(Act 3 Orin spoilers) Plot holes

[Noctoculus]

The story seems to have been written by two different teams. One team really loved Throne of Bhaal and wanted it to be canon for BG3 and another team glossed over the story and didn't understand it.

Sarevok still being alive for example. Why? Is he a zombie or something? Did the PC from ToB unknowingly make him an immortal body? He was human.

You find a fresh "bhaalspawn" corpse in Orin's bedroom. What? Did one of them survive and completely contradict Bhaal's resurrection?

You find a book in Gortash's chambers that outlines Orin's ascent to Chosen. In the book, she kills a Bhaalspawn to do this, however... this turns out to be Sarevok's daughter. A character that WotC/Larian invented and has nothing to do with the Bhaalspawn saga.

Is there some debate over what a Bhaalspawn is? Because there shouldn't be. It's not genetic. They were children of Bhaal containing fragments of his Godly essence. That ended.

[Glorp's Biggest Fan]

The Second Sundering (which was like what 100 years after the events of BG1?) saw Bhaal (and other two dead three) get resurrected (with Bane coming out the strongest of the three). How Bhaal is resurrected is shown in the Murder in Baldur's Gate module for DnD. However, due to the nature of their resurrections, they resurrected in a "quasi-divine" status, which meant they are still mortals and can die again.

The whole point of Bhaalspawn was to act as a contingency in the case of his death. Given that Bhaal can now die a mortal death now, I think it would make sense that he would try and recreate that contingency again. I mean, it actually almost worked last time bar a particularly willful/determined Bhaalspawn. In fact, it did work out for him in the end, during the events of Murder in Baldurs Gate. In case you don't know, WotC has an official character that acted as the Bhaalspawn we the players played in the BG games.

Now whether that makes sense or not is up to you. Personally, I think it makes sense given the context of his resurrection.

You could say the Second Sundering was a soft-reboot of the DnD lore given almost all gods were resurrected in some way, shape, or form as well as lands previously lost being found again, etc.

[Noctoculus]

Originally posted by Nyeko:

Given that Bhaal can now die a mortal death now, I think it would make sense that he would try and recreate that contingency again.

I guess it's open to interpretation now. I think if any quasi-deity can spawn insurance kids then it opens a bag of lore worms. Why is Bhaal the only one doing it?

I think it's more likely WotC is conceptually bankrupt and rehashed stories make money.

[Glorp's Biggest Fan]

Originally posted by McReesington:

Originally posted by Mizu:

To have powerful minions that are easily controlled into doing his murderous bidding because their divine blessings include a poison pill that makes them lunatics who desire to do the kind of murderous things that advance Bhaal's agenda?

And yeah, seriously, this notion that 'gods can't interfere with mortals' seems kind of weird. How do clerics get granted their divine blessings if gods are allowed literally zero interference with mortals? There is clearly some sort of threshold of interaction that is considered reasonable and allowed otherwise why would mortals even bother praying to the gods for anything? Useless gods that can't touch the affairs of the world aren't going to have followers.

I mean if they wrote a story explaining all that maybe, but the Bhaalspawn were a specific thing for a specific purpose, not just some generic thing Bhaal does every so often: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnC_EjbE2ks&t=56s

Bhaal is functionally mortal again after his resurrection during the events of the Second Sundering. Do you not think it would make sense for him to create his contingency again with the Bhaalspawn given his mortal status? Especially since it actually worked out for him in the end? The whole point he made the Bhaalspawn originally is because he was going to die. It was a contingency.

[Morgian]

After some checking they did some retconning at edition changes. Someone could not leave it at the original ending, especially as it was an end. By the original lore there cannot be any Bhaalspawns around, but they changed a lot in 20 years.

[McReesington]

Originally posted by Nyeko:

Originally posted by McReesington:

I mean if they wrote a story explaining all that maybe, but the Bhaalspawn were a specific thing for a specific purpose, not just some generic thing Bhaal does every so often: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnC_EjbE2ks&t=56s

Bhaal is functionally mortal again after his resurrection during the events of the Second Sundering. Do you not think it would make sense for him to create his contingency again with the Bhaalspawn given his mortal status? Especially since it actually worked out for him in the end? The whole point he made the Bhaalspawn originally is because he was going to die. It was a contingency.

Is any of this stuff written into the game to explain it though? Or are these your head cannon explanations for some random thing Larian threw in there?

[Noctoculus]

Originally posted by Morgian:

After some checking they did some retconning at edition changes. Someone could not leave it at the original ending, especially as it was an end. By the original lore there cannot be any Bhaalspawns around, but they changed a lot in 20 years.

The original BG games were never considered canon though. The time of troubles and Bhaalspawn were canon, but they had their own ending that didn't involve ToB.

[Glorp's Biggest Fan]

Originally posted by Noctoculus:

Originally posted by Nyeko:

Given that Bhaal can now die a mortal death now, I think it would make sense that he would try and recreate that contingency again.

I guess it's open to interpretation now. I think if any quasi-deity can spawn insurance kids then it opens a bag of lore worms. Why is Bhaal the only one doing it?

I think it's more likely WotC is conceptually bankrupt and rehashed stories make money.

Possibly, but we don't know if the other gods are doing that too. If only Bhaal can do so, then I would agree. The ball is in WotCs court in that regard now. I personally it would be cool if the other gods of quasi-divine status saw what Bhaal did and decided they wanted a piece of that. If done right, it could introduce some interesting consequences.

[Glorp's Biggest Fan]

Originally posted by McReesington:

Originally posted by Nyeko:

Bhaal is functionally mortal again after his resurrection during the events of the Second Sundering. Do you not think it would make sense for him to create his contingency again with the Bhaalspawn given his mortal status? Especially since it actually worked out for him in the end? The whole point he made the Bhaalspawn originally is because he was going to die. It was a contingency.

Is any of this stuff written into the game to explain it though? Or are these your head cannon explanations for some random thing Larian threw in there?

This is from the official WotC lore: the DnD modules. There are books in the game that do briefly cover these events too. But they don't go into any specific detail, just a general overview.

[Noctoculus]

Originally posted by Nyeko:

If done right, it could introduce some interesting consequences.

BG3 was their chance to do that. Maybe the "definitive edition" will properly tie up the loose ends.

[Glorp's Biggest Fan]

Originally posted by Noctoculus:

Originally posted by Nyeko:

If done right, it could introduce some interesting consequences.

BG3 was their chance to do that. Maybe the "definitive edition" will properly tie up the loose ends.

I mean for DnD in general, not the Bhaalspawn saga. I personally think the plot suffered from having to juggle and stitch together the illithid plotline and dead three plotline. They should have chose one or the other.

[Glorp's Biggest Fan]

I really think WotC forced Larian's hand and had them try to include a more direct plot related to the BG saga, which is unfortunate.

[Noctoculus]

Originally posted by Nyeko:

Originally posted by Noctoculus:

BG3 was their chance to do that. Maybe the "definitive edition" will properly tie up the loose ends.

I mean for DnD in general, not the Bhaalspawn saga. I personally think the plot suffered from having to juggle and stitch together the illithid plotline and dead three plotline. They should have chose one or the other.

There's so many Shar/Selune references and plot points in the game that I think might be evidence of Larian's original vision for the main story. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they had to compromise that for WotC.

[Glorp's Biggest Fan]

Originally posted by McReesington:

Is any of this stuff written into the game to explain it though? Or are these your head cannon explanations for some random thing Larian threw in there?

I just realized I misunderstood your question. No, as far as I know, there is nothing in the game to suggest why Bhaal would create more Bhaalspawn after his resurrection. So yeah, I guess you could say it's headcanon. I don't see any other reason why he would do so. He has a very compelling reason to do so again given he's mortal again.

Like I said, I think the dead three plotline was added late into development, probably by pressure from WotC. You can tell very obviously in the game there are narrative conflicts between the two major plotlines.

[Glorp's Biggest Fan]

Originally posted by Noctoculus:

Originally posted by Nyeko:

I mean for DnD in general, not the Bhaalspawn saga. I personally think the plot suffered from having to juggle and stitch together the illithid plotline and dead three plotline. They should have chose one or the other.

There's so many Shar/Selune references and plot points in the game that I think might be evidence of Larian's original vision for the main story. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they had to compromise that for WotC.

For sure. I think Larian ultimately wanted to do an Illithid plotline with a Shar vs Selune subplot set in the Baldurs Gate region. But given the game takes place in Baldurs Gate, there might have been concern that fans would be upset/disappointed that there were no direct connections to the other games (specifically from WotC), hence the addition of the dead three plotline. However, the way they implemented it ultimately upset/disappointed fans anyway. There are also nuggets of that in EA from content like being able to choose one of the dead three as your diety (which was removed in the final release; likely due to plot reasons), and data-mined content (mostly from a guy called Chubblot).