Inconsistent Quayle?
marceror
Member Posts: 577
It seems like Quayle's transition from BG1 to BG2 doesn't make a lot of sense. In BG1, he's obnoxious and doesn't seem to be raising any Elven lasses. In the short time that follows into BG2, he seems way older and kindly, and appears to have been raising Aerie for a very long time. Seems off.
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He met the Sigil Troupe at some point as well, so the best explanation I can up with is some weird magic experiment of his in the future sent him out across the planes and he somehow managed to return to Faerun before meeting you and decided to lay low in the circus so as not to interfere with history. But then he knows Jan as well... ahh, I don't know...
Or perhaps Quayle traveled back in time to help charname on his journey to make sure Aerie met a nice boy she can take home to have dinner with her uncle?
As far as not enough time passing between the two games for such a transition to realistically happen... well, count it among all the other plot holes opened up by the BG sequel(s).
It's not the only inconsistency though. Other characters have changed a bit as well, although it's a little less glaring and more easily explainable. Then there's the solar, who tells a different story about your birth in ToB to the one Gorion tells you through his letters in BG1.
So the Quayle you meet in BG2 would be more or less what he's like when he's not on an adventure
I don't find his change of personality so odd. Aerie was like his daughter and he saw her caged, wither and then hacked without anesthesia (or the other way around, he saw all that, his sense of compassion reappeared and she became his daughter). As an explanation for a traumatic and sudden turn of personality, that's the best and most plausible of all. What's odd is that Aerie talks about him like they have been together a lot of time. And that she stays at the same circus (it's the same right?) and has good memories of the place*. And that she doesn't use a regeneration or wish spell for her wings, although charname uses the last one like popcorn. And her super-fast-only-after-one-night pregnancy. And many other things. But Quayle change of heart? Nah.
*"Good morning, fellow circus worker! Remember that day you laughed at me while I was dying in a cage? Haha, good times, good times!"
Remember, BG1 is supposed to take a player about 9 weeks. Throne of Bhaal is one and a half years(or so) after BG1(with about half a year between SoA and ToB) causing the time span between BG1 and SoA to be anywhere from 7 to 10 months. Quayle could have very much so managed to pick up Aerie as a foster-child during that time. The thing that can not be explained though is the 100% change of personality, and the older version of Quayle.
I doubt the writers gave the time between the games much thought. And how could they? Depending on how you play the game's end date will vary vastly from the next guy. The year in the journal entries probably just got stamped there before moving on to other things as they figured most people are probably done within a year at least. I don't feel it matters much though. Unless you killed them off/let them die the most glaring plot inconsistencies is Khalid/Jaheira travelling with you at the time of capture and Dynaheir being alive at all.