#dnd sucks and bg3 suffers greatly for it

[verigayo]

Some bs I got rattling around in my brain. (Bg3 spoilers)

I really hate the theories abt the emperor being a super genius manipulative asshole because it’s just so reductive. They figure since the emperor is a mindflayer it must be out to get you. And you can never trust a mindflayer! So then they go thru the whole game refusing and rebuffing the Emperor’s trust and then point and say “SEE SEE LOOK ITS JUST TRYING TO MANIPULATE YOU.” It literally makes no sense because literally giving the emperor even a tiny bit of trust NEVER bites you in the ass. If you at least don’t tell it to die every second it appears before you it will go thru the whole adventure supporting you. The only thing you could say it manipulates truly on is its appearance (which it does obviously to make sure you can even fight the brain) and killing Orpheus. But killing Orpheus is only a really negative thing if you think the Gith are a better ally than the guy who has literally stayed by you the whole time. And I mean if we’re using the dnd lore nerd standards when talking abt illithids and lack of soul and inherent evilness; the Gith are basically just a non tentacle illithid. They literally want to do the grand design but for Gith instead of illithid. And just because Orpheus says oh I’ll always remember you brave warrior that freed me, doesn’t change the fact literally they are trying to control the world.

In contrast if you ally yourself with the Emperor literally when it has the chance to completely fuck everyone over and dominate the brain and complete the grand design it never does. If it was some evil mastermind why would it not do this. It’s all about freedom for the emperor and people think that it’s about control but it’s not. The emperor comes before you and presents itself and its ambitions multiple times once it is revealed for what it is. The only real hiding factor is the whole balduran and ansur thing which ultimately? Does not affect anything really. It is just a past, one that is filled with grief and hardship. Not fully divulging this information is no sleight against it because it literally only makes the emperor more interesting as a character.

And this is where dnd as a setting really REALLY struggles in portraying the depth of a character. Due to its inherent struggles to deal with the very blunt and simplified version of fantasy that it was originally created with, assumptions are abundant in nearly every race in the game. For example, as a drow you are automatically assumed as a follower of the absolute or some sort of nefarious figure. Many characters will literally react with increased suspicion upon you because you are a drow. And while I’m not saying bg3 is exclusively bad at this; omeluum and blurg are great examples of races stereotyped as always evil (illithid and hobgoblin respectively) being unequivocally good people, the reality is that there is a lot of assumptions that are paramount to the dnd lore and canon. And this is why you see so many people violently react negatively to the emperor, they have been taught through the source material of the game bg3 is based on to assume illithids are bad. And if you chose this path you can continue to allow yourself to believe all illithids are evil as you betray the trust of one of the most interesting and layered characters in the game because they are an illithid. Just a waste of a viewpoint for such a cool character :/