Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Are you dissapointed with companions variety?

So basically we got neither quality or quantity...

"Are you dissapointed [sp] with companions variety?"

nope.

For me, the lack of variety is a symptom of the larger issue being lack of overall companions in general.

The ones we have are really good and more fleshed out(by nature of the game) than almost any of the companions in the previous two games.

But the trade-off is that there's like a maybe a third of what we're used to having available to choose from.

This is a reason I would've liked to not have origin characters. All their quests are still fully present in Tav/DU's playthrough and in the case of my recent Shadowheart playthrough, I felt hers fell a little flat playing from her perspective.


Anyways, long-story short, if we had more companions, we would've had more variety. But the number of companions itself is criminally low for a BG game.

Well i would find gnomes etc rather unwanted companions, i never like them in any games so from that point of view companions are more interesting however... i think they made companions for wide audience of players which is the reason why im struggling to find more than 1-2 interesting ones for myself, none of them are interesting when romancing is considered and only very few has interesting story.

[SPOILERS]
A lot of their stories ending plots i could predict from almost the first lines the characters tells about themselves "oh that one's story is about deal with devil and its about breaking that deal and getting punishments" very very predictable clichees and therefore boring... or shadowhearts story, i could so fast guess all about her being manipulated by shar people and that i could make her see it and make her turn good.. so very clichee and predictable.. no surprises at all unless you count the nightsongs transformation but thats not solely shadowhearts story.

But gales ability came as a surprise, didnt expect the devs let us finish the game on act2. And Astarion is very entertaining and the fact that he goes evil all the way made him interesting.

There's a Spoilers button that gives [Spoilers][/Spoilers] if you want to hide spoilers.

not going to say anything negative. I would definitely enjoy more companions/content where and if it is possible.

absolutely. at best, i expected every class to be represented- not only is that not the case, we have TWO druids

zevlor could've been our good-path paladin, alfira is a common bard suggestion, i mean we have choices that narratively fit into the game and fit the characters

but the thing that REALLY surprised me, is that despite having the options present at character creation, we have NO dragonborn or little people companions. wulbren could've easily been one

i mean how do we end up that that many humans and elves? all the different races is part of what makes the fantasy world feel... fantastical. it's honestly kind of annoying

Because the companions were primarily designed for sex fantasies first. So its "pretty" races only with 1 exotic.

I hate to say it, but you are probably right. I mean, the companions we have, are interesting (apart from Halsin of course), but they didn't have to be humans, elves and in-betweens all.

In my eyes the companions in BG3 also seem to cover all the usual personalities found in dating games which for me is a pretty big indicator what they were designed for.

I'm blaming Bioware for this, they started that trend (I love the Dragon Age games, but you see it there too)

Yes, thats when romance became mandatory and formalized on how they work (Mass Effect).

But there is still a lot of room for how you implement them. Compare Kingmaker/Wrath of the Righteous to BG3.
With the Pathfinder games I never got the impression that companions are there to fulfil a romantic/sex fantasy role except Sosiel as the token gay character.
But in BG3 I can't shake the feeling that romance/sex was a primary or at least very important design goal.

I don't know, I like most of the companions in BG3 without romancing them tbh. Apart from halsin, whose solely purpose seems to be sex kink tbh. But yeah, I would have been ok with not having all companions to be romanceable. I love Jaheira and Minsc and like, that they are not romanceable (I always found the Jaheira romance in BG2 creepy, because she just lost her husband - and I'm probably one of the few people, who actually liked Khalid)

I don't think even a little that romance is the root of any of the problems of this game, including the lack of companion variety. I am of the opinion tha tpeople blow the romance and sex aspects of this game way out of proportion. I think the real problem that lads to our lack of racial variety in this game is the fact that Larian really doesn't seem to have respect for the short races. Anytime they talk about halflings they seemingly have to mention how throwable they are, that seems to be their main takeaway for the race, at least that's the one they want it to seem like they have. They also don't seem to have much opinion or consideration for dwarves, it seems like they find dwarves boring. So that leaves tieflings, humans and leves for a little variety.

I think what people are seeing when they look at the treatment of sex in this game is that Larian did actually put thought into sex and how various characters would approach/treat it. One thing I'll say in praise of the game (actually it's more than oen thing, I do think the game is good overall) is that they don't do what a lot of media does, which is to divorce sex from character entirely. Bywhich I mean, when sex starts, they don't replacethe characters with action figures that just go through the motions. There's thought behind it. (except with Halsin, he's a mess) It's been pointed out that a lot of media has been pushing sex out in recent years. There's plenty of beautiful people in states of undress, but actual sex and sexuality depicted on screen has been on a decline. I'm actually generally in favor of this, but I think BG3 is going against that trend and it makes it seem inordinately "focused" on sex when really it's not actually central to anything.

Short answer is no.

I generally recruit 2-3 companions max during any run-through as completing their storyline once is, well, enough.

Having cheap hirelings and the ability to endlessly respec allows me to have as much fun as I can with this game.

All that being said, I have no issue with the future addition of new companions should they opt for that, but the romance thing, the pixel porn, it's juvenile.

...not really? I'm an asexual player. I literally don't care about romances at all, but in games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect or other CRPGs like Pillars or Pathfinder, those options never annoyed me. It does in this game. And the reason why has nothing to do with sex scenes existing or how explicit or not they are.

It was that fact that close platonic content seemed almost non-existent. It felt like every option to be interested in the companion as a person was a flirt. Options to comfort them after a rough time were either tied to being in a romance or absent altogether. Romances aren't an optional way to interact with a character or an alternate path of development. It feels like it's the ONLY path the devs put any real effort into. And I don't know if it was a bug or not, but on release after Act 1, interactions between companions with people not me got very anemic. When you have something like Wyll and Karlach being super close, but it feels like it came from nowhere because they've been together in my party for the last 20 hours without saying a word to each other? They don't feel like three dimensional people anymore even without the weird immersion breaking moments that felt solely romance related. Shadowheart forgetting she has amnesia happens to make a quip about relationships or her information on what being a Sharran is like from her contradicts itself to justify the player's romantic decisions. Halsin's everything. Don't romance Astarion, get very little and even then, I've heard 'wholesome support' route has less relationship content than vampire BDSM route.

Why?

And if they don't feel like people, and the only depth they get is through a romance, and there are quite a few times where the writers prove willing to break their own characterization in favor of a romance/sex thing, then my perception is going to be that BG3's focused on romance to its own detriment.

Two Elf Druids at that.

I loved Khalid. He was my boy. And pure fighters were amazing in BG1 and he was basically it if you wanted a good party (the other two being Shar-Teel and Kagain).

I love Khalid too. Part of that is likely due to his characterization in the BG1 NPC project and in SoD, he has a cute quest to get a gift for Jaheira. But he was just a legitimately good dude with a genuinely tragic end.

I'm OK with the companion variety I guess, but on the other hand the options feel very limited compared to BG1 and BG2 in terms of classes, races, and sheer numbers.

I'm usually on Team Elf, one thing I do like about Dwarves is their never-ending rivalry with Elves, Dwarves and Elves hate eachother like Werewolves and Vampires, personally Gale should be a Gnome, while Halsin could've been a Half Orc.