Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback "The ability to initiate conversations using a companion leads to characterisation issues."

Hey all, new time forum user and Baldurs gate player looking to provide my first bit of feedback and hopefully start a discussion on an aspect of the game that doesn't really make sense to me. I was reading through all the suggestions on this website and I came upon a really great and comprehensive feedback post by user Drath Malorn (https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=744950#Post744950). The feedback is broad on a lot of issues, but I wanted to make an individual thread for a really specific critique that was bought up in the hopes that I could get different perspectives on it.

Below is the specific point in question and my response to it.


So I was wondering what people thought of this feedback. I understand it may be an unpopular suggestion because technically I want to limit player freedom by restricting who can lead conversations. But for me immersion is more important, and I feel like immersion should be maintained by consistent autonomy on the part of your companions. It's a contradiction to have them be independent characters and also controllable in dialogue sometimes as well.

I understand that companions should be able to perform skill checks that they're more suited for instead of the player, and also have them more involved in conversation via interruptions and such, but I don't think that contradicts my suggestion, which calls for companions to not have all the freedom of dialogue that the PC has.

So what are peoples thoughts on this issue?

Since I like the direction they're going for with character stories and motivations, I also wouldn't want companions to be able to act out of character when they are not the party leader/not played in origin character mode.

I think they are still implementing how they want this to work, because there are some situations where if you have a companion selected and interact with something, they sometimes do have dialogue that's specific to them - like Astarion and the mirror. But they are still able to say what is available to the player character even if it contradicts their character. I believe you will have more freedom with these characters when you play their Origin stories, but I think when they aren't, they're dialogue is intended to be kept in character. It's just not implemented yet.

I can't wait to be able to choose companions for skill checks. I noticed their is a character selector in the bottom left during dialogue, but it doesn't do anything at this time.

I agree, we should not be able to control our companions dialogue options but of course utilise/equip them, etc. how we see fit. I don't think it limits player freedoms at all because frankly there should never have been the option to control our companions dialogue responses in the first place. I might be digressing here a little but I think this issue is really symptomatic of a lack of immersion as a whole in BG3. I won't list them all here as they have been covered at length in other threads.

I find the whole concept of the Origins characters a bit of mess. For example, when playing as one of the Origins characters will they have dialogue responses limited to their general personality/alignment or will you be able to craft Lae'zel into a 'good' character through your actions/achievements? If so, that would seem to go against her general demeanour? That is not to say that evil characters cannot redeem themselves but if this path is open to every evil character then it just becomes a bit OTT in my opinion.

good food for though, I agree that this is kind of immersion breaking as it's can potentially contradict the character usual standpoint.

In a nutshell: Better roleplay only with the main char only, and not all char at once, unless you are in a multiplayer session.

Yeah these are great points for sure.

I think dialogue responses will be somewhat limited to the Origin character's general personality/alignment. We can see a little of this for certain character types. For example, when talking to the Tiefling couple in the Grove, its usually a conversation about what creature comforts one imagines one will indulge in when they get to Baldur's Gate. As a Gith, none of those options were available to me other that remarking how foreign those things are - even not knowing what a cat was. I assume playing as Lae'zel, when Origin stories are complete, it will follow something similar.

Whether or not you can play the Origin characters as the polar opposite of their alignment - I think the writers still want to write believable characters, so we have to just wait and see how far these characters are able to stray. All the characters are written with aspects of occupying a moral gray area, and the most evil ones have a root cause that can be shaken.

Thank you for that info. It seems like an awful lot of resources will be poured into these Origins companions; I would be interested to see percentages on how many people intend to play them versus those who don't and I hope that those resources won't be at the expense of other things in the game which really could use a makeover or are missing from the game currently.

I recall this being requested back in Divinity 2 quite often during early access, but it was never implemented. There must be some fundamental reason why they can't achieve this, and so I am not hopeful that it will be there in BG 3.

I think the main issue here is the multiplayer and the fact that we can play as companions in the main game. They want complete freedom, just like in Divinity 2, so they need to have all that dialogue available for the companions. The problem, however, is much like divinity 2, you could pretty much play the whole game as one of your party members with your main PC as essentially a side character, baring a few vital cut scenes. I think for single player, there does need to be an optional toggle (can't believe I am asking for it to be optional but convinced Larian won't do it any other way) that enables the PC to be the 'face' of the party so that all dialogue triggers are redirected to them, or at least the option to hand over conversation to the PC if a companion does happen to trigger a cut scene out of nowhere.

These problems we are talking about are unfortunately symptoms of having a game with the freedom Larian is shooting for, and I would agree that it takes away from the single-player role-playing when you are also having to role-play as both your main PC and your Companions. Heck, in the original D:OS, you actually had to have a CONVERSATION WITH YOURSELF, when talking to your companion.

Ow you should see it before at the start of the EA it was even more horribal. Not clue why larian has so much problem with this.
But i'll leave my post here from similar thread...in short i agree completely.

Here is the post:

There no party vibe at all, it's minimal even now after improvements. Party members all act like single entities and not as part of the group as presanted by the idea... no leader as well.
Sorry, but random party banter on the road can't fill that void if normal party - group interaction is so shallow. The fact that the game doesn't know who's the party leader makes things even worse and leads to unnecessary reloads and forced wrong checks.

There are examples where talking to a npc twice turns conversation into mush. Doesn't make much sense the second time around yes it was improved alot but still. THere is hardly any party interaction during dialogues, information is not included from previous interaction, whole party should work as a team. Instead it feels like party is a group just for combat?


We get question poping up after the player already has the information. Like "who are you?" and similar questions.. Companions do not register previous intercations and they can't do checks at least not as much as they should so weird thing happen and information is ignored or not used.

Talking to the dead could be implamented better as well. Sometime it's great but other times not so much. Example: The druid gate fight, you can talk dead thifling Kanon infront of Arka and Memnos. The whole thing turns out weird and no one registers talk to dead interaction at all. Dialogue leader ignores it, party ignores it and Arka ignores it.
You would think she would take that chance to talk to Kanon i mean talking to dead is kinda a big deal. Off topic, we have like 4 scrolls of resurrect and for some reason we can't use them?

Anyway, gathered information should be better used in dialogue same as skills use. some times it is but other times it feels like a half made system.

Is it the Origins system Larian is using? I don't know, feels like it. Bioware never had this problem in there games.

Let us set party leader for dialogues that way at least i won't be forced in all sorts of things.

I fully agree with OP here. It hurts immersion and makes it hard to see the companions as autonomous beings with their own motivations and agency.
I feel like if this isn't dealt with before full release, fans of the old BG games will be outraged about the fact that you can suddenly play Minsc as the most evil person imaginable if you wanted to. Just doesn't make any sense.

Hmm, thought-provoking. I do agree that by default interactions should be with your main character if they're around, but also like the idea that you can send in a party member for some conversations they may be better suited to either because of higher charisma or other factors such as race or their story. Plus your main character may be elsewhere, sneaking, or temporarily dead or unconscious.

And given I do want other party members to be able to lead all or part of conversations, I don't want to have no influence over what they say if they do. Personally, as long as the game gives me at least one line that it's feasible the companion would say, I'm okay to take responsibility for not picking wildly out-of-character lines for them. But I agree it would be better to remove some options that completely go against who they are.