Baldur's Gate 3 fans dub Karlach the best companion, and they're right

(Image credit: Larian)

It seems that every Baldur's Gate 3 player is coming to the same obvious conclusion: the best character in the game is Karlach, the extremely hot (and also hot) Tiefling Barbarian.

You can meet Karlach pretty early on in Baldur's Gate 3's first act, where she's on the run after some, uh, trouble that you should probably play the game to see for yourself. She's got an infernal engine inside her chest that makes her too hot to touch, a core conflict you've got to resolve if you want to see her full story arc. (Also a key consideration if you want to seal the deal on a romance with her.)

While surely somebody out there is more a fan of, I dunno, Gale, there's a growing sentiment among players that Karlach is, indeed, the best. Take this Reddit post, for example. "Who is the best companion and why is it so obviously Karlach," bodhibell02 writes, positing four reasons why Karlach is previous:

She is just a big kid inside a badass Tiefling body
She just wants hugs
She has the most amazing on-click lines: "Let's cook with fire baby," "Hey good looking," "Fuck yes"
She dances when everyone is watching

Folks, as a journalist, I know people can often present their subjective beliefs as objective facts. But those four reasons above? Unimpeachable universal truths. I promise that it is utterly without bias that I say this: Karlach is best girl and I would like to marry her in real life.

Hyperbole aside, there is some sentiment that other companion story arcs pay off in more satisfying ways, but I'm only 40 hours into the game and slightly terrified of spoilers, so I haven't read those comments too closely. But there are more posts out there praising Karlach, and the sentiment seems to be that, intricacy of story arcs aside, it's tough to name a more likable character in video games. I think this comment just about sums it up: "I mean she is so likable that Shadowheart and Lae'Zel, who disagree about everything, both like her."

Lae'Zel is not nearly so beloved, but Dragon Age writer David Gaider notes that "Fandom has always treated male characters with more forgiveness."

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.