>>96539278
I didn't get that far into BG3 but Shadowheart didn't seem like that much of a sadistic goth baddie to me. More like a karen bitch, honestly fampai. So I don't really get why GW slapped her into the Dark Eldar.

>>96539278
Good

>>96539296
Yeah she's very uwu my tragic backstory once you get through her questline.

I could stand none of the character design, animations or dialogue offered in this sad CR-clientele cash grab. Every character has been done ten times before in other pieces of fiction, and zero novely was offered here. Drivel for mouth breathers, smooth brains and autism spectrum nerdcore teenagers.

tl;dr - culture is dead

>>96539543

The party members were cookie cutter templates, and not even good cookie cutter templates, fucking tumblr ones. Give me a gold hungry, drunken dwarf

>>96539565
>I need le funny Reddit dwarves!

GW just gutting the Deldar weapon options was bad enough but then they just drop one of the very few units that Covens have because thry can't maje 1 fucking model for Grotesques is fucking abominable. Fucking atrocious.

>>96539543
Amen

>>96539543
yes yes *pushes you down a well*

>>96539278
Her whole design seems like it was intended for porn. That's not a complaint but I can't take her seriously because I think the devs built her with sfm instant loss animations in mind.

>i don't like popular thing
Okay.

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>>96539565
Minthara's pretty great. The initial impression she produces is that of a generic evil drow, but once she starts talking about subjects that aren't orphans, who she wants exterminated, the poors, who she wants enslaved, or mages, who she wamts to stay away from her on a 'they're too meddlesome and explosive' basis, she turns out to be a shockingly attentive woman who squints at any given party member and immediately understands how they function and malfunction and what drives them, and what their fears are. She's also shockingly loyal and monogamous. Other romance options are down to get freaky with other people, or bitch out if you do something bad, or if you turn into an illithid, but Minthara genuinely, earnestly wants you to be as strong, as powerful, as capable as you can and wish to be, and she does not care what sort of crime against the world you commit to become that, because then the world woudl be yours to take anyways.

Oh and she is a hot evil hag voiced by that one voice actress GW hire a bunch for audiobooks and stuff. That's good too.

>>96539656
this is really just a self confession that you jerk off to that shit I'm afraid

>>96539668
You can also be too pointlessly evil for Minthara, though she doesn't get angry but just scoffs at you

>>96539296
She was apparently meaner in the playtest version, but people complained and she got toned down into a pure waifu you have a hard time believing would be part of a cult of a sadistic evil goddess who regularly torture people to death. Granted, there is some justification for that (she's basically a good person who has been mind-wiped and brainwashed, and depending on your choices she can recover her original memories and convert to a cleric of Selune, a good goddess), but she's still supposed to have killed and tortured people prior to the events of the game.

>>96539668
Too bad most players won't recruit her since you have to go out of your way to be pointlessly evil just to get an option for her to join your party later (even as an evil character, there really is little reason to side with the cultists and goblins to massacre the druids, when killing them both offers better rewards and would seem to better further your goal of getting the Illithid tadpole out of your brain).
Of the characters you're more likely to recruit, I did like Laezel's arc even if it's not particularly original. She starts hostile towards pretty much everyone, but once you earn her respect she becomes extremely loyal to you, and the arc of her going from devout follower of Vlaakith to realizing her whole worldview is based on lies and resolving to free the rightful prince of the Githyanki and bring down Vlaakith was fine.

>>96539849
Or you can just knock her out instead of killing her, and then rescue her from prison.

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>>96539668
Extremely correct opinion, have a (You).

>>96539820

All five party members were more evil in the earlier versions of the game. Definitely made more sense, considering their backstories, especially Wyll. I'm going to assume Halsin and Karlach were added later because the beta testers wanted more altruistic companions. Don't know about Minthara.

>>96539820
She's not very kawaii uwu at all unless you "purify" her

>>96539849
I should do a loyalist Lae'zel run sometime

>>96539668
She would be great if not for the man jaw and extremely masculine voice.

>>96539856
I though they changed that so you can no longer do that. I tried in one playthrough to knock out her and the goblin you can free from the druid camp (since there's an achievement for saving the goblin), and the goblin was there in act 2 but Minthara wasn't.

>>96539989
It was initially very much a bug and you had to fuck around to make it work. Since some patch it's just a regular and implemented option that works every time, provided you do not accidentally kill her, and nothing breaks.
Shame they're seemingly not going to reimplement the option to knock her up, but little victories are victories still.

>>96539877
Karlach was definitely a later addition. She replaced another companion that was apparently going to be a halfling werewolf or something, though I think that one never made it to playtesting (there's still game files present related to the scrapped companion, though). Wyll also got completely rewritten late in the playtesting. He was apparently originally more of a scoundrel character before being turned into an unambiguously good guy, which is why he has less content than other companions. Karlach being a late addition is also likely why her personal quest just has you fight one the main story's bosses instead of doing something unique to her and why it just ends without proper resolution (apparently Avernus was going to have more stuff than just the House of Hope, and you probably would've gone there to fix Karlach's infernal engine, but that got cut from the final game due to time constraints).

>>96539543
All the male characters work better as women.

>>96539668
extremly correct! Recruited her in my first run and since then there has never been a run without her (yes I killed the Tieflings on my first run because fuck them)

>>96539925
her voice is the best about her, your taste is garbage

>>96539925
If you don't want an evil, husky-voiced hag to whisper in your ear that you're worthy of ruling the world while dripping just a tiny bit of poison in your other ear with one hand (got to build up your resistances) and giving you a soul-ripping handjob with another, you are homosexual.

>>96539668
I was very disappoined by recruiting Minthara because despite being a Baenre from Menzoberranzan, their story is completely detached from drow culture and nothing about them seems to indicate that they are from the Underdark or aligned to Lolth in any way (despite what their character sheet says).

>>96540438
WotC has publically disavowed classical Drow culture and whitewashed them severely. I would guess that they wanted to incorporate more aspects of her actual culture and religion but WotC shut it down. They made the fact that WotC was torturous as fuck with its creative oversight pretty clear.

>>96539668
Imagine a male version of Minthara saying about chicks the same shit she says about dudes.

>>96540059
>tfw no all female yuri bg3

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>>96540536
If she was a guy, a dilf ideally, saying that sort of stuff, she'd have a fanbase the size of astarion's, made up of the same people

>>96540011
Shame that they weren't able to develop her more, as she's quite evil and addicted to burning souls in her engine.

>>96540095
>a-actually it's getting emasculated that is manly
it's not 2015 anymore uncle, stop posting this safe horny redditslop

>>96541126
>being so comically insecure about your masculinity that you need your woman to be 5'0, 100 pounds, demure, uwu-speaking, and ideally with daddy issues
Sad!

>>96540536
>getting mad that the Drow is misandrist

>>96539668
Was she the Drow at the back of the goblin camp? If so, my Drow called her a bitch for abandoning Lloth to follow the Absolute, which turned the whole camp hostile. I am still wearing her clothes.

>>96539278
Dark Eldar have been ruined since the advent of the name Drukhari, which happened long before BG3 even started development.

>>96539278
BG3 has been a disaster for DnD, and I thought it couldn't get any worse after the game was flooded with improv theater kids

>>96542274
It's not so much that as the character being overly popular for it among a crowd that that would absolute throw a fit over the opposite. I just think seeing their reaction would have been funny.

>>96541126
>safe horny
Wtf does this even mean? No one has been able to give me a singular definition of this.

>>96542679
Twitter-approved sexuality.

>>96542691
>more meaningless garble
Wife does that even mean? Twitter dosen't have a ban on hot young chicks, quite the opposite.

>>96542679
It's fetish stuff, but toned down and sanitized so it's considered acceptable by the target audience of terminally online leftoids

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>>96542838
>implying twitter trannies aren't into the weirdest shit

>>96540908
A lot of planned things were cut because Wizards was riding Larian's ass for an earlier release because they thought they'd lose money from Star Field.

>>96539543
All of the starting npcs are shit, because the game wants to pretend that you can play as any of them as the 'main character' except that doesn't actually *fucking work* because some of them are unambiguously more plot important than others (Shadowheart is the main character of the story, and its dumb to pretend otherwise. Without her plot-coupon artifact you all don't even survive the prologue). But because the game wants them to be treated as interchangeable for player POV, they all have to have copy-pasted character arcs and backstories that hit the same notes but play madlibs with the details.

Which could be fine, except for one problem: with very few exceptions, all of these characters are fucking MISERABLE to be around for all of act 1 and much of act 2. Everyone is a shadey, mistrustful sourpuss for way too long, such that I wouldn't want to share a camp with any of this assholes. Except Karlach, who is at least happy to be here.
Which isn't to say that these characters don't warm up later on. (SOME of them, anyway. Astarion turns out to be a cool dude as long as you are in it to have a good time, but Gale never stops being a That Guy character). But first impressions matter, and the first impressions for all of these fuckers just suck.

This anon >>96539668 is right, though. Minthara is the best party member, she's actually the right blend of interesting contrast with the rest of the group. But she's only allowed to be that because the game doesn't treat her as an interchangable starting point!
The depth and diversity of options in BG3 is impressive, but its party compares POORLY to almost any other game.

>>96539278
why the fuck do people like this bitch

>>96543241
She's the sexable female in the game that most looks like a generically pretty woman without some weird fantasy caveat that normies would find offputting.

>>96543033
Yeah, but it's one of those "it's okay when I do it" things.
BG3 is the perfect example; every character is a freak with some freak fetish that everyone who isn't a freak finds repulsive, and the freaks will defend it to death, while drawing the line at white, conventionally attractive, female video game characters showing a little too much skin (e.g. Cammy from Street Fighter)

>>96539676
I wasn't trying to hide it.

>>96539278
???

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>>96543430

>>96539543
>tl;dr - culture is dead
No, the culture is alive, it doesn't matter if a stupid game has bad characters. You're overly dramatic.

>>96543435
I never saw this connection until you pointed it out to me.

>>96543292
The funniest thing about the BG3 shit-flinging is that none of the weird shit people lay on the characters are actually in the text of the game unless you the player go out of your way to interact with it. If you play the game as a heterosexual male into chaste romance and sex, that is what you get out of the game. (((YOU))) the player has to be a fag to interact with any fag shit.

>>96543564
>(((YOU))) the player has to be a fag to interact with any fag shit.
ngl kind of based.

>>96543564
shart flirts with halsin and karlach no matter what you do if you're romancing her though

>>96544127
Except she doesn't unless you've already flirted with them too. Why are you being a whore?

>>96543234
I consider Halsin much worse than the Origin companions, he's literally only present because early access players with daddy issues were obsessed with the literal bear man.

Some other companion was cut from the game to make room for him to be a full party member and I've been mad about that ever since finding out. I heard it might have been a halfling chick who was a werewolf!

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>>96544205
me when i lie
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Shadowheart/Banter#Shadowheart_and_Halsin

>>96543255
The female companions are all fuckable... then again, I haven't been a normie for some time.

>>96539820
>She was apparently meaner in the playtest version, but people complained and she got toned down
many such cases. I think almost every character was slopified after early access right? Literally actively trying to lowest common denominator their game. Those Belgics deserve everything coming for them d esudesu

>>96541126
thinking this is safe horny and not the implied opposite cute pure submissive wife-slave #27104210948 is really funny, good job

>>96539543
We get it you're an old man, how about you start engaging in literature if iterations of the same thing over and over again bothers you? Oh wait...

>>96540095
Evil Bastila

What does shart have to do with DEldar?

>>96545432
She's also a tortured meowmeow forced to do sadisms. And she's a goth elf.

>>96539820
Larian's awful and insecure early access model is why I appreciate Owlslop despite it having its own issues. Larian commits the biggest mistake of giving fans what they ask for and ending up with a safe and bland character in return, while Owlcat has no issue with a party of people who fucking hate each other and half of which are genuinely sadistic and evil.

>>96545432
the new Lady Malys model looks just like sShart

You can't really patch over Larian's love for more edgy PCs than the original Baldur's Gate games, and that try as they might Larian cannot write peak Bioware (i.e. way before the EA acquisition) party banter. So although BG3 is pretty fun to play through it can't really fulfil the nostalgia for the original, and by the original I mean Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn.

>>96549515
Eh, party banter's great for at least some people. I am the mintharalover from above, her story about the priestess she loved is fantastic. Comedic thanks to Karlach, sad, poignant, shows what sort of a person she is; a novel in like a minute worth of easily missable dialogue.

There's some stinkers, sure, but overall the qualiy is up there.

>>96549621
I don't think Larian's party banter stuff is necessarily bad, although DOS2 was definitely better, but it's definitely nowhere near as good as BG2's. Or even like, Dragon Age, or any of the KOTORs, or Jade Empire. It's like 6-7/10, and peak Bioware was slamming 9s and 10s constantly.

>>96539543
Shadowwife is cute and that overrides any flaw in her writing.
Astarion was alright, too. He overdid the "I'm the evil aligned companion" a bit too much but he actually has moral values deep down which is nice.
After a little bit of face surgery Lae'zel becomes a cute tsundere.

>>96542679
It's "safe" in the sense that, in the woke sphere, males are authorized to be horny this way without getting shat on.
>What causes you to be shat on and what is acceptable?
Sex is toxic when it caters to traditional gender roles, a dominant male and a submissive female.
So safe sexuality is when these roles are reversed. Women are dominant and men are harmless manchilds groveling at their feet.

This is anything related to femdom in general. You can observe zoomers in the wild who despise conventionally attractive women and will claim out loud that they love muscle mommies or feet to signal how harmless they are.

>>96539278
consider stopping playing this satanic game

>>96539679
So do whatever heinous shit you want, as long as there is purpose behind it; 'the ends justify the means'?
Though as long as the ends are beneficial to you, there is no need to justify anything.

Burn down an orphanage to kill a bunch of children?
>Was that really necessary? Now we have to deal with the guards for no particular gain.

Burn down an orphanage because you need the now freed up land to build an annex to your slave-child-orphan operated factory?
>What are we waiting for? Let's burn down some children as motivation for the ones left to work even harder. The guards will also be a necessary sacrifice for increasing our profits.

>>96539820
basically everyone was cooler in EA. wyll was a spoiled wannabe instead of the most bland hero in existence, there was a werewolf companion instead of halsin... point being, "listening to the fans" is retarded and the game would have been better off if larian had stuck to their original vision instead of hastily changing it in accordance with the whims of idiots

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>>96539278
what does it mean to be a dark eldar if you're not even a dark elf?

>>96554512
Yeah that's kind of how she rolls, but sadly she has far too little dialogue
What they came up with is hilarious

>>96539296
She's not. She's essentially a very sweet and nice girl that got mindfucked into being an evil bitch. The results are disastrous, because she's literally incapable of behaving like an evil cultist.

>>96554614
Wyll was basically put at the end of his EA-era arc in release, without anything else to have. Very lame. Which's a shame, I'd have personally appreciated a straightforward, truly heroic individual who's trying to be an anchor to a gaggle of dipshits and traumatized meowmeows, Tav/Durge included.

Not like that'd work with that the party does not really mingle or interact with each other, but still.
>there was a werewolf companion instead of halsin...
There was not. She iirc was planned but never made it to any sort of release.

>>96554512
She even offers a thoughtful mental calculation of cannibalism as a way to solve Baldur's Gate's refugee problem, when you propose the idea. Love that woman.
>>96553363
I think you are failing to understand the value in women of Minthara's sort; competence, self-reliance, a rock YOU as a man can lean on as a partner, instead of being a parental figure to an infantile blob of daddy issues. She's not a dommy mommy so much as she's a mature and adult woman surrounded by not so mature women. Laezel is barely an adult and is constantly doing the frog equivalent of freaking the fuck out, for instance. To her you start off as a body to fuck, not much more. Emotions are put on lock and hidden away because she's in no state at all to process them. Next to her Minthara's an avatar of maturity and self-control, treating love as a serious affair only somebody strong enough can truly do. It's a charming contrast.
Plus the very idea that you must be strictly submissive to her as o support your mental map of acceptable hornyness is stupid and built on inability to conceptualize giving somebody as in-control as Minthara, and from a society as built around female dominance as the drow, a chance to let go and enjoy something very freaky, to her: submission. Or even just a more balanced relationship, that's also freaky.

>>96539543
That's a lot of words to say nothing.