I'll admit to be entirely confused by this whole Origins subject...
Is this intended for players that can't be bothered to create a Protagonist so they just play as one of the stock companions?
What a truly terrible idea that would be for a Baldur's Gate game.
I mean I can understand the rationale, if the target audience is ultra casual console players, but that's a wildly disappointing design decision for the most anticipated PC game of a generation. I guess it might explain the party cap at 4 as well, so that everyone can have their own Switch controller somewhere down the line? Gah! What a nightmare
If rolling an original character to be the protagonist in a Baldur's Gate game is too much effort, they're probably going to find literally everything else about Dungeons and Dragons too daunting and annoying to manage with much enjoyment.
The goal should be to get the noob all super invested and stoked by the char creation process, using that as the hook. Not like the DM saying 'check out the awesome character I made for you! Now who's ready for the adventure!?'
I disliked this feature in DOS 2, since it stripped down all the companions of of most of their identity.
I feel it would be an even poorer fit for the D&D ruleset and setting.
Not everything that is convenience for the player on the immediate distance makes a game better.
And let's be honest... The feature was in DOS 2 to compensate for the extremely low number of companions available, the mere suggestion it will be in BG3 hints at a similar problem.
As of now, my number 1 fear is an underwhelming number of companions. It's looking likely that aspect is not going to change.
Larian very clearly appears to be building their origin characters to provide a "few quality characters" instead of what I remember being much more a diverse party situation in the previous Baldur's Gates. It also appears that you're meant to "lock in" your choices by the end of Act 1 (sounds familiar... D:OS2) and then you're using that party for the rest of the game.
I want to be the foc
us of the campaign- my character. The rest of the party is just that- the party.
Why we need to change the class, outfit, personality, etc of these other characters boggles my mind. Instead of making an alternative Astarion, make an actual alternative to Astarion. Provide me another Rogue that I can party with. Curb their interactions to be limited and minimize VA needs. Get Jim Cummings to do a few random voice lines and make some shallow characters I don't mind losing in a fight versus the local goblins.
It simply feels like the goal is to push as far away from BG style gameplay as possible. Currently there is very little that feels reminiscent of BG.
I'm suddenly so much more nervous about the direction of the game than I was 10 minutes ago before realizing this was a thing lol
