Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New interview with Sven by Gamespot

Well... We'll see I would like to see more characters and 1 big-ish quest for each + one main cinematic at the culminating moment of the quest rather than fewer characters and A LOT of cinematics for each. I guess it's a question of choice more than anything else

I agree. Minimum 12 fully fleshed-out companions is what it should be. Around 6 is what I expect we will get.

That's part of determining the right balance between "adequately developing a character", and "total development time invested in that character". You can spend a lot of time working on a character without that character gaining any more depth (like making more cinematics or recording more audio). IMO it is the "original characters which you can also play as main characters" idea that keeps them from simply churning out more companions. This idea means each of these characters has to have such a lengthy, complex quest that goes along with the main plot, when you have only so many maps in the whole game. "Oh, somehow all of my companions have the next milestone in their story happen in the same city/region/area that we're heading to, and the next critical NPCs we need to see happen to live in the same neighborhood. What a coincidence."

In the context of the story, Lich are locked to lawful neutral/lawful evil/neutral/neutral evil because the advisor that sends you on the path and the actions you take to remain on it are pretty unambiguously evil. You are given some wiggle room by being on one of the non-chaotic neutral alignments though.


The fox is actually a woman. Nenio is hilarious, and a pretty interesting wizard. She’s one of the setting’s few scholars, maybe closer to a scientist.

One of her unique traits is that she is able to wield any weapon and use any scroll in the game by default. The game takes advantage of this by providing several monk quarterstaffs with the ability to power up spells that are clearly meant for her.

Huh, cool. And looking into things, apparently I can also play a Kitsune and there is summoning, so I probably will get the game eventually.
Pardon ignorant questions but how many people can you have as a companion at a time? Cause there are multiple in the list I'd want following just on appearances alone.
I am a simple man, and well written companions and good summoning do a lot to endear me to a game.

Without spoiling too much if you don't mind, could you tell me what her general demeanour is? do the companions have a variety of personality types that isn't just "fuck you main character"?

You can maintain parties of 6 at a time, not counting animal companions and special exceptions. The rest you leave in a hub area and they’ll do their own thing in the meantime (every companion has various reasons for joining the crusade and they have important tasks to attend to when they aren’t with you), which changes throughout the game.

So far in the beta content, the hub area has changed for every chapter (4 chapters, about 60 hours of playtime, with 2 more known chapters).

If you go Azata mythic path, the dragon Aivu counts as a seventh permanent party member.

Finnean the talking weapon may count as another exception, he gets to interject in conversations and all, but he’s something you can transform into any weapon type of your choice. On a scale of novelty and joke character, Finnean is not on that scale at all, his story is pretty tragic and one of the main plot threads is figuring out how he became the way he is.

The devs have been emphasizing replay value and it shows. The mythic paths alone are one thing. But some companions (Arueshalae especially) have multiple outcomes and you can influence their personality similar to hardening Alistair in DAO. Some of the mythic paths themselves have branching outcomes.


Like I said, she’s very different.

She’s a scholar and scientist through and through, and prides herself on her intellect. To the point where from the point of view of the other characters, she has no place on the battlefield. Many of the game’s villains don’t really know what to make of her too. But she can take care of herself just fine and you can humor her research. Another quirk of hers is that she has very selective memory and often forgets irrelevant details, including things about herself. The irony is not lost on the player character, you are fully capable of calling her out (and everyone else for that matter).

None of the companions in WotR are really in your face unless you do something to really piss them off. Like Regill will not really get along with a chaotic character because he’s lawful to the max for instance. They’re more likely to snip at each other than you, because it’s very obvious why you’re the leader of the group.

Nor do they want to jump on you immediately either, I don’t think the opportunity to start a romance even pops up until about the end of chapter 2 at the very earliest. Though you can start flirting with some companions earlier, they all have their own preferences.

One can interpret the limited amount of romances as the devs not considering them a priority, the devs not wanting to sacrifice each companion’s characterization for more of them, and/or they want to take the time to ensure whichever one you pursue is worth it. Only 6 companions are planned to have romances out of the 12 main companions currently known, and one NPC (Queen Galfrey). The rest of the companions are either still a teenager by the standards of their race (Woljif), mentally a child or acting like it (Ember), already married with a family (Greybor), or straight up not interested.

Strongly disagree with this because for all practical purposes, greater width ALWAYS comes at the cost of lesser depth. If I want width, I'll play another Bethesda sandbox. The majority of players likely won't even complete one playthrough, let alone dedicate 100s of hours to extract every nuance, so I'd rather have additional content that can be enjoyed on my single playthrough (if I even make it that far). I really dislike the dogmatic "Noah's Ark"-tokenism where all classes, races and alignments ideally MUST be represented. Beyond allowing for a balanced team with preferably a single "backup" for every basic party role, having characters with opposing ethos and conflicting personalities makes for MUCH more interesting roleplaying opportunities than "mechanical designer parties".

That said, it makes particular sense in BG3 to differentiate between full *ORIGIN* companions that share the same urgent PERSONAL motivation to risk teaming up with a party that might turn into brain-sucking monsters overnight, that include a blood-sucking monster, a ticking time-bomb, an alien racial supremacist, acolytes of evil etc., and time-limited companions that join to accomplish specific goals. Having a smaller, deeper and more dynamic cast is more realistic too.

Honestly, a large cast of companions is one of the reasons I like the BG series, so I genuinely want it to have many. Non origin companions don't need to be deep so that the quality remains for the origin companions. The mercenary system of DOS2 is not a substitution for companions in my eyes.

Oh, I have no hope for this and am certainly not holding my breath. Just what I think would be best. And yeah, if "deeply developed" means "look, this character has sooo much drama, it's deep and well-written"... well, I'd rather take flavourful cardboard, thank you very much. From what I can tell, the current cast acts like BG3 is the beach episode of a teen drama. I don't think I'm going to like any of them.


Ah, I see. Thanks! The possibility of raising additional companions sounds very interesting too. Might go with a Lich on my first playthrough, though I usually go with goody-two-shoes on neutral first.


Nenio's art didn't really capture me, but she seems like a great character. I love those "unique/different" ones.


Don't get me wrong; I don't want mechanical variety at the cost of writing. In that case I could just take mercenaries or a custom party. I want "archetype"/personality/character type variety, and it happens to go well together with mechanical variety. A mix of classes/races/backgrounds works better than "everyone is a human fighter noble". I very much agree the token-whatever thing is ridiculous, and I would not push to force one character into another class when it's detrimental to the story aspect just to fill the class quota. I'm also of the opinion that replay value is overrated and should not come at the expense of experience of a single playthrough (especially the first).

So my point is not to fill some quota or to increase replay value - it's that a good variety of companions is required to give players choice. If I have 6 companions to choose from, chances are that either I as a player will like none of them or it will be jarring for my character to hang out with those particular characters. No amount of "depth" (or crammed content of whatever quality) will matter if I can't have a party I actually like. Hence my opinion (as kanisatha's) that 12 "full" companions is a minimum. This is what WotR has now and from what I understand, they don't seem lacking in writing, content or reactivity. The additional 12 I mentioned is as a low-cost bonus to further expand on choice.

Another thing is what I mentioned already; it's supposed to be a Baldur's Gate game, so it should uphold one of the main features of the series. In a successor to Planescape: Torment, I would not push for many companions (though imo there still should be like two more than you can recruit to a full party).

You'll get the worst of both worlds because the gamed needs to have its "playable origins" for some reason, instead.

Like @Saito I also am a huge fan of P:WotR. I backed it but have not been participating in the beta, because I love that feeling of the first time I play a new cRPG and don't want to spoil that for me. But I am so looking forward to playing that game. Everything about it is just spectacular.

Planescape Torment had only 7 companions and it worked really well. BG2 companions were... Well, they had nice writing, but most of them felt pretty generic. Not in a bad way, mind you, and not all of them, there were several standouts, but the majority of them were your average high fantasy adventurers with basic backstory and basic personality.

That just proves his point, and that of many others: at the end of the day, most of us play games to have fun. We don't play games because "oh but this story makes so much sense" or "oh but it's ultra realistic that you have a smaller but DEEPER and DYNAMIC cast". It's fun to have a large roster of adequately written companions even if they are "generic", because we'd have options to choose from. It is fun to have options.

You can certainly sit there and hope that BG3 will turn out to be another PST - in terms of both style and writing quality. "It worked" for PST, yes, but why? Because that game was never about combat. It's about dialogues, philosophy, story, and it has a superb story. Does BG3 look like it's trying to be another PST - not about combat and going to have PST-level writing? No, it looks like it's going to be another Larian game instead.

Here's another thing, what if you dislike certain companions? Oh these NPCs are sooo DYNAMIC and DEEP but you know what I hate their personality, so can I choose other NPCs to fill my party? Oh wait but I don't have much of a choice, do I, because there are only a handful of them. In fact, it's only reasonable that you have at least two options for each major class, so if you need someone to fill a certain role, you have at least two NPCs to choose from - 2 tanks, 2 rogues, 2 archers, 2 mages, 2 clerics, 2 whatever. This explains why BG2's big roster serves it really well - you almost always have options regardless of what kind of role you're trying to fill.

PS: this is not even talking about other rp factors like alignment yet. If I want to roleplay a good/evil character, I would want to take along NPCs such that it would make sense for those NPCs to follow my character. As I understand it, this game is trying to create companions that have personality, meaning that they should react to the things you do. So what if 3 or 4 of them dislike what you do? You're screwed big time if you don't have other companions to fill your party. On the other hand, if every NPC would be willing to follow you around no matter what kind of character you are, no matter what you do, then... that sucks.

Well quoting sven " We hoped for a small community to work with but our sales are over the roof. What do we do now?" . You do more characters.

THERE. FIXED.

Found a way to spend Larian's money. ^^

Aaaaah, can't wait for the next panel from hell!

Adding to this many companions in BG2 were also multi or dual classed, <fighter/druid, cleric/ranger, mage/thief, cleric/mage...adding even more options to you party comp.

The way they are doing full cinematics, voice, motion capture, and the size of the game does not lead me to believe more than 6-8 Origin. Maybe more would be added in a Definitive Edition or subsequent post-release content, but not at launch.

The story implies these are the core characters. 6 people are considered by the Absolute as "Chosen". That is why they are considered "beautiful weapons" and why the goblins are searching for them, and why THEY all have unique special backgrounds and they aren't all just common, regular people.

Were they all connected in some way previously?... perhaps connected in some way to Bhaal?... Who knows?

Huh... Let me guess: at some point late in the game you will have to battle/compete among your own party to decide who will be the one really chosen and that person will get the chance to ascend, or something like that. You will have the option to submit and surrender all your power to some other being, or kill said being and take all said power for yourself, or kill said being and also relinquish said power, making sure there will never be another "chosen one" ever again.

(Does this game also start on a beach, by any chance?)

Also, fire everywhere.

😂 That really made me laugh 😂