Early this morning, around 4:30 am, I beat Baldur’s Gate 3.
And I am happy with the ending. I beat the Elder Brain known as the Absolute and saved all of the titular city of Baldur’s Gate, and probably everyone else in Faerun, from her cruel and selfish mind control.
Well, the voice was female and she is referred to as female throughout the game. It’s not like she had a giant vulva or anything.
SPOILER WARNING : From here on in, I will be discussing the end-game portion of Baldur’s Gate 3 in some detail, so if you plan on playing the game yourself and don’t want the end spoiled, spin on.
Unfortunately, in order to beat the Mother Brain I felt I had to take the final step and become an illithid (or Mind Flayer) myself.
Looking back, it might not have been strictly necessary. I didn’t use any of my cool illithid powers in the final battle, after all. Just my awe-inspiring sorcery.
And the final battle was suitably epic and difficult and lengthy to be the climax of a very long and detailed (and well written) game, without being too crazy about it and making me want to beat my head against the wall in frustration.
In fact, throughout the game, I found the challenge level to be about right for me. Not so high as to destroy all hope but hard enough to make me have to really think about how to go about certain battles and trying various tactics till I found one that worked.
And I enjoyed that.
I beat the Mother Brain on around the fifth or sixth try. There were a lot of problems to overcome (including a full sized freakin’ dragon) and I had to figure out how best to use my newly acquired “summon allies” ability.
See, one of the neato things about the game is that as you adventure, you help people (or at least, I do, because hero) and in return, they promise that you can call on them when the time comes for you to fight the final fight.
And you can! And I never would have won against the Mother Brain without them.
After all, someone had to keep that freakin’ dragon busy while I did the thing with the thing to make her vulnerable.
All that work (including starting the whole fight over once) really paid off though, because in that last, successful run I completely kicked ass.
My people and I deployed our allies to keep the various Mother Brain minions off my ass while I cast the necessary spell.
The final obstacle to beating her once I gained entry into her inner sanctum had been the fact that when I damaged her there, she unleashed a “brainquake” that that damaged me in return.
So this time, I made sure to save my ability to cast a single sixth level spell until I got to her, then cast Globe of Invulnerability on myself so I could fry her ass with my lightning spells with impunity.
That felt pretty darn good. I was very proud of myself for pulling that off.
And of course, after going through the ending cutscenes et al, I did what I always do these days and immediately started another playthrough.
It’s how I deal with my tendency towards post-victory depression. And it works.
I debated having my new character be a necromancer. Having an ever-growing army of of the undead sounds like a lot of fun.
But I decided that was too similar to being a sorcerer like my previous character, so I opted to be my other default character type, an archer/sharpshooter.
Dunno why I love playing those, but my Moon sign is Sagittarius, which is the sign of the Archer, so…. ?
Dunno how long my second playthrough will last. Rarely do I end up going though the entire game again, though it’s been known to happen with really good games.
There is still one thing in the first playthrough I might do, though. At the end, you are given a choice : destroy the Mother Brain, or enslave her to and conquer the world.
I, of course, chose to destroy her.
But I must admit, I am kinda curious about the other ending….
More after the break.
Mood plus one, plus one
Feeling a bit better lately. A bit more chipper and positive and optimistic.
I think it’s because I’m on an upswing after a low point. Yesterday morning I had one of my moments when all my frustration and disappointment and impotent rage and untapped energy reaches a crescendo and I feel like screaming my head off.
And for many, many years, I feared and dreaded these moments because they were very painful and scary and really made me feel like I was going insane.
But now I relish them because I have finally learned to take that energy surge and focus on the iceberg around my heart like a laser beam and get some serious melting done.
My other image of this process is of my using the energy to pry open the jaws of my depression and push them off myself.
Like I am forcing my heart to finally open the hell up.
Either way, it works. And I hope to learn to do this miracle of redirection all the time and not just during these rare surges.
Any time I am feeling frustrated or bored or hopeless, I will take that energy and turn it on the blockages in my spirit that are cutting off my life energy like I have a bad case of arteriosclerosis of the soul.
Hopefully, if I keep blasting away, I will open up the channels within me and my life force will flow to all the areas it needs to go and I will finally be truly alive.
Possibly for the first time in my life.
And I am making myself ready for it. I am opening my mind as much as I can in order to make it ready to accept and embrace the higher level of stimulation that being truly alive represents, and to hell with what my Trog has to say about it.
He is on his way out anyhow. I am chasing him out of every corner of my mind where I find him and sealing the doors behind him as I go.
He’s old news. Bad news. And I don’t need him any more.
Maybe I never did.
Either way, motherfucker has got to go.
So consider this your eviction notice, you whiny little wimp.
We are moving up, so you are moving OUT.
So fuck you forever.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.