BaldursGate3
Unholy trinity of minor villains whose design goes too hard
Priestess Gut, Malus Thorm and Mystic Carrion all have some of the coolest designs, mocap and voice acting for such minor villains. At least Malus Thorm gets a cool fight and cool cutscenes though.
Discussion
NGL, I expected to see Karniss here.
Karniss is really cool too, but if I was going to pick one from each act I had to go with Malus. That character left a huge impression on me, the scene where you convince him to let his nurses stab him to death gives me literal chills.
I'd swap Priestess Gut for Karniss. She's cool, but what you describe I kinda have with this character. I'm arachnophobic but there's something incredibly cool, unnerving and kind of disgusting about his design, it really slaps. I would love to see more of him in the game, if he survives the ambush, it's a bit of a shame he sort of goes nowhere.
He goes to the top of the tower if you roll with him all the way to moonrise towers.
I do not recommend. He’s a pain to fight alongside Ketheric and his myrkulite/necromites
Gut is in Act 1 though. OP picked one from each act.
Karniss is just a reimagining of Darth maul with his mechanized spider legs in my mind. Doesn't make him less terrifying, just have seen it before
Spider-centaur things (Driders) have been in the DnD world since at least 1980 (Queen of the Demonweb Pits by Gygax came out in 1980)
I know driders have been around forever, Im saying in terms of seeing it visually animated in this game I instantly saw maul with his robot legs. It's a classic DND monster that clearly was brought to life with some inspiration from other sources to make the horror of the monster real.
Kar'niss does go too hard. Like... no, dude. You have to die.
And then there’s Gortash looking like a doofus
In the immortal words of some guy on reddit:
“He looks like a final fantasy villian going through a mid life crisis”
Always felt like he looked like an aged British pop star who was big in the 80s.
I keep swearing it's Noel Fielding!
I want to see Gortash redone with Noel voicing and mocapping while also fully in-character as Vince Noir.
Reminds me of 00s Trent Reznor
Reminds me of Robert Smith myself
Billie Joe Armstrong in Steampunk cosplay
Gary Numan
Yet he is described as "handsome young man" in act 1 when we see his shadow trough priestess Haruspia mind xD
A final fantasy villain experiencing twink death
My favorite that I've seen is "he looks like if an ashtray was a person."
A handsome young man with an easy smile and bad clothing
An absolute fraud in a very nice coat
Yall dragging on gortash is bringing tears to my eyes
I didn't want to say it but yeah all 3 of these villains are so much cooler than Gortash and Orin, although I will say both of those voice actors are excellent they were just given kind of underwhelming character concepts
I wouldn’t say Orin looks cool but I do think they nailed the insane murderer concept.
To me she feels like the edgy OC of the "weird" girl in middle school no one talks to (I say this with love, because I was that weird girl in middle school). Her dialogue comes off very cringy to me. I like the concept of a fanatic Bhaalspawn shapeshifter who creates distrust and uncertainty among the characters and at least she is given a more direct role in the story than Gorty which is cool. Also, her like.... sexy crabshell armor? Is not it to me
I mean, I kind of saw her as a clown that tries very hard. If you confront her by saying that her Bhaal doesn't even notice her (or smthg along those line), she gets very visibly distraught.
The whole trinity of villains is basically a power hungry scheming idiot, a notice-me-senpai murderhobo, and a depressed dad (who is actually the only one I could take seriously).
I'm not saying they are bad characters, no, they are well executed and written, but they aren't nearly as smart or dangerous as they make themselves out to be.
Plus, I'm adding this later, but the entire Thorm family, somehow kept alive through necromancy (refused to die, greed, fanatics...) can be basically all killed with dialogues checks. Again, their strenght is a facade for a kind of tragedy.
It is ironic that the first of the big bosses you kill was actually the most intimidating and believable one.
My first playthrough was Durge and it was so hard to take her seriously. Ironically, she was my hardest fight in the game when I actually did face her. (Since I had to duel her one on one and she had slayer form and I did not - I was being a mostly good person.) The only fight in the whole game I had to reload to win on Tactician was dueling Orion and I did so much to prep for it too.
But story wise/implementation in the game they completely failed to make me feel afraid of her. Kethric seemed bad-ass and dangerous with immortality. Even after you take that away, his appearance, lines, and voice acting give him the feeling of a man of power. Gortash has more conniving slimey rat vibes, but a dangerously smart slimey rat. He controls the whole city. The Steel Watch are everywhere. He invites you to his coronation and there is a true pressure to not attack him right there, you feel outnumbered. He is watching you everywhere you go with his robots and scrying eyes. He is also having your allies put to death (floric), controlling Wyll's dad, trying to turn the people against you with the press. He's not cool, but he's effective, and that makes him seem like a real threat too.
And Orion . . . she's so pathetic. Just like some lame girl in sexy "armor" trying so desperately hard to impress you with how edgy she is. The thing is, every single time she shows up to "intimidate" you she runs away like . . . how is it scary that she won't even fight me? I'm supposed to be scared of her middle school teasing? Oh no, sexy bully girl hurt my delicate feelings again . . . oh wait, she didn't. I just want her to stop running away like a little b*tch. None of her insults are even good? Also, none of her Bhaal assassins guys you encounter random places are hard fights so she's not building tension that way. (I think maybe if she'd kidnapped someone I cared about that might have worked, but she got Halsin who just sat in camp doing nothing so nothing changed. Plus the whole imposter plot was dumb/broken beacuse you couldn't do anything to investigate it at all with your mental links and mind powers and scrolls and potions or even talking or other spells.)
There are so many bad things she could have done if she had half a brain with impersonating people to screw you over or scare you or make you look bad. What if you killed some innocent people in public? (Only it's her.) What if you wake up one day and you are wanted by all the fists and steel watch and everyone on the streets is upset? Or what if she started killing everyone you helped after you complete their quest? Well I'd care about that and beline over to deal with her. Or what if she sabotaged you effectively in any way with her imposters? Mid some other plot her replaced person is relevaed? Heck given no one keeps watch in this game she could have just killed you in your sleep.
But story wise/implementation in the game they completely failed to make me feel afraid of her.
Orin is actually the only one I felt afraid of. Villains operate according to a normal logic. Orin doesn't. She's the only one who felt like she could genuinely do something insane and dangerous. She's not trying to build anything. She'd happily stab herself just to nick you in the process. The other two are building towers without foundations, just waiting for the hero to come shove them over. People with nothing to lose are more frightening, I think, than people who have ambitions to build empires.
Sure, she might attack me but . . . she dosen't? She just goes "nah nah nah" and runs away when I'm ready to fight her there and then.
Also, the idea of being attacked in act 3 just isn't very scary either. Your whole party is close to or max level, and if you've been building and gearing thoughtfully/effectively you're really strong. At that point you're sailing through the vast majority of combats with no challenge, which made me at least feel pretty confidant. Which makes the lady who might randomly attack you less scary, since I felt like I could take her probably. (I actually did win the first time I fought her, but I dropped first which brought my party and all her cultists into the combat which counted as losing the duel and Bhaal cursed me. So my party totally could take her, actually.)
Anyway, her lack of logic just made her seem petty and stupid to me. She was a very pitiful figure the more you get into her history. And I don't find her cool or scary so she's just . . . sad.
I’m pretty sure that aint crab
Lady Gaga's meat dress
it’s not crab, it’s inside-out skin
It’s worth noting that Bhaal had a dangerous, ice-cold strategist as his representative who was still crazy as all hell, but stable enough to exercise the restraint required to execute complex plans.
…unfortunately for Ketheric and Gortash, that was Durge, who got taken out and replaced by everyone’s least-favourite try-hard murder hobo. There’s several bits of information in-game showing that they hate having to deal with her too, and I think Gortash himself talks (if you meet him as Durge) about how much more smoothly everything was going when Durge was in charge of the Bhaalists.
Thorm gets all of act 1 and 2 as a lead up to him. The other 2 have to share one act that feels like it should have been an expac.
I think this is a symptom of the loss of the Upper City. Based off a lot of in game details and general knowledge of the city of Baldur's Gate; I'm pretty sure Gortash was meant to be in the Upper City. This would leave Orin to have the Lower City to herself (and her shenanigans in the Outer City).
It tries to have a plot in rivington but gives up upon entering the lower city. If it had a year or so to itself it wouldn't have a lot of the issues it has.
Excellent point! Everything in Act III feels far too separated. It feels like an unfinished draft, with good ideas but execution that isn't quite there yet. And the references to Upper City are weird when you don't get to go there. Like a bunch of plot points and beginnings with no pay off. When you play it the first time it's less noticeable because Act III is very overwhelming and crammed, but upon a replay the flaws are far more obvious. In particular, I found that having more Forgotten Realms knowledge made Act III fall apart more in my eyes.
Orin and gortash are exactly what i think about when i think if a champion of murder and tyranny. Orin for obvious reasons but gortash because he spends so much time on vanity. Every time you see him he is made up doing something to feed his ego. Which is exactly what you expect a tyrant who thinks hes won to be doing.
I’ve played multiple campaigns and I’ve never seen that third guy in my life.
He's very hidden. You have to break into a kind of unassuming house to find him and he has a whole pretty cool sidequest. He also sells one of the most powerful mage items in the game, and the sidequest nets you some really powerful rewards
And one of the best Druid armor, casting a cloud of haste spores is clutch.
I mean, it's unassuming if you're not paying any attention. It's just out of the way, and even then, you can be pointed there by quests by finding either Thrumbo or Oscar.
It's legitimately a huge, obviously haunted house, surrounded by only dead trees (there's even a Druid trying to revive one), and a guy desperately trying to tell the Flaming Fist outside that he can hear creepy noises and smell rot inside. And if that doesn't do it, it pops two different perception checks for secret entrances.
Me and my sister both think he was fished out of a sewer and looks greasy to the point of not bathing for a month
Excuse me, he's a handsome young man.
*snickers*
I think that's just what he ordered the Netherbrain to describe him as in his slave's minds. "Now everyone will finally be forced to realize how young and cool I look!"
Right? He doesn't even have a gory moustache!
I find Gortash extremely attractive, thank you very much.
I would also add to the list
- Kar'niss
- He Who Was (I wish we had more Shadar-Kai in general, given how much time is spent in the Shadow-Cursed Lands)
- Thisobald Thorm
Design-wise, he who was is pretty normal looking to me.
I like how the Shadar-Kai looks
I'd have He-Who-Was ahead of Gut for sure.
Idk ‘Evil Goblin Grandma’ is a bit more fun to me than ‘Edgy Dork with a Weird Fetish’. Especially since Gut’s opener is ‘Hey kid, wanna burn a GANG SIGN onto your hand??’
But to each their own lmao
He-Who-Was could be much more integrated than he is. Gut has a place and fills it and, to me, is fine. There's no, like, unfulfilled potential there.
He-Who-Was could be much more integrated than he is. Gut has a place and fills it and, to me, is fine. There's no, like, unfulfilled potential there.
Gonna sounds wild, but the Abyss Spider could work well as a big villain. Have her do the whole "Elf turned Lolth Worshipper turned Bigass spider" thing as you progress. Could be neat
I LOVE Mystic Carrion! He was my favorite part of Act 3.
I guess I missed out on something by just straight-up paying him?
There's a lot that goes on with him, if you do the quest with him and eventually decide to fight him.
I love all the Thorms. I wish we got to learn more about them.
Same. I'm a whore for the lore and was kind of frustrated when there wasn't much about them in the books
Same!! I want to know all their family drama.
I love Malia Thorm because if you don’t know the Shar lore, like I didn’t, you might be confused as to why Shadowheart worshipping Shar is such a big deal. His encounter was the thing that made me fully realize what Shar worship can look like
I am fascinated by Princess Gut!!
She is by far my favorite minor character (other than Rolan) and I truly wish she had more to do than just a little bit of exposition and a very underwhelming fight. Her voice acting is SO good and I love that she, despite being an Absolutist, wants to sabotage you so she can remain in power. In general I wish the goblins had been given a better role in this game than just basically cannon fodder lol
Her fight had some cool ideas, like her being able to drop the statues in you with her powers, but it doesn’t really mean much when she doesn’t make it to her first turn…
Wait she can what!? I’ve never seen that and I have over 1k hours in this game.
Yep! In the room where you first meet her and get branded, she can use these psychic tethers and yank the statues down
Ah, that's probably why I've also never seen that ability. I've always done this fight the smart way, by attacking the priestess only when she's conveniently isolated in her chamber ;-)
I've literally never fought her there lmao. Always get her alone in her chambers and sneak attack with Astarion. That's usually enough to never give her a turn
Malus is definitely the coolest enemy you can convince to kill himself and not fight at all
Malus definitely has some cenobite vibes to him.
So I haven’t been scared by books/games in a long time, but I was very unsettled by Malus Thorm and his nurses. They still creep me out.
What is the light of eyes but the cancer that causes one to witness the laceration of being?
Mystic Carrion is such a fun character. Mf gained immortality and all he does with it is chill in his seaside mansion, taking money from rich folks and generally enjoying (un)life. No plans for conquest, no nefarious schemes, buddy just wants to Chill and i can respect that (he did kill and horribly abuse some zombie dudes but hey, nobody's perfect). Also you can tell his VA had a lot of fun with some of those lines.
Honestly, all 3 of the Thorm family bosses in act II are amazing. I think Thisobald especially is great.
I'll never not laugh how Gut feels betrayed and tries to kill you after attempting to give a drow a sleeping potion
I like Balthazar
The nurses in the house of healings design still sticks with me as some of the coolest looking undead ive aeen in a while, especially thebones who have the hats on
“Are you poorly?”
Where do you find the third one?
Start by the Heapside Strand waypoint, you can see a large abandoned house. NPCs nearby will be complaining of a rotten smell. You can fly or jump to the roof fairly easily and lockpick a door up top.
Ahhhhhh. I haven’t had a character with a role play reason to visit that building yet. Maybe next run.
Yeah I honestly wouldn't have found it if I wasn't searching up where to get some of the best mage gear. It does almost feel like metagaming to go in there lol
If it helps at all, I actually did find him by accident; I'd been rummaging through every building in the city, so it is possible. Finding his heart is a different matter.
I also found Thrumbo by accident too - same way really.
Tbh, I think there are only 3 ways to find Thrumbo for the first time - by accident, by reading a guide, or just by meticulously exploring literally everything. On my 1st run I've done it the 3rd way, just due to my completionist mentality. Otherwise, I'd have a really hard time looking for him - technically, the hints are there, but they're all pretty vague...
Yes, there's no way I'd pick up on the hints if I didn't already know. If I hadn't been going through everything, I never would have found him.
There is also a hole you could climb through if you are small enough, and a stone door on ground level you can unlock with a password or via picking/knock.
Don’t forget the hag! The only thing i didn’t enjoy is that stupid, trap filled descent into her lair.
I’ve never had to fight Malus. I always convince him to allow his “sisters” to kill him in the name of Shar.
He was a pain in the ass to fight when I did have to. That bone saw hurts like hell.
I hear that. brrrrrrrr
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WHO’S THE LAST GUY???? I just finished my first playthrough and never even seen him
Mystic Carrion. Find him in Philgraves Mansion. The nearest waypoint is Heapside Strand. Connected to the Oskar Fevras quest.
I’m fairly certain I’m close to the end of Act 3 (though, maybe not, it’s my first time through) and not a single word there means anything to me.
Have hundreds of hours in this game and don’t recognize a single word in this comment. Is that in Baldurs Gate lower city?
😅 Yes that waypoint is in the Lower City, near the dock area. I usually go behind Sorcerous Sundries.
Oskar Fevras is the artist enslaved by the Zhentarim in Act 1. He was in the hideout.
If you freed him, you could continue his quest in Act 3. He'll be at Lady Jannath's Estate (his wife), near the Steelwatch Foundry. This line of quest will bring you to Mystic Carrion and gives you an unsatisfactory reward from Oskar.
Who’s the last guy?
Malus reminds me of OG Bioshock. I wonder if the design was a callback?
Lil disappointed by the convo options for mystic carrion, which there was more. But great looking characters!
uck
…..
I’m sorry, Mystic who?!
If you didn't stumble on him through exploring, did you rescue Oskar the artist?
Ooooh maybe the first play through? It’s been so long
I loveeeee Balthazar’s design. He’s so intimidating.
... ngl. Mystic Carrion just seems like he bit off Shadow Shaman too much for me to take him seriously.
I keep expecting him to bust out his really rasta "Tastes like chicken!" ... although he does have a lot of cross-over flavor...
Malus' design went too hard for how little screen time he had
Absence. No other amount of screen time reflects Shar.
Shadowheart Approves
The scene of him getting stabbed to death by his “sisters” is literally my favorite cutscene in the whole game. The music, the vibe, it just does it for me. I generally love act 2’s gloominess and themes.
Yet doing that is not how you get his achievement.
I accidentally got his achievement because I snuck around and said this guy ain’t worth my business and started firing spells at him from around the theatre
Act 2 outside moonrise gave me strong silent hill vibes x)
Legit! I kinda wish he had a little more part in the story, but I also understand why they did him how they did