#idk what else to tag this i just wanna cover my bases for blacklisting lol

[wakinguponsaturday]

I'm gonna be a hater for a moment and say that I wish they hadn't made it so a "good" PC could recruit Minthara by knocking her out. Having recruited her on my "evil" playthrough, she's one of the best written characters in the game (when her dialogues actually trigger) and her VA's performance is fantastic. I'm not alone in having said the evil route is pretty bare bones relative to the good choices, and Minthara was one of the few things it had going for it. And I do want more people to experience that!

But you can do that by just. Thinking up an evil PC. Dark Urge is already pretty well set up for this if you're not great at conceptualizing original characters. The evil route is again already gutted, and this just makes the gameplay even more unbalanced. Your actions should have consequences - hence why raiding the grove has Karlach and Wyll leave your party. That's great, I love that moral fortitude on their part! And similarly, siding against Minthara locked you out of having her as a companion.

I know fully that this does not matter, and that other people are approaching the game differently. Hell, I'll probably knock Minthara out to recruit her on my next playthrough because I've adored having her around. (Though how I'll manage to gain approval with her as a goody two shoes, I don't know. The worldviews are pretty diametrically opposed.) But I think that it was a reasonable and well thought out decision to keep Minthara locked to that one choice at the onset. It didn't need to change. And playing as a morally grey or evil character, in a game whose moral greyness was already sparse, suffers more for it.