused the game, and then again return to camp then back to the battleground. Other than that I had a few dialogues fire incorrectly but they didn't undermine my experience too badly. Anyway: Let this be your reminder to save often!
Masterpost
Content note: Child harm, abuse, suicide
THE END IS SO CLOSE I CAN FEEL IT.
(I have felt that way for seven hours of gameplay, and distracting myself from playing any more by writing this up. EDIT: And then it took me another like 5 hours haha)
SO. As I edited my previous post to say, I totally flinched on losing Astarion. I started walking past the cage of sad children trying to convince each other their parents were coming soon and went NOPE.
Astarion's response when you persuade him he doesn't need to be a Super Vampire to be happy was really sweet. He's really free now.
And then Tav let SEVEN THOUSAND imprisoned vampires into the world. Astarion told the other head thralls to lead the others into the Underdark and presumably teach them to eat Underdark oxen and spider blood. I'd forgotten that the children's parents were monster hunters, they were not SUPER happy about their children being vampires now but thanked Tav anyway.
We looted some nice clothes from Cazador's mansion, I felt uncomfortable putting Astarion in any of it but found a nice green and red outfit for Shadowheart, who had said she wanted to wear more colour after so much time in black and purple.
God what else did I do it has been a Lot...
Ha, that's right. I really wanted to do Shadowheart's personal quest but the instructions on how to find the Baldur's Gate Temple of Shar were really vague. So I decided to just do all the 'Investigate Mysterious Events' sidequests I'd activated, in case one of them turned out to be it.
The first was a mystery about missing letters. A pigeon said a Horrible Terrifying Beast lurked on the roof of the church where the priest was murdered. So I was all prepared for some sort of eldritch being... and it was Gale's beloved flying cat, who'd been eating the carrier pigeons. I sent Gale up to talk to her and the game didn't even give me the option for him to tell her to stop.
The second was just footprints... which turned out to lead to the hideout of Underdark gnomes who Tav rescued from the Absolute, and who had rescued Tav in return.
The good news was that they had a plan to destroy the factory where Gortash made and controlled his creepy steampunk robot soldiers. The bad news was that their plan involved killing all the enslaved gnome workers, who the underdark gnomes hated for worshipping the wrong god.
So obviously I now had to go rescue all the enslaved gnome workers!
In the factory, a cutscene reveals that the gnomes are all wearing slave collars connected to a kill switch held by all the overseers.
And then very quickly I discovered that if you kill an overseer the associated kill switch will "wait one turn" before detonating, which is like...a couple of seconds if you're not in battle/turn-based mode.
Guess who killed the overseer right at the end of the fight and a few seconds later was left in a smouldering crater of dead gnomes!
So I did the fight again and killed the overseer first and disabled the kill switch while still in battle, phew!
The gnomes explain that their family members are all in a secret prison and will be killed if the gnomes rebel. They agreed to rebel if Tav could rescue their families first.
Getting through the factory without setting off a kill switch was pretty stressful even with cheats. But eventually I learned how to get to Gortash's secret underwater prison, home to many sad gnomes... and Wyll's dad. Woot! Also the friendly mindflayer from the Underdark.
I was still team "rescue the slaves" but finding the prison sounded very involved and I really wanted to do Shadowheart's quest. So I looked up a walkthrough and turns out you have to talk to this one random guy who's just standing around not saying anything off to the side of the map :/
BUT I DID THAT and Shadowheart was summoned to the "House of Grief", a pretty, mildly goth temple in the main city which carefully avoids mentioning the name Shar and kinda felt like a scientology recruitment centre, full of people offering vague yet weirdly off-putting platitudes about Helping With Your Pain. Every time they spoke to Shadowheart the facade slipped and they gave her shit for 'abandoning Shar'.
And of course downstairs it was all very gothic architecture and violent cultists. I feel like Astarion and Shadowheart could bond about being kidnapped into death cults by abusive quasi-parental goth mass murderers who they found catharsis by murdering. Killing Shadowheart's mother superior was much less fraught and lacking in difficult choices, though. Before she died the Mother Superior said Shar had murdered a whole other temple of Shar worshippers to set up Shadowheart's indoctrination, because Shadowheart had been born to have some sort of important role for Selune, and Shar wanted to prove her power by turning Shadowheart into the next Shar Mother Superior.
Downstairs were Shadowheart's actual parents, who had been chained here since Shadowheart was a child, their life force being used as the power binding Shadowheart to Shar. Shadowheart had been brainwashed into repeatedly torturing them, not knowing who they were D: But they didn't blame her, they were just glad to see her as herself. Apparently her original name is Jen which is kinda boring but I didn't say that to her.
And then Shar herself showed up, a massive dark blue woman who laughed that she had stolen Shadowheart from her sister Selune, and Shadowheart could never escape: the only way to totally break Shar's hold on her was to kill her parents.
Which they were totally down for, all "We are old! Now we've seen you we can be at peace! You were born to be the light of Selune!". Tav felt weird getting involved (this was NOT their ideal 'meet the girlfriend's parents' scenario) so said Shadowheart would know the right thing to do, and she double checked it was really what they wanted then let them go. They'll always be sorta with her as spirits or something? I am fuzzy on how that works.
Afterwards, Tav found Shadowheart at a statue of Selune, saying she felt directionless and alone. There was the option to say she should be a Selunite now but Tav said she didn't have to and Shadowheart agreed. She said she is going to stick with the name "Shadowheart" because it's as much part of the person she is now as "Jen", and you can't have shadow without light.
And now it was time to UNKILL someone's parent.
The quest to rescue everyone from the undersea prison was EVEN MORE stressful than the one to get through the factory: Gortash sets off a bomb and you have 6 rounds to walk to each cell, open the door, untie anyone if necessary, and get back to the submarine, killing any fish guys in the way. Hoorayyyy for cheats.
When Wyll's dad got out, Wyll's patron Mizora showed up saying "I made an agreement with Wyll that you would die, I can hardly go back on it ^_^" and summoned a bunch of spiders before vanishing. But we rescued him anyway and he and Wyll had a sweet reunion, finally able to speak freely. And afterwards Mizora was STILL IN CAMP HANGING OUT NEXT TO WYLL, that woman has NO SHAME.
Gortash was now very pissed at Tav, so it seemed like a good time to go kill him! Unfortunately everyone in his palace had become an enemy, including the guards, all the nobles, and all the noble's bodyguards. Also there's grenade launchers and land mines. The nobles were just cowering in terror so I tried to avoid killing them but ACCIDENTS HAPPEN OK. Anyway, after getting lost a few times and maybe killing more people than was entirely necessary we made it to the top. Gortash is definitely a Boss, I might look up strategies next time to be more clever at dealing with his various complexities, but this time I just gave Karlach an unlimited ability to hit him with a big sword until he was finally dead.
Annoyingly, the game didn't consider the fight over, even though there were no enemies left onscreen, maybe because there were some left on the floor below? I found a distant battlement from which I was able to "run from battle", and then came back so Karlach could have her "Oh god he's really dead" scene. And then she got overcome for a while by all the sadness she'd been repressing under a drive for revenge, about how she'd been betrayed, and how her only choices are return to hell or die young, and how everyone in the party will probably die thanks to the Absolute regardless. After a little while she felt better, and said she's just going to live while she can, all she wants is for Tav to be with her to the end. Anything is better than going back to the hells.
Guess where our next quest took us!!
(OH WOW SO AT THIS POINT I STOPPED WRITING AND JUST SAT DOWN AND FINISHED THE GAME IT TOOK ME LIKE 5 HOURS AND I HAVE FEELINGS BUT LET'S WAIT TIL WE GET THERE)
Ok, so! As a reminder, at one point I explored the Emporer's old underground lair and ended up bumping into Orin, who had kidnapped Lae'zel and said she would die unless Tav killed Gortash. I hadn't wanted to commit to killing Gortash yet so replayed to avoid that conversation, and never went that deep underground again, despite encountering hatches leading underground at various locations.
But now that Tav had killed Gortash without talking to Orin, she decided to bring the conversation to Tav. The next time Tav had a long rest, they woke to Lae'zel holding a knife to the neck of the little orphan girl, who Lae'zel said she'd seen transform from a woman. The girl cried out that she had no idea what Lae'zel was talking about, and even though I'd suspected her of being a shapeshifter from the start, I told Lae'zel not to kill her until Tav could double check.
But Tav failed the persuade check, so Lae'zel killed her anyway... and turned out to be Orin in disguise! Because she'd kidnapped Lae'zel when Tav was asleep!
I felt pretty bad about the girl dying so replayed the scene a few times until I could save her. But to save Lae'zel Orin demanded we do a whole convoluted thing with a Murder Tribunal and Holy Fight To The Death In The Temple of Baal.
At around the same time, I finally learned how to break into the devil Raphael's lair to get the hammer to save Prince Orpheus from his imprisonment.
I was clearly approaching the end of the game at this point, and both of these quests seemed big enough that I might only be able to do one of them (though hopefully not). I thought about it and decided Lae'zel would much rather we save her people's rightful king. Having her die was a sad thought, but I knew I'd likely be replaying a lot of this anyway.
So down into Hell we went.
Raphael's "House of Hope" was creepy, an opulent manor with a table overflowing with rotten food, and full of sad muttering souls who he had tempted into making a bargain. As we arrived we were approach by the mental projection of a halfling woman who called herself Hope and was clearly very mentally unstable from years of torture but who said she would do her best to help us.
The pass-phrase to the hammer turned out to be in Raphael's safe, written in his diary, which seems like bad Opsec. It was guarded by a Sexy Raphael Clone in skimpy BDSM gear, who said he'd let us pass if we played a game which involved Tav taking off their clothes. Tav said no.
Once we stole the hammer the party had to run away from a Giant Flaming Hell Rock while fighting off angry doomed souls, and then rescue Hope. I'd been thinking she was some trick by Raphael or a metaphor or something but no, she is a perfectly nice Actual Halfling who Raphael imprisoned for reasons I don't entirely follow, possibly related to her sister being Raphael's second in command. We killed off Raphael and the sister and Hope took over the House of Hope, saying she'll make it a genuine place of hope now. Maybe she has magic powers on par with devils?
Anyway! We left, and Karlach said she hated how much better physically she felt in the hells, because it tempted her to go back there, but she was absolutely determined not to, and after making a little effort to persuade her Tav respected her choice.
And hooray, saving Lae'zel was still available, though I got the sense I only had until my next long rest.
At some point the Emporer hit on Tav, but took the rejection well. He again suggested Tav turn into a mindflayer but didn't actually offer the choice to change their mind. Which they wouldn't have done, I just found it odd, maybe I'm missing something.
So I did the whole Murder Tribunal thing (I murdered them, which I think means I passed) but still wasn't sure how to get to the Temple of Baal. I later realised I'd managed to miss looting the map, but at first decided to try out the place below the Emporer's Lair that I'd bumped into Orin last time.
In the Emporer's digs I encountered a book about mindflayers, saying they can never be trusted and however nice they seem they are inherently manipulative and deadly.
And beyond that was... a WHOLE ENTIRE UNDERCITY MAP. It's huge, with connection to places all over the surface city. I even encountered a secret entrance to Cazador's vampire lair, and the path to the Absolute, which was overflowing with creepy little rats which, when spoken to, formed sentences one word at a time saying Tav should submit to the Absolute. So we turned back from that!!
It took a LOT of exploring to find the entrance to the temple of Baal, during which I encountered a number of little personal dramas going on amongst the sewer dwellers. And then it turned out I couldn't enter without an amulet I'd left back at the murder tribunal, and in the process of finding that I also encountered the map I'd presumably been meant to have been following. OH WELL.
The temple of Baal was kind of boring, lots of long winding rock paths without much to look at except piles of skulls and creepy statues muttering about the Baalspawn. Baalspawn are descendants of Baal who were the driver of the plot of the previous two Baldur's Gate games. Apparently Orin is the granddaughter of a Baalspawn who was the villain of one of the previous games. Not all Baalspawn are evil, since the hero of both previous games is one too, and apparently even the villainous one can be redeemed. But you wouldn't really know that from this game.
At the end was Lae'zel chained to a big altar, with Orin poised to strike since Tav stole her chance to kill her grandad. I had to take a couple of tries to pass a persuasion check to save Lae'zel, and then there was a pretty difficult battle. Even with cheats, I haven't figured out how to reliably deal with enemies who cast 'invisible' at the end of their turn, making them hard to find and hit. So I freed Lae'zel mid-battle, allowing her to help.
And as I said at the start of this post, that broke the game! It classified Lae'zel as a summoned fighter during the fight and then wouldn't let her got back to being a regular companion afterwards. So I redid the persuasion roll until it worked AGAIN, then did the fight AGAIN without freeing Lae'zel, then returned to camp and then back to the temple and THEN finally had Lae'zel back at camp, phew!!! The way she begrudgingly said thank you was very endearing.
There was the option to go directly to fight the Absolute but I decided to take a final look at my remaining sidequests.
The two most significant ones were for Wyll and Gale. Wyll's was to recruit a dragon, which sounded risky since afaict they're evil in this setting. Gales was to find a book about the crown controlling the Absolute which sounded boring, but less difficult and risky.
The moment Tav gave him the book he got all I COULD USE THIS TO GAIN THE POWER OF A GOD which Tav was not a huge fan of. There was no option to go "I am not against mortals gaining godlike powers as a group, but if you personally gain them that's just making a new god, and I feel like we have enough". I couldn't figure out what next step to take and wasn't sure I even wanted to. Still, it was interesting to learn that the crown was created not as a way to control the wearer, but as a way for the wearer to become much more powerful.
I also said hello to the mindflayer scientist from the Underdark, who is happily settled in an Underdark researcher collective. Bah to you, book, mindflayers can be nice!
I was hoping Lae'zel would have some idea how to free Orpheus now we had the hammer, but she said we just needed to wait until we ended up inside the astral prism again somehow.
So I decided to just go fight the Absolute and see what happened!!
The path to the Absolute was skittering with brain friends, and littered with the headless bodies of the Absolute's jailors that they had popped from D: The Absolute had almost entirely broken free of it's bonds, and was poised to take over the world.
When Tav confronted it, it said this had all been it's plan, that it used the prospect of power to get Gorlach etc to give it access to the power of the crown and a pre-brainwormed
army with which to strike. It even freed the Emporer on purpose, to create the situation where Tav killed all three holders of the stones of the crown, and brought the stones to this place.
There were a sequence of ability checks to oppose the Absolute's will, where I got to choose which ability was checked. The way ability checks work is you roll a 20 sided die, and then add any bonuses. Tav's max bonuses are usually like... 10.
The first check was a 15, and I passed easily. The second was a 25 and I didn't quite pass. The third was a 30 and I was like "Uh. Is there some way I could vastly increase Tav's intelligence or something? I guess Astarion SOMETIMES pass 30+ checks if they hit his strengths." And then the fourth check was 99.
Things were looking dark but the the Emperor rescued everyone and took them... inside the astral prism.
He started making some speech about how sometimes, to do the right thing, you have to make a Sacrifice. But before he'd even finished talking Karlach had taken the hammer and smashed Orpheus out of his chains. The Emperor was PISSED and vanished.
Orpheus was also kinda pissed! Tav argued that they hadn't WANTED to murder all of Orpheus's bodyguards and use Orpheus as a tool, it had been self defence, and Orpheus said "you could have let my guards kill you, the only acceptable path for one who has been infected by mindflayers". Geeze. But he agreed that for now he had no choice but to ally with us.
He also said that based on the last fight, the Elder Brain has gained power from the Netherese Crown to become... a Nether Brain!! Which is a silly name, I felt like snickering any time someone said it.
Anyway. The only way to defeat the Absolute now is with the abilities of a Mindflayer. There is the choice for Orpheus to take that role (and presumably, kill himself afterwards out of sheer self hatred), or Tav.
I thought for a moment, and chose Tav. I don't like Orpheus, but he'll be much better for the Githyanki than their current queen. And Tav is the self sacrificing type.
AND SO TAV BECAME A MINDFLAYER
I spent so long making that beautiful face ;_; My two other thoughts were "Well, I did want a way to increase Tav's intelligence" and "I hope Shadowheart likes tentacles".
Mindflayer!Tav looks a little different to the usual sort, their tentacles are shorter and their face a little different, but still very... squishy and evil looking.
I accidentally screenshot them blinking, they usually have small but visible dark eyes.
There were some cutscenes of the Absolute ascending above the city and summoning a bunch of nautiloid warships before turning the brainwormed people below into mindflayers, causing widespread terror and destruction.
The party escapes the astral plane into a burning city. They met with the allies we've recruited over the game: Halsin, the monster hunters, the tieflings etc, all of whom can be called on in battle. The dialogue with each was pretty short, considering that it turns out you never seen most of them again.
And then there was a medium length and not especially exciting "travel through a burning city filled with huge numbers of enemies" sequence, followed by climbing a giant brainstem to the surface of the giant brain to fight through tentacles and the minions of the (now Absolute controlled) Emporer to use the stones to finally control the Absolute into killing itself.
Which Tav did! Hooray!!
There were shots of mindflayers stumbling and being killed by brave Baldur's Gate citizens, and then the Absolute falling into the bay before the party emerged, triumphant.
Then followed some pretty short reactions from everyone, I can see why people want more. I didn't even get to say goodbye to Halsin at all.
What I saw was:
Gale says he's going to find the pieces of the crown and then give them to Mystra because he's realised chasing power is a bad idea.
Wyll says he can feel Mizora's powers fading, and he's happy.
Astarion says he's happy before realising that without the brainworm he's burning in sunlight and so he just...runs away? >:(
Orpheus says he's going to go free the Githyanki, and invites Lae'zel to join him. Tav encouraged her to go since she seemed pretty gung ho.
Shadowheart says we should all go for a drink, I think maybe Halsin agreed.
And then Karlach started burning up and so Tav stayed by her side and she DIED and TURNED TO ASH D: It was actually a pretty well done scene but still sad.
The narrator said Tav could feel themself being influenced by being a mindflayer. They had the option to lean into being evil, kill themself, or decide to stay alive as long as they still feel like themself. They took the last option and the narrator was cautiously hopeful.
There was a scene set later with Shadowheart, where the two of them had apparently just had tentacle sex which she found a bit strange but not bad. She worried that people would hurt Tav now that they are a mindflayer, Tav was all "Lets run away together" but she said she needed some time to figure herself out and they needed to part?? She said she wanted to believe they could find some way to be together in the future, which is something I guess??
THE END.
So yeah. That was ok, but not the best ending ever.
I looked it up, and if Orpheus becomes a mindflayer and then dies then Lae'zel takes over the Githyanki, which might actually be a step up for everyone (except Orpheus, lol, sorry Orpheus). Also if you finish Wyll's personal quest he can make a place for Karlach in hell or something. AND if you have the conversation with Orpheus as Karlach then there is the option for HER to become a mindflayer, which saves her life AND doesn't kill Orpheus. I mean then she has to deal with all the issues with being a mindflayer, but at least she isn't dead!
So! I will have options when I replay the ending! But I might as well wait to do that since the devs have said they're going to beef up the endings. And in the meantime I am headcanoning that Shadowheart and tentacle!Tav and Halsin and all their pets still do get that little house in the country. Though idk what Tav is going to do the first time they have to eat someone's brain to survive :( Maybe the scientist guy will find a vegetarian alternative. And Tav is DEFINITELY not going to turn evil because I SAY SO.
EDIT: Forgot to say: Shadowheart says she's still regaining her memories in general, but Shar made sure to return all her bad memories, the ones of torturing and being tortured :( Also every now and then her hand still pains her and she mutters "Are the gods really so petty".
no subject
Date: 2023-09-01 05:21 pm (UTC)So I was all prepared for some sort of eldritch being... and it was Gale's beloved flying cat, who'd been eating the carrier pigeon
OMG. <3 Does she get to come hang out?
And then Karlach started burning up and so Tav stayed by her side and she DIED and TURNED TO ASH D: It was actually a pretty well done scene but still sad.
OH NO.
The Underdark magic mindflayer seems okay! I'm sure Tav will be too! And I think Tav's mindflayer form doesn't look tha tevil.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-02 01:25 pm (UTC)Thank you!
Sadly she did NOT come to hang out. I don't know if you see more of her if you pay more attention to Gale though.
And yes Tav is going to be FINE. As is Karlach if I go that route with her.