Thinking on an old post that asked if BG3 was about anything and at the time I said not really. Larian's stories often feel like a collection of ideas that don't really weave into each other, besides maybe one or two clever ideas that don't really seem to mean much in the grand scheme of things. Like, it's sort of all half formed stuff.
But thinking more on it, it's pretty clearly about cycles of abuse, with all of the origin characters and even two of your other companions having stories about this, and the core villains all are the products of abuse or are just monstrous abusers. Even the BG1 and 2 returns are bent around for this reason, thus why SPOILER and SPOILER have sort of been rewritten in this continuity to have no redemption arc or vague gesturing that said arc was aborted.
The one exception, the one truly baffling exception, is Gale.
He's just, like, a huge dumbass who makes bad decisions. Even in his darker character arc, he doesn't become an abuser, and is not the victim of abuse. Heck, he probably had the happiest life of all the cast before the plot happened until he did a headass thing. He's just a wizard with a lot of smarts and no sense and it doesn't weave into any other part of the narrative on a thematic level, but does add texture to the group dynamic and has his own interesting story going on.
And that is weird and bugs me.
