Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The approval system need to be more engaged with the dialogue

What the Approval System now has to offer is just some extra story from companion plus potential romance scene and maybe the late/end-game endings, this is not very engaging to player's roleplay experience.


I suggest giving the companions a chance to interrupt player character's conversation depending how they already approve on player's leadership:

> see if the player character was the one who started a conversation with some NPC >

> see if player's current available [default dialogue options] had a line that would trigger a companion's [positive approval change], this companion need to be involved in the current conversation cutscene >

> see if the triggered companion had the very same [dialogue option] if it was he/she doing the talk >

> store all triggered companions and their [current approval value] towards the player into a temporal array >

> sort this temporal array according to the [stored approval value] from low to high >

> retrieve the [companion id] from the first array entry and see if this companion had negative [approval value] towards the player character or under a [particular threshold(which can be assigned specifically if necessary)] of approval >

> if this companion had negative [approval value] towards the player character or under a [particular threshold] of approval, then move the cutscene camera to this companion as he/she interrupts the PC and let this companion to do the talk automatically til the current dialogue phrase ends >

> what this jump in companion had to say is: if he/she had an Origin special dialogue option, prioritize using that, if not, use the default dialogue option that triggered all these >

> if this jump in companion said something that piss off the other companions around, they lose [Approval value] towards the player character as it was the PC's fault to not been able to keep that jump in companion at bay >

> the same thing can be done to the companion with the highest approval towards the player as well in case of player let one of the companion to start a conversation instead the player character.


So, for example, when you was about to decide what to do with that kid who tried to steal the druid's idol, if you had Wyll with you, who is about full of "the Blade of Frontier", might as well want to say something in a rush regardless what you might think.

The point is, the companions you pick should not only reflect how you wish to compose your tactical combat approach, but also how you wish to handle situations outside of combat encounters. Because a companion who don't trust PC that much might want to interrupt a conversation to make sure the thing goes in a way that they believe to be right, and a companion who agree with PC a lot might consider his/her own opinion matters more that others, even the PC's. Anyway, just my 2 cents.