Originally Posted by kanisatha
Seems like every character in the game is *special* somehow. Your companions are all special outliers and exceptions to the rules for what one could expect given race, class, background, and especially starting level. Ditto for all your followers. Ditto for monsters, whether intellect devourers or goblins. The ONLY character in the whole game that is NOT special in any way, and often is mundane and boring, is yourself (as a custom PC).


I agree. I think this is obviously a consequence of the whole Origin system, which means that every potential companion character is designed like a protagonist - but a protagonist and a companion character aren't the same thing, and they should be neither conceived nor written the same way.

I agree with Yawning Spider that there was some of that in the original games, but it was framed differently. Crucially, I think there was also an element of discovery, as you met different characters over the game. Here, it's all frontloaded, so you're getting hit with everything at once. Meeting a guy during your adventures who turns out to be a vampire is one thing; having an entire team of competing, tiresomely adversarial protagonists to deal with right from the start along with all the other stuff is too much.

And it's not even that interesting. I think that's part of my problem. All these characters have a lot going on with them, but none of them is particularly involving, or weird or funny. They're busy, but boring. Which again adds to that "trying too hard" feel I get from the game.