Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Will All Companions Be Evil or Tainted

So far we have a vampire spawn, a Warlock of the Fiend, a dark cleric, and a Gith that are each evil or tainted in some way. I'm hoping to see companions more suited to a good-aligned party.

The character's I typically play wouldn't team-up with these companions unless forced. Maybe that's the story, but it seems like someone else's story; not mine.

Thoughts?

I think we might get a companion based on all the standard player classes, each of varying morality/ethics, not to mention we the player character can choose how good/evil we want to be. The BG series was great for having a party that complemented your morality to ensure cohesion and cooperation between the group. So far we have a Wizard, Warlock, Cleric, Warrior and Rogue class companions, that leaves plenty of room for the other classes.

having companions be evil seems to be kind of a trend these days.

I too am looking for some companions who might be suited for a good-aligned party. "Evil" of course does not mean killing orphans and killing puppies at every turn, but "Good" does not have to mean flawless or boring.

I am a little troubled by the apparent lack of good-aligned companions because I really, really do not think there will be as many 12 (one per standard class).

yeah. Evil doesnt have to be baby munching.
but which one of the companions could be discribed as good?
I think Wyll and Gale are the only ones even remoteley possible to be good, and one seems to be kind of a fraud in his whole hero business and the other ones a smarmy mage.

Maybe well get a paladin companion afterall..

Evil in BG never meant shit. The only really evil characters in the games are Dorn, Xzar and Montaron.
For the others, "evil" usually means they are greedy, power hungry, or straight up dicks.

which kind of is what "evil" is.
The Alignment axis doesnt realy cover SEVERITY of alignment.

You can be evil without beeing a complete monster. is a corrupt official not chaotic evil at the end of it?
is your average friendly mall securty that helps old ladies not lawfull good?

Most playable evil cahracters are evil, but not incompatible with good people.

Always hope for redemption:)

I suspect that’s what they might be going for. “Evil” characters with the potential to be redeemed, and “good” characters with the potential to be corrupted.

It seems WotC is downgrading the importance of good/evil alignment in general, and apparently asked Larian to put less emphasis on it. I guess the idea is to make it easier or better to role play someone who thinks they are fighting for a just cause, but prepared to do some nasty things in pursuit of it, for example. Making things a bit less black and white may make mixed alignment parties easier to deal with as well.

I expect all the characters will have substantial flaws and/or secrets, but not necessarily “evil or tainted”.




Ensuring cohesion and cooperation in the party might not be the name of the game in BG3 though. I’m guessing again that fiction, disagreements and animosity might be the more normal experience, and perhaps irreconcilable differences.

All that said, there does seem to be a lack of generally “good” characters so far. This might not mean anything though. Maybe these are just the first characters ready to be tried, or there’s specific things about them or their interactions Larian want feedback on? Perhaps they want to stress test their party system by making everyone play early access with the biggest bunch of dicks available? There could be any number of reasons that these are the first characters to be released.

Yeah, most companions are on the edgy side. Reasonably I'd only trust Gale in my party and kick everyone else out, starting with Shadowheart. 'You can call me Shadowheart' NOPE. Bye girl.

Hopefully we'll get more variation, the party still needs a jester! A playful chaotic good type of character.

Don't forget we can acquire camp followers. I believe Swen mentioned that if we follow a quest chain we can get that Deep Gnome we saw in the gameplay preview and Volo himself as a follower/chronicler.

Redemption/corruption is a really cool thing but does that mean I'll have to start with a character I don't like to custom the classes of my companions (I mean e.g 1 healer + 1 caster +1 rogue +1 warrior...), then try them to become good/evil during the adventure because he/she don't suit the party role I want to play ?

We definitely need way more than 5 or 6 well written companions, even if they aren't origin characters.

TBH being implanted with an evil spawn of cthulhu would send most good characters on the edge.

“Shadowheart” (I’m guessing she’s a Susan) is almost definitely in for me. Because we’ve all met people a bit like that. Ties to act all cold and badass while worshipping the emo god Shar. Awww.

I don't see the need for all alignments, classes or races to be represented. Just enough to get a good balance. I would think having contrasting morality as well as personalities makes for better role-playing than potentially playing with a hive-mind. So I really hope we don't get too many companions. The added selection inevitably will come at the cost of how deep all the characters are anyway and I'm the go deep, not broad kind of guy. Besides, I'm not sure shared morality necessarily equates to shared chemistry as long as the divergent alignments doesn't go to extremes.


Interesting how different subjective impressions can be. There's a whole thread dedicated to ragging on how boring and generic all the companions seem to be.

What's everyone's beef with Shadowheart anyway? Even the name is enough to trigger some people. She resembles Viconia of BG2 quite a bit, this may lead to a similar dynamic path to redemption. Given the several ruined temples of Selune in the gameplay videos, Shadowheart worshipping the twin sister and enemy Shar, might be tied into the story on a deeper level that I'm personally keen to explore. But yeah, a Minsc type of comic relief would be welcome as well. Though I do think Larian is a bit concerned about striking the proper balance between paying homage to the original series, yet not following the original formula too closely so as to make BG3 feel like a Baldur's Gate-game, yet be its own creation.

Viconia, for one, is a good made up name. Shadowheart is:
https://youtu.be/0kja30aeU80

Viconia? Not even near as iconic as Shadowheart. So I would have to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

I like all the characters so far. Don't get the hate on ShadowHeart. I do think we need some lawful/good characters too. I'd love to have some extremes too, like the self-righteous do-gooder that feels superior in their own beliefs. If they have 4 tainted, a couple of true neutrals, and a few good / lawful then it would be pretty interesting, and for sure some internal fireworks possible.

I'd have to agree that constructed names like Shadowheart appeal more to me than a lot of purely made-up names; it's the way many place names, geographic feature names, and family names have come about, so it's easy to relate to.

I often find that a body of entirely fictional names have a randomness that makes them difficult to process and remember. To create a credible body of fictional names it helps to build up a fictional language first, as with Tolkein, and that is beyond the skills of some authors.

I'm not even convinced of Gale yet. So there are no companions yet that I'd have in my party. Where are my good-aligned companions? And I absolutely will not use generic companions. I will only accept fully fleshed out companions with backstory and personality.

As for Shadowheart (and also the vampire), they should consider themselves lucky if I don't choose to kill them on the spot.