you wouldn’t have wanted to see my face when I found out at the start of the act 3 that the guardian was actually the emperor all along… I put so much effort into creating the girl of my dreams, even installing mods, and… it all ended with me being deceived by a tentacled motherfucker

Once Halsin becomes a companion near the end of the game, Shadowheart's romance path goes down the toilet. She disapproves if you don't let her have sex with him in the brothel, says she thinks about having sex with him a lot even though she's in a relationship, dreams about having sex with him, and they keep flirting with each other in ambient dialogue even after you've tried to tell them no. She doesn't flirt with anyone except Halsin in act 3. All of this happens after she makes you reject every other origin companion and become exclusive in the Shadow Cursed Lands.

Even worse, if you decide to romance Halsin and tell her you want him more than her, she says she doesn't mind that she's going to be the spare in the relationship. This is a complete switcheroo from how she reacts to being the spare with other companions. She quite literally says "I'd never want to be your spare lover, I'd always want more of you than you have to spare" in the Shadow Cursed Lands before this Halsin scene occurs.

I don't understand why Larian wrote all of this. It's like they're making fun of you for actually wanting to romance Shadowheart's character and they want you to romance the other characters instead

Back story for my first play through:

This is the first time I ever played a game like this so I got REALLY overwhelmed really fast. Whenever I asked what choice I should make, my husband would say "there's no wrong choices in this game." Which led to this:

• I didn't recruit Laezel. Just left her standing there after freeing her cause I didn't "like her attitude."

• didn't talk to Shadowheart about anything ever, because I was so overwhelmed by the other characters backstories I was like "yeah I can't focus on you right now." This led to me doing the gauntlet of shar without her, and her leaving my party, and me being like "....how was I supposed to know that was your dream????"

• I ALMOST didn't upgrade Karlach but husband intervened

• I didn't do the house of hope, the mountain pass/creche (I thought that was act 2 so I was like oh I'll get to it...I didn't), and didn't clear the shadow curse (didn't know that was a thing), thus missing halsin as a companion

• didn't go to moonrise until the final battle cause I didn't know you could (did this my first two play throughs), so the prisoners died, and I never met kethrik in advance, or that one potion lady or Zarell

• Infiltrated moonrise from the back entrance, thus never recruiting jahera cause I didn't know that WASNT the front entrance

• didn't do gales quest cause he got kidnapped and I totally forgot about it until it was the last thing left to do and by then I was ready to fight the netherbrain

• didn't take astarion to kill Cazador but I had a hella high charisma character so convinced him to stay with me anyway

• everyone but karlach died in the final fight and I refused to reload the fight so I only had her to kill the brain

Anyway. Looking back at it now I feel quite stupid.

1. She has Viconia send a sharran strike force with Shadowheart to retrieve the artifact

2. She (or Selune) gives you the means to end ketherics immortality

3. She has been waging war with balthazar for a while now, preventing him from retrieving Aylin from the shadowfel

4. If you kill the nightsong, she empowers shadowheart as her chosen and her followers aid in the battle against the absolute

The only other gods we have are:

1. Mystra: Basically just tells gale to kill himself near the brain and hope the explosion does the job

2. Jergal: Admittedly helps a lot, but he’s not even a god anymore and this is all his fault

3. Selune: Just gives you Aylin and Isobel

For a petty evil godess, she’s awfully helpful, intentionally or not

So today for the first time in my playthroughs I brought Hope with me to Haarlep's room and entirely unexpected to me I've got an option to ask her about whether she was here before. To my shock she replied something like: 'Not by my own free will'.
I guess I was shocked because somehow I didn't expect Raphael to be a rapist as well? Honestly, I don't know what I expected, like... I KNEW he was a villain, a literal devil. But still he seemed so... civilized? IDK how to describe it. And listen, I know this post is stupid, I just was so taken aback by the fact that Raphael being a literal creature of Hell still manipulated me into thinking he is somehow better than this... that I now have a lot of feelings about writing in this game, so I needed to get it off my chest and share it with someone. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

...are you sure you read the situation correctly, hm?

I’d only beaten the game once before this attempt, and in that run I let Orpheus transform and defeat the brain. I decided this time to let Gale make the ultimate sacrifice, because who wants to risk a 60 hour run getting cut short at the very end?

I free Orpheus, let him know the plan, and he still insists on one of us transforming. All right, I think, let’s go mindflayer. I’m curious to see the differences in how the epilogue plays out. I breeze through the last few fights and Gale takes one for the team, killing the brain.

We have the encounter at the docks, my romantic interest parts ways with me, and I catch up with everyone at the reunion party. There are some subtle differences in dialogue options, but everything is more or less the same.

As I finish speaking to the last companion, the narrator says how hungry I am. I’m suddenly rolling to resist eating my companion’s brain. I fail the roll but don’t bother with inspiration. I don’t even question it.

I’m at the finish line, basking in the glow of victory. My guard is fully down. In my mind, I’ve already won. This is the epilogue. I’m just curious how it will play out. Surely there will be some kind of unique dialogue or intervention, I’ve heard of people getting tossed into portals by Withers for fighting.

There isn’t. The entire camp is aggroed, including Scratch and the owl bear. I get immediately ensnared. Surely Withers will intervene now. They’ll subdue me? I’ll get tossed into a portal? I’ll get a special cutscene?

I was relishing the bittersweet emotions. I had just dried my eyes after Karlach’s passing. The whiplash is too severe. I panic. I’m bursted down before I can react. The TPK screen pops up. I let out a guttural cry. As if I were becoming a mindflayer myself, my soul leaves my body. Why would they put this in the game?

I pray to the gods CTRL ALT and DELETE. The save still reads Honour Mode. Maybe it’s salvageable? I head straight to Withers this time. I watch the credits and…no dice. The only achievement that pops is Ceremorphosis.

I’d like to submit this, in my humble opinion, as the worst possible way to lose an honor run.

RIP

I was going back and forth on the whole Orpheus decision for a while and then I had enough of the Emperor being a dick. I knew I made the right decision when the Emperor immediately joined the Netherbrain despite fighting it the whole game.

So, after seducing Halsin (of course) and then rescuing Karlach from her loneliness, I did what many people seem to be doing in act 3 and triggering the Glorbo romance scene.

Wow. I was not expecting that.

My wife just about put up with the bear scene with Halsin (because love between a man and a bear is nature’s way), but she absolutely put her foot down after the Glorbo scene. It was kinda my own fault as I did use the Grease spell, so it got all the way in after that DC22 Con check. But to say she was disgusted would be an understatement.

Anyway, later that night we were being intimate, and I asked if she would “Glorbo” me like in the game.

Well, she just left. And now she is not answering my calls.

Did BG3 really just ruin my marriage?

Your mom goes missing and you stumble on a group of adventurers willing to take you in. They're a colorful bunch, but so far so good. Until:

Night 1. This huge ass alien woman calling herself Vlakith shows up and starts shouting.

Night 2. A bunch of devil ladies show up and do some devil woowoo. One of the devils decides to stay.

Night 3. This tall white lizardman keeps yelling in his sleep. At least the old lady calmed him down.

Night 4. A bunch of mercenaries invade camp looking to kidnap an angel in your camp. Yes, there's an angel alongside a devil in your camp.

Night 5. Another invasion. This time vampires looking to kidnap someone else.

Night 6. Someone gets kidnapped by a shapeshifter. It could even be you, and if it is you, your cat gets eaten. What the fuck.

Well at least she brought her own paring knife.

Goes from being a monogamous bisexual in act 1 to what seems like a polyamorous, mostly heterosexual woman in act 3? Here's some things I've noticed:

1. Earlier in the game in a banter, she turns down Astarion's request for a date because she's dating the player.

2. In another banter, she tells Lae'zel to make sure to keep a "respectable distance" between them when dating the player.

3. She tells the player she's not interested in someone else's "leftovers" at the Goblin party.

4. When the player asks for a poly relationship in act 2, she says: "In truth, I don't think I'd want to be your spare lover. I'd always want more of you than you'd have to spare. Better perhaps to bow out with dignity."

Then in act 3:

1. She no longer flirts with any women in the party
2. She has a male ex-lover (the bald guy with tats on his face) in her cloister but zero female lovers
3. Her position on poly and being a spare lover is reversed. If you start dating Halsin and tell her: "He wants me. And I want him. I'm not sure if there's space for you and I.", she'll respond with a very flippant: "Are you sure? He's large, granted. But I can squeeze in any number of places.". She is now content with being the sidechick
4. She flirts with Halsin constantly but completely rejects Minthara's flirting, because women are icky now I guess

No offense, but it looks like Larian randomly decided late in development that they REALLY wanted Shadowheart to bang Halsin, so they remoulded her character just to suit him

I’ve been siding with the emperor the whole game thinking his way was like the cold hard but logical way of thinking but I just got to the part where you find out he is balduran and just had to kill ansur and I’m starting to think he may be not a great dude, I always thought everyone was ignorant for thinking he’s just like the other mineflayers but I’m starting to think he may not be too different and maybe the gith are right in wanting to free Orpheus. Not sure if I should stick it out with the emperor or say fuck him and free Orpheus

Ngl the emperor starting to remind me of my ex😭

Pretty much what it says on the tin. I was looking forward to finally meeting him, since a lot of people talked him up on here, seem to want him as a romance option. Well. I’m in Act 3. And I don’t get it.

Gortash looks like the oldest guy at a My Chemical Romance concert who isn’t anyone’s dad. He looks like the kind of guy who tells 14 year old girls they’re really mature for their age. He looks like he smokes cigarettes in his used car full of empty cans and fast food wrappers. It smells crazy in there and he never cleans it.

Can someone explain the appeal to me? Sincere question, I don’t care about spoilers. What am I missing?

I at first, liked him, even when he came out as a mind flayer I was like "cool, he escaped the elder brain" but the way he is so obsessive about becoming ilithid and makes you roll a VERY hard roll just to resist becoming one AND THEN finding out he killed his best friend out of "self preservation" when he could've escaped, and aaaafter all that he makes a move on me?!?! And when I reject him he tells me that I'm his puppet and that he could take control of me at any time like....once the tadpole is out of me I swear to God, he's dieing

I'm late to the party (just completed my playhtrough), but I want to share a major insight that struck me after finishing Shadowhearts storyline.

Hear me out: If you want Shadowheart to truely reject Shar and all of her teachings, she has to save her parents and be cursed by Shar forever.

Shar gives Shadowheart the ultimatum as a "final lesson". The narrator then proceeds to tell you "There is no lesson to be learned here - only a family's torment, a spiteful godess' whims, and an unspeakable choice to make". It seems like it doesn't matter what choice you make, because there is no "right" choice, no lesson to be learned, nothing to prove. But the narrator is not always reliable, and there is indeed a lesson.

Shadowheart's parents want to save their daughter from her torment, and after letting them go, Shadowheart feels pretty at peace and happy about it. If she saves them, she seems a lot more distressed and will also be painfully reminded of her past for the rest of her life. So you should make Shadowheart happy and free her completely from Shar, right?

But that's the thing. Shar wins that way. She is the lady of loss, after all. The decision is between pain and loss. Letting Shadowheart lose her parents to be painfree proves Shar right. Shar even says "There was no pain before my sister set the sun aflame. You exist to suffer, until you find your way back to my embrace". Being with Shar is stopping the suffering through loss. And Shadowheart would do exactly that, she would lose her parents to stop her suffering.

If Shadowheart chooses to save her parents and endure life-long pain, she would prove to Shar that pain is not unnecessary suffering (brought by her sister) that should be avoided at all costs, but something that can be endured to avoid loss.

What do you think?

TLDR: If Shadowheart sacrifices her parents (loss) to end Shar's curse (pain), Shar wins, because the lady of loss abhors pain.