#i've come to appreciate her so much more this playthrough. she might be my favourite arcanum character

[theodoravery]

this hits so much harder when you know prima's younger selena's incarnation. she's begging her to move on

[baldursyourgate]

Transcript: Adam Smith interview on Minthara

"…we're writing this for a very small audience and when they get to it, they're going to get something special..."

Note: This is an excerpt that mentions Minthara from a PC Gamer interview with Adam Smith, the lead writer at Larian Studios.

Adam: I got um one note from uh... You've probably seen Amelia's video outtakes as the narrator... I got one note from Emma who plays Minthara and she was just like "Thanks for all the drow words, they're really good fun to say!" and I was like, that's sarcastic isn't it! They're really hard to say, she nailed them, but my God!

Interviewer: I love that, but I was wondering if you had a specific favourite or if there's a favourite quest line or just like a specific like; or just a quotable line of dialogue that you really love?

Adam: Ah so... Oh the stuff I want to say... Okay fine, I can say stuff that's from... it's fine, block your ears if you don't want to hear. They're not story spoilers...

So, I actually write less dialogue than you might think. My job is mostly to edit everyone else's work, so I know other people's lines better than my own, because those ones I kind of write them and then say somebody else can deal with that now... Whereas everyone else's lines I'm like you know, "okay, how do we make this as brilliant as it can be" but...

I spent a lot of time on Minthara. And we knew from the beginning Minthara is a character that most people will kill. She's a villain you meet her; you can recruit her, but most people kill her. We know that from the stats and we knew that putting the effort into writing lots and lots of dialogue for this character was going to be appreciated by very few people, but we're like hell it's good... I nearly swore don't if I'm allowed to swear...

And I put in one line which I don't know how many people will ever see it, so I'm going to just say it now.

So Minthara's story, she's been infected with tadpole, she's working for the cult and when you recruit her essentially, she comes under your protection and she can no longer hear the voice of God, of the Absolute; and you deprogram her. And she doesn't become a nice person, she's just like "Okay, let's do evil for ourselves now. Let's not do it for anyone else, let's take control."

And there's a moment when she gets very close to you, if she does, she has a crisis of confidence and she said, "I don't know if I can do this" and you can say "Look you're stronger than anyone I've ever met" and she says "If I'd never met you then I would have been... I would have still been a maniac doing things at the will of a God that doesn't exist" and you say "But you did meet me" and she says "Yeah and 9 times out of 10 I would just one more corpse in your crusade" and it's a little sad moment, but, it's also a little tap on the forth wall that says "Yes, in all your other playthroughs you piece of crap".

[laughs]

She's a horrible person it should be said, but the ones that I love are the moments where we're like, "we're writing this for a very small audience and when they get to it, they're going to get something special" and that, that stuff I love. I love our villains as well.

Interviewer: As a Dark Urge monk are you going to recruit Minthara on that playthrough?

Adam: yeah, I have her already. I usually take her along just because I spent so much time with (writing) her.

Interviewer: Yeah definitely.