D&D General BG3 Massive Spoiler Thread

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

1) Karlach now (and at the time the quoted post was written) has more of an ending than literally any other character, and in fact, her ending kind of overrides a number of other endings, potentially. Yes this was patched in after fan response, but it's no more "unfinished" now than a number of other characters. Arguably now she can have one of the most positive endings vibe-wise, albeit one likely to feature strife and struggle.

2) Karlach has white-approximating facial features in her current version, and is played by a voice actor doing an accent - sort of in-between Received Pronunciation and Estuary - that is very much associated with white Londoners. The idea that she's "non-white" in some way that would cause her to be victimized by the writers because the voice actor isn't white - something that's quite hard to find out, note (it's not obvious from her appearance) - is not particularly convincing.

Agreed.

And Karlach had a better ending planned, but it was cut due to the developers not having enough time to implement it. Like how they cut an entire companion from the game due to not having enough time to implement her (Helia the Halfling Werewolf Bard). And it's possible that Larian could add some of the cut content in a Definitive Edition, like they did for Divinity: Original Sin 2. Not to mention the fact that Karlach has less quest content than most other companions because she was one of the last companions to be added to the game during development.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

And Karlach had a better ending planned, but it was cut due to the developers not having enough time to implement it.

Link?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Link?

Someone compiled a list of cut content on a now deleted reddit post, but it was copy-pasted here. Unfortunately, it just seems to list a lot of the cut content and not give evidence for it. So maybe it wasn't cut content, but there are parts in Act 3 that do point to some sort of planned happier ending for Karlach, like the fact that Enriched Infernal Iron can be looted in the Steel Watch Foundry, but it has no use like the other types of Infernal Iron do. I swore that I saw a quote from a Larian developer about Karlach having a happier ending, but I can't find it.

 

[Ogre Mage]

I've got Raphael's song stuck in my head. Please help.

Raphael's theme and Alfira's "Weeping Dawn" were my favorite musical moments in the game.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As an American, yes, she has an accent. I'm not sure if I could have identified it as precisely as Ruin Explorer did, but I agree with their analysis. Like someone who grew up in a context where you spoke RP to your elders and Cockney to your friends until the two kind of blended together. Her way of saying "soldier," for instance, is very Cockney, but many of her vowels are crisp and full, as opposed to the generally more bitten-off/clipped way Cockney accents are depicted.

No one speaks proper cockney these days. It's pretty much a dead accent apart from those who put it on for the grockles. That's why Oscar Isaac's Steven Grant accent in Moon Knight sounds fake.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No one speaks proper cockney these days. It's pretty much a dead accent apart from those who put it on for the grockles. That's why Oscar Isaac's Steven Grant accent in Moon Knight sounds fake.

This is true. It was dying when I was a kid, in the 1980s, and now there are almost no people who genuinely have a proper Cockney accent, because it's been overtaken by Estuary and Multicultural London English (aka Jafaican). There are still traces of it though in speech patterns, sounds, and word-choices. I remember when I was a teenager, hanging out, one of the girls said "I'm brassic" and everyone looked at her blankly, but I was like "I'll lend you a fiver mate", and her and I were both people who grew up in technically Cockney areas. But that was the 1990s, last time I heard the word "brassic" being used was on some appalling Sky TV show were it was clearly being used to be "exotic".

 

[RangerWickett]

Brassic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I had never heard this.

 

[Cadence]

Jaheira and Minsc have their own unique accents, deriving from the accents used in the original games. Ketheric obviously has an American accent, I would hesitate to place it personally because JK Simmons has a remarkable voice (and having been to Michigan, I don't think he sounds like he's from Michigan specifically!).

Cohhcarnage, who is from North Carolina, voices a character but I think I missed them.

Most of the other characters have British Isles accents, the vast majority being English accents and largely Received Pronunciation, but there are a few Scots, Welsh and Irish ones in there, possibly some other regional ones though I don't think heard any Brummie, Scouse, West Country or the like. Apart from Jaheira and Minsc, the only companion with a non-English accent is Halsin, who has a soft Welsh accent.

Minthara, Shadowheart, Astarion and Lae'zel all have pretty posh (upper middle class-ish) Received Pronunciation accents (albeit Lae'zel's heavy use of Gith interjections gives it a different feel), Wyll is sort of in-between, Gale sounds like Richard Ayoade on The IT Crowd, and then yeah Karlach has the most "normal" accent, like, middle-middle or lower-middle class Received Pronunciation with a hint of the regional (in her case, East London).

All the PC voices sound English though they vary a bit in implied class. It's a pity there are no Welsh, Scottish, Irish or even strong regional options imho, given there are four of them for femme and masc each.

As an aside, after seeing your post here and learning some terms I didn't know before, this came up in my Google News feed today:

Cockney and Queen’s English have all but disappeared among young people – here’s what’s replaced them

Accents are constantly changing.

theconversation.com

 

[Ogre Mage]

The discussion about the companions accents is interesting. As an American I am not as familiar with British accents as some here. But I did start wondering about how the companions accents match their class background (and I mean social class not D&D character class lol).

Astarion (a former magistrate), Gale (sage) and Wyll (former noble) come from posh backgrounds and their accents do sound like upper-middle class Brits. Not so far from the RP I might hear on BBC News.

Shadowheart also has an upper-middle class accent. While we know her parents are Selunites I don't think her class background is delved into. In Act 3, Shadowheart mentions that she enjoyed her training at the Church of Shar to infiltrate and adopt different identities. So I figure adopting upper-class mannerisms was either something she learned or was born into.

As a Githyanki, Lae'zel exists outside the typical magical medieval society class dynamic. So I won't comment on her.

Karlach's accent sounds distinct from the others. Although maybe I am influenced by the fact she seems to swear more than everyone else put together. She does mention that when she started working as a bodyguard for Gortash she was able to move her parents into a better neighborhood. So it sounds like she started lower-middle class and later became more comfortably off. Her accent does seem to reflect this as it sounds like a mix of Cockney and the more "proper" English the others speak.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Brassic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I had never heard this.

I think most modern TV is made for an international market, and therefore tends to steer clear of using dialect words. You will come across rhyming slang more in British TV and radio from the 60s and 70s. You could probably chart a graph of declining use of rhyming slang in Only Fools and Horses over its lengthy run.

This, in turn, contributes to the decline in dialects.