Try as you might, but inBaldur’s Gate 3, you may’t geta perfect ending for Karlach. Either her engine burns up, and she accepts death on her own terms, or she returns to Avernus - this time with company - and embarks on a journey to fix her engine and escape the hells for good. Well, there are other outcomes too (like having her becomea Mind Flayer, or bumping her off in Act 1), but these are the two that most players are confronted with.
At launch, some players said this was a mistake or even a case of content being cut to save time. However, even as numerous updates have added additional scenes for all of the main characters,Larianhas never added a way to fix Karlach’s engine. According to Karlach actor Samantha Béart, this was all very much by design.
No, Karlach’s Endings Were Not A Mistake
“The writing is there because that’s what the writer wanted to put out," Béart tells me in an interview that will be published later this week. “That’s very deliberate. Sometimes, that question is posed to me as if it was a mistake. It’s not. It’s very much what was intended.”
Director Swen Vincke hasalso said this in the past.
While this decision was made by Larian and Karlach’s primary writer, Sarah Baylus, Béart agrees with this approach.
“We have a lot of folks who’ve met with me who have chronic and terminal illnesses, and they say they are comforted - not only seen, but comforted - by Karlach’s journey," they tell me. “I think it would be a very cheap trick to take that away from them with some sort of magic spell.
“People die, and sometimes we’re carers, and sometimes the person we love says, ‘I’ve had enough chemotherapy. I’m ready to go’, and that’s very hard for that carer, and that’s an interesting position to be put in as a player. The fact that it’s ignited such passion in our players is a testament to the writing.”
Béart also feels that this is inevitable with someone like Karlach: “She’s a Viking, she’s going to die young. She wants to go to Valhalla”. But they do also admit that, naturally, Karlach is heartbroken to have her life cut short when she’s only just gotten it back. Ultimately, Larian wanted to write a tragic character, and that’s certainly what we got.
This isn’t the only insight into Karlach’s character that we’ve gotten recently. Elsewhere, Béart shared that it wastheir idea to have Karlach confess her love to the player character in the way that she does. Sure, Karlach’s story might be tragic, but it’s also one of the most romantic, in my humble opinion.
