Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Indirect confirmation "Tav" will NOT be fully voiced

Indeed! That didn't even occur to me.

About this, I think the implication is just that the game will be freaking BIG, to the point that even "barks" and "odd comments every now and then" will pile up to count in the thousands.

You could easily be right, but I’m trying not to let the possibility totally burst my bubble. Admittedly my bubble is pretty deflated, though!

😢

Reposted this thread to steam forums as well. I think it's very valuable information for people out there.

Interesting. 4k is still a lot, but with how often a character comments on things found in the enviroment it doesn't sound impossible.

Now the 2nd question would be: will origins be fully voiced or is 30k of Astarion primarily companion content.

Does anyone know how many lines Tav has in EA?

It will likely be the same for both origins and Tav. I don’t think it would work well in multiplayer, where you could have both in a party, to have origin pcs have full VO while Tavs are silent.

I want full voiced Tavs i believe it will give much more depth and weight to the fate of our characters. That doesn't mean that i am not gonna be happy if they aren't but it will be a pleasant addition to hear our heroes deliver their lines. Also we know it is a video game and not an actual dnd session so there are limitations just by having dialouges to choose from (like most rpgs). Not having full voiced Tavs won't change much as to the freedom you get to feel by playing the game and in my experience bg3 is already a pretty "free" game as to what you can do and say. 4k lines i think are just enough for the whole game (but maybe am wrong) because we deal with certain amounts of options in each dialouge scene,some have more some have less. Also i saw a comment on Josh Wichard's twitter post were he complements the games depth , attention to detail and writing. Now if he has an opinion on something like that to me it means he delved deeper into Tav than just voice barks and idle comments.

I find Baldur's Gate to be frustratingly limiting in what we can say and how we can say it, especially compared to other crpgs. If you compare it to something like Mass Effect or The Witcher, it's incredibly impress. But compared to Pillars of eternity, any of the Pathfinder games, etc, it's disappointing in my opinion. At least by having a silent protagonist we can imagine our character's tone. I think if Larian had their way, then even the most good character would still come off as a dismissive jerk. That's the tone I've gotten from several interactions we've had in EA. There are multiple frustrating occasions where we've had no choice but to be mean or dismissive, ad that issue could only be amplified by full voicing.

I am actually on the opposite spectrum from you - because I find conversation options underwhelming I am disappointed that they will not be voiced. Even a silent protagonist requires character in its writing, and I was hoping VO will fill what is lacking in written text. It’s an awkward middle ground, where I neither get a mouldable custom character, nor a compelling pre-defined one.

Having more varied voices to pick from is good though.

It's not really a middle ground, though. Whether voiced or not, bad writing is bad writing, and protags in these kinds of games tend to be just that because they're also meant to be self-inserts. That includes protags like Shepard for instance. The idea is to represent not express, kind of the way you do in a TT where at best you might have a figurine or rough drawing and need to let imagination do the rest. Actions also flesh out a character a ton too, and that's one of the strongest aids for a silent protag in a game full of choices.

That's also one reason I don't care about unvoiced protags since the writing tends to be subpar anyway. It's a lot easier to write compelling characters when you know what a character's personality is like, what their motivations and history are, etc. A blank slate is really, really hard to write and well... most games don't when it comes to self-insert protags.

I thought Shepard was pretty good. Protagonist will always serve a different function than a companion, but, for what it was, I found Shepard to be a very effective protagonist.

I disagree about customs having to be bad - good blank slate is all about provide a range of expression that games provide - player should be able to define and fill the blank protagonist as they play, not be stuck with an expression-less cardboard cutout.

Obsidian has been doing terrific job with their protagonists, and some games with less customisable protagonists like Planescape and Disco provided players with interesting conversation choices to shape the character they control.

I think the issue I have with BG3 is how dry protagonist writing is. It boils down to the most fundamental actions with no ability to specify the intent, viewpoint or opinion. You could say that filling blanks is up to you to do outside the game, but I don’t think it works in a game that is so detailed otherwise, especially that game will regularly take control from the player and have the character animate regardless of what our intentions could be. The issue is exacerbated with NPC who react to those basic actions we can take, without any context of reason or intent - this is not BG3 specific issue, most RPG run into it to some extend - but I found it to really block any role playing attempts I might have attempted in BG3.

I never hoped for anything on the quality of level of Shepard - closer to Inquisitor from DA:I. Theoretically a VO could do the heavy lifting in characterisation, that written text doesn’t provide. Still, doing VO for Tavs and Origins would be a monumental undertaking so it is understandable if they don’t do it. That does leave us with just dry protagonist conversation trees though.

Shepard is my favorite pc of all!😊 I much prefer her to bland blank slate pcs!

Shepard started off kinda bland, but they definitely grew into their own character more and more with each game. Frankly by the second they became a memorable and iconic character in their own right. I agree that Obsidian has done a great job with this. I will continue to say that Pillars of Eternity is one of the best crpgs ever made, certainly one of the best of the more modern era. I will also continue to say that the breadth of characters you can make is exceptional. To date I have made three vastly different characters in full playthroughs (not to talk of partial playthroughs) who could not be more different, and the game even gave me the space to give them meaningful character arcs where they started one place and changed by the end. Even on my very first playthrough, I reached a point in the middle of the game where I just realized "oh wow. No, this moment is going to deeply and fundamentally change my character and her motivations" and I played that change and it was one of the moments that really, truly taught me how much games could actually do in terms of roleplay. In WotR, I played two angel characters that were both vastly different, with the first one having an arc of struggling against internalized rage and frustration that growing up as a tieflign inflicted her with, and learning to channel that rage to productive, beneficial ends. And that's not even touching on all the numerous other mythic paths I've played. Basically what I'm trying to say is that blank slate characters can really work if the developers put the work in. And thus far it doesn't seem as though Larian has put the work in.

My problem is that the game kinda signals that it's trying to be Dragon Age, with its free and open protagonist, as opposed to the more defined Mass Effect and Shepard. I think it ends up taking the worst of both worlds frankly.

I absolutely agree with you about PoE. I did multiple playthroughs of both PoE1&2 and managed to roleplay as very different characters, with different background goals and ideologies and they all worked really well.

We will see how BG3 will end up looking at the end. I am still pinning any issues with protagonist and companion writing squarely on the shoulder of origins - you can have blank protagonist. You can have a shared protagonist like Shepard. You can have predefined protagonist. You can have a group of protagonists. Really you can do whatever you think suits your game best. What Larian tries to do, is to do everything at once, and I just don't think this is a feasible goal.

Isn't that what DoS achieved? The final result was very convincing to me, despite some people saying that Larian writing is bad.

PoE was an exception built from the ground up for that though, so it's a bit unfair. I mean, you could choose who the person you're looking for is from your past (sibling, lover, parent too I think, etc), and that was a constant theme. It was like a literal build your own story simulator instead of you inserting yourself into a preexisting narrative. It imo suffered in other aspects because of that though, such as the main story itself being really loose and unfocused to accommodate this.

I also disagree about Shepard becoming their own person. They were very much a generic middle ground self-insert character that the writers unabashedly leaned towards paragon. Renegade options are all really awkward and 90% of the time result in the same 'good' outcomes outside of specific major choices that are really just story branch toggles than anything else. Not really sure what you guys are considering memorable specifically about Shepard's presentation/writing, and I'd love to hear examples, because I remember Shepard being pretty bland by intent so you could have "your own" Shepard. Compare that to, well, literally anyone else in the cast who was keenly influenced by their history, personal motivations, and mistakes/successes.

Or, you know, compare Shepard to a true fully developed protagonist like in, say, God of War. Kratos' identity as himself is what carries every shred of that story, from his past to his troubled life with his son, to all the consequences of his past actions. That story wouldn't have worked as a "make your own character kind of game," and those are all the reasons he's considered incredibly well-written by many.

You're just never ever going to get that with a self-insert character. Shepard was ultimately designed to merely represent the kind of Shepard we wanted to be. I suggest you look at some retrospective videos if you're ever bored; I love watching breakdowns of plot and so on, and quite a few of them do an excelletn job at breaking down and candidly point out just how flawed Shepard is as a character and how mostly meaningless the paragon/renegade system was. Our love of him came as a porthole and method of influence into the surrounding narrative and companions, and that's what we mostly remember fondly. Our adventures through Sheperd, not Sheperd himself. That's imo what games like this are really good at and why it works well enough for many rpgs to do the same, just like BG3.

You can't really have a player created self-insert character with a strong personality and highly developed presence. It just doesn't work that way, and that's exactly why Tav has so few lines and the narrator is front and center.

I found D:OS2 conversation choices and companions to be very underwhelming. Not something I held against Larian after finding they were jammed in at the last minute, and BG3 is way, way better than anything that was in D:OS2 but I still find a design of “an origin” to be “jack-of-all-trades master of none” kind of a deal.

Regarding PoE, I compare the two because they're both crpgs, but also because people are praising BG3 for its roleplay and saying up and down how great it is, and honestly, that bothers me because its roleplay is unimpressive compared to a lot of other modern crpgs, with PoE just being a standout example. Honestly I just think this game gets far more praise than it deserves. Its reactivity is top notch, but beyond that, I don't think it does anything other than graphics better than other crpgs. And frankly, it's only better in terms of fidelity. I was more wowed and struck by the beauty of PoE and WotR, with thedistinct style and design they put in, and the effort they put into pushign that style as far as it could go. In contrast BG3 is offering a higher-fidelity look, but it's offering a pretty unimpressive version of that. Hell, when I played BG1 a few months ago, I was more genuinely impressed by Gorion's death scene because I could tell just how far they were pushing what they could do with what they had.

And I would argue that the looser main story in PoE isn't a flaw but a necessary feature that allows it to be the amazing roleplay experience it is. A realization I came to long ago is that the game actually has a lot of potential themes in it, and you're able to choose the one that you want to focus on for your character. For instance in one playthrough I focused on the themes of passion and extremism, and how much can be considered acceptable for the greater good, and when things cross the line and go too far. In another I focused on the theme of responsibility, leaning into the central themes of chaos and order and ultimately transitioning my character from, to use D&D parlance, a spoilt young chaotic neutral noble to a firm-minded, lawful neutral bordering on lawful evil ruler who agreed with and ultimately took the place of the main villain. I think it's a matter of personal taste. For me, I don't care so much about the main story of crpgs. I want crpgs to serve as a vehicle where I can express my character in various situations and build up who they are and how they react to things. It's why Dragon Age inquisition is one of my favorite games. The main story, while thematically strong and coherent in my opinion, is not exactly compelling if you lay out the events on paper. What for me makes it compelling is that it puts my character in a lot of situations where I have to make choices and react to things. I find that BG3 does that to so-so effect thus far, but I'm hopeful based on what's been said about the city thatoncewe get to Baldur's gate, I'll get more of that.

As for Mass Effect, I thinkpretty mucheverything you say is right. when I said shepard becomes a more developed protagonist, I only meant that relatively speaking. Comparing ME1 to ME3, Shepard does show more agency of their own outside of our chosen dialogues options. But no, compared to Kratos its no contest. As an aside, I think people put way too much emphasis on every choice leading to something different. I think it's enough if every choice lets your character be different, and the world notices in small ways that difference. The small changes to dialogue that come as reactions to our choices are enough for me. I don't need every choice to come with some massively game-altering outcome, and I would hate if crpgs only offered those choices and not also the small ones that let us characterize our characters. That's something which BG3 is lacking and I think that the lack of voice acting makes it more possible to ammend that.