I played 12 hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 with a custom bard and stumbled on the end of Act 2 by complete accident. I wasn’t trying to rush through this gargantuan RPG like I had a deadline to hit, but there I was at Moonrise Towers with my Penis C in my hands… my party of four squishy under levelled morons scrambling to fight a small army. I spent three hours in a death loop before retreating back to the drawing board.
Rather than fine-tuning a character from their looks to their class and skills, I picked Karlach for my new playthrough. A tall, fuming dommy mommy with an attitude. Sign me the fuck up. I’ve never played a barbarian before because, in any CRPG, I like to go all in on intelligence and charisma to smooth talk my way out of as many fights as possible. Hell, I practically played the first Fallout as a pacifist up until I convinced the final boss to kill himself.
After hitting play, I thought I’d be right back at the character menu within the hour to go with someone more my speed. Maybe a wizard or a smooth-talking knight, anything but a dumb brute who hits things really hard. I was so wrong. Within five minutes I found Shadowheart in her pod, begging for release. Last time I searched around and found a key, then toyed with the fleshy mechanisms next to her to break her out of captivity. With Karlach, I stubbornly yanked off the door with my bare hands, yelling in excitement as it came clean off its hinges.
Jump ahead and I’d yelled at pretty much anyone with ears. At the druid camp, their stand-in leader had imprisoned a kid and was planning to execute them as punishment for stealing a sacred idol. Where last time I used my persuasion to get under her skin and offer alternatives, here I simply yelled at the top of my lungs to let the kid go. The druid backed off and said something to the effect of, ‘Jeez, fine. Christ,’ like a scorned child. I did say Karlach was a dommy mommy.
Later, after getting into the goblin settlement, I made a B-line for the barn where you find a fuzzy guy shagging a big ogre woman. Last time, I used my sweet-talking bard skills to stop it from becoming an awkward altercation, claiming that his pounding would make for some top-notch smut back at Baldur’s Gate. I’m guessing they don’t have AO3 in fantasy land, though. This time I belched out a laugh and made fun of his “puny runting” and watched him awkwardly tuck his tail between his legs and scurry out.
As an introvert who hates getting in the way and would apologise to the waiter if I got the wrong order, playing as a loud-mouthed barbarian who simply yells “NOW” when they want something has been liberating. Is this what extroverted life is like? Not a care in the world, just stomping around like you own the place? Okay, it’s still not for me, but I’m living vicariously through Karlach and her charming way of scaring people shitless so they give her what she wants.