The Morality of The Emperor | Baldur's Gate 3 | Character Analysis

what is going on everybody it's me Roku back with some more content in this video we're going to talk about the emperor from Ballers Gate 3 the emperor is in my opinion one of the best Ring characters in the entire game he's also a character who's a common conversation Topic in discussions about the game because basically speaking your interactions with the guy can vary wildly I myself played a route where I kind of went along with the shenanigans and once I was done with the game I was honestly pretty happy about the way he treated us I kind of like the guy then I talk to my friend and he tells me of like what a huge deag the emperor is and how he's just this evil manipulator this got me to go down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos Reddit threads and also Wiki pages and honestly as a whole sunk cost fallacy kind of thing I'm deciding to use all that time and wasted on it to make a YouTube video so is the Emperor a good guy or a bad guy where does he belong on this handy dandy moral alignment chart that's what we're going to talk about in this video what makes it so difficult to get an accurate read of the emperor in a single playthrough is that he's never really completely upfront with you about information there not to say that he lies to you but he basically never tells you the whole truth unless you kind of find it out for yourself also as mentioned before depending on whether or not you antagonize him throughout the game his inous video can vary wildly what we're going to do in this video is cover every single major Story action of the emperor with as much context as we can possibly give it this way we can get a nice fair and an accurate reading of the character I hope this is obvious by this point but this video is going to contain lots of spoilers so only continue with the video If you a have already beaten the game or B don't really care and want to get spoiled anyway before we get into some of the more specific actions let's discuss one critical point that trips a lot of people up into think that is automatically evil and that is that the emperor is a mind flare this basically gets a lot of people to automatically go against them because in the world of DN mind flares are essentially just straight up evil and they're often times used as the main baddies in a lot of D andd campaigns the Mind flares are a race of super logical squid-like creatures with very strong psychic powers their entire goal as a species is to essentially turn every single other humanoid creature into a mind flare to create more of themselves this is the grand plan which is basically just turning everyone else into a mind flare given this fact when finding out that the emperor is a mind flare it makes a lot of sense that a lot of players's gut reaction is to find a way to kill him or at the very least go against his will in my opinion going into the game thinking like this is going to give you quite an unfair view of the emperor and the other mind flers in the game because essentially speaking there is nothing the emperor could do or say to convince a mind flare hater that he is like a good character individual mind flares can actually be different to their whole evil archetype with the biggest example in the game being amum omum is an insanely chill dude that you first meet in the underd dark the guy will try his best to cure you and he's actually a member of the Society of Brilliance so he hangs around with and gets along with a lot of people and his kind of character defining moment that makes it clear that he's a good guy is in act three where if you didn't give lady Esther the GI egg he'd be alive and trapped in the iron thrm prison when you get to the prison omum tries his best to help you with information to rescue Duke ravenguard and does all this without expecting to be saved himself he knows that this is his one shot at being free but he also knows that the Duke is more important than him so he basically tells you outright to not waste time on him and then just to go and save the Duke and when you do actually rescue him he's just like pleasantly surprised these are not the actions of some evil mind flare out to control everyone but rather the actions of an individual so while the Mind flares whove broken free of the Elder brains control do keep some of their mind flare qualities in that they're kind of logical and a bit not too emotional they do have the capability to act as an individual with their own unique personality traits so therefore I invite you to be a little bit more open-minded as in the video we're going to treat the emperor like an individual and judge him based on his actions and intentions the first thing that the emperor does in the game at least in our story is that he saves our and our companions' lives at the beginning of the game you and your companions have to escape the naate ship after being Tad pulled on your adventure you can go around and ask a couple of knowledgeable characters on the whole C morphosis situation when you're characters and it's basically clear that your own tadpoles are very special your tadpoles are protected by some sort of weird magic that stops you from transforming into an actual mind flare that magic also gives you the powers of the tadpole without the negative consequences thereby making you more powerful it is confirmed later on into the story that the emperor is using orpheus's magic to protect you and your entire Squad so from a player perspective the emperor has done us a huge favor at the start of the story but we can't just chalk the up to a purely Good Deed because the emperor isn't some dude to go around picking flowers and saving people the emperor's reasoning for saving you and your gang can be argued to be entirely self-serving basically speaking the emperor's main goal is to defeat the Elder brain but he cannot do this alone because he's trapped within the artifact the emperor has to keep orus under captivity because if orus gains Freedom then he will fall back under the control of the Elder brain and also your entire gang will turn to mind flares and you'll also fall under the control of the Elder brain but you know the emperor has made a specific plan to defeat the Elder brain as efficiently as possible and he needs you guys to act as his agents out in the Overworld so he tells you to gather nether Stones he Buffs you up with your tle powers and also tells you to get away from dangerous people like the gith yanii now mind you this doesn't really take away from the fact that he Sav your life because I mean I don't know about you guys but if someone saved my life I wouldn't care why they did it what it does do is that it adds a strong base of context to his decision making a big thing about the emperor is that almost all of his actions can be attributed to him wanting to survive he will do anything to live and that is a huge part of his character he manipulates you into trusting him and generally just lies to you this point is pretty major because up until act three we don't even find out that the emperor is actually a mind flare in act 1 and 2 he basically just interacts with us in his dream visitor form and contacts us in our sleep to give us like some Exposition dump about the Tad pills or something now the reason why I use the word lie in quotations is because if you go back and analyze every single one of his lines he'll very rarely just straight up lie to you but what he does do instead is emit the truth he'll never give you like the full picture of what is happening he'll just tell you the Bare Bones of what you need to know to go along with this plan now his intention here is to clearly manipulate you but whether you take it as manipulation depends entire entirely on your character at this point in the story The Emperor hasn't exactly wronged you at all I mean sure he's lying to you and manipulating you but one he's saved your life two who's giving you tadpole powers and three he's basically our only way of getting rid of the tadpoles so for playing a more blunt upfront honest kind of hey this dude saved my life so the least I can do is at least hear him out as to what I should do then it's less manipulation and more just you working together with him if we look at things from his perspective it could very easily be argued that he did what he had to do to get you to align with him the emperor is clearly a mind flare and he knows that the normal humano reaction to a mind flare is outright hostility this is doubly the case for you and your squad because you guys just got infected and abducted by mine flares if he tells you the truth from the get-go he risks your squad at best ignoring him in his plan or at worst seeking to outright destroy him and he is not not exactly a stranger to hiding the fact that he's a mind flare as that's how he's lived his life the whole time he was free from the Elder brain the best option for his survival is to drip feed you information as you go along and ease you into the fact that he's a mind flayer you can't really chalk this up to him being good or evil because it's simply the most logical choice for him to make he found out about your character and found out the best way to make his case to get you to join him he didn't lie for some evil malicious reason he lied because he had had to and also once you do eventually find out that he's a mind flare he doesn't try to obscure it or deny it he's just pretty upfront about it this is kind of how we get the emperor to Spill the rest of the story throughout the game because he basically only tells you the bare minimum of what you need to know so you got to go out in the world and find out more of the truth and then if you confront him with that truth he then gives you the rest of the story and a point can be made that from a hyper logical perspective you don't really need to know all this other information you basically just need to know that bar minimum he gives you to confront the Elder brain we learn the most about the Emperor as we get into act three because one he actually lived in Boulder's Gat so we can kind of see the remains of his actions and two he plays a big part in the story of the game so it makes sense that as it reaches conclusion he plays a bigger part the first point to make about the emperor is that he used to be balran now balran is this legendary Adventurer who's actually the founder of Boulder's Gate get it Balan Boulder huh now the morality of balran himself is a little bit more difficult for us to determine because we never actually get to meet him or even see him in game outside of Visions from what we can gather through his tales and stories is that he is an arguably neutral adventurer who is incredibly ambitious someone who can't just stay in one place and do nothing he has to Adventure find things and get richer now a clear distinction to make is that the emperor is not Balan what we know about mind flares is that the second the transformation is complete the soul of the original person leaves that body the original person is no longer there the Mind flare is basically just a copy of the person that it used to be so while the emperor isn't balran he has balan's memories his thoughts and some of his personality traits all this ties into the first action of the emperor that we're going to get into in act three which is the killing of answer now throughout his life balran had a very close bond with a dragon named aner aner upon learning that he was infected tried everything he could to help balran out to no avail it was at this point where balram basically told aner to fly free and just leave him to become a mind flare now answer couldn't take no for an answer so he tried to kill balran in his sleep to stop the ceremorphosis and this led to a battle while balran slay answerer now morality wise this can be very easily attributed to self-defense B was just defending himself in this situation but the more important thing here is that the emperor has actually kept some of the personality traits of balran because number one like balran the emperor will do whatever it takes to survive including killing his lifelong best friend and number two he can't just sit around and live a quiet life the emperor like balran is very ambitious he is someone who wants to get stuff done and is characterized as being quite Restless if he's just kind of chilling around this ties in to our next case the enthralling of duke stalman duke stalman and what happened to her is often times used as the Silver Bullet on Reddit to basically disregard the Emperor as just being straight up evil this is at the point where we're going to get into the more day-to-day life of the emperor in Boulder's Gate because he wasn't just sitting in the sewers and gnawing on ball followers the emperor Upon returning from being tentacled up led a life of power acting as some sort of behind the scenes Puppet Master he he formed a partnership with Duke stalman and basically controlled the Knights of the shield the biggest Merchant operation in all of Boulder's Gate Duke staline was also one of the Council of four which is the main governing body of the city now the word partnership is doing some leg work here because the emperor had completely enthralled Duke stelman he also ate the brains of criminals to survive because you know he's a mind flare man's got to eat now on paper these acts are clearly evil so we got to add a bit more context here first off the criminal brain thing is more understandable because he had to do that to survive mind flares have to numb num num on brains to survive and praying on hard eared criminals is i' say the least painful way of doing that now I'm not saying that criminals deserve to have their brains eaten or whatever but let's just say that in the world of DN your average criminal is probably going to be a lot worse than like a normal criminal like the possibility for what you can do to other people is way worse in DND D not to mention how the emperor doesn't really need like a trial or whatever because he can literally just read the guy's mind and determine if he's guilty or not now the whole enthralling staline part is where things get a little bit dicey this is the part that's a little bit speculative because we don't really have all the details here we don't really know the exact kind of influence the emperor had on the city a good one or a bad one given that he only ate the brains of criminals and that he actually built the city himself You could argue that he on some level cares about older's gate so you could imagine that his decision- making would be at least a little beneficial to the city but we don't really know this for sure the best thing we could assume here is for him to stay true to his character in that he wants to be powerful and that he wants to survive the reason why he enthralled Duke stain can also be chocked up to this as well now we don't really know exactly when he enthralled her but I think what makes the most sense is that the second she found out that he was a mind flare he instantly took control of her now if we look at things from his perspective the game is essentially over for Morality the second stal M found out about him being a mind flare because as a normal rational human she would stop at nothing to eliminate this mind flare threat option number one would be to straight up kill her which while it is the way we as players solve the vast majority of our problems in this specific political situation the emperor does not want to attract more attention and not to mention how her successor could be even more harsh on the emperor option two is just to leave the city which brings a whole of whole other issues because like number one where would he even go right where else would he find safety number two it'll be more difficult for him to make the journey as there are lots of anti- mindf flare gith Yankee along the way and number three it's probably way easier to keep yourself disguised as a mind flare within the city because the city is home to all sorts of creatures and freaks whereas out on the road people might be a little bit more suspicious and all this doesn't really get into the fact that it will be way more difficult for him to find brains to eat because in Border's gate he can kind of be picky with his choice and only eat the bad people but out on the road or in some smaller town he might be forced to eat some good people and then just do an actual evil act I'm not saying eating the brains of criminals is good but it's the least bad option given that he has to do it these two options are clearly not good for the emperor so the best logical move for him is to enthrall her this is the safest way for him to continue living in Boulder's Gate and this isn't me saying that enth her is a good action but more so something he just did out of necessity he did it to ensure his own Survival and way of life you could argue that as a mind flare he should have never sought out a life of power because at some point he would have to do evil actions like enthralling Duke stelman but honestly does that really make him any different to like normal people in power because last I checked there is nobody with any real amount of power who also has a completely clean moral streak as a person in power you'll inevitably to make some bad tough decisions because of some ends justifies the mean situation now the emperor being a hyper logical mindreading intellect is probably way better at decision-making than just normal regular humans now is his Effectiveness as a decision maker worth it in exchange for his transgressions all of which are out of sheer necessity because he's a mind flare I won't really go too deep into this point because it kind of depends on your personal worldview but bottom line is the Emperor did some evil things things out of necessity to keep his survival and his way of life and if you are a in the grand scheme of things kind of guy you might think that it's actually a good thing to have someone like the emperor in the room when making these big decisions the emperor is a hyper logical mind flare which lets him very easily eliminate terrible and emotional decisions and if you know any amount of History you know that if the people in power make terrible and emotional decisions it can lead to horrifying consequences a funny point that I want to make make is that a lot of people trigger the cut scene where he tells you that he enth Duke stelman and use it as like see I told you he's the evil mind flare kind of moment let's try to add more context to this and see things from the emperor's perspective basically speaking the cut scene in which he tells you this is the cut scene where he's willing to get down with you one thing that is very important to the emperor's character is that he sees himself as a free individual being he's not just another mind flare he's his own personality at this point he's been under the control of the Elder brain for God knows how long so he finally gets someone to connect to and to get him to admit to all this you essentially have to insult him in the worst way possible in his most vulnerable moment and honestly him going like oh you're just a Mindless thr you're just a little puppet yeah like him doing all that is so humanizing because at this point he's just trying to spit whatever Venom he can at you to make you feel bad for making him feel bad this next point is relatively simple he doesn't force you to become a mind flare now I'm only bringing this up because in some Reddit conversations you have people bringing this up as like a negative part of The Emperor's character and also because it adds some characterization to who he is although the emperor heavily recommends you become a mind flare at no point does he actually force you to go through with it if you have never used any of the Tad Poes throughout your adventure when he gives you the special tadpull all you got to do is saying no at that point he basically just makes a snarky comment and drops the subject entirely though if you have used tadpoles before I'm pretty sure you have to roll like a saving throw or something but I think that's more so your own tadpole power taking over your body rather than the emperor doing anything now I might dislike how heavy-handed he is in his recommendation but keep in mind that this dude has been alone for basically his entire existence as a mind flare so from his perspective you really would want like a likeminded nether brain free mind flare as a little buddy now wouldn't you and also from his perspective being a mind flare was a good thing for him because he got smarter and way more powerful so from his perspective he's basically just recommending for you to evolve as well again this isn't really a good or a bad thing it's just something aside from his dealings with Duke staline the other case where people dislike the emperor is his dealings with orus for context the githyanki used to be a slave race of the Mind flares who then Broke Free and vowed to essentially wipe out all mind flares from existence the person who led the githyanki Rebellion is called gith the mother of all githyanki get it gith githyanki orus is the son of gith so he's very powerful and M has basically used his power to defend himself and us from the Elder brains control if you go and get the orphic hammer you are now capable of breaking Orphus free yourself now the emperor doesn't like this one bit and the second you tell him that you're actually going to free orus he immediately just dips like he doesn't give you a moment to sort of make your case he doesn't let you convince him that you can kind of work together with orus he immediately leaves the prison and gets back under the control of the Elder brain the fact that he leaves like this is so jarring gameplay-wise because in every single other situation like this you can at least get a word in but he basically just he says his piece and just leaves instantly although this might seem weird or out of character we have to remind ourselves the two main personality traits of the emperor he likes being an individual but above all he'll do whatever it takes to survive the emperor has kept Orphus captive his whole time and used his power for his own means and orus isn't really some sort of open-minded chill guy he is an oldfashioned mind Flur killing gith yane chances are orus would try to kill the emperor immediately after your freedom or at the very least after you guys are done dealing with the nether brain there is no way where orus would let this mind flare who had entrapped him this whole time go around being free and just living his life now orus would just shut that down in a single second as fast as he could he also can't trust you to protect him from orus because by this point in the story freeing orus isn't really the best logical move to make if your goal is to destroy the nether brain our choices at this point are option A which is to work with the Mind flare who's been completely and utterly focused on eliminating the nether brain up until this point who had done some questionable evil things out of sheer necessity to survive who also let's remind ourselves is the only reason we're alive right now straight up is the only reason why this adventure even exists and option b is to free this bloodthirsty space murderer whose entire existence is dedicated to killing mind flares and people infected with tadpoles like you given that you would make such an illogical counterintuitive choice you are no longer on the emperor's side so to preserve his own Survival the emperor has to join the nether brain because if he doesn't he dies either right now or at some point down the line to orus by joining the nether brain the emperor gets to live on and he's not like a normal mind flare in that his sense of individuality is stronger than most he has already broken free from the control of the nether brain twice before which means that the chances of him doing it again are more likely than orus letting him live also as a side point A lot of people are under the impression that the githyanki are only bad and evil because of laith in that she's like this evil oppressive ruler who forces them to be bad and orus is like this legendary savior prince who will set them free to be righteous and heroic but like this is so not the case at all the ganki are completely evil in DN D with them killing mind flares being their literally like only saving grace basically speaking gith his mother and the founder of the gith Yankee had a grand plan for all the gith Yankee where step one wipe out all the Mind flares and step two genocide and enslave literally every single other race orus an admin follower with his mother's ideology would do just that after he takes control siding with orus and let him go free is possibly one of the most destructive things you can do within balers Gate 3 I know this is beyond the scope of the video but the best thing you can do to preserve lives in the world of balers gate is essentially side with orus but force him to turn into a mind flare and then kill him at the end so that you can have Lazelle lead the revolution this way the revolution isn't led by some blood crazy genocidal space warlord and it's instead led by Lazelle who can actually instill some good changes within the gith Yankee it's lowkey ashamed that we didn't see any GI zerai in the game but you know the game already has a lot of content as is the last point we're going to talk talk about is the fact that he follows through on his word and destroys the nether brain in the ending of the game it becomes abundantly clear that you need a mind flare to destroy the nether brain this means that if you side with the emperor you have to trust him with the nether Stones this in my opinion is the most character defining moment for the emperor because once you give him the nether stones and fight your way to the brain he can very easily just take control of the entire mindf flare Army and continue The Invasion the emperor doesn't do that though he kills the nether brain he stops the Mind flare Invasion and cures your entire party of your tadpoles when all of said and done he says his goodbyes and goes off to live his normal life this is because deep down the emperor has no aspirations or grand plans to be evil or to rule over others he's not some mustache or rather tentacle twirling villain out to destroy people and be malicious however while him staying true to his word and killing the nether brain is an amazing ly good action we can't quite give him moral brownie points because of his intentions he didn't do it because he wanted to save everyone he did it because he just wanted to live his life if the situation was a bit different in that for him to ensure his survival and his way of life he had to allow the nether brain to kill everyone in Boulder's Gate he would do it without a second thought what we can read from the situation is that the only reason he did the right thing is because in this one case the right thing aligned with his personal goals at the end of the day the emperor is and always will be a mind flare but that alone isn't necessarily A Bad Thing from the way he acts the emperor just wants to live his life as a mind flare and he's willing to do anything both good and bad to Ure that his life goes on first off there is no world where the emperor qualifies as being straight up evil he doesn't go around wanting to hurt kill or oppress other people and in the cases where he has done these things it is out of sheer necessity City he had no other choice or else he would die but on the other end of that coin it is quite difficult to classify him as a good character I guess if you look at things from a sheer utilitarian perspective he is a good guy because one he saves you guys' lives two he kills criminals and three he did just help save the entire city but he didn't do that to be some sort of hero he didn't do that to save lives he did it for himself he did it all to protect his own life I'm very sorry if you wanted a more conclusive as answer to this question because that kind of answer simply just does not exist if you are an ends justify the means type person in that you think small actions that are bad here and there are necessary to build up a better future then he's definitely a good character in your eyes on the other hand if you're the kind of person to think that no amount of good can wipe away evil deeds and that you must be held accountable to every single bad thing you do then the Mind flare is an evil character in my opinion the most reasonable take is that the emperor is a true neutral being with him somewhat leaning towards being more lawful and that's only because he's a mind player who likes logic and you know chaos goes against logic but yeah all right guys this is pretty much it for this video I had a ton of fun putting this one together I love balers Gate 3 so if you want me to take a look at other characters in the series or even other video game series in general let me know in the comment section below I'll see you guys in the next video peace out

Channel: Rhoku

Views: 57,167

Keywords: baldurs gate 3, baldurs gate, bg3, bg3 builds, rhoku, best items, baldur's gate 3 gameplay, baldur's gate 3 lore, what is baldur's gate, baldur's gate 3 story, bg3 story, bg3 gameplay, bg3 classes, bg3 lore, bg3 githyanki, bg3 gith, bg3 elder brain, character creation, game design, baldur's gate 3, mind flayer, mind flayer lore, mindflayer, the emperor, morality, video essay, duke stelmane, stelmane, ansur, orpheus, tadpole, manipulates, lies, lore, githyanki, trust emperor, balduran

Id: yfcFQSG0uRI

Length: 27min 22sec (1642 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2023