Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Suggestion: Don't lock the party after Act 1

+1 - some possible ea spoilers and sorry for the rambling

having your available origin companions 'lock' after a certain point in of itself i dont necessarily think is a bad thing, i just dont think the way larian is planning on implementing it is the best approach ie. locking in the party at the end of Act 1

(as an aside - i also dont think im a fan of 'act maps' - i would like being able to travel back to the druid grove or ruins after i have progressed the story a bit if i missed somethings initially, in the og bg among the seven chapters you could explore the world as you wanted [solo, or with any number of party slots filled, including 4/6 or 6/6] with some time sensitive plot points true, but overall you could make and take the story at your own pace, further cementing it as a story about your pc. having act maps seems just another odd system design limiting character choice and agency - unless there is a strong story/plot element, which frankly, im not really getting with the ea play so far as (spoilers) it seems you either decimate the druids or goblins and go from there but i may be mistaken. while i think the tadpole plot is a interesting dynamic to explore, i dont necessarily feel all that special if all my recruitable act 1 companions and multiple other npcs also have the tadpoles and makes me see the pc currently just as just another guy. furthermore, and maybe i may just not have run into this yet in ea, but if we are so concerned about this tadpole eating our brain why are we able to cheese long rests?...just some tangential rambling)

if they still want to lock the companions i actually think larian would be better served implementing a party lock later on during the story as the first act seems too soon in the narrative in that we wont be able to really explore these origin characters larian spent so much time/resources to create to make an informed decision as to what we want our party to be like for the remaining acts, especially when it sounds like the origin stories really wont be explored until we get to BG. Personally, i think for inspiration larian should look more towards how character choice impacted the party and gameplay as it was done in ME/ME2 or some other rpgs (currently locking after Act1 feels very dos2 - hesitant to say that, bc while i enjoyed dos2 i felt that feature was one of the weaker points).

idk if this is taboo to talk about, but specifically for ME/ME2, you were given the chance to learn and work more with your companions (while also recruiting a good number of them over the course of the whole game) to build that rapport that would give more weight/impact to tough decisions you made more towards the ends of the game. also, i think its just another odd game decision to lock your origin companions so early when larian expounds on how much effort/resources are put into creating these characters only for us to essentially lock us out part of the story early on - idk, seems like not the best use of resources, but thats just my interpretation. and while i understand some ppl may say its for replayability, i just dont see that connection as you could still choose to hold off on any origin character content you didnt want to experience until future playthroughs with out mandating that players have to essentially opt out of certain gameplay. and frankly if i want to do another playthrough id say is more bc i want to fire up a new player character and that trying new origin companion content should just be supplemental to a new player character play through at that point, but i also think that the concept of an origin character in of itself doesnt really mesh well with a bg game where the player created character is supposed to shine as the star. to add to that, i dont necessarily feel all that connected to these origin characters when they just sit back and let a mind flayer eat my brain, but thats another topical discussion (and for those of you who say that you didnt have a pc in ME you had shep, while true, it was also your own shep whose backstory, gender, look, and decisions you decided on during the game. added benefit that shep had their own VO also makes me wish this was a feature implemented in bg3 - kinda a let down to almost never hear the pc's actually voice selection during dialogue)

tbh, the more i play the more i scratch my head on how the systems in this bg game seem to limit player agency/choice more than give us options (ie limiting the party after act1/no optional party size, limitations in character creation options - ex. full customization options regardless & y no alignment? [unless your a cleric?? and i cant be an evil elven cleric of the archeart that pulls some Altmer elder scrolls inspiration?], no current choice to roll for stats or selecting standard array/point buy. optional first level feat, the option to just leave or attack for every dialogue encounter, choosing starting equipment - all these would increase player choice, and i get some of these will likely be covered by mods, but i think letting larian know there is a demand/market for such functions will only work to improve the game)

just my thoughts - thx!