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bg3 frustrates me so much. it's so clearly best in class in so many areas (e.g. companion writing [for the most part], exploration and quest density, reactivity and quest design, build diversity if not for the pathfinder games), but its main plot is a goddamn mess from start to finish. i don't think it's a coincidence that act 2 is so highly regarded when its by far the most focused and thematically coherent section of the game.
plus i'm not a fan of the change in tone and aesthetic in the forgotten realms in general when i compare it to the earlier crpgs. but that's mostly on wizards of the coast as opposed to just larian... and even wizards is responding to a shift in how popular media approaches fantasy storytelling.
there's a lot less demand for the old sword and sorcery archetypes that formed the basis for why i even like the forgotten realms in the first place. i'd say the fr's purview has widened a bit too much, but maybe i'm just old. it's not better or worse, just no longer really to my taste.
I’m asexual but am I the only one who feels like a complete slut for fictional men? I’m playing BG3 and there are times where I get extremely romantic thoughts about Wyll, Halsin or Gale…Then I also think about characters like Dammon, Zevlor, and Rolan…or even Astarion and He Who Was…then there’s moments like today when I think extremely filthy thoughts about Gortash…or Raphael/Harleep…or Kar'niss. My tastes for fictional men are definitely all over the place.
it amuses me to think in the purely self-indulgent isekai fic lurking in my hindbrain that if you told all the companions their potential endings when you met them, every single one of them would pick the "bad" option.
think about it:
Shadowheart? The second you mention she can become a dark justiciar and the mother superior her sharran fangirl heart would explode. contrasting that with having parents (!?!), a farm, or being a free adventurer is nice and all, but in Act 1? She's 100% able to toss aside those fantasy as unrealistic or even a lie. It's not something she's allowed to have so it doesn't bear thinking about. DJ Shart ✅
Astarion: not even a question. becoming this super duper powerful vampire and all his siblings and victims are dead? perfection. 10/10 no notes. Sticking around in the underdark to lead them is.... a level of responsibility he doesn't have the slightest urge to submit to, though the implicit "running a vampire kingdom" in the underdark does sound appealing on some vague level, but the second any guilt or shame triggers we're 10000% times down the ascension path. He's smashing that red button instantly. Ascended Astarion ✅
hello Gale you can either become a.) a dowdy has-been professor, b.) go back to banging mystra in elysium, c.) kill yourself either intentionally or by challenging mystra, or d.) BECOME A GOD. ....yeah act 1 gale is picking the god one after a few minutes of quibbling about the technicalities. he's talking himself into it and you realize 10 seconds in that he was always going to do it, he just needed to rationalize it to himself first. God Gale ✅
Wyll? Arguably the worst ending is him still tied to Mizora's whims, but in light of saving his father I think he'd pick it. But really the Mizora decision or his father's fate is flavortext, what really matters is becoming Duke or going to Avernus. Wyll is much happier killing devils than politicking, and I'd argue what's best for Wyll is not setting himself on fire for others and gaining his own freedom. But becoming Grand Duke is such an easy path to ostensibly do good that I think Act 1 Wyll would take it even if he knows he wouldn't enjoy the role and would perhaps even be ill-suited for it. (Especially if he's still bound to Mizora!) Duke Ravenguard ✅
you say 'Ascension' around Lae'zel and she's slammed that big red button before you've even explained her alternate 'heretical' paths. not even a question. Ascended dead Lae'zel ✅
Karlach can a.) become a mindflayer b.) die surrounded by friends or c.) go back to Avernus, possibly with a friend but maybe alone, and just get an ounce of hope that mayyyyybe they'll work something out in future. yeah she's picking a or b, probably b. Act 1 Karlach is pretty desperate and very clearly cruising off of euphoria, she'll take her moment of happiness over some thin hope that condemns her back to living in the hells. Dead Karlach ✅
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As I took screenshots of my blorbos loving each other, I thought of something.
Male bodies are so well rendered in this game, while female bodies look... plastic, except for some female companions (which is great - at least this is great). Mind you, I play the Dark Urge, there's no way for her to look like that, even the beloved daughter of Bhaal must have had her bad days and gotten her ass served to her. I really, really could use a body scar or two, preferably on the parts I can leave uncovered on ladies.
Oh well. One can dream.
And no, it's not about "realism" - only about staying true to the world of the game. I play video games to escape reality, not to be reminded of it.
After my 1,417th Tav I decided that everyone of my Tav's are on the spectrum. The purpose of role of the dice in every conversation is just how well they are masking or how well the person is going to be with the mask coming off depending on the context. Advantage and disadvantage are based on how many spoons they currently have and bonuses are if the conversation includes a special interest to that Tav. This is probably why BG3 has become my favorite game, Fantasy Austism Simulator!
Now, I've always been fond of Gale, in spite of how the early game felt like it was trying to get me to be mean or not trust him. He's a nerdy know-it-all (my junior high school self manifested as a very handsome man instead of a pudgy, mediocre-looking girl), so of course I liked him. Because I recovered from my years of self-hatred and accept myself now. Mostly.
That being said, I didn't trust him right away, but I didn't trust anyone right away (except Lae'zel and Karlach) on my first playthrough. Wyll got me to trust him pretty quick by backing down and showing a core of goodness that his warlock pact couldn't erase, and my only hang-up with Halsin was one I blame on a very important missed opportunity regarding goblin kids. No one says shit about it and it infuriates me, but that is Larian's fault, not Halsin's. Shadowheart took longer, and still got dumped back at camp every time she said, "Lady of Sorrows guide us, did you want something?" Regardless of what I might have wanted to talk about at the time...
[If your rude isn't funny, stop fucking saying it.]
Even though I am a serial Astarionmancer, I honestly never trusted Astarion not to fuck me over in some way (and he absolutely did with how deeply traumatized he is--because I can't not care about hurt people, fictional or otherwise.) He always made me laugh, though, and that was enough to see his romance through. Once I did, I was hooked, and did it over and over and over again.
Gale comes off as pretty arrogant when we're first getting to know him. I don't find arrogant men particularly attractive (arrogant women are super hot--I don't make the rules; my hormones do), but I find arrogant men amusing, and as we have established, making me laugh can actually be better than being the one everyone thirsts over. I could care less about looks in truth. Personality and voice make a character physically attractive to me. The words they choose and how they say them is like... gently caressing the tumblers that unlock my heart.
Then they become exponentially more attractive to me.
My favorite romances before BG3 were a dorky virgin who talked about lampposts and said taint sooo many times, a raptor with half a face, an alien nerd whose face we never really got to see (I refuse to accept caucasian-ish Tali), a quirky elven blood mage, a self-important bald apostate who turned out to be a damn god, and a big bearded liar-liar with his pants on fire.
The core of all these romances was, with the exception of Solas, that even if they hid something from my character, they eventually came clean and still loved them and wanted a life with them more than any other motivation.
When I first encountered Gortash, I thought, "A villain voiced by Jason Isaacs? Perfect! He makes an amazing villain. I love to hate the villains he plays. Oh... what a dumb haircut! Air-lats, too?! This man should be wearing lifts to further accentuate his severe case of small man syndrome. What a sleazy little brat... I LOVE him! But in a let's see if I can make him cry before I kill him sort of way."
Then I met him without Karlach or Wyll in my party.
And he spent half of his coronation making moon-eyes at my Durge. I learned more of his backstory, and he started creeping into that place where Astarion lived. The only thing is... Astarion and Gortash are only very alike if you generalize them into: man abused by others who became power-hungry and cruel because of it.
That's about where the similarities end. Astarion is experiencing freedom for the first time in over two centuries. Gortash has been out of the Hells for a long time. He's repeatedly revisited the cruelties inflicted on him onto others. Astarion's psyche is more malleable; he now has the opportunity to reinvent himself. He can choose to allow his past to dictate his future, or he can defy it. Gortash has already made hundreds, if not thousands, of choices repeating the cycle of abuse and sacrificing any individual identity he may have possessed to a garbage loser god (sorry, Bane-lovers) so he can stop being scared all the time. (My own personal take: canon Gortash is 100% fear-driven. You don't have to agree with me.)
Mods that change Astarion into Gortash are jarring and incredibly off-putting to me. Audio notwithstanding, the way Astarion is animated simply does not fit Gortash. Neil Newbon did the mo-cap for both characters, but is clearly portraying a much different person with Gortash than with Astarion.
However, mods that replace Gale with Gortash's model actually seem to fit (even though I can't use them because only the Astarion one is on PS5. 😭) I've seen videos & screenshots.
We don't get to talk to Gortash very much in-game, but when we do, he talks for a long time, animating with his hands frequently, just like Gale. Although Gale maintains slightly better posture than Gortash. And is less of a bird (head bobbing).
One of Gortash's most omnipresent traits is his confidence--something Gale has in spades (abject and incorrigible self-delusion to one of his assessors at university). Confidence is something Astarion severely lacks. He has false confidence, which is very much not the real thing. Gortash and Gale have the real thing. And it's pretty damn hard to shake in either of them.
Because of the way he looks at Durge, we want Gortash to act like Gale does with his partner, but in a darker, more twisted way. With Durge stuff involved.
Also... he talks smart, and has puppy eyes and chest hair. Mmm... chest hair.
Astarion's only physical flaw is his lack of body hair.
When I decided to romance Gale, I began to realize that Gale is Gortash---if Gortash wasn't an unreasonable piece of shit who only cares about power. If we had more time with Gortash, if he was allowed nuance, I think he would remind more people of Gale. They're both very intelligent and confident, even obstinate at times. Their egos are huge. There's this sense of entitlement about both of them that only Gale actually manages to earn.
Gale is as capable of selfish, evil choices as any of our companions, and unlike Karlach and Wyll, you don't have to play as him to explore them. He can be convinced to accept them as a companion. But he experiences a severe crisis of conscience and only goes along with an evil PC because he knows he can't save himself alone. He becomes fairly awful if you pursue the god path with him, too.
Most Gortash fans want an ending in which he survives. If he had a more reasonable side to him, like Gale does, he probably could. That Gortash is ready to re-sign up with his severely brain-damaged, amnesiac ex-cohort could be viewed a few ways. Two of those ways are Gale-coded. The first is how others see Gale as desperate, which despite Gortash's seeming position of power, the newly appointed Archduke absolutely is desperate. The other is Gale's almost unconditional acceptance of his partner, so long as they choose him. He loves you as a worm. He's excited about loving you as a worm.
Gale fulfills the headcanons people have of Gortash better than Gortash canonically does himself. Gortash doesn't even want to know what murder means to Durge. As strongly anti-murder as Gale is, he also essentially says, "Just kill the ones who are trying to kill us, and it's all good." Also, after tying Durge up so they don't kill him in their sleep, Gale says: "This is surmountable. I'm sure of it. I will protect you until you prevail."
Gale is truly so many of the things Gortash fans wish that Gortash was.
If you're a Gortash fucker and you don't like Gale, I suspect you haven't gotten to know the wizard very well. Possibly because you have his hand in your backpack.
