The attention to detail Larian Studios put into Baldur’s Gate 3 has the game well on its way to earning a lot of gold this award season. But players have recently discovered what they feel might be some questionable storytelling in the latter half of the game.
We’d like to preface this piece by giving anyone a spoiler warning if they haven’t made it to the end of Act Two. While the game has been out for some time now, its more recent release on console makes it newer to some people.
As we learn in the beginning of Act Three, our “dream visitor” is an Illithid in disguise known as the Emperor, who was once a Balduran. However, he turned into a Mind Flayer after being captured while he was searching for treasure around Moonrise Towers.
In a post to Reddit on Sunday, Nov. 27, one player realized following the revelation that a few aspects of the story didn’t seem to line up. Despite the Emperor admitting to being turned into an Illithid at Moonrise Towers, they seemingly act surprised about the Illithid presence in Moonrise Towers during Act Two.
“If he knows that there is a Mindflayer colony beneath Moonrise, why does he act surprised/ doesn’t warn the player?,” the original poster wrote. “True, he probably wanted to keep up his disguise longer, however he states multiple times that he is infected as well.”
As one might expect, the comment section for the thread is filled with players quickly poking fun at the Emperor’s notorious reputation for being deceitful and manipulative throughout the course of the game, with one player calling it a “hard lesson.” Others noted the Emperor is constantly trying to persuade the player to become an Illithid by consuming more tadpoles.
From a storyline perspective, the Emperor’s lack of a thoroughly detailed warning about Moonrise is tied to the way Larian wanted to keep players questioning the Emperor and their motives. Additionally, the Emperor was turned into a Mind Flayer so long ago they perhaps didn’t know the true gravity of the state of the Absolute’s hold on Moonrise.
