Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Absent companion reactions

Why do companions who are sitting back at camp always react to things that I'm doing out in the world? It seems super weird that I can recruit someone, leave them at camp for the whole game and have basically no interactions with them, and somehow have high approval with them. It feels like if you want to build rapport with some, you should have to put in the work and, you know, actually spend time with them.

I get that word of your deeds might get told around the fire back at camp sometimes, but I don't think that should have nearly the same impact as witnessing it firsthand does. Does anyone else find this weird?

It's either a glitch or the joint consciousness of the tadpole. Judging from this quote from the Patch 3 notes "Neat Factoid: For all 204k of players who let Astarion chow down, you won't have to deal with SH's approval dropping in what should be a private moment between the two of you." - it's probably a glitch.

I don't think it's necessarily a glitch - they probably have a reason for how it is. Just saying it feels off to me.

Because it would be a massive pain in the a** to swap out companions continuously to get reactions from the one(s) you wanted to groom. This way, you can have your preferred party and tweak companion attitude at the same time.

It feels weird to me to try to groom someone that you don't want to bring along with you.

On the other hand, I would love to be able to hide things from companions by not bringing them along.

People are talking, even if they dont have connected minds with tadpole ...

Isnt it weirder that in other RPG, when you leave someone in camp none of your decisions have any effect?
Hero: "Yo Paladin, my favourite guy, i just burned orphanage, and raped some nuns."
Paladin: "Its ok, dude, im cool ... i was just sitting here and roasting sausages, you are doing great!"

This is a very complicated line to draw here, between what makes sense and what doesn't. For example, yeah, it's a bit annoying that you constantly have your companions scrying on you, and that they react to every single littlest thing you do. But like Ragny just said having then react to big things is good. If you want a more responsive approval system they need to be able to tell the difference between big and small things.

So maybe Wyll don't react to you stealing candy from a tiefling kid if he isn't in the party. But if you side against the tieflings he still reacts to it, because it still reaches his ear, so to speak.

But that adds workload and stuff, so maybe it's a too high expectation to put on them. And if I had to choose between a system where companions either react to everything whether they're in the party or not, or a system where they only react if they're in the party no matter how egregious-to-their-morals acts you commit, then I would choose what we have now.