Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why is Tav the least interesting character?

I can't get interested in Tav. She is as generic as you can make someone. I won't play Dark Urge because that is way too dark. I am not interested in playing an "Origin" character. I wanted my own character, my own story. But there is literally no backstory to her. No one in Baldur's Gate knows her. She doesn't run into anyone from her past. She doesn't have voiced lines. We didn't even get to choose our starting city. She literally has no life or backstory before the abduction.

She has no personal connection to anyone or anything. Tav has no personal questline at all to look forward to. Yet, all of the other characters do.

Why wasn't more effort put into making the one character that could be considered "ours"? If there is another patch, I really would appreciate fleshing out more depth for Tav. Our own characters deserve more than just "theater of the mind".

Thank you!

Well because of the very large number of things our own characters could be it would be very hard and time consuming to implement. You could maybe add a questionaire at the start asking things like your parents alive? Happy? In the jungle researching spiders? But you just couldn't cover it all.

To be honest I think it's by design. They give you options to play as characters involved in the story and they give you the option to play a blank slate with some dialogue options based on their class/race. I think that's more than fine. If you want your own story, it sounds fair that for it to be your own you have to imagine it.

There is a spectrum of freedom they can give the player character in RPGs, sometimes it's a bit more "railroaded" (the Dragon Age games come to mind) and I also like that, but I think for this game this approach works, especially since they give you plenty of options to have a detailed backstory with the origins.

If they wrote backstory for Tav then Tav would be an origin and not yours.

Tav is a character that has to accommodate millions of people.

Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins, for a couple of examples, gave us options that really helped shape the character. We had connections to characters right from the start (Captain Anderson or the Noble family Cousland, for example). So we had some emotional attachment. They don't need to create a huge story change, but some depth and emotional connections would make a huge difference.

The thing is... the game does give you options to help shape a character. If you don't want to pick them, that's your choice, but them offering several options but also a blank slate option is like the best compromise I can think of. Otherwise there'd be threads asking for Tav to not have an established backstory, or asking them not to be voiced, etc. There is no winning in the whole "player agency vs established backstory" debacle and this was a good middle ground.

Tav is your character, you must come up with your own story for him and play with it. Absolute freedom. Tav can be anyone, you just need your imagination.

I'm very glad they made "Tav" an unknown person who's personality you can define. I don't like predefined characters, the main reason I'm not a fan of the Witcher games for example. I'm currently playing the Dark Urge, and I'm already quite annoyed by it. As said in some posts before, if they made predefined stuff for "Tav", it would just be another Origin char.

The issue with putting in established lore is that you have to actually show that lore.

In a game like Mass Effect, this is done by having cutscenes where other people are talking about your character at the start of the game. In Dragon Age: Origins, you have the prologue where you're doing your origin story.

Neither course would work with the way BG3 is set up where the very start of the game is you being tadpoled (Which is suggested to impact character's abilities - Hence people like Karlach, Gale, Lae'zel and Wyll starting as level 1 and barely able to 1v1 a Bugbear despite being highly adept warriors/wizards - Thus it would be super awkward to have a prologue where you're "Full power" before being abducted and tadpoled)

There's also the secondary effect of things like having choices a la ME's backstory options, as you'd have to create different dialogues based on what was picked, which is additional work (ME gets away with it due to how little it's actually brought up, just a handful of references across the entire trilogy and 1 unique mission in the first game).

Meanwhile, blank slate PC can work as people can create their own headcanon for their character and try and pick from generic responses to try and push that headcanon.

It could be nice to have options for backgrounds, maybe nothing as concrete as an Origin character, but things like what city you're from, your profession (Aka the "Background" option being somewhat relevant other than the skill proficencies) and a Solasta style demeanour choice to influence your speech... But such things would be a lot of work and you'd still end up upsetting people.

It's a shame you don't want to play as Durge, because it fixes the problem you're having with Tav not having a background. I liked my durge run a lot more. I feel like it is better at tying the story to the main character.

So I think the reason that Tav is the least interesting character is because Larian never really thought of Tav as a "character." I think Larian views Tav and to a lesser extent even Durge not as a character who we are meant to emotionally connect with, but as an avatar through which we make things happen, interact with the game world and experience the stories and actual characters within the game. I say this because I have never played a crpg where I felt less satisfied and more disappointed roleplaying. I felt as though for all the different things that can happen, my character always felt pretty much like the same person across my three or four unfinished runs, with maybe some moderate variations. It's not just a matter of Tav being a blank slate. To give examples, The Pathfinder games and Pillars of Eternity both have blank slate player characters. But the game provides a large breadth of dialogue options that allow the player characters to feel unique and to potentially be interesting. The stories are also clearly ABOUT the main characters in those games. BG3 isn't really about Tav. It's a game that's concerned with presenting the player-as in the person behind the screen- with as many options and things to do as possible. It's not the blank slate factor.

You are absolutely correct, OP. And in my view, Larian deliberately left Tav underdeveloped as a way to pressure players to use one of their pre-gen origins, which is what they want us to play as. It is a cunning way to force us to play as one of their origins, and that is complete b.s. Like you, I also will never ever play one of their ridiculous origin characters but still fully expect that I should be provided with a player character that I create that is fully tapped into the game. This is not something too much to ask for. Games like DA, PoE, even the Pathfinder games, and most notably BG2, all do this far, far, far better than Tav in BG3. So, it can be done. It has been done by others for years. But Larian deliberately chose not to do it in BG3.

As a side note, I hate the concept of their origin characters so much that I would want to just slaughter each and every one of them because I see them as the characters that don't belong in my game. But Larian has made sure we can't do that either, by tying huge chunks of the game's story to those origin characters such that removing them from the game would effectively remove huge parts of the game's story, quests, and content.

Tav is a nobody, that's my problem with this "MC" he/she doesn't matter, no matter what happens to this character, it's irrelevant, even the MC from DAI had more character...

Tav is what you make him/her.

Dark Urge has a backstory and it worked out beautifully. I much, much prefer playing Dark Urge to Tav now. I played Tav once, tried Durge, and never looked back. There are people who like blank slates, and they get Tav.

Dark Urge isn't that dark. You can be a good Dark Urge. You will have "urges" and make mistakes sometimes, but it'll be revealed in due time why it is. And the ending for a good Dark Urge is very rewarding and wholesome. I really recommend trying Dark Urge. You can change their class and race, so you're not stuck playing Dragonborn.

As others have pointed out, several other games in the genre have done this better than how Larian handled Tav. It would be nice to have a simple prologue or cutscenes providing some information on what Tav was doing before being abducted, based on their race. They could also have added elements to make Tav feel more integrated with the game world based on race. For instance, if Tav is human, the game defines them as a Baldurian. It would then be safe to assume that Tav has contacts in the city and possesses at least a surface level knowledge of the current state of affairs in the Sword Coast. However, none of this information is provided. In my opinion, a "blank slate" character should still have some backstory that's interwoven with the game plot, and preferably some prior relationship with existing characters (Dark Urge has those). Tav is more like an "empty husk" than a "blank slate".

lol pardon?

@GrayGhost: Your theory also makes sense in the light of their recommendation being that you use a Tav for your first play-through. Tav is basically the avatar to figure out and "learn" the plot with it's different options, so you can later on tell a story that makes sense with one of the Origin characters - Durge included.

I second this. Especially if you played through the previous Baldur's Gate games.

In Early access, many people asked for more content for Tav. They gave us Dark Urge and I'm happy with that. The way conversation and tags work, part of the problem to add content to Tav is that many of the tags that you can use as Tav, are shared with the origins. From classes to backgrounds. Dark Urge has an exclusive background. The bad side of this is that you can't have a noble Dark Urge (well, you can add skills and all that, but the game won't react).

They could have added a "Tav" tag, but the problem is that a drow Tav shouldn't be treated the same as a githyanki Tav or a human Tav. As it is, there are few race dialogs or triggers that should appear for them but won't.

I would probably have fixed that by allowing Tav to choose from a few preselected stories similar to the origins that added a new tag. Or by allowing specific backgrounds not available to the origins. But that is me and they probably wanted to encourage you to play the Origins even if most people said that they preferred their own character. Anyway, I have faith in the mods and expansions.

I think the problem is that the story of Baldur's Gate 3 isn't Tav's story. In most crpgs with a blank slate protagonists the protagonist is the main character. BG3 isn't about Tav, it's about whichever character the player happens to be controlling. That's why the Dark Urge isn't a solution for most people (combined with the visceral violence which certainly kept me away). People say that Tav needed their own unique backstory stuff because otherwise they just have nothing that makes them special. In every other crpg, the main character has their own unique story; it's called the main plot. The story isn't actually built around Tav, so Tav feels lacking. It goes back to my first point, that Tav isn't meant to be a character you roleplay as or get invested in. They're just the tool you use to decide what content you want to see.

I finished my first run through BG3 as a Tav at the weekend, and it was the most I've ever enjoyed playing a character I created myself in a video game. Back when I played Skyrim, I levelled up with whatever I was using at the time, and basically built an avatar of myself with no personality. My BG3 character was developed basically as I would a D&D character, and she is definitely *not* me.

Starting with a rough character idea (elevator pitch: "introverted bard"), I thought during the early game about what her personality might be like, a bit of backstory, and how being thrown into the story might affect her. My D&D characters are often fairly unremarkable people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Over the next few levels I built up a deeper idea of her personality between my imagination, what seemed right in the game, and things I could pick out from the voice acting and animations.

So my character became an independent person in the game world and not my avatar. She gets scared of some of the missions. She gets angry at the slavers even if the party is horribly outnumbered. She has her own opinions of the origin characters. So yes, this is the first time I've actually created a proper new character for a video game. I absolutely recommend it and will be doing it in any other CRPG where you create a character from a blank sheet, but if you don't want to do that there are origin characters to choose from instead. Personally I'm planning to play as Astarion next (lawful evil run to contrast my chaotic good run).

I don't think BG2 is a fair comparison, because as I understand it you are a specific character in that game, even if you can customise them: you're a Bhaalspawn; whereas in BG3 you're just a random person plucked from the streets of Baldur's Gate. Through the game the narrator did give me several bits of information, and I could use speech, based of living in Baldur's Gate. According to the Forgotten Realms wiki, over 100,000 people live in Baldur's Gate so clearly only a part of the city is actually explorable in the game. The people my character knew must be somewhere else - and at level 1 she can't have been _that_ famous.

Lets flip the questions around (btw I agree with what you are saying).

Why DOES IT WORK in the previous Baldur's Gate games??? At least I think it does brilliantly.

Yea there is a background story for your family and your destiny is tied to the storyline. But you could be from anywhere any kind of race, different experiences etc...
I just dont get people saying "well thats not ME or MY character"...WHY NOT??? You have plenty of options to make your character's story unique. Then the game story and Role Playing takes over.
BG3 does THE EXACT SAME THING with the story. Its linear. Its deliberate. So why not add some more interesting background story elements to the TAV like previous Baldurs Gate games? Larian takes a HUGE shortcut for this. The ending basically. What about the beginning?
Its like Larian is telling us : YOU CREATE THE STORY. I'm not a writer, and not particularly good at imagining a detailed INTERESTING background story for my Tav, and even If I did.... Thats why I BOUGHT YOUR GAME. Give me something for my Tav. And interesting story, and I can fill in the details. This isn't an MMO.

Tav character is as hollow and boring as a dead tree trunk. Making TAV "my own" doesn't change that. No solid hook to the world or story (its the companions). Thats why people are desperate for relationships / romances in this game. One of the few things that shapes your TAV and can make it interesting.

This is a great way to describe Tav and also how this game works.

I'm sorry but I cannot buy the claim, just on face value, that the Dark Urge is not that dark, and that there are such thngs as a "good" Dark Urge with a "good" ending. I need convincing, based on facts from the game, because everything I've read from a range of sources thus far paint a very different picture. Furthermore, as some others have already stated right here in this thread, playing the Dark Urge does come with having to deal with your character being associated with some pretty horrific actions. And to me, it does not matter if those "dark' things are in the character's background or in the form of dreams. Playing "good" means, for me, not having my character associated with such horrible and nasty things.

Larian made many, many mistakes with BG3, including some really big ones. But arguably their biggest mistake was creating the Dark Urge option for players, thereby demonstrating that they *could* provide such an option if they wanted to, and then *not* providing an equal and parallel 'Light Urge' option.

A common theme in mythology and fantasy, is this person coming from a formidable background ( a king's son or even demigod) whose life is in danger shortly after birth and must be saved by hiding as a simple peasant or towndweller child. As he or she (I'll use they for the rest of the post) grows up, a kind of predestined path opens up and will restore them to the glory of their ancestors.

I see my Tavs in this light. Isn't it strange that everyone automatically considers me as the party's leader ? And that Withers and the Gods choose to help Tav's party on their quest ? So this is my headcanon. Even though Tav is unaware of teir great origins during the entire BG3 adventure. What the game could do, IMO, is to leave some writings and prophecies about a person (who will be Tav, without you knowing it) who, coming from seemingly humble beginnings, will rise to the greatness of their ancestors and save the world and become a great and just ruler.

It should even be possible to make these prophecies semi-dynamic to match the race and background you choose for Tav at character creation, so it could explicitly mention a drow, duergar or human liberator... Little by little Tav may feel that this prophecy is about them. There could even be some dream scenes after reading these prophecies. IMO that would be a nice way to make Tav more interesting, without compromising the freedom to choose a character race/class and background.

I don't think that a prophecy would help this issue for several reasons. The most obvious being that it seems people have generally lost interest in prophecy stories and playing chosen ones, so that's not gonna grab a lot of people. Secondly, what you're suggesting, while interesting, would require some structural changes to the game. I think that for it to work, the prophecy would need to be a central aspect of the story, not just a random addition. It would need to be something Tav considers and msues on frequently. The prophecy would need to be their story, and so it would need to be important. The prophecy has to DO something, it can't just just be an extra detail. That ties into whole thing you say about Tav automatically being considered the leader and Withers etc choosing to help them; it's not unique to Tav. If you play as an origin that stuff all plays out the same, which is the root of the problem. The game isn't about Tav and so long as origin characters exist the way they do, it can't be.

@kanisatha


Which one are the big ones in your oppinion?

Purely my opinion, of course: not making Tav central to the game and the story; the origin companions concept; not enough good-aligned companions; party size of 4 instead of 6; how party movement works; dialog options not reflecting the full range of options, especially "good" options; having meaningful consequences to choices; too many design decisions made to support co-op at the expense of single-player; avoiding combat results in outcomes not as good/beneficial/effective as going the combat route; maybe a few others I'm not remembering right now.

Interesting that you feel that's one of the "Big mistakes"

Given that BG3 is actually one of the best RPG's for making non-combat options comparable to combat ones, with nice exp gains for non-combat options and a relatively low level cap means the usual concern of it being so much better for exp gain to just murder everything is less prominent (Though, it still has that annoying thing where you can maximize exp gain by using non-combat dialogue options... Then murdering everyone anyway)

Sure, it's not perfect (It generally won't ever be so long as combat provides experience) but it good enough where it doesn't feel horrible to bypass combat.

I agree about the non-combat options. I have done each of the Thorm siblings and Yurgir twice in one run because I think that they are both fun combat encounters and incredibly good dialogue scenes, so I do have a hard time choosing a route to go. On the plus side, if speech fails the resulting mess is still enjoyable.

Personally, I am in the minority who really don't like blank slate characters and even Durge feels too much like a soulless husk to me. I would have wished they had put a little bit more effort into the Origins-as-Avatars in some situations.

You make a fair point. But the thing for me is that although experience, and also loot, matter, what matters most is quest/story outcomes. And it is here that I feel BG3 falls short a lot, where quest/story outcomes/results are inferior (by my reckoning) when you go the noncombat route than when you engage in combat.

Larian's avoidance of making the custom player character the protagonist of their games is one of the reasons I struggle to get as invested in their games as I do other crpgs. It's very possible to let the player customize their character *and* have that character be the protagonist due to some kind of circumstance that ties them into the world and the story. Off the top of my head, the games that do this include: BG1 + BG2, all the Dragon Age games (especially DAO and DAI), NWN2, Pathfinder: Kingmaker + WotR, Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader, Jade Empire, KotoR 1 + 2, Pillars of Eternity. I'm sure there are others I'm missing.

But in these games, the player character is customizable to some degree (appearance/gender/class/sometimes race) and has a plot reason to be at the center of the story, whether that's because of something in their backstory or because of something that happens to them at the beginning of the game. For example, Pathfinder: Kingmaker begins with a blank slate protagonist who nonetheless becomes the heart of the story. No other character can replace them as that heart.

With Tav, something does happen to them at the beginning of the game, but it isn't unique to them. Because Larian favors their origin characters, whatever character you play will have the same tadpole connection to the plot, but origin characters get *extra.* Tav gets no unique quest, they basically just act as a supporting character to everyone else. Tav feels more like the blank slate characters in Icewind Dale and NWN1, where the PC is the one who does stuff to move the quest forward but has no personal reason to do so, if you stop and think about it (other than basic self-preservation).

For other players, I'm sure Larian's origin system is really effective and preferable. It just isn't for me. I want my character to have a story arc and a special place in the story and the world, not be an interchangeable "avatar."

Edit: I do appreciate that Durge is customizable, and I enjoyed playing Durge. However, while I am fine with the backstory being predetermined, I wasn't super thrilled with aspects of my Durge's personality being predetermined (like engaging in certain uh practices).

This is it exactly for me as well. And for me, this is a very major issue in terms of my reaction to and satisfaction with a game.

If I recall correctly, the data tends to show that Origin characters are by far the least played. So it's not just you but most people don't have much interest in playing an Origin character compared to creating one (Especially true when Origin characters are also companions you meet early into the game, meaning you basically already get a playthrough with an Origin character regardless of it you start as one or not. With only a few extra scenes/dialogues being the difference)

Meaning that this "Bland, faceless PC character" concept only really has the benefit of allowing for more versatility in character design. Such as allowing Eternal characters in Divinity or Dragonborn in BG3.

That is, without the drawbacks of either having to create multiple background scenarios to establish the races (Like how DA:O does where human and dwarf characters have different prologues, with mages also differing from the standard human background) or trying to create some weird generic story for why such varied races with wildly different cultures end up having the same backstory.

Which requires more work than simply sticking in a blank slate.

I don't think the problem lies in the backstory aspect. As I and others have pointed out, other games pull off entirely blank slate, no background PCs. The Pathfinder games both do it. The problem is that the narrative of the game doesn't really connect with the main character. The main character is a victim of circumstance, but so is every other player character. In Kingmaker, you're the leader. You're the one who takes charge of the party and leads, and because of that leadership you become duchess and eventually the monarch. The story is centered around you at all times. The conceit of the story requires you. Yet you can still literally be anyone from anywhere.

I would say both.
Tav, she/he has no real backstory (it's just rnd backgrounds or loose backgrounds from the other companions). She/he is not important to the story in BG3.
Such an unimportant character is usually found in an MMO.

this is a great feedback.
and i used to heard from official talk that maintains -- "tav will be a special one that compares with other original characters".
then i receive the disappiontment.

about d-rurge, acturally, you are playing tav-urge, not d-urge.
since d-urge is in a way that is impossible to cure, or he/she has resisted all murder urge 15 years ago.

the importance is that the original characters eventrally are just npcs, just replaceable npcs, it's meanless put players' souls into the original characters to have the views, because some options' saving throws only tav can pass, even the options only appear for tav.

Not really generic. More like stipped out of defining features.

Designing custom protagonist whom player can characterise through dialogue, and designing blank slate are two different things.

Larian's "origin" design means they need a neutral non-discript core dialogue tree that can work for every character they created, which then they spice up with character specific interactions for each origin. As Tav you mostly get just neutral non-discript dialogue.

Still, BG3 is far far better due to a generous amount of race/class specific options (though I found those to be somewhat problematic as well at times) than D:OS2.

It honestly isn't too bad, but it is not in the same league as some my my favourite custom protagonist RPGs. It's unfortunate side effect of BG3 trying to deliver as many options as possible, resulting in each of those options being somewhat underbaked.

It is good to have a blank character to allow people to roleplay their way.

Roleplaying "their way" is meaningful (and satisfying) only when companions, NPCs, and the world respond specifically to your roleplaying.

I agree with some of the folks here in favor of blank slate Tav because of one reason: there's no way to accommodate for all of the possible backstories people can come up with. There's always going to be someone that feels like none of the possible backgrounds fit their characters.

Also take into account that not everyone starts the game with a backstory for their Tav, some people like, myself, like to discover their characters as the game progresses. Perhaps some of the reactions, check results or how some situations are resolved end up influencing how you see and play your character. You may end up with something totally unexpected.

There is one custom character with a backstory and it's the Dark Urge, they have their own quest with branches and decisions. Some people will like it, some don't, and that's okay.

We have to remember that a videogame will always be more limited than our imagination.

But as so many of us keep pointing out, you don't need to have any backstory to still have reactivity of the "blank slate" player character to the other characters and world around them. Many other RPGs have already very successfully done exactly this without any controversy or problem.

Using the conceit of the BG3 story, what would you have changed to allow us to play our version of Tav without having him or her be a blank slate?

And what exactly does that ADD to a story centric TAV ? What do you roleplay? This isnt a sandbox game or MMO. Its a STORY DRIVEN game. The story is set in stone.

Your class? (this can be done with a story TAV)
Your dialogues? (this can be done with a story TAV)
Quests? (this can be done with a story TAV)
Do you write a biography of your TAV? (this can be done with a story TAV)

There is ZERO downside of having a story TAV to your roleplaying imagination. This has been proven by dozens of RPG games in the last 35 years similar to BG3.

There is however a downside of NOT having a story TAV. You get a hollow tree trunk like what we have now.

For starters, it could just have been exactly like it was in the original BG games, made 23 years ago. Charname was a blank slate, and yet was central to the story of those games. That's all I am asking for, though after 23 years surely Larian could've come up with even more than that. But if it had been just like how Charname was done in the original games, that itself would've made me so much more happy with BG3.

Let's say I want to play an apprentice red wizard who was forced to flee my master and now I've just arrived on the Sword Coast ready for adventure.

Then I start the game and learn that I'm an orphan at Candlekeep. It's only a blank slate within certain confines.

It seems that the "blank slate" character typically has to be an orphan or absent memory. That way a background can be snuck in to make the character relevant to the plot.

And, as far as I can tell, that's exactly what was done with the Dark Urge.

I'm not trying to prove I'm right or anything. I can tell that some folks are searching for something else; I'm just trying to understand what that something else is.

I feel like a lot of it comes down to "Larian could have figured out something that I would have liked more, but I'm not sure what that is." Again, I'm just trying to understand. I say that with all sincerity, not in an attempt to be rude.

I find myself wondering how much the presence of the origin system itself is causing this feeling in players, myself included. As in, I wonder how many people would feel different if nothing else about the writing changed but we just did not have the origin system in place. I have a feeling that part of the issue for people who feel the way I do is that through the origin system we're able to actually see how replacable Tav is. Same with Dark urge. We KNOW that if Tav didn't exist, then Wyll or Gale or Karlach etc could fill that role and nothing would be different, which just makes clear how secondary Tav really is.

As for what I would have done differently, I'd have tied Tav specifically to the story more by having them specifically encounter something early on that cements them as a central figure in the story. Maybe having them get the astral prism and making that a little more significant early on. Perhaps the prism is explicitly what allows us to keep our minds right from the beginning? So literally we are thralls until we somehow come cross the prism and that frees us and allows us to free our companions. So swe see immediatly see that the prism is important and that us having it and being able to wield it is important. So yes technically anyone could have gotten the prism and been in our position, but Tav was still in the right place at the right time, and so was effectively bound to the prism and it won't be separated from her. I think that would have been at least a good start, given that the prism doesn't really matter to Shadowheart's story. It literally could have been anything.

As an aside, I realize as I write this; was it ever really explained why our companions and Tav remained in total control when we first awakened? The assumption seems to be that we were going to moonrise in order to be fully "turned" but that doesn't actually make sense. We're already tadpoled. The tadpoles control and influence minds. If they've been changed and augmented, wouldn't it make sense that they would immediately bring their hosts under control? It doesn't really make sense that we get tadpoled, but have to be brought to moonrise for the control to "take" does it?

My theory on this is that the Emperor is the one who tadpoled us. The Emperor was known to be in charge of the Nautiloid. We find this out from a book in the Vault.

(Some people say it wasn't the Emperor who tadpoled us because the eye color is different. I say it was and that visual differences are the result of changes made after the intro was put together. For instance, Lae'zel and her armor look completely different in that scene.)

Anyway. The idea is that the Emperor was freed once he was in proximity to the artifact. At that point, he rushed to come up with a plan to fight against the Absolute. He began snatching up people left and right so that he could tadpole them and build up his own opposition. The githyanki appeared in the middle of his plans because they were searching for the stolen artifact.

Only a few of the people the Emperor changed survived. The Emperor retreated inside the prism and began helping and directing the characters toward the eventual confrontation with the Absolute.

Snatching people up in plain view like the Emperor was doing was not how the chosen of the dead three were pursuing their goals. It was the result of the Emperor trying to build a force to fight back to ultimately free himself.

The suggestion that process was interrupted by not getting to Moonrise was supposition. That was never the case. The process is not something that's finished at Moonrise. When that possibility is mentioned to Halsin in the worg pens, even he expresses some skepticism, saying essentially that he wouldn't rely on blind luck, or something to that effect.

this is the empahsis, i also clamed the similar post before.

the original characters are meanless onces you put one of them to be the main character, and the one never be his/her "original" since you put your soul into the one and control him/her.
this is, wyll => tav-wyll, gale => tav-gale, karlach => tav=karlach.

larian thinks that "this is a kingmaker game -- anyone can replace tav", but this is acturally "tav is the savior specially designated by AO-- without tav, ragnarok will come".

Is it weird that I liked feeling like I wasn't the only prophesied/chosen one/only hope? I'm comparing it to Skyrim, where the player was destined to save the world and ALL the guilds, which felt a little silly at times. In this game, I liked having a team who were each the hero of their own story. I appreciated having the option of a blank slate character too.

I don't really understand Stevelin's point because it seems to just be headcanon they're discussing like it's fact, but those theories have little bearing on what's actually in the game.

As for you SteelTempest, that's an opinion a lot of people share. The issue isn't that Tav isn't a chosen one or that Tav is a blank slate. It's that they are entirely ancillary and not even really a character. One Tav will end up playing pretty similar to another if you play a good character. I at least found that by the second or third playthrough my Tavs felt quite boring and samey. If you want an example of those same things executed on in a far more satisfying way, I direct you to Pillars of Eternity and the Pathfinder games, kingmaker in particular. Both games have you play blank slates that aren't chosen ones at all, and they consistently keep your story as the centre of the narrative, whereas in BG3 I find that Tav is just a husk you use to interact with the world, and isn't really meant tobe a character.

I personally really enjoy the "blank slate", in that the whole adventure doesn't actually revolve around me - I'm just a random, but resourceful, adventurer who got scooped up from the streets and tadpoled. My main gripe with the previous BG games (and many other CRPG:s) was that character creation "freedom" was an illusion, your character wasn't who you imagined it to be, it was a plot element. Never liked that. Hence, I loved the Icewind Dale games a lot more than BG, and I love that Tav is not a central part of the plot in BG3. If you want your backstory to take the lead, you have a generous choice of origin characters.

However, something that annoys me is that Tav has not a single voice line beyond the generic CRPG grumbling. Dialogues should have been voiced, and some race + class + background combo conversation options could and should have been worked into Tav's interactions with the companions. Yes, more work but it should have been done. Actually I think one reason many feel Tav is so underwhelming is that the companions are origin characters and as such chat a lot between them and thus seem a lot more developed and interesting to the mute Tav.

For me it's not just about Tav not being central to the plot, it's that Tav isn't a character. I found roleplaying in BG3 to be the most disappointing experience I've ever had in a crpg and that is not hyperbole. Several games have done what BG3 have done in this area and done it far, far better. I also categorically disagree that Tav should have been voiced. I think that too much voiced dialogue in a crpg, especially for the main character, is a bad choice that makes the games worse. I want to be able to imagine my character saying lines specifically how I want them to be spoken. Not just that but voiced dialogue ends up limiting the scope for dialogue options and reactivity because then adding even an extra line to refer to a past choice costs exponentially more time and money. I understand that's a matter of taste, but having Tav not be voiced is one of the few choices I think was entirely correct from Larian.

I get your point and agree to some extent, but in a game like BG3 where every single word spoken (by every single entity, regardless of importance to the plot) is voiced - having your own main character not say anything aloud comes off as weird, and I believe it contributes a lot to the character feeling bland and empty to many.

Another thing, related somewhat, is that I still marvel at the omission of a gruff warrior voice for Tav. So in a way, Tav's muteness is a blessing for players of half-orc barbarians and the like...

Honestly, game shouldn't have had origin\tav characters, and it should have been dark urge only, with a lot more focus on dark urge story, choices and options. As it is, all of it feels unfinished, and origin characters - what is even the point, there's not enough to them to justify playing as them. All of these characters work better as companions, rather than pc

Well, I would've been okay with a 'limited' blank slate as you suggest here. In fact, I have posted multiple times that what I would've liked is a second Dark Urge, one that was entirely 'good' and a beacon of light. In fact, and I say this in the context of agreeing with a lot of what @Gray Ghost said in the post after yours, the perfect solution would been to have Tav the true blank slate plus multiple Dark Urge Concept options, and no origin companions. Those companions could've still existed, just as non-origin companions. As @Gray Ghost correctly identifies, the main problem here is that Larian was almost-obsessively focused on creating and then pushing us to use their origin characters. And so the whole game is built around the idea that although you can play the game in other ways, the *best* experience within the game can be attained ONLY by playing as one of Larian's Chosen. And not only is this something I refuse to do per personal preference, it also just pisses the hell out of me as a matter of principle.

I will NEVER ever play BG3 as one of Larian's origin characters. Period. Not even if I replay the game a thousand times. So then I am guaranteed to NEVER ever have that *best* roleplaying experience from the game. And *that* is total crap.

This I agree with, 100%. I still enjoy the game a lot, but the fact my character's interactions throughout are very undeveloped compared to the origin characters does piss me off. My Tav mutely lumbering along while the others chat and bicker back and forth is frustrating, I feel left out. I absolutely love each and every one of those characters and how they work as companions, but I will never play as one of them, that's just not the way I play rpg:s.

While I understand the sentiment, I have difficulty understanding how this could be implemented in a way that was compatible with every backstory that people can create for their Tav. I already have issues with the game giving me a Baldurian tag based on my race, and I think canonizing more encounters/traits for Tav would be even worse on that front.

Call me overly simplistic, but my understanding was that Tav was the option for players who wanted a completely open-ended PC, and Dark Urge was the option for players who wanted a PC who was still a custom character but was tied into the world and had an established questline.

...though I also think people are overestimating how developed the origin characters are as player characters, cough cough. I haven't had a chance to play everyone, but in all the origin runs I have done, it starts out very reactive in early Act 1, and then drops off significantly. I'll consider Gale an exception, but the rest aren't brimming with unique content.

I agree, but I think the problem is that a lot of people don't want the graphic violence of the Dark Urge, yet still want to be an integral part of the story. Also I think that marketing messed up when they promoted Durge as evil, so many folks who don't play evil won't even consider it at all. I know I started maybe ten Tavs, getting frustrated with each character because she was so disconnected from the story that was supposed to be a continuation of the previous Baldur's Gate games. Then I researched the Dark Urge and realized that's what I should have been playing from the start.

In the previous BG games, you have a backstory, an evil one (unbeknownst to you), but you are able to build your character the way you wish, and avoid the horror while also being the main character of the story. Larian failed to to this on so many counts -- the custom character is too generic for most players, and the Dark Urge is too horrific for most players.

Yeah... sure it would be nice to have a pre-written story for a custom character, there's a limit to how much it's a custom character at that point. It's like you can play Skyrim and be a blank slate with no personality and a customisable appearance, or you can play The Witcher 3 and your options are Geralt of Rivia. Sure, the Dragonborn is tied into the story because of their destiny, but at that point so are the BG3 characters because of their tadpoles. The way I usually play D&D is that my character is a fairly ordinary person who suddenly gets swept up into extraordinary events.

I also don't understand the idea that it's bad that the origin characters chat to each other without involving Tav. Tav does have conversations with the origin characters, but these stop the game so you can think and respond. I've had plenty of chats with origin characters, many of which were not directly related to the story at that moment. And I think it's great that the origin characters chat to each other. Even if the main quest revolves around Tav leading the party, it gives the illusion that the world would go on existing without them.

I'm in the group that wouldn't want to be given a pre-written backstory for a custom character, because I created my own in my head. Maybe I'm being unfair because I played this game differently, but it's the best experience I've had so far with a character I created for a video game (rather than playing a pre-written character). Of course the game can't display what I've got in my head, but I knew what my character thought about the origin characters, about the missions, about the whole... thing. There are moments where the synergy between what happened on the screen and in my head gave me more than the game could have done alone unless they'd written a fully-realised character that happens to be exactly what I was thinking of; and far more than I could have imagined if I didn't have the game.

Maybe another option for a pre-set background with a custom appearance, like the Dark Urge but different? I've not played it, but the what I heard doesn't appeal very much - just sounds like playing Trevor from GTA 5. But while I can understand that some people might want a pre-set backstory, I can't understand the idea that this makes BG3 a 'bad game'.

I'd love it if Tav had been voiced, and I don't know if the reason they aren't is simply because of the sheer amount of recording needed across all the different voices, or if it's just because they keep trying to introduce themselves. Maybe in a future game that can be done with machine learning - the actor might read the line with a placeholder, like "Pleased to meet you, my name is Player," and the computer replaces it with a synthesized version of your character name in that actor's voice. With an option to turn it off if it can't pronounce it.

This is a great way to describe it (though I may have said 'empty' or 'disconnected' instead of 'generic'). It captures very well how I feel.

Here
I think most people see it that way, whether they have a problem with it or not.

yes, but the official statistics always count the character creation (tav + dark-urge).
it is strange, the official statistics never do the statistics that separate tav and dark-urge.

maybe dark-urge is the real chosen of larian, but i do not like they use the tricky approach make players think dark-urge is the most popular character that players is choosing.

though the plots doesn't give tav outstanding show, but tav is the true chosen by most players in the fact.

Well, they are both "custom" protagonist so it makes some sense to lump them together. I was considering doing first playthrough as DU, but it was Sven's comment during PfH that made me go with Tav (something like: Durge changes so many things it's better to know the base line first). I didn't get far enough with Durge to have my own take on his recommendation. The NPCs that were killed so far, weren't contributing to Tav playthrough much.


On a side note, I dislike how reactivity is handled in BG3 - I prefer if reactivity is reaction to my choices, not an alternative universe. BG3 does "the Witcher2" thing where making a choice makes you enter a different universe where things are different but unrelated to a change you made. So:
I dislike it, as it might be fine for singular playthrough, but I dislike this inconsistancy between NPC actions. I strips what I find about player choices interesting. It's not actions and consequence - and I favour more logical new avenues (oh, of course I can resolve familiar situation in a new way becase I am x or chose to do y), over those weird "oh, they didn't say that in last playthrough, it must be Durge exlusive content".


Anyway, I am curious if Durge was planned from the get go (let's try to make customisable origin this time around), or if it was Larian's response to EA feedback (custom Tav being bland, lack of BG1&2 connections).

Spotted this on a read of the thread and kind of glad it's not just me thinking this
always thought it was the emperor the armor and how he seems to be the one in charge of escaping the gith in the opening scene.
the eye change colour could be more to do his mind control being activated .

only spanner in the works is the dead mindflayer that says he tadpoled you .

On subject though it would of been nice to have a Tav personal quest but as said Dark Urge is probably what they wanted you to play its why you can have your pretty Elven goth's as your screenshot model.
Tav is basically durge with no evil for those who can't stand the bloody history you can't really connect a good Tav to the dead 3 for the story purpose there is too much missing.

I dont mind my Tav's being nondescript entities in the grand scheme of things I can self insert to a point . I do also like playing the Dark Urge not as a Dragonborn though I can't quite get myself to connect with them same with Orcs .

Not tried one of the other origins yet with 16 Tavs/Dark urges at various stages it will be a long time because 2 further Tav's/Dark urge are in the queue of my thoughts

i could see "empty", but i think most people who think it's a good thing don't agree with "disconnected". i connect because it's a blank slate.

Tav is the least interesting character because they have 4 different facial expressions and body stances and don't talk.

As bland as Tav is he/she is an improvement on his DOS2 ancestor. The Durge is another step forward and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them expand on that idea in their next game.

i don't think durge is another step forward of tav.

in the fact, durge is a failed one, or he/she ought to resist all murder urge 15 years ago.

if you play dark urge in bg3, you are actual turge(tav urge) not durge(dark urge).
and the original dark urge weak willed background can not match your will's amazing tough completely.

I think this is the community's fault. Originally in EA it was clear that Tav was going to be fully voiced, with a choice of voices and personality, with the intent to have preconfigured encounters depending on the choices you made for background in character creation. (So I bit like Dark Urge, but voiced and more mix-n-match.) The community here was quite vocal in saying that it didn't want a Tav with a personality because it reduces your own ability to roleplay and imagine your character yourself. So Larian dropped it. You can still see some of the artifacts left in the game - for example Tav will occasionally speak.