Your pick is probably an objectively better call (and better scene), I just remember being in awe the first time I saw that scene as a kid and really feeling how powerful Irenicus was. As if it wasn’t already apparent enough from the opening, where his delivery is equally dripping with similar nonchalant disdain at these flies who think they can lay a finger on him.
I wish BG3 had an antagonist half as strong as him. Maybe it’s just me but the super spooky gigabrain of doom was just not it.
BG3 has plenty of other strengths over its predecessors. It’s just not its main villain. Gortash and Thorm were both great, but our attention was divided amongst several antagonists rather than how much of the spotlight Irenicus got.
Ketheric was good, in general I felt like Act 2 was where the game peaked for me. I didn’t really feel like Gortash was all that great of a villain honestly, although part of it may be that he got introduced so late. And Orin was absolute dogwater so that didn’t help the impression of Act 3 for me.
I feel like they needed a stronger throughline antagonist, even the big brain is introduced very late. Maybe doing something with the Emperor instead of “not all Mind Flayers are evil, actually! Hey, would you like to fuck one?” would have been better for me, I don’t know.
But I think an Elder Brain is just inherently less compelling as an antagonist than something more human, and I’m not really sure how to get around that.
For me the main boss of BG3 was Raphael. He’s the one who established an ongoing personal antagonism throughout the game, and the fight with him was unforgettably dramatic. Everything after him was a protracted denouement.
I personally did not get the feeling that he was a “main boss” due to the way he was dispatched sort of to the side of the main plot. So for me it felt more like “weird that a side quest is getting this much fanfare”, even though I loved the moment itself.
But I absolutely agree that he was by far the most charismatic, impactful and narratively supported villain. There are a lot of things about BG3 that I seem to have liked way less than the general public, but I did love Raphael. I wish he was the defacto final boss and main antagonist.
It’s one of the pitfalls of a novelistic game with multiple branching paths; a story where Raphael is the main villain might easily work out to be the best possible story, but it’s more about what you think is the best story.
I’ve beaten BG3 three times and I go after him every time. It’s not about the loot, the XP, or even the theme song. It’s because the brain was just a problem that needs solving, but I had a score to settle with Raphael.
Is the game actually that branching? It always felt pretty linear to me, although granted I only played it once myself and watched Welonz and Mapocolops Let’s Plays of it. Like sure, you can have some player agency on a micro level in the moment-to-moment stuff, but the story is the story. It’s not like Witcher 2.
Or did you just mean Raphael? I guess the player might have some agency on how much to engage with him.
bg3.wiki/wiki/Endings is a pretty long page. Witcher 2 has, what is it 16 endings? There’s at least that many here, but I’ll grant that not a lot of the possible endings feel meaningfully unique, just stylistic preferences. That might be the real shortcoming, the fact that when your enemy is “absolute mind control monster”, there are only so many ways to win that are meaningfully different.
Well, what I am talking about when I’m talking about branching narratives is not really endings. There are tons of games with tons of different endings, especially these types of combinatorial endings where they’re cut together out of various parts that answer individual side quests and whatnot. Many games can technically have hundreds of “different” endings, but they’re not branching narratives.
I always use Witcher 2 because it is a very rare example of a truly branching storyline. Siding with Roche or siding with Iorveth means getting two completely different experiences. I didn’t really see that in BG3. Imagine if you could join up with the Absolute in Act 2, not kill Ketheric and have a completely different Act 3 where you’re buddies with the trio? That would be a branching story.
As far as I can tell in BG3 the main story beats just kind of have to happen, and you might get some flavour one way or the other or some fake choices but the story is the story.
Your pick is probably an objectively better call (and better scene), I just remember being in awe the first time I saw that scene as a kid and really feeling how powerful Irenicus was. As if it wasn’t already apparent enough from the opening, where his delivery is equally dripping with similar nonchalant disdain at these flies who think they can lay a finger on him.
I wish BG3 had an antagonist half as strong as him. Maybe it’s just me but the super spooky gigabrain of doom was just not it.
BG3 has plenty of other strengths over its predecessors. It’s just not its main villain. Gortash and Thorm were both great, but our attention was divided amongst several antagonists rather than how much of the spotlight Irenicus got.
Ketheric was good, in general I felt like Act 2 was where the game peaked for me. I didn’t really feel like Gortash was all that great of a villain honestly, although part of it may be that he got introduced so late. And Orin was absolute dogwater so that didn’t help the impression of Act 3 for me.
I feel like they needed a stronger throughline antagonist, even the big brain is introduced very late. Maybe doing something with the Emperor instead of “not all Mind Flayers are evil, actually! Hey, would you like to fuck one?” would have been better for me, I don’t know.
But I think an Elder Brain is just inherently less compelling as an antagonist than something more human, and I’m not really sure how to get around that.
For me the main boss of BG3 was Raphael. He’s the one who established an ongoing personal antagonism throughout the game, and the fight with him was unforgettably dramatic. Everything after him was a protracted denouement.
I personally did not get the feeling that he was a “main boss” due to the way he was dispatched sort of to the side of the main plot. So for me it felt more like “weird that a side quest is getting this much fanfare”, even though I loved the moment itself.
But I absolutely agree that he was by far the most charismatic, impactful and narratively supported villain. There are a lot of things about BG3 that I seem to have liked way less than the general public, but I did love Raphael. I wish he was the defacto final boss and main antagonist.
It’s one of the pitfalls of a novelistic game with multiple branching paths; a story where Raphael is the main villain might easily work out to be the best possible story, but it’s more about what you think is the best story.
I’ve beaten BG3 three times and I go after him every time. It’s not about the loot, the XP, or even the theme song. It’s because the brain was just a problem that needs solving, but I had a score to settle with Raphael.
Is the game actually that branching? It always felt pretty linear to me, although granted I only played it once myself and watched Welonz and Mapocolops Let’s Plays of it. Like sure, you can have some player agency on a micro level in the moment-to-moment stuff, but the story is the story. It’s not like Witcher 2.
Or did you just mean Raphael? I guess the player might have some agency on how much to engage with him.
bg3.wiki/wiki/Endings is a pretty long page. Witcher 2 has, what is it 16 endings? There’s at least that many here, but I’ll grant that not a lot of the possible endings feel meaningfully unique, just stylistic preferences. That might be the real shortcoming, the fact that when your enemy is “absolute mind control monster”, there are only so many ways to win that are meaningfully different.
Well, what I am talking about when I’m talking about branching narratives is not really endings. There are tons of games with tons of different endings, especially these types of combinatorial endings where they’re cut together out of various parts that answer individual side quests and whatnot. Many games can technically have hundreds of “different” endings, but they’re not branching narratives.
I always use Witcher 2 because it is a very rare example of a truly branching storyline. Siding with Roche or siding with Iorveth means getting two completely different experiences. I didn’t really see that in BG3. Imagine if you could join up with the Absolute in Act 2, not kill Ketheric and have a completely different Act 3 where you’re buddies with the trio? That would be a branching story.
As far as I can tell in BG3 the main story beats just kind of have to happen, and you might get some flavour one way or the other or some fake choices but the story is the story.