Party banter exists, it just doesn't trigger often enough, and this is annoying. However that isn't something that is somehow compromised by the Origin character system.
Narration issues - like particular characters' scenes playing out of order, or not triggering at all? Again that is more likely to be an Early Access game issue, where things are still getting ironed out, not related to the Origin system.
I was talking about what it was like in DOS2. I don't know anything about BG3 because I haven't, and don't intend to, play BG3 EA. I was just trying to say that people have reason to be skeptical about, and dislike, the origin thing, as from what they've said, so far BG3 EA hasn't exactly proven them wrong.
Let's take "Lord of the Rings" as an example of a good fantasy book, just for the sake of argument, and let's say LOTR is basically the story of a party of 9. The question Larian is asking with the Origin system is, what if you approached a story from the viewpoint of each different character? Let's pretend LOTR is our game - we know the story is mostly about Frodo because as the Ringbearer he is special, but what if you saw and experienced the story from the perspective of Aragorn, or Legolas, or Gimli, etc?
Now that would actually be really, really nice. But alas, it's only nice when you get to have a distinct journey for each character - each character goes to different places, talks to different people, perform different quests, has different gameplay mechanics. They
see different things,
think different things, and
feel different things. And at various points in the whole game/movie, the stories of these characters intertwine. Everything that each character does and experiences is part of a big picture. At some point these characters may meet and perform some big tasks together, then go their separate way again. This reminds me of the movie Trick 'r Treat which tells 5 different stories of 5 characters but they all happen in the same neighborhood during Halloween night. The movie turned out to be much more enjoyable than I expected.
Even if this is what Larian's origin system has been trying to capture, I don't feel it has quite pulled that off. If the whole movie is about two people traveling together, fighting bad guys together, until the end, then it makes little difference whether you play as guy #1 or guy #2.
Going with your LOTR example, now let's say we get to play through the portion where Sam and Frodo travel together. Would I be excited that I can play this portion as either Sam or Frodo?
Maybe, if there is enough gameplay difference between Sam and Frodo. You see, since they travel together, most - if not all - of the things that they experience, are the same. The game has to somehow make my experience as Frodo different from Sam, whether in a psychological aspect or in a gameplay aspect.
In fact, there is this game called The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (2003), in which you do get to play as the various members of the Fellowship, progressing through different locations and quests, having different abilities, facing different enemies and challenges. The plot corresponds to what you see in the movies. I remember it was pretty hard, but I enjoyed it a lot. Man, I WISH it were like that with the origin system; it would be amazing. But I know this is too much to hope for because it would be like making several video games and bundling them together into one.
