Background and goals
After the emotional train wreck of my previous evil playthrough, I wanted to do one that was light and bubbly — so I decided to play as the terminally ill character!
For this playthrough, I added the goal of collecting all the teddy bears in the game. Partially because I need to give myself new goals to keep the game interesting, and partially because that seemed like a cute thing that Karlach would do. When you talk to her about her time in Hell, she mentions that she was so lonely that she adopted a pet rock named Crag. When she is available as a companion, her tent has a teddy bear named Clive in it. Unfortunately, in an Origin playthrough, you don’t have your own tent, so I couldn’t add Clive to the pile. There was also one teddy bear I felt bad taking from the sisters, so I left that one alone as well.
Total teddy bear collection otherwise? 13.
Playthrough 4 was my first Origin playthrough, meaning that you play as one of the Companion characters in the previous games. Karlach is by far my favorite of the companions, so it was not difficult to figure out who I’d play first. I didn’t really know how an origin playthrough works (do you still voice all your lines with everyone? Do you get pauses for additional internal monologue? Do you become voiceless like Link in the Zelda games?)
It’s different because obviously you don’t get to interact with her. While she does have her plot-important monologues (internally, because you ARE her), she has much fewer lines in general, and it just isn’t the same.
Pros
One thing that I have struggled with in previous playthroughs is the true role-playing aspect of it. It’s difficult for me to set aside what I know and fall fully into what my character knows, especially when I’m playing a character that is “me” in a sense. I think this is why my Evil playthrough hit me harder than normal. In this way, it was easier when I was playing Karlach, because there was already a framework for her behavior and reactions. It felt like my old fanfiction days, building on a world and magic system and characters that already existed. It was easier to say “yeah, Karlach would definitely do this” or to avoid certain characters that Real Angela would want to fight, but Karlach would probably live and let live.
One benefit of an Origin playthrough is being able to see her inner thoughts at times. We know from previous games that Karlach’s backstory is that she was betrayed by someone she trusted, sold into slavery to the archdevil Zariel, and had her physical anatomical heart ripped out of her and replaced by a devil engine that runs too hot to sustain itself. As a result, she has not been able to touch another living being for the past ten years, for fear of incinerating them. This has led her to an incredible sense of loneliness.
And, apparently, horniness.
One of those inner thought times is at the very beginning of the game, when Karlach lies down to go to sleep, and instead starts thinking about what (and who) she wants to do now that she is free. And oh man, Karlach is THIRSTY. She starts fantasizing about the different people that she’d touch now that she is able to, and writes erotica in her head before reality so rudely interrupts her (and us!)
There are also some interesting interactions with the other characters that you don’t see in banter otherwise. Normally, your companions only talk to each other when the party is out in the world bantering down the street, but there isn’t a way to have them talk to each other in camp, where we usually have downtime to talk to each companion. In my Tav games, everyone has a “poor Karlach” moment that they told me, but in this playthrough, it was quite nice to hear them have a longer interaction with her, expressing their condolences with some saying quite lovely things that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise.
Cons
There are also two incredibly emotional scenes for Karlach, and they both hit differently in an Origin playthrough. The first scene is when Dammon the blacksmith finally manages to build a new casing for her flaming heart, making her able to touch people for the first time. Karlach is understandably over the moon about it. In a Tav playthrough, you have the option to hug her or kiss her, depending on if you have been flirting with her. It’s the first touch she’s had in ten years. For some reason, in an Origin playthrough, there is no option to ask for a hug from one of your companions. They just stand there and stare at her, while I sat there screaming “someone touch me!” like an edgelord incel.
The second one is Karlach’s soliloquy. If you’ve played the game, you know exactly which one I mean. If you haven’t, you’ll know it as soon as you hear it. It is one of the best performances in the game, and in my completely unbiased opinion, freaking award-worthy across any media. I cried watching that scene the first few times. This playthrough was the first one that I didn’t, because while Karlach still says the main points, it is an internal monologue thinking to herself, and it just hits differently than her passionately emoting out loud.
Talking to NPCs also isn’t any different. I guess I was hoping that there’d be more options or they might have different dialogue than we would have with any other Tav, but they did not.
I think overall, I’d prefer having Karlach as a companion rather than being her.
Companions
Shadowheart was not in this game for long, because she was mean to Karlach last game, and while Karlach might be a forgiving sweetheart, Real Angela is not, and I’m still figuring out this role-playing thing. I’ve also always hated one of the confrontation scenes with Shadowheart early in the game, and oh, would you look at that, that misunderstanding ended up in her landing on my axe. What a shame. Oh well, into the body backpack with you.
I will say that Act 2 with all the shadow curses and light/darkness stuff is significantly more tolerable without Shadowheart yammering about Shar every ten seconds.
Astarion I had to keep with me because without having Karlach there as banter, he was my main go-to. He started off as a glamour bard, but then I got bored so I re-specced him as a dual archer. This was also the first game that I finally felt comfortable with pickpocketing vendors, much to my wallet’s sigh of relief.
Wyll I finally perfected as a machine gun eldritch blast sorlock – it’s not consistent but it’s a hell of an opening salvo. I still feel kind of bland about him as a character, but canonically, Karlach loves him, so I kept him with me due to my love of her.
Laezel was champion fighter – she did a lot of damage with superiority dice although they didn’t always succeed.
Minthara turned into my cleric/paladin, since I didn’t have Shadowheart, and she was fantastic at it. This will probably be my go-to build for her from now on.
Gale started as an abjuration bladesinger (because even my wizards melee!), but then as I got more scrolls to work with, courtesy of Astarion’s light fingers, he went back into evocation. The benefit to having all those scrolls is that I felt comfortable trying spells I hadn’t before, because it wasn’t “wasting spell slots” anymore. This meant I got to try spells I had never even taken before, and led to some new strategies that I otherwise wouldn’t have done, because why not just cast a Fireball? It was fun to use globes of invulnerability and walls of stone to corral enemies. Would I do this again in a playthrough where I didn’t have enough scrolls to rebuild the library of Alexandria? Probably not.
Romance
Romance in this playthrough is different because Karlach, due to the above trauma, cannot be touched for the first half of the game, so it’s difficult for others to initiate romances. In fact, in one of the first long rests after she is able to touch people, Lae’zel suddenly shows up at the bedroll and declares her passion for me. In regular playthroughs, Lae’zel makes her intentions known to the Tav very early on, but in this one, it comes out of nowhere. Unfortunately for Karlach, I don’t react well when startled awake, and I turned our favorite githyanki down without much thought or tact.
My plan for this playthrough was to romance Gale, the erudite wizard that Bill had romanced the last time. I wanted to see his romance for myself, but my intentions are not entirely altruistic — one version of Gale can actually help Karlach with her engine problem. As it turns out, this version of Gale is the opposite of the one that I had eavesdropped on in 2/14.5, so it did feel like it was unfolding in a genuine ‘fresh’ way for me.
Unfortunately, Gale is one of the companions that is VERY not okay with poly, and in fact, makes a dramatic threat if you bring up the option.
Which means that this is the first playthrough so far that I have not romanced Halsin. Despite my efforts to not flirt with him (I tried, I swear!), he did confess his feelings, and I had to gently shut him down. He takes it very graciously, in fact, much more so than I did.
Since we are talking about romances that can’t happen, I really want there to be an alternate universe where Karlach can romance Dammon, the tiefling smith that helps her with the two “upgrades” to her heart. He’s an absolute sweetheart, he geeks out over the infernal technology, and he comes up with the solution that allows her to touch people for the first time in ten years. Come on. The fanfiction nearly writes itself!
In fact, in that scene where NO ONE in my party will touch this starved woman, Dammon is the one that reaches out and holds her hand. There’s definite chemistry there, and then he gets shy and turns away.
In a later scene, he says to her, “In another life, I would have liked to… well, it doesn’t matter now.”
YES IT DOES, DAMMON, FINISH THE SENTENCE!
Ending
So we know that Karlach’s big struggle is her dying heart, and we as players try desperately to save her life. One of the ways to save her involves Gale doing something for her. That was the entire point of romancing him this playthrough. And to see what a romance with the chatty sweetie-pie is like. But 80/20.
My Karlach made several choices to support him in the path he was growing on, maybe to the point that it wasn’t quite canon-accurate. Gale is quick to declare his interest — he might actually be the easiest character to romance. He’s sweet and articulate, sometimes a little overly so. He has a flying cat and a huge home library, which are definite selling points. I even got sexy scenes that Bill had never gotten. Things seemed like they were going well.
And then?
And then.
Something that must been the mother of all bugs happened and wrecked everything. I did everything correctly, but at the point that Gale is supposed to decide to help Karlach, my Gale basically said “oh noooo, sorry, well, thoughts and prayers”
EXCUSE ME?!
I busted my hump making sure that you succeeded, and once you got up there, you pull the ladder up behind you?
Guess who’s going in the body backpack next game?
To add insult to injury, he wasn’t even there to comfort my Karlach when she died (I hadn’t gone with any of the other ways to save her, since I thought this one would work). He was off dicking around somewhere playing with his toys. You know who was there in my last moments?
I understand that this was a bug but oh man, am I still mad at Gale and probably will be for a while.
Takeaway
Ultimately, would I play another Origin playthrough? I don’t think you gain enough by being able to play as one of the companions to make up for not having them there to interact with. There are definitely some selling points, but it’s the small moments that are the positive, not the large ones. Only if it wasn’t the primary goal.
In fact, my next playthrough has the goals:
- Romance Lae’zel
- Try tactician mode without any mods at all
- Choose the “stand by and watch what happens” options
None of these require a specific Tav or even a build, and I was struggling to figure out what would be a new and useful main character, so I figured I would play as Origin Astarion. This has the added benefit of
- I will be playing the sneaky rogue, so I won’t need to have him there separately, saving a party member slot
- Not having to deal with the asshole nature of Ascended Astarion
- He’s most likely to choose not getting involved, and in fact, gives you disapproval when you do.
I love Karlach, but I’d rather have her with me than to be her. I will most likely need to have her anyway because she and Astarion have the best comments, and if he’s going to be my next Origin character, I’m going to need someone there to make me laugh.