Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Do you think Minsc will be playable?

and if so, will we be able to play him 'evil'? I haven't played BG1 and BG2, but from what I heared he is supposed to be an inherently good character with an established personality. I doubt Larian will make him playable while at the same time restricting the kinds of story paths we can take with him.

Maybe he will be an NPC with as complex a story as the origin characters, but not playable like them?

Edit: oh I wanted to post this in the 'general' section of the forum. If a mod could move the thread plesase, thank you.

I assume he will be an origin character, which means the answer is yes to all the above

But would that make sense? For me that feels.. very wrong to think about... just like I can't imagine playing Wyll and siding with the goblins

But you definitely can. Even now there is a mod which allows you to play origin characters and you can be a lawful good Astarion or cheotic evil Wyll

i can't even imagine playing Lae'zel as a friendly, not at all in a hurry to only save herself, hero type lol. The whole origin system just seems really odd in that regards.

But that's the main flaw of this system ever since its inception. This is one of the reasons this always seemed to me like a gimmick which is more trouble than its worth

Oh I am aware that you can. I'm just saying that I think it's weird and feels wrong. I'm not quite sure what the solution would be though. Obvviously Larian isn't gonna chnage the origin system this far into development. Do you think it would help or hurt more to restrict the choices players can make when playing origins?

Yeah exactly. It makes no sense that she would even stop at all on her way to the gith creche.

Considering we've had no recent word on the state of their progress in regards to the origin system, I wouldn't be surprised if it ultimately gets scrapped. It would be welcome news to me at least, because it would mean that the developers have decided to redirect their efforts towards fleshing out each companion in general AND making Tav feel like less of a random bystander, instead of having to essentially design two versions of each origin companion and all of the potential writing/programming troubles that goes along with it. The origin system only really worked in DOS2 because literally everyone has the same dialogue options when you are the one controlling them outside of very infrequent unique options, there was literally ZERO party banter outside of everyone offering their input before the leader makes a big choice, and no one called out Larian for that back then because good writing isn't exactly the main draw of that game.

BG3 forcing the same thing would be nothing but awkward, among an audience with much higher expectations in regards to the writing, and one of the most immersive-breaking things in a game that people are expecting to be immersive.

For example, we already know from datamines that...


Exactly how is that supposed to play out if you're playing as one of them? Do you have to make a different skill check that's an automatic game over if you fail? Or would you have options to avoid it entirely, which is basically even more extra development resources being expended for that right there?

I doubt they will get rid of it completely, seeing how much time and effort has already gone into content that is only available when you play the origin characters (dreams of Astarion of his master, uniquie dialog options for each origin, etc)

Man love your optimism. Dunno if any of it possible but still

I'm both hopeful and concerned if they're considering doing a massive rework of the companions origin system. Games that end up changing direction drastically during development have a history of not turning out well.

Yep I'm pretty sure it's too late for that by this point.

Moreover, non of the problems with the origin system are new. All the problems that are in Bg3 were present in DOS2 and it seems like Larian decided they aren't big enough to scrap the system

That's the thing though. This over-reliance on the systems of a previous game in an entirely different series speaks to a lack of faith in their skills as a developer. It's not the most encouraging thing for people to observe.

I would definitely argue that the origin system is absolutely not a core defining reason to DOS2's success. It absolutely isn't when actual praise for the system is rare, and most of the community outright encourages you to play as an origin character instead of custom, because the custom option is missing a lot of context exclusive to each character along with being written so awkwardly and poorly in comparison.

People did make great use of the origin system, but probably not for the reasons they think. Considering how Larian keeps talking about focusing their design based on data gained from analytics, it'd be a case study on how analytics without the context is misleading at best.


There's no reason that Astarion dream cutscene can't just be a shared dream that you can observe via tadpole powers, and especially even something you can probably stumble into seeing if you are romancing him. I feel like trying to encourage replayability of an 80+ hour cRPG through things like locking exclusive cutscenes behind your choice of main character and the highly implied removal of companions not in your active party after a certain point is a foolhardy endeavor, and outright hostile from a player choice/freedom standpoint. The latter was at least tolerable from a gameplay standpoint in DOS2 because builds were a lot more free-form there, so you weren't affected in combat at all, in a game largely all about the combat.

Here, with the bigger focus on the writing and everyone having specific classes, adapting the same design and expecting it to work out somehow just feels cynical as hell.

True, and we did discuss it at length somewhere on the forum. But the bottom line is that this one isn't gonna go away anytime soon. And this system is actually really really popular. Much more than you might think. Is it popular for the right reasons? Who knows.. but I do know many many many of the casual fans of DOS2 (casual in the sense they aren't posting too many feedback topics) really love it

Anything looks great when the alternative is poorly done. Likewise, anything looks bad when the alternative is well done. :P

Like I've said with my mass edits, the origin system worked well for what it did in DOS2. But I see it as nothing but a massive resource sink in the context of what BG3 aims to achieve in comparison, for something that is ultimately meant to limit the player experience to encourage multiple playthroughs, and additionally comes at the expense of the overall experience in each playthrough.

This isnt a waste of resources, or so Larian thinks. I think they have quite a lot of data on how players treat origins system with DoS2. If they decided that it was worth keeping it, the reception was certainly not negative.
It also doesn't buy the argument that it's a different series of games. Each developer uses fragments or mechanics from previous titles as much as possible, if it does not conflict with the game design.
Why would they abandon the proven mechanics in the next title if they consider it a success (not counting that some people consider it a clone of the previous game, but who cares about it)?

I didn't play DoS a lot (and I never tried the MP) but from what I read, a lot of players loved using them in MP because you had a real side story for every characters inside the story.

I think that this Origin character system is really an issue, a big constraint for the writings and the number of companions but according to me there are 0% of chance that they removed it.
I would have been glad if they worked on "origin background" (and normal but good companions) rather than "origin characters". This could have led to a new standard in cRPG but origin characters have too many consequences according to me.

I think the point is that the data Larian has on this system is misleading since although you technically had the option not to play an origin character, the non origin option was so lame and lacking that no one wanted to play it. If this is the reason Larian think the system is great than they drew the wrong conclusions from the data

You can have this average sandwich, or this shit sandwich I found!

Huh, I guess people like average sandwiches