With Patch 5, Larian Studios gaveBaldur’s Gate 3players an intentional alternate way to recruit Minthara to the party that didn’t involve the comically evil act of slaughtering dozens of tiefling refugees. Since then, the character’s popularity has skyrocketed, with many people slotting her into their party for the first time.
To accomplish this, one must knock Minthara unconscious at the Goblin Camp after she becomes temporarily hostile, usually done by stealing an item in front of her. You can then progress through the story as normal until you re-encounter Minthara at Moonrise Towers, where you can free her and recruit her to the party.
While there are suggestions that Larian is working on amore intentional method of alternate recruitment, Patch 5 made this obscure method more reliable.
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More players are now being exposed to the character of Minthara, and are discovering that yes, she actually is quite evil despite a previous community narrative that her barrier to entry was more malevolent than the character herself.
The most charitable interpretation of Minthara is that she’s efficient and extremely self-interested. Asone commenterin a thread about the topic puts it, “I think she is less evil and more brutal and pragmatic. She usually has good points.”
A lot of this apologism stems from Minthara showing remorse about the genocide of the tieflings as she was under the control of the Absolute when she orchestrated it. However, it’s only a regrettable event for her because it contributed nothing to her own goals. Minthara shows no remorse for killing innocents when it benefits her.
A telling scene occurs when playing as Dark Urge. The player can link their mind to Minthara’s using the illithid tadpole. As acommenter reveals, “You can show her what you truly are and not only does she revel in it, but Durge is shocked to find something within her that rivals their dark urge.”
Horrific ideologies like tyranny and child slavery are to be expected in drow culture, and Minthara champions these ideas. Her ultimate goal is to bring the entire world under her own tyrannical rule, and she will do anything to achieve this.
Although she can fall in love with the player character and cracks humorous one-liners now and then, everyone is learning that Minthara is morally irredeemable, even when you recruit her the ‘good’ way.
That’s the beauty of Baldur’s Gate 3, though. There’s always a debate to be had over every character and narrative decision. This is one of the many reasons that Larian’s masterpiece is so compelling and why we gave it aperfect score in our review.
Baldur’s Gate 3
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23 years on from the release of the seminal RPG, Baldur’s Gate 2, the third game in the series has been developed by Larian Studios (of Divinity: Original Sin fame). Set over 120 years after the events of the last game, Baldur’s Gate 3 tasks you and your party of heroes to fight off a mind flayer invasion of Faerun, while seeking a way to remove the tadpole in your brain that’s slowly turning you into the enemy…
