Larian And/Or WotC Destroyed Viconia DeVir

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Why absolutely retcon and destroy one of the best original characters. Like what is this crap they did with her.

An absolute fan favorite over 2 games and 2 expansions. Who had 2 epilogue stories after Bhaal and neither of those stories is represented in bg3.

Why even use her character in the game at that point.

Yet this game is praised for it's fantastic writing. I'm not buying what you're selling.

[b0rm4nn]

Ok.

[DrZann]

I'm sorry this happened to you.

[Tomas Mac Mordain]

Gen z don't know what you're talking about. They never went through Viconia's arcs...

[Sterling]

It's not a retcon if a character who was evil, to begin with apart from an optional romance route with her in BG1-2 turns out to be just as evil 100 years later.

[b0rm4nn]

Originally posted by Tomas Mac Mordain:

Gen z don't know what you're talking about. They never went through Viconia's arcs...

Epic boomer moment.

[Яeplicant]

Doesn't matter what epilogues she had in the games, they probably went with the novel canon anyway.

[Glyph]

Who kept Viconia around in BG1 and 2? Waste of space lol

[Sterling]

Originally posted by Яeplicant:

Doesn't matter what epilogues she had in the games, they probably went with the novel canon anyway.

She does not exist in the novels. The 5E/Bg3 canon is a middle-ground between novels and games. The Charname is Abdel Adrian, but the story is more aligned to games, since the only followers who existed in the novels are Imoen, Khalid and Jaheira and they were all dead by the end of the TOB novel.
Nowadays most of the BG 1 cast (but sadly not BG2 ones) exist in 5e Canon.

[DrZann]

Right! Who would have thought a woman who killed three of her husbands for fun would be evil? That came right out of left field.

[Thorley23]

Originally posted by JimmysTheBestCop:

Why absolutely retcon and destroy one of the best original characters. Like what is this crap they did with her.

An absolute fan favorite over 2 games and 2 expansions. Who had 2 epilogue stories after Bhaal and neither of those stories is represented in bg3.

Why even use her character in the game at that point.

Yet this game is praised for it's fantastic writing. I'm not buying what you're selling.

I will be the first to tell you this game has a writing problem. That said how they handled Minsc struck me as being more ham handed than this. They have some good ideas, but REALLY need to hire some lore people, I mean some of the FR writers must be out there to help, and it shouldn't be a lot to ask that they actually play the original games first and read the source material that inspired or spun off of them before putting pen to paper so to speak.

The situation with Viconia is a lot less touchy than with Minsc because while Minsc is a major part of certain things, and had a ton of spin off material, and very clear origins, Viconia was a lot more spotty given her evil alignment and she was one of those NPCs who was never guaranteed to either survive or join the party right from her introduction. What's more any kind of relationship with her required some very counter-intuitive behavior from the rest of the game.

See with Minsc he pretty much walks up at one point and goes "Yo, I'm joining the party, let's go rescue my mistress" and unless you don't rescue Dynaheir for some reason your likely to wind up with these two in your party for the rest of the game unless your character is a dedicated front liner or pure mage as they are simply put the two most tuned characters for what they do in the game. In BG 2 he again walks up and joins you in the intro, Dynaheir is dead, but that's mostly because Imoen is now a mage and far more plot-centric. Since she does what Dynaheir did, she was sort of uh, retired, which also removed the problematic issue with Minsc basically being her moron slaveboy.

Given this situation just putting Viconia in the game somewhere is a fair enough nod, it's not like she has enough of a canonical role in the overall narrative that she inserts herself into where she's important as unlike Minsc she is entirely optional and it's unclear if she lives, dies, or even joins the party. Also Minsc has very specific characterization and while he's pretty much meathead muscle, he makes people chuckle, so he's appeared in various Forgotten Realms material such as that FR Idle Clicker game, and the Neverwinter MMO by Cryptic. That's why I, and many others, noticed him being mishandled more.

[Sterling]

Originally posted by Thorley23:

so he's appeared in various Forgotten Realms material such as that FR Idle Clicker game, and the Neverwinter MMO by Cryptic. That's why I, and many others, noticed him being mishandled more.

Viconia did appear in a ton of spin-off materials lately, including the Idle champions game, MTG crossover and the 5E books. Just google it. Minsc was the first to get attention, but now WoTC apply it to a lot of Baldur's gate 1 cast.
Basically the only difference Minsc makes is that he has the awful comic series about him.

[Mizu]

I don't really like how the used her, but her presentation in the story isn't that much different from the her non-romanced epilogue. You even find some jewels she was rewarded for helping save an elf city as a reference to the events in the epilogue.

https://youtu.be/pIeB4QJ3h4A

All that changed is that she destroyed her Waterdeep cult because Shar commanded her to and we now know that she went and founded a new cult under Baldur's Gate instead of her fate being unknown.

[Shark]

I hear you bro. She was my favorite, too. I did find this petition on Change.org and signed up for it. Not that they can change the game now that it's already released, but maybe with enough eyes on it they can fix things in a sequel somehow.

https://www.change.org/p/request-larian-studios-to-remove-viconia-devir-from-baldur-s-gate-3