Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback This IS a D&D game, isn't it?

Yeah there definitely should have been a more careful discussion at Larian about whether their Character Origin idea was an appropriate fit for a series whose players often spent as long in the character creator rolling stats as they did playing game. I don't think it is, but at this point in the development, I doubt they're willing to drop it. Spending so much time on that was probably a mistake though, as it undoubtedly consumed resources that could've been used on more choices and consequences relevant to any given Custom PC.

That said, I've thought a lot about this. And in BG 1&2, most of the companions had something strange going for them. You have a petrified cleric from a time long past, a Witch and her Barbarian bodyguard from a strange, alien culture (not to mention the Giant Miniature Space Hamster), a member of what is essentially Faerun's CIA, a Winged Elf whose race is almost entirely extinct, the descendant of a dimension-hopping Archwizard, etc. There's no shortage of that almost juvenile brand of special you're talking about in BG 1&2... I think the difference you're sussing out is that in BG 1&2, nobody is as pressed for time or resources as you are off the start.

That is to say, either NPCs are recruited for the purpose of completing a quest, or they don't get in your face about their personal quest until something triggers it. It's completely different from having these NPCs sign up, and then one night of camping in they start telling you that you'd better hurry up because there's a bomb in their chest that's going to explode, or you better get moving because they have something way more important to do than talk to you going on in Baldur's Gate, etc. BG3 seems particularly aggressive about reminding you that you aren't all that important to these people, which is a weird, uncomfortable emotion to try to evoke in a single-player RPG. Weird and uncomfortable emotions are fine... if they exist to express some larger theme, and are managed with great intention. And I don't think that's the case here, it seems like these characters were written to be the center of someone's attention for the sake of the Character Origin mechanic.