I appreciate that they added better dialog between characters and the followers arent as snarky anymore.

But this came at a cost you can VERY EASILY see which dialog is from the "last patch" and this "new patch"

Because the dialog wasnt all recorded at the same time you can tell that the actors just forgot how they were acting during the first set of takes. Its so jarring. Maybe on the first take they were feeling a certain way but now on second take it totally feels like a new recording session.

Not sure what the fix here is but at the moment it all feels like a patch work of different recording sessions put together and it feels all over the place.

It could be they did the voice work remotely and it is just a placeholder to feel out fan reception before committing to final studio production. We are in the age of Covid after all, and I don't know about your state, but California is back to operating under Martial Law light again with curfew restriction and prohibitions against unnecessary travel and large gatherings

Was kind of worried about it. I feel like they should just stick to their vision, improve it and possibly release some less antagonistic companions, instead of awkardly patching up the existing ones by making them 'nicer'. Edwin, Korgan and Baeloth aren't awesome because they're 'nice'.

Having said that, if they changed the banters to be a little less horny teenagers (with worms eating their brains) that'd be nice.

Hmm, I'm actually saddened by this.

I think that no matter how sarcastic the characters are, it's their personality, their authors saw them that way. I don't see the point in changing their behavior just because it offends someone.

+1 i liked them too

Nicer Snarkyheart and Baezel, world ends... I disapprove it too.

Ideally they'll reach a point where they've finalised the dialogue completely, and make an internal declaration that it will not change any more - after which they can smooth it into a single coherent character.

Making changes with a dedication to full VA is a *lot* of work they're making for themselves; I don't mind if it's scruffy and not polished from the outset, so long as it IS polished up once the dialogue is set in stone.

Thats what made me a bit O_O, since, afaik, recording new VA lines (even if semi-placeholder audio) is a pretty big thing to do

If their intention is to make the companions more likeable through changing dialogue, then they should do so by having the characters develop and dialogue change based on action and inaction. By this I mean they could simply keep both sets of dialogue, but the companions react differently based on how quests are completed or approval.

They could be miserable sods like before or more tolerable depending on character development. I mean, IRL you're not going to behave like Lae'zel or some of the others did unless you've got a developmental syndrome like Asperger's or something. You'd actually pick up on social cues and behave appropriately whether or not you entirely agree with situation whether it be out of companionship or simply necessity to survive.

If they could add some companions that aren't banging goddesses, vampires, werewolves, princes, inhabited by demons, immortals from an extinct race etc., etc., and are actually relatable or more normal then that'd be great to. I'm sure when the ship was flying and zapping people off of the street they got some normal people too. *shrugs*

I didn't notice any difference they still seem snarky and antagonistic to me? Where did they change them?

+1

A lot of the problems are baked in, but some reactivity would help.



Hopefully it's a placeholder. It would be nice/ effortless/ helpful if Larian mentioned that, but they are about as reactive as their characters when it comes to feedback. "I'm not going to tell you because I'm mysterious and I have a dark secret and I also have layers... No I can't tell you why we only respond once a month. By the way, did you know X% of players never made it to the goblin village because they got bored?"

God, now it's been mentioned, the asperger's diagnosis is difficult to let go of.

This is why if I was running the project, I would not have done any of the voice work until I had all the dialog locked down to like 99% completed. Every time they make dialog changes, they increase the price because they need more voice work and as you mentioned that it not 100% the same.

EA could have been fine with just text dialogs. Voice Acting just adds more depth, was not needed at the start.

Shadowheart has gotten considerably nicer with 'neutral' approval ratings than she was in the previous patch with exceptional approval. She has more things to say and gave the "and not an unpleasant one . . . " talk shortly after meeting her. Which was big change from her previous, guarded personality. Also fewer scowls. Like the OP, I don't think the changes were good and I agree with those asking for longer dialogues. I'd prefer a written wall of text to a brief vo. Again, this is something PoE1 got right.

Yes, but I'm not sure it will work with cutscenes...

Welp, i felt like SH was the only one they'd done truly right, what with how her talks progressed and how many they were. Just needed to make her a bit less snappish, on high approval, when asked for her opinion of you and about her magic thing.

Actually, it's actually pretty weird they chose to straight up make them all nicer rather than just working on making the approval system better and more relevant.

This is the product of listening to consumers who are convinced that they know best and giving into silly demands to placate them.

There were way too many young entitled guys who were salty that their only female romance options were pragmatic, dutiful, and not "traditionally attractive" Lae'zel and standoffish snarky Shadowheart.
They attacked the forums in droves because it messed with their fantasy that all women should act vulnerable and do everything within their power to be as appealing to men as possible.
What we have now are watered down and confused followers who constantly feel like they're holding something back and pitying you because they're doing their best to be kind.
It comes off as condescending and inconsistent. Shadowheart in particular went from being stoic to acting like middle school girls in the 90's who modeled themselves after the witches in "The Craft."

But hey, at least a pile of young adult males who have 4 Charisma in real life can now romance the more-tolerant woman of their dreams!

Well that escalated quickly

It's still EA so i'm not judging too hard, but if they take this road is more on Larian than anyone else tbh. People can criticize whatever they want, at the end of the day if their plan was to release the 'evil' companions first to encourage us to take the (very bad) evil path they should have just buckled up and stuck to it, especially when it came to narratives that very much missed some pieces.

I killed Lae'zel right again at the start to get her armor
( and because she feels too out of place in my camp )
during the Tiefling standoff so I wouldnt know.
And until now I am not at the parts where Shadowheart truly started to annoy me.


But hey now I hear both of those empowered Wamen had a slight personality overhaul?
Sounds great.
Cause they were not "cool".
They were just sassy or bossy just for the sake of "personality", of being "different".


To be fair I dunno about Lae'zel.
Maybe Githyanki culture is just one giant piece of shame, who knows? And she can be excused that way.
But Shadowheart?
This wannabe detached and wannabe "deep logic moments" of her's, can be pretty annoying.

Her class feels off for this kind of personality.
She seems more like a Rogue than a Cleric.
Even a Cleric of Shar.
I know Shar Cleris are all about Taqiya and stuff... but she isnt even smart about it.
The sass and soft-hostility appear just childish and mentally unstable.


And in a typical D&D story that is the type of character that kills you later just because... "edgy and evil".
Sometimes it frustrats me that we cannot see her entire chain in EarlyAccess.
If Shadowheart does not later on accepts that her behaviour has been totally immature and cringe, I hope the tadpol just clears out her already pretty hollow skull.

Yeah you can only be a convinced follower of someone tyrannical like Shar if you have minddamage like Amnesia.
But then again the Shadowdruids too seem to be pretty humanoidphobic too.
I bet when they were all children someone at their pudding once!! LoL
" And this is not their reeeeevääääänge! "

^_^

gamers ruined games for everyone

She's green so I Captain Kirk'ed her.

Is it fair to say we're just swapping one fetish for another? Hard to get goth girl vs. compliant trad wife. Difficult to avoid that in a voyeuristic game with animated sex "rewards," I suppose.

I definitely agree with the first sentence - I wish it were otherwise, but it's rarely ever the case that implementing a client's/public's feedback on something complicated like a character will fix that nagging sense that it isn't quite good enough. But as has been mentioned, committing to VO too early makes it costly to make anything but surface changes. I'm hoping it's one of those things that matters less and less as the game becomes more polished. It's the only real way "out," imo, that doesn't include new writers coming in.

Why isnt it okay for a few of the companions to be less agreeable than the rest? Laelzel maybe was a bit too much but there was no reason to change shadowheart.

None of this would have been nescessary if they had added Karlach, Minsc or Helia to EA. Can't wait for the demands to make those less "nice" in comparison.

I haven't reach the new character segment yet but I'm really dreading that. I hope that in the worst case scenario we will be able to remove these new additions with mods

I disagree, I'm pretty sure that it was mostly female gamers complaining about Shadowheart.
Male players were very happy with how standoffish and secretive Shadowheart is (she is obviously this way because she IS vulnerable). Also she has a bit of a goth aesthetic going and we guys really like that, but way to condemn half of humanity to make yourself feel better. I mean obviously Larian should listen to you and condemn the vast majority of it's own playerbase (males with 4 charisma who love videogames).
Oh and her instant dislike of Laezel was great, I wish more characters refused to entertain each other, or even duke it out and fight to the death (BG2 style)

It's not about listening to anyone. It's about being faithful to the character you created. If they want to change shadowheart because she is a bad character they should change her. But don't do these half assed changes that perhaps make some players happy but make the character inconsistent and worse writing wise.

+1

Yeah but the point is that Shadowheart was fine as she was pretty much, and blaming this change on males who dislike women is dumb and wrong.
I mean maybe you would have a point with Laezel, but honestly you can just murder her at so many points in the game that I don't see why people would want her changed instead of just killing her like I did? Also the game does give you the option to kill off your companions either directly or indirectly so I see no reason for rewriting them.

Then what are you arguing about?

I don't mind much that the companions are unpleasant and reserved at the start, as long as they potentially evolve to open up and be more favorable to you (based on your actions and Approval). Realistic and durable character evolution is always one of the most satisfying aspects of companions in RPGs, and few of them get it right. I hope Larian does!

To be honest, I'm after the blighted village and did most of the things you can do in the game up to this point, and I didn't notice much difference...

Group of folks of varying backgrounds, loyalties and goals must all be kind to each other even though none of them would associate with each other were it not for the existence a life ending tadpole in their heads, sounds like reddit stuff. Granted I still have to run through this new patch but them being nicer just sounds dumb.

I'm not playing the EA myself, but from what I got out of the Update and Swen's presentation the main thing they toned down was the companions constantly having a (mostly negative) reaction to EVERYTHING the PC says/does, including even when they're not physically there when the PC said/did something. Seems eminently reasonable. Someone can be as dour or sullen as they want to be and yet make a choice that they're not going to respond to every single thing the leader of their group says/does that they dislike. This is what is actually normal behavior.

I look at it as more "everyday women with a variety of emotions who aren't here to serve you or entertain you" vs. "guaranteed to be Rule 34 fetishbait for people who haven't felt the warmth of another human in a long time."
I feel as though being dismissive and confrontational in a situation like this is a far more plausible reaction to the standard "save the princess, woe is me for I am frail" bullshit.
But I don't really have a dog in this race because I'm not interested in women anyway, nor am I particularly invested in video game romances in general.

I will say that post-patch Shadowheart feels "weaker" to me. She's lost her iron will and headstrong determination in how she interacts with me, and I liked how walled-off she was before.

Were we looking at the same forums just after release?
There were no less than about 20-30 posts from males complaining that Shadowheart wasn't agreeable enough, going so far as to call her an icy bitch just because she didn't bend over backwards to soothe their fragile egos.

I feel as though Larian had it right before the patch, with Shadowheart anyway. She starts off as a wall and then eventually opens up, but never really loses that edge.
Now it feels like she's gritting her teeth through her smile and pitying you instead of being genuinely open about her reservations.

If it is merely this I'm fully on board

She was like a breath of fresh air in comparison with insipid male options. I don't understand why they leveled SH down instead of making others interesting enough.

This. I thought SH was good nod to Viconia -- Classic Tsundere relationship. Now that Shadowheart is soft and goey from the start I'm less interested.

Good, what people get for throwing a fit about nothing at all. Hope it stays that way, shows what happens when a company caves in to appease the masses over nothing.

Lol what kind of chicks do you all hang around? From what I gathered being "strong" is being standoffish? Now she is weak and uninteresting? Do you want to hang around nitpicking standoffish non agreeable chicks?

Don't know about you folks, but a companionship whether romantic or not does not happen if both parties at least tolerant to each other. In the game what reason is their for her to be rude and boderline hostile besides the player being Gith? Having secrets is as easy as not talking about it. It's got nothing to do with attitude.

Now some of you are using that as an excuse to attack dudes. Hmmm I don't know does not seem right to me. Were you even planning on having her in the party?

Devil's advocate: "The males are too weak and feminine. Perfect for a high school girl fanfic".

See thats how some of you look. Shame.

The reactions are much the same. From what I've noticed --

Wyll is pretty much the same in my playthrough

Shadowheart walks around with smile more often than not. Previously she had a resting scowl and the only time you saw her smile is when you mentioned night orchids. Someone made a post reddit suggesting the smile was graphics bug. Previously she thought the kiss was a mistake, now she's happy she made an impression. I'm guessing they swapped in the "committed" relationship voice overs.

Astarian is much friendlier -- which is strange since he and my toon disagree on nearly everything. Before he started out conversations with "you're staring again"and a scowl and now it's "well hellloo" and a smile.

I think that some of the comments might be referencing this older topic:

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=735973#Post735973

It seems that they made SH more agreeable to them at the cost of making her more boring to the others. I'm guessing that while all NPC's are supposed to be playable, SH is specially meant as a romance more that anything else, so they try hard for SH to be likable.

PD: I kind of liked Astarion saying the "you are staring again" and his other anthics. It was fun. The flirty tone for when he has higher approval doesn't fit at less approval. Besides, what would he say when approval goes higher?

Oh Jesus now the simping will get even worse

I've met some poisonous people whom cover it with politeness on the surface. Maybe its a western thing. That's why I appreciated SH showing her true emotions. Memory wipe, serving unforgiving godess and her artifact mission, magical flarings and, crème de la crème, possiability to turn into mindflayer at any given moment (which won't happen till the end of the game if at all but she doesn't know that). This is shitload of stress. I would like to see true person chilled about that.

I like to work, to earn her trust and warm up. Smile was rewarding.

I can only disagree, I think, that being standofish makes sense at all given the "we're all about to die horribly" situation. It makes a lot more sense to just get on with it. Any active pushing away is absurd if your head is about to pop open. The place of "romance" here is equally absurd, imo, which makes it part of a broader problem that you leave a UFO with a timebomb in your head but then start your first day of school. Like a weird fever dream.

So it's not smirky teenager vs. waifu. As I said before, I think both "versions" are equally fetishistic (which makes sense, because all characters in BG3 are designed to be fuckable as an obvious "goal"), and more than a little detached from the supposedly imminent *pop.*

Definitely agree with you and others that the way they reacted is not a serious fix.

Isn't that with the assumtion that peoples true colors are horrible. Thats just not always the case my friend. It does not sound like you are building a rapport, but rather wearing the person down. That is probably why you assume horrible people are nice and nice people are posion. I don't know you so I have nothing more to say about that.

All I can say is don't expect to be happy if you have to "work" for anything with people. It puts you in a bad and unnecessary spot.

Stress and fear is what gets you killed. Keeping a cool head and think things through is the way. Why be hostile? No time for any bs drama including rudeness. Emotional instability. Nothing interesting or useful in that. It is a reason to leave her ass on a grove corner. If she was actually good with secrets she would say very little and follow along and subtlety take whatever. In which case I'd leave her 8 int ass anyway. Lol

The only way is to cut the rude bs and join the team like a normal tadpole infectee.

I would not even think about trust in Shadowheart's case since its literally join me or die from several things that have nothing to do with me including whats in her pocket.

So far, I preferred the before over the after.

I agree with some of the OP. You can tell which lines were newly recorded. In some of the scenes, Lae'zel doesn't even sound the same. I wondered if it was a different voice actor.

The VR issue definitely needs to be fixed regardless of scripting.

This is awful... I do not know what else to say, for many ppl he was attractive without these corrections. He's an asshole, but people love him for it. Also, because of this, you can't feel the" growth " of relationship....

I said some people, do not misinterpret. We had wide spectrum of companion's characters, now some of them lost their uniqueness. And working on trust is normal thing when person has her baggage like SH. She was guarded and opened because of our actions. Now they removed it, she became more flat. @Nyloth pointed the thing with Astarion, similar problem.
What kind of progression is left for SH? Show her true colors as evil priestess. We have Gale, he's kind but very manipulative.

What devs could do is cutting some of disapproves, giving at least one good companion and leaving VA untouched. Now its a mess.

How considerate of you. So you get all the edgy/manipulative/conniving/evil companions that you like, but I only get one good companion for my good party?

I don't mind evil companions in general, but is this a good opportunity for me to mention for the hundredth time Our Lord and Saviour, More Companions That Aren't Necessarily Origins?

Maybe just WAIT??? They said they would add more companions. So let them add good companions, and do not correct the evil...

Blame the devs, they wanted to bring us baddies at first. 3 more good companions incoming so you will get your dream team someday.
Still, nothing prevents you from demanding more sexy good companions.

Yes I know we are supposed to be getting good companions at some future point. But (a) I remain skeptical about these "good" companions we will supposedly get (because they not only need to be good-aligned but also likeable), and (b) the interesting discussions about the companions are happening now and I want to weigh in too and not wait to do so many, many months from now when everyone else has moved on.

Also just to note, I don't need them to be "sexy." Just good and likeable. I don't care at all about romance in my RPGs. What I do care about, a LOT, is camaraderie, friendship, and brother/sisterhood with my party companions.

(Sorry, I appear to comment a lot on your posts today. :P)

I have some faint hope that the currently unreleased companions still have some chance of being tweaked according to our feedback. It would be easier than tweaking the current ones, anyway. Two of those characters appear tentatively ok to me, although I haven't read the datamining thread, so I've got no info on any details. (I know about them at all because people have exactly 0 respect for the "tag your spoilers" rule. Speaking of which...)





I'm pretty sure that Verte was jokingly referring to the spammed "we demand more sexy [whatever]" threads one user produced en masse. But besides that: +1000 to what you said, couldn't agree more.

That was my intention ofc

While I dislike current companions toned down to be gentle smiling people, I would love to see more options than just romancing them and even more to see their banters goes like they are growing on each other (like a fungus ;-)) not just flirting. This and their character progression (getting nicer over time, not from get go) would give us more companionship.

I have the same concerns as Uncle Lester's spoiler.

I want scowling Shadowheart back and I want to her break off the relationship with the MC only to start it again. Just like the Viconia romance. This should be part of her redemption -- Shar is goddess of loss and sorrow. New hope and new beginnings should invoke a crisis of faith.

While I normally agree with Kanisatha I did like Durance exactly because he was going through a crisis of faith. I wanted to help him understand that he was serving a goddess that used him like a tool to be discarded when he was no longer fit for purpose. Durance never became 'good' because 'good' doesn't exist in PoE but I enjoyed bringing him to the point that he would denounce Magran.

So far I like old Shadowheart and current Wyll the best.

Sorry, it seems Larian's focus testing has shown that the majority of players do not enjoy companions talking back to them, and they will now have no choice but to adore the player from the moment they meet.

Actually as far as I know thanks to dataminig people, it was just a bug. He was rude because he was using his "you did too many Astarion-disapprove choices" greeting at the beginning.
Unless you mean you really earned this greeting after some time :P

I also agree totally with @Uncle Lester's spoiler-hidden observation, and for exactly his implied reason.

But @KillerRabbit your point about Durance is a good one, and I agree with it. I did like the crisis of faith story part of Durance. But his type of acerbic/caustic personality is just something that grates on me too much these days. So, liked his story, but hated his personality.

I have to admit if Minsk starts trying to screw my male PC as other 2 companions do, I'll be a bit shocked. I can live with a vamp. spawn or that weirdo wizard doing that. But Minsk? What would Boo think?

I haven't found any new companion dialogue from Lae'zel or Astarion (aside from his now-unbugged greetings). Was Shadowheart the only one affected?

Lae has one new dialogue, but there is no cutscene to it, or I just haven't seen it before. She talks about some 'Tears'. I haven't found any new Astarion dialogs, but I'm in process...
I'm still crying for Shadow, and I can't look at her forced smile...

I haven't updated to the new patch yet, for a few reasons, but I gotta say I really don't like the idea of them making Shadowheart any "nicer".

The Tears of Selune, where her creche is? That isn't new - been in the game from the beginning, as far as I know, though it's not the easiest thing to trigger.