WARNING- BG3 ENDING SPOILERS AHEAD
..i’m crashing tf out over karlach’s endings - or lack thereof. this is gonna be a long rant.
i’m semi new to baldur’s gate 3, but i’m the type of person to open EVERY freaking barrel and burlap sack, so i’ve sunk 35 hours into my main file and i’m only just doing the goblin camp. about to save halsin, i did every other questline in act 1 first.
or, i was PLANNING on saving halsin next, anyway. but i was doing some shameless googling, and i stumbled across spoilers for karlach’s unsatisfactory endings. i was shocked and devastated. i’ve had my heart set on karlach, the cinnamon roll sunshine character hiding in the body of a battle-scarred barbarian, since before i even bought the game. and as soon as i found her on the beach, fresh out of hell and yet still smiling, i was smitten. she was the first character to openly share her story instead of keeping secrets. she joined me willingly and talked freely, and asked me to dance when she was idle. the idea that someone can endure so much trauma, and be thrust into such violence, and still manage to find joy in life’s littlest pleasures… it’s honestly inspiring.
i dropped everything to pursue her questline. went and found infernal iron IMMEDIATELY and took it to dammon, and even acquired a second piece before i realized he couldn’t upgrade her again until act 2.
oh well, i had thought. i can be patient. i know she has romance scenes, so she’ll be cool enough to touch eventually… and dammon told me that he’ll find a fix by the time we reach baldur’s gate, “if he’s worth his salt.”
i didn’t fret. there was no doubt in my mind that she’d get fixed eventually.
oh, how wrong i had been.
finding out that she cannot, in fact, be cured, i was stricken. that went against what dammon had told me. also, i happened to be aware already that gale, who brought his condition on HIMSELF and is a greedy bastard in comparison to the innocent karlach, is 100% saveable from the orb in his chest. so. why shouldn’t karlach be? it made no sense.
i googled more. watched the cutscenes, which is a level of spoilers that i normally try to avoid. cried and raged over the injustice of it. because… how could that be it for her? how could it possibly make sense that, in a world of powerful magic and nearly infinite player choice, there was simply no fix for one of the main characters? not to mention, one of the most popular and beloved by players. (second only to astarion, i think. personally i spared him out of mercy but yeeted him from my camp when he tried to bite me. snide little fucker. but his gang of simps number many, and they’re craaaaazy for him.)
the answer is that it doesn’t make sense. at all. not only is it unjust to both karlach and the game’s players, but it literally just doesn’t make sense. there is, obviously, evidence that larian was planning on adding a fix for her and a better end to the questline, and then they cut the upper city… but the enhanced infernal iron is STILL IN THE GAME, now with zero purpose. seriously???? and the steel watchers function perfectly in the material plane, yet there is no OPTION to even ASK the gondians to help karlach, leaving the player feeling as though no one even cares enough about karlach to really try to save her.
besides the obvious solution that is RIGHT THERE, there are so many other possible solutions that it’s ridiculous to propose karlach simply cAnNoT bE sAvEd. for example, revivify scrolls can be used to revive karlach from the “dead” status, like any other playable character. so… why don’t they work at the end? and if the issue is her body exploding, gale has a scroll of true resurrection just chilling in his inventory (!!!), and those things can provide a new body if necessary.
or you could ask raphael to strike a deal. or any cleric, warlock, or paladin could call upon their patron deity for help. or karlach could be cloned, reincarnated, etc. or, you know, heart surgery could reasonably be a thing?? given that they were able to put IN the infernal engine in the first place…
there are just so. many. options. and you’re just not allowed to explore any of them. for a game that’s supposed to be all about free reign for the player, that’s extremely disappointing.
why won’t the game let me care about karlach as much as i do?
maybe i’m being dramatic over a fictional character, but maybe i don’t care. she deserves so much better. i refuse to accept her endings as true; that’s what larian slapped in there, but it isn’t what would’ve happened to her.
and to everyone who claims that she has decent endings: no. there is no true happy ending there in my opinion. yes, the scene where she breaks down is beautifully done, but there is no reason she should have to die when there are so many things we could still try. turning her into a mind flayer might preserve her life, but is she really living? she loses herself. she is no longer karlach.
and the avernus ending? don’t even get me STARTED. that is a bandage slapped on a bullet hole, not a true resolution. the player has to talk karlach into going back to hell, which is both literal hell and karlach’s own personal hell. the whole game she swore never to return, and even if she has the player or wyll with her and isn’t lonely anymore, it still forces her to go back on what she’s been saying the entire game. and it’s not even going back in a “growth and looking your trauma in the face” kind of way. it doesn’t guarantee a fix or a happy ending or give karlach closure. it just sends her back to hell, to run around in search of a cure she might never find. players complained about karlach’s lack of a happy ending, because EVERY OTHER CHARACTER has some kind of resolution to their problems while she gets screwed over… and THAT was their lazy ass response?
it’s a beautifully done game in so many ways. but god, they fucked up by fucking over karlach.
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