Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Playing with Origin Companions?

I was wondering if it was a good idea to play in a group of 4 origin companions. Will all 4 origin stories be told in that one playthrough or only my main character's story?

I want to play this game again and probably again and again, so I don't want to know the ending of 4 of the 6 origin stories after my first playthrough already, but instead save some stories for another playthrough.

Is it a good idea to fill my group with 4 origin companions on my first playthrough or should I only take - say - two origin companions, and fill the other slots with mercenaries? That way I could discover the other companions' stories in different playthroughs.

Another alternative would be to run the game as a couple of lone wolves. That way you have 3x guaranteed new quest content.

Basically whatever origin companion you are not playing as your main character will give you a quest line you can follow. It's essentially what you would go through if you had picked that companion to play as your main, except that you have less control over how they will act. That means, as you surmise correctly, that if you want to keep some stories fresh, you had better pick 'faceless' mercenaries or indeed go lone wolf.

Thanks for the response Terodil. Is there a way to avoid the origin companion quests all together or at least partially, or do these quests progress throughout the game without me being able to control whether or not I want to go after them?

Basically I want the party dynamic of the origin companions, with them sometimes reacting to my decisions positively or negatively, but I don't want to know all their stories yet.

Regarding Lone Wolf: I want to avoid it because I'm already doing a coop game with Lone Wolf, so I want to experience the game with 4 characters.

You can try to deliberately get follower quests stuck, I guess, simply by avoiding whatever they're asking you to do. I'm not sure how foolproof that is though, because sometimes your companions will simply take over or, if you don't let them, start hating you and eventually leave. This is compounded by the fact that oftentimes key characters in your companion quests are also key characters in the main quest chain. Furthermore, the game sometimes tries to 'help' and 'unstucks' quests by allowing you to skip certain quest steps... in short, if you really want to avoid getting companion quests spoilered I would probably suggest leaving said companions out of your party entirely.

I really understand how you feel but I don't think the game gives you enough control over this. I mean that's part your companions too right? It wouldn't feel right if they just stood next to you chatting up their arch-nemesis and went 'This is FIIINE.'

Haha yes that is true. Okay I will probably do a compromise and go with 3 origin characters and 1 faceless companion. I'm playing The Red Prince as my main character anyway, so the faceless companion will be my slave

Thanks for your thoughts and advice Terodil, that really helped!