The Witcher series was largely plagiarized so I don't think the Witcher franchise has any rights to complain if it were:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkiP64adGjY(disclaimer: I *do not* agree with this guy's politics -- it confounds me that he could be so right about Elric and so wrong about so many other things. Another lesson in: people are complex)
It is true, but we don't deal with the books here, we deal with adaptations. And it's important. It is very apparent in the movie industry, where you have a new highly acclaimed and innovative movie that is not a direct adaptation of a source material, but has enough elements of it, and then when the source material is being adapted and to the casual movie goer looks like a copy of the movie.
Some examples - matrix and ghost in the shell, valerian and the fifth element, etc.
My point is that if we talk about Volo and dandolion, the fact that Volo is the original is completely irrelevant here. Unless Larian can do anything new or interesting with him, he will always be (at least in the context of bg3) a less cool dandolion copy. And the big thing here is that unlike Elric for example, Volo is not a super important character that you can't build a forgotten realms story without. So the decision to add him in is worthy of criticism and comparison to dandolion
Actually, the fact that Volo is the original is completely relevant here. In fact, I'd say it's of tantamount importance given the thread title, yes? IF one is copy of the other, it would be Dandelion that's the copy, since his origins come after Volo's. So, I have to ask, how is Volo used in Act II? Act III? What's that you say, you don't know, because you haven't played them yet? Then trying to justify "But mah Witcher" with how he's used here is pointless, to the extreme, yes?
As an aside to this, "but we're not talking about books/lore, only about the game", doesn't that sort of fly in the face of "not enough like BG/DnD"? An NPC that firmly ties a game to the FR setting can't be swept under the rug because one wants to claim "but he's a clone of this character over here that didn't even exist when he was written". At least, those things that do in fact tie it firmly to the FR setting can't be. The first thing I thought when I read the topic title was "No, because Volo has been around a lot longer". It's obvious from reading the thread that the OP wasn't aware of that fact. So no, we can't just pretend Volo didn't exist in the FR before the introduction of Dandelion, especially not because he didn't play a prominent role in games that weren't about him. He's played prominent roles, or at least been involved with some of the most important things in FR history, "recent" history, anyway, and so, we don't get to just ignore that because "but I want this other thing to be true".
