Welcome to Part 2 of a critical look at Beamdog’s creative contributions to
Baldur’s Gate. We’re going to analyze and discuss the Enhanced Edition characters and their storylines, and try to highlight problem spots that - much like gameplay bugs - could potentially be smoothed over and patched.
This is not the place for statements of blind support or blind hatred of Beamdog. If that’s all you have to contribute to the conversation, please take your comments elsewhere.In our previous thread, we discussed the half-orc blackguard, Dorn il-Khan. Today’s subject:
Chultan, lesbian, vampire –
Hexxat. Certainly the most controversial addition to the Enhanced Edition, it’s also fair to say that she’s the most ambitious of the new characters.
To understand why Hexxat turned out the way she did, we must understand that more than any EE NPC, she is the product of constraints imposed by necessity. Historically, unless Evil PCs had thief skills (multiclass, dual-class, kit), an Evil party had to include Jan (whose role as comedy relief clashes with Edwin’s) or Imoen (plot-relevant, certainly, but hobbled by being unable to actually improve her thief skills). So long before we knew anything else about Hexxat, we knew she had to be an evil thief. She also had to be the same-sex female romance, because BG2:EE is a post-Juhani, post-Leliana, post-Liara game. And, of course, she had to be exceptional, to suit the thematic and mechanical formula of Evil party members: outcasts and criminals and monsters all, and supremely powerful examples of their classes to balance out the XP/gold penalties.
Before getting deeper into Hexxat’s storyline and characterization, I want to talk a bit about vampirism. It makes sense that a vampire would be just as welcome to Team Evil as a dwarf berserker, a drow, a Red Wizard of Thay, a half-orc blackguard and a twice-dead Deathbringer Bhaalspawn. However, Beamdog cherry-picked vampiric traits for Hexxat: she gets the stat bonuses, but not the level-draining (for obvious reasons); she’s immune to poison but not healing magic; she can withstand sunlight and is functionally immortal thanks to Dragomir’s Cloak and Respite, but her need for blood has no gameplay ramifications at all. Only one exchange with Aerie in ToB sheds any light on how Hexxat is sustaining herself during your travels, and it’s an implausible answer when a much simpler one is available: Hexxat could just as easily be feeding on the many, many enemies that come your way. A comment on the taste of troll blood, or something similar, is really all it takes to close this plothole.
Now, consistency with the “rules” of Forgotten Realms vampires wouldn’t matter that much… except that
you’re constantly fighting vampires in BG2. You have so many opportunities to see what they can do, and it’s never clear why Hexxat doesn’t conform to that same set of rules.
An additional stumbling block in her reception among BG’s existing fanbase is simply that the concept of a vampire party member isn’t nearly as revolutionary as one might assume: a popular mod allows you to recruit the vampire Valen, whose design
does follow vampire lore (and, consequently, makes her both tremendously overpowered
and precarious in the sense that if she dies, she can’t be resurrected). Meanwhile, the Ascension mod lets you recruit Bodhi for the final battle. If the impetus had been to create a “monster”-type NPC, one must consider all the things Hexxat could have been – a duergar, a yuan-ti, a shadow, a sahuagin, even a goblin – against which being a “half-vampire” inevitably feels like a letdown.
It’s also been argued, and not without merit, that the end result of all these constraints causes Hexxat to play into two problematic tropes: the Tribal Woman and the Lesbian Vampire. It’s also created an unpleasant coincidence in that both same-sex romances are Evil (though we’ll get to that when we discuss Hexxat’s romance storyline). However, even if the resulting combination of traits was unavoidable, Hexxat could have overcome them by distinguishing herself as being
more than the sum of those tropes. Unfortunately, the writers withhold too much information in their attempts to make Hexxat mysterious, and so her character never evolves to the point where we can see past those stereotypes.
To clarify this point, let’s look at her storyline in closer detail. I’ve said before that Dorn’s introduction in BG:EE is a clever bit of misdirection; Hexxat’s introduction takes that to a whole new level. She’s easy enough to find, waiting at the Copper Coronet, yet it’s clear that something is very wrong with her: she speaks in a very spaced-out tone, and single-mindedly demands that you take her to Dragomir’s Tomb in the Graveyard District.
Once you do so, Hexxat overcomes a barrier only she can pass through and awakens the Sleeper within: the real Hexxat. Your party member up until that point was a Dominated girl named Clara, who Hexxat promptly feeds upon and kills. As twists go, this is a very good one: the player has no reason to expect a bait-and-switch on that level. However, there’s a bit of a hiccup: before the grand revelation, you pick up an item called Dragomir’s Cloak, and the description clearly states it can only be worn by a vampire. This effectively spoils at least part of the twist – you’re going to have a vampire in your party. If there’s a technical way to keep that description text hidden until
after the real Hexxat is recruited, I strongly suggest implementing it.
Your first exchange with Hexxat supposedly defines her character: she’s the ultimate survivor, and while she’ll work with you, you must never forget that she puts herself first. It would be a perfect encapsulation of the Neutral Evil philosophy, except that five minutes later she basically puts her life in your hands by giving you Dragomir’s Respite, the key to her survival. Here, already, we have a contradiction – one doesn’t survive for very long if you randomly trust strangers – and it won’t be the last.
(This is the place to note that, as with Gord Marriott, Sereana Malani does an outstanding job voicing Hexxat.)
At any rate, we have a character who’s been trapped in Dragomir’s Tomb for two hundred years. She has nothing to say about how Athkatla has changed. There’s no shock for her, no need to adjust. Admittedly, the “fish out of temporal waters” scenario is cliché in itself, so it’s probably a good thing Beamdog avoided going down that path; however, the time gap has other repercussions for her storyline.
Shortly after recruiting Hexxat, you meet up with Cabrina, an agent of her employer L. Cabrina is an incredibly amusing character – a twist on the Lecherous Pervert type – but here’s the thing: she knew Hexxat before the latter became a vampire, and yet, based on her comments, it’s clear that Cabrina isn’t undead herself. How, then, is she still alive two hundred years later? We don’t know, and this is an answer that’s going to come up again and again in relation to Hexxat: “We don’t know.”
(As with the vampiric feeding issue, there’s a very simple solution here: change Cabrina’s race to elf, and mention it just once in dialogue. This immediately resolves the question, since elves have a centuries-long lifespan anyway.)
Cabrina clarifies Hexxat’s mission: L has contracted her to steal three items from distant tombs all over the world, and Dragomir’s Casque was only the first. Hexxat feels obligated to complete this assignment, for reasons that will become clear later, and so the player accompanies her to Shou Lung and later Zakhara, solving puzzles and looting the tombs.
Now we come to the major structural flaw in Hexxat’s questline. Consider, as a point of comparison, Dorn’s quests, which we discussed last time. Nothing that happens in Resurrection Gorge actually triggers the events in Lunia,
but both quests tell self-contained stories about Dorn himself, and are therefore successful as separate units. Rasaad and Neera, on the other hand, have much more conventional structures linked by causality: their ToB quests are the
direct results of their SoA quests.
Neither of these approaches are applied to Hexxat: upon delivering the last item to Cabrina in SoA, she announces that Hexxat’s job is done and that L owes her a favor. And that’s it. There’s no immediate reward from L, no sense that Hexxat has achieved anything for herself by completing these tasks. We don’t even know (yet) what the significance of these items are, that we’ve been working to gather for L. And this has a negative impact on our perception of Hexxat, because it appears as though she put herself in a lot of danger simply to satisfy a two-hundred-year-old obligation – which runs counter to her survivalist mantra.
ToB
will reveal the outcome of her bargain with L, but before I get to that, I want to discuss Hexxat’s characterization up until this point. The Shou Lung mission provides a brief glimpse into her backstory: she tells you a bit about her early years, her mother’s fate and so on. The interaction ends with Hexxat considering a return to Mezro, to see what’s become of her family – but after two hundred years, it doesn’t make sense that she’d even consider such a thing. Strangely, a later exchange with Cabrina implies that Hexxat’s imprisonment lasted decades rather than centuries – and while it’s clearly an error, this is actually the
more plausible scenario. Had she spent fifty or seventy years in that tomb, Hexxat could at least face the realistic notion that she might find some kind of home for herself in Chult, with people who would actually know or remember her. (It would also explain her ability to function in “modern” Faerunian society.) Two hundred years is just too large a gap to work with the kind of emotions this scenario tries to evoke.
Hexxat’s interactions with other party members similarly falls into a strange middle ground. Naturally, her presence is anathema to Good characters, and nearly half the Good NPCs will openly rebel: Keldorn and Anomen are the obvious choices, Mazzy and Aerie less so. (Minsc doesn’t seem to have a problem with her, despite the fact that his racial enemy is vampire.) However, Hexxat’s reaction to these outbursts is surprisingly subdued. She’s always civil and apologetic, reminding them that she can’t help being what she is. It’s a somewhat bizarre choice, because it makes the Good characters seem intolerant and judgmental – not least because Aerie is the only one who actually makes a case against Hexxat based on something she
did rather than what she
is. Now, it’s entirely possible that Hexxat is simply putting on airs as a survival tactic… but because the mask never slips, the player can’t tell if she’s genuinely as stung by these rejections as she claims to be.
Tellingly, her interactions with
Evil characters are another matter entirely: she fends off Dorn’s nagging to receive the mark of the vampire (because of course he’d want even more power); she takes pleasure in frustrating Edwin’s fascination with Dragomir’s Cloak; Korgan flirts with her only to get scared away; and her attempts at seducing Viconia go a long way towards communicating her loneliness without making the drow unsympathetic when she turns her down. It works so much better, goes so much more smoothly, that you can only conclude Hexxat was designed
only with Team Evil in mind.
Speaking of seduction, I’ve already noted the uncomfortable implications of the two same-sex love interests being Evil, but the contrast becomes evident
very early on, especially when you bring Viconia into the comparison. Romancing Dorn is a careful navigation of lust, power and violence; romancing Viconia
can lead to real emotional intimacy, but you have to get past the fact that she comes from a matriarchal society and initially sees you as just another lowly male. But Hexxat’s romance is genuinely touching, as it puts both women on a level playing field: you assure her that you’re interested despite her condition, and she expresses desires she knows are problematic but which she can’t resist. This is not “Twilight”, and vampirism is a very real disadvantage in the relationship, but the alternating sweet and naughty exchanges give you the sense that it’s still a proper love story.
However, any discussion of Hexxat’s romance storyline must acknowledge that a huge chunk of it was cut from the game. Dummied-out data reveals that you would have eventually been able to convince her to turn you into a vampire. There are scripted reactions from each and every party member, the addition of a second sunlight protection item, and there are even dialogue options designed to suit different motivations: maybe you were just using her to gain immortality, or maybe it’s the only way the two of you can be together forever, whatever suits your roleplay.
According to the devs, this path was removed for technical reasons: grafting Hexxat’s undead traits onto the PC was too problematic, especially since it would effectively make the PC immortal. I’m not entirely sure I agree with that from a design perspective – if the player has no personal version of Dragomir’s Respite, there’s nowhere to retreat if they “die” as a vampire, and so the game engine could probably be programmed to interpret any “death” as disintegration. As it stands, the romance storyline builds so strongly towards that climax that it’s inevitably a letdown when the option doesn’t present itself.
Let’s move on to ToB. We reunite with Cabrina in Amkethran, and she informs us that Hexxat somehow got a message to L after completing the Zakhara mission. This will probably come as news to the player, who hasn’t seen Hexxat do anything of the sort while she was in the party; Hexxat, of course, refuses to reveal how she did it, because she’s mysterious and “We don’t know” is the answer of the day.
L tasks Hexxat with delivering the Casque – now improved by the addition of the other items you’ve retrieved – onto the head of a rogue lich named Korkorran. This is a very strange assignment, since Hexxat is a thief rather than an assassin. In fact, her entire questline might have made more sense if she
had been an assassin, taking out specific targets at L’s behest rather than stealing items that don’t seem to interlock in any clear way… but that’s neither here nor there.
You fight through Korkorran’s lair and, at last, encounter the lich himself. And here’s where it all finally, sadly goes off the rails. You learn that Hexxat’s deal with L is for the restoration of her humanity; that this is the price she gave L in return for her services. Korkorran offers her the same deal if she’ll leave him alone, and here’s how the scenario plays out:
If you accept Korkorran’s offer, Hexxat becomes mortal and dies (as she’s over two hundred years old), unless you convince her to stay in the party.
If you defeat Korkorran for L, Hexxat becomes mortal and dies (as she’s over two hundred years old), unless you convince her to stay in the party.
There’s a lot to unpack here. In terms of character development, we have a woman who, upon her introduction, says there’s nothing she won’t do to survive, and the end result of her storyline is that she has a death wish. It’s implied (though not outright stated – again, because Hexxat is mysterious) that she knew all along what would happen if L restored her humanity, and she pursued it anyway. But if Hexxat wanted to die, she could have jumped on a stake or burned in the sun at any point after you freed her. Why jump through all these hoops for L? Why define herself over and over again as someone who’ll do anything to see another day, when all she really wants is oblivion?
“We don’t know.” Except that we
could have known, very easily. If I recall my D&D lore correctly, vampires go to the Abyss when they die. Hexxat’s mother was an Ubtoan cleric, her aunts were presumably also women of faith: the only way Hexxat could reunite with them would be if she died a human death. It’s a relatable, understandable, sympathetic wish: she did all this to see her family again. Instead, all she says is that she can’t endure the life of a vampire… but if that’s
all she wants, she could have killed herself at any time. But dying as a
human, for a
real reason: that’s something
only L could do for her.
Except, of course, that Korkorran can do it too. In fact, if the player takes Korkorran’s deal, you don’t get any further insight into Hexxat at all: he cures her, she dies, you either kill him anyway or walk away. Hexxat’s last, conclusive meeting with Cabrina and L is entirely optional, and leads to the exact same result. There really,
really should have been some alternate consequence to Hexxat jumping the gun and taking Korkorran’s “shortcut”, because in doing so she’s breaking her long-standing arrangement with L. More to the point, we’ve seen where impatience can lead with Edwin’s SoA storyline; why should Hexxat be immune to that same principle?
This is the same kind of false choice we saw with Dorn’s storyline. Both L and Korkorran will kill Hexxat unless you persuade her to reject their cures – and even then, it just doesn’t make any logical sense. On the one hand, Hexxat’s humanity is so important to her that she’s willing to die to regain it… but she’ll throw it away on the player’s say-so, with nothing more than a promise to kill her if she ever asks for it. Again, she’s had that freedom to die all along, it’s entirely unclear why
the player needs to give her that guarantee.
“What does Hexxat want?” is a question to which the answer is constantly changing and never fully explained. As a result, it’s very difficult to sympathize with her. We don’t understand her, or her motivations, or how she can contain all these contradictions. Even her epilogues relegate the character to the background, as both endings (default and romanced) are focalized through
Cabrina rather than Hexxat herself. I’ve said that Cabrina is certainly a fun character, and might have even been an entertaining substitute for Hexxat if you failed to “save” her, but is she so important that
she gets the final say as to Hexxat’s fate?
I really want to like Hexxat. But by the end of the game, I can’t say that I
know her.
Next time, we’ll talk about the first bald man in the history of Baldur’s Gate: Rasaad yn Bashir!