Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Words have meaning, but names have power.

I understand that this is something is unlikely to change and I am fully aware that this is an opinion that´s way over in the realms of personal tastes, but honestly, I have to get this out of my chest: I´m talking about the names of the characters in the game.

Right now we met Shadowheart the trickery dark cleric of shar, Wyll the warlock, Gale the wizard, Astherion the vampire spawn, Lae´zel the gith battlemaster and of course Raphael the cambion.

So... What the heck, Larian? No, really, What in holy blue blazes?

I´m not even going to go deep into "Shadowheart" because every time I read the name out loud weird images of a crossover between D&D and My little pony comes to mind.

Usually they advise you to avoid names in modern fantasy that describe the personality of the character (because it sounds artificial to call a pyromancer "Cinder" or your BBEG "Bloodrain" or "Slithertongue" unless they´re made-up names).
So, we have Shadowheart, the dark cleric of Shar, goddess of shadows; and Gale, the wizard that casts gust and misty step. I suppose we will also met later Mortis the necromancer, Bandaid the healer, Pyro the fire mage, Elsa the frost mage, and Spicy the Maztican foodcart chef.

I also expect the main adversary of the game will be called Tyrannius McEvilpants the grannybeater or an ilithid named Trepanatorius Burrhead, just to be sure you get he´s going to be the BigBadEvilGuy.



It´s also a consensus for most fantasy writing guides that you may consider avoid names that belong to another iconic characters or pop figures from the real world, common names but changing one letter or two, names difficult to pronounce, names based in mythology from another world (or the real world) or names with apostrophes in the middle.
So.. for the holy udders of the most sacred cow, are you really going with Shadowheart, Wyll, Astherion, Lae`zel, Raphael and Gale the mage? Seems they´re going for a straight bingo. Really Larian, reaaaally?

Let´s take a moment to talk about "Raphael" the cambion. A name that it´s not only the name of a famous Christian mithological figure of the real world (an Archangel) and a famous artist of a world outside D&D but also the name of a Teenage mutant ninja hero turtle.
They´re going for a glorious double-tap with this name.

So... my question is: You´re doing this on purpose, right? riiiiight?


PD: Just to be clear, the tone of this post is jocose, don´t take it too seriously.