Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate 3 vs Solasta comparison

Gale is definitely not Neutral Good, he's far too self-absorbed for that classification. I peg him closer to True Neutral or Chaotic Neutral really.


I think another part of this extends to the BG3 companions too. The thing that's bothering me the most about the BG3 companions so far is that they are super laser focused on what is happening in the present and not much else beyond that, though this is understandable given how the plot and the entirety of act 1 is framed. But this is the same sort of thing that made the D:OS2 companions feel super one-dimensional, they never really interacted with each other and the character arcs aside from Fane were varying flavors of 'kill this dude here'. Fane was the most well received character for a reason, and we all know Fane was written by a guest writer who doesn't appear to be involved in BG3.

But even the plot framing reasoning only goes so far. Wrath of the Righteous is arguably much further along on the high stakes end of the world scale, but its cast of party members show a capacity to actually care about each other and interact with the world that they are a part of while they're adventuring with you, even if they don't necessarily like each other either. One gameplay example is that if you fail certain skill checks, some party members with the relevant background may jump in to resolve the situation on their own, instead of standing there watching you get into a potential trainwreck. Many of them do give off the impression that they care for you on a personal level too, instead of simply just being the party leader.

Early game WotR spoilers:


A lot of their writing really follows the 'show, don't tell' style of presentation. There is still plenty of telling, but they actually back it up through their actions and party interactions.

There is hope in that maybe the later acts will flesh the BG3 companions out more and that there will be opportunities to expand them beyond 'I have my own issues to deal with and I can't care about much else', but this uncertainty is going to persist all the way until full release with how Larian plans to structure the EA thus far. But there's not that much faith in this category either, as the impending ideas of them being origin characters + the possibility of most of them dying if they're not in the active party at the end of act 1 indirectly works against that. Plus, as you've said, the multiplayer focus removes a lot of the incentive to really put much more effort into this too.

Everything also being voice acted means that any alterations will turn out to be much more expensive too. It's a major indirect reason Pillars of Eternity 2's companions fell flat in the end, I remember there was an article interview saying that the dev team there didn't really work on the companion quests very much because those were very expensive. All this put together has made me accept that the BG3 companions will likely remain as they are, outside of Shadowheart as it's pretty obvious by now that she's the most plot-relevant out of all of them from the disproportionate focus on her this entire time.