Originally Posted by UnderworldHades
Originally Posted by robertthebard
Originally Posted by Goldberry
Originally Posted by robertthebard
I have, admittedly just skimmed a lot of this, so I may have missed where someone may have actually pointed this out, but we are having this discussion with the full knowledge that the current batch of Origin characters can be the Player Character, right?


Yes. But it seems the vast majority of people prefer custom characters and rather dislike Larian's Origin mechanic since DOS2. It'd be nice to see a poll to get an idea of numbers though, I can only speak from what I read around this forums.

Yeah, like or dislike really isn't the issue here. The issue is that of course they're all "special snowflakes" because they can be the main protagonist. Since this is the case, and even just running with BG, Bhaalspawn would equate to "special snowflake", the whole argument is moot. They are special because they have to be.



And that is an issue by it self.

Because everyone is special, no one is. Especially your custom character which is what I and many others (From what i've read) want to play in a DnD game. Custom characters have no story. I'll copy what I said from another thread about this.

"Because compared to Origin characters, Custom characters fall flat, and are just cardboard cutouts with zero personality or history. That was a major criticism of OS2 and it remains here. Too many resources go into making all these Origin characters playable and making it so you can see their story in "first person view", and Custom characters are left blank. It leaves a sour taste just calling the main character "custom". In every RPG it's just "main character" or a name, in this one its "oh custom". That to me just comes off weird and terrible. Because every Origin character can be played, they allll have to be special in some way, which means no one is special, and ofc...same goes for Custom even more. Custom is nothing.

Before you are on the ship, your character has zero history. Yes you get your "race" dialogues, but that's not unique. That's race dialogue, that's not YOUR character dialogue. They have no history and just "appear" out of nowhere when the game starts it looks like. Every CRPG does something to make the main character have some sort of background, a link to the world. Even pillars 1 (where u are a blank slate), has the character traveling to a new place and a mandatory NPC asks you for your reasoning, which gives your character a place in the world. An actual place, not some headcanon stuff and some elaborate history players can make. All CRPGS/RPGS do it. Even fallout NV (which is considered a damn good rpg by majority) has some backstory, like you being a courier, outside of that it's a clean slate."

There's a really simple explanation for this: Custom Character. What happens if Larian, or any developer, defines your custom character's backstory for you? I'll give you a hint: Head to the store, and buy tons of popcorn, because you're going to need it. You're going to need it because the forums will catch fire from the outrage of having to play Larian's character, instead of a custom character. How do I know? Because I've seen it happen. A good off the cuff example would be Hawke in DA 2. I would point to Shepard, in ME, but they gave you some options to choose from, from the very beginning. The thing about the FO series, from 3 on, is that yes, the main character is a clean slate, but all of the others are predefined. You have just about as much as we have here, maybe a bit more for FO 4, since spouse and child, and what little background you can get if you explore the house before you answer the door. The difference between FO and here is that none of those NPCs can be the main character.