#anyway. minthy is very cool so far. I can't wait to learn more about her!

[forcedhesitation]

I finally got to recruit minthy....and wow. in just mere minutes, she's already infinitely more interesting to me than both halsin and SH. her dialogue is so beautifully written, and it's so interesting to learn about the cult's activities from someone who was forced to act under their control! I am genuinely eager to keep playing the game with her in my party, just to hear everything she has to say.

and I haven't gone very far with her yet, but god, wow, it's really shocking to see the contrast between my first impression of her, and how halsin is handled as a companion throughout the whole game. to be clear, I do like halsin, but that's because I spent a whole campaign trying to learn about him and grew attached to the version of him I rewrote in my head as I played. I find his actual, in-game character to be terribly inconsistent, disappointing, and incredibly bland. I mean, when you first recruit him, you learn things about him that do genuinely sound fascinating. when he tells you that it seems to him that most people do not think his feelings can be hurt, that he feels he was a poor leader, that he was unhappy and felt trapped in the grove...that had my attention! I was hoping the game would expand upon that and we'd learn about how this position of well-respected leadership and near reverence led halsin to feel dehumanised. instead...most of his in-game material is, well, just about sex, to be blunt about it.

after you finish any quest material in which he could have remained a full NPC, there's just...nothing, really. his position in the story is demoted to "eye candy" for the player, and the only scenes he gets are about sex. while I did not have my tav sleep with the drow twins, I know of the information about halsin you learn after this happens. it is WILD to me that the only other way you can even get a HINT about halsin's traumatic experiences in the underdark seems to be by taking him to the house of hope and having him interact with the portal to menzoberranzan, which will prompt him to make a comment about his "misspent youth." why you would lock information like this behind something many players would not want to do, when this character already has SUCH limited material, is completely beyond me. not only this, but it is utter madness to me that the only instances in which halsin can acknowledge the player's relationship to astarion seem to exclusively exist in discussions relating to sex/the act of sex itself. you know, astarion, the guy who wants to be seen as more than just a pretty face? whose story is about reclaiming his bodily autonomy after being abused in every way imaginable for 200 years?? whose romance explicitly requires you, as the player, to respect that he doesn't want to be expected to have sex? like, wow! it is completely bananas to me, that halsin, as he is in game, just. exists alongside a character like astarion. I know they are written by different people, but I have to ask if halsin's writer even thought some of his writing through.... did he think that this wouldn't look bad? because it does look bad!

again, I like the halsin I envision in my head, the story that I would have written for him...but the way he is in game...the weakness of his entire character in comparison to just minutes of minthara's....he just would have been so much better as an NPC because he clearly wasn't added as a companion for the purpose of story. or, I don't know, he should have been written by someone other than the person who wrote the most bland origin, because the writer being the common denominator between the two least interesting companions suggests to me that it's partially an issue on his part. they also could have chosen a different NPC, that would have better suited the role of extra companion, instead of using halsin. like, if there was any NPC that should have been made a possible extra companion, like how minthara is, it's barcus. barcus has a clear, consistent, and well-written story that spans all three acts of the game. he has an important tie to the central narrative of the game by virtue of his association with the ironhand gnomes. just as minthy can be recruited after rescuing her from moonrise, barcus could have been recruited after you rescue wulbren from the moonrise towers' prison and wulbren is a huge asshole bastard to barcus when you get back to the last light. it would have made so, so much more sense than last minute shoehorning halsin into the companion role, just because EA players wanted to fuck him.