#like i just. dont understand. why your player would ally with the goblins in act 1

[afterthefeast]

was gonna wait til i finished act 2 before posting my nightsong thoughts but actually i want to get my first impressions out to see if they change but…currently i’m pretty disappointed by it because from an rp perspective i literally don’t see a single reason why the pc would let shadowheart kill the nightsong if they weren’t already allied with the absolute.

from a practical perspective your whole aim is to get rid of ketheric’s invulnerability - i guess killing the nightsong might achieve that purpose but to me at least the implication throughout the gauntlet is that if you kill the nightsong as part of the dark justiciar trial she doesn’t actually die. (never mind the fact that aylin seems far too important to both ketheric and shar for her to be sacrificed if an ordinary selûnite would do). obligatory disclaimer that i didn’t let shadowheart kill her so i don’t know what happens in that instance, but that doesn’t really matter in this case because i’m talking about how the choice is presented to you, and to me at least it did not seem like killing aylin would be in any way strategic.

in which case it’s not really a choice because a) practically you are strongly encouraged to let aylin go and b) morally your tav has to justify the murder of a defenceless woman for…what, shadowheart’s career goals? even if you’re romancing shadowheart (which i am) convincing her requires a straightforward persuasion check, the mechanics of which thus far have meant you convince her that your position is correct - there’s not much in the way of lasting relationship consequences in that she won’t get so mad at you she leaves the party because you’ve already convinced her you’re right.

all that is to say that i think this is reflective of bg3’s overall binary attitude towards its major choices - there’s a good route (save the grove, defend isobel, free aylin), and a bad route (destroy the grove, ally with marcus, kill aylin). a lot of those choices compound, as well - other people have talked from actual experience about how allying with minthara will lose you a huge amount of content and allies, thus railroading you into picking a side from both a narrative and gameplay perspective. you’ve a huge amount of freedom in how you go about achieving any of those things - stealth, persuasion, combat etc., but the objectives themselves are pretty static.

so when you then have a companion’s personal quest tied to intrinsically to the plot it negates a huge amount of player choice. thematically, the companion quests are binary because they can either break or perpetuate cycles of abuse - that’s an instance in which binary choices can be very compelling. but the thematic concerns of shadowheart’s very intricate and heartfelt personal quest are totally undercut by the necessities of a pretty straightforward choice. i can’t play a hands-off tav and let this be shadowheart’s decision without to all appearances letting ketheric win. this isn’t a truly grey choice like the decision to sacrifice isolde or go to the circle in dragon age origins. it feels like that’s what bg3 was trying to do here by combining shadowheart’s quest and the main narrative, but because that main narrative is actually relatively inflexible, it just means shadowheart’s quest suffers by comparison.