Good voicing for companions is great ...
Good voicing for pre-set protagonist is also great ...
But voicing "player-created" character? :-/ Nah ... there is too much that can go wrong, i prefer such characters to only have some barks as they had in DA:O.
Agreed.
I was going to ramble a bit more about the flying meat, like how it should totally miss and zoom right past us if playing a Halfling, or get caught in our beard if we're a playing a Dwarf. Perhaps a hawk swoops into frame and catches the meat in it's talons "baccccawww!" then lands on our shoulder, so we know we're really a Ranger lol. But I think I made the general point already.
I love how campy these scenarios feel. Sometimes BG3 takes itself too seriously, to its own detriment. People complain about Larian-style humor but... I dunno, I picked up BG1 for the first time and the writing overall is a lot sillier even if the color pallet is overall darker.
I'd love to see a more emotive performance, with a full theatrical repertoire for the PC, but since there's really nothing of that sort going on yet, it's hard to visualize what sort of PC inputs they might make use of? I think its also a bit problematic that the user can't really create their own Origin character. Or a character on par with what the Origins represent in terms of characterization.
A lot of the more emotive performances have even been cut out, likely due to complaints (such as the Arabella reaction shot I mentioned), which doesn't help matters. Which fails to get at the actual issue, I think. It's not that these reaction shots are bad, but that they don't fit every permutation currently available. And I know alignments are gone, but I can't help but think if they still existed in some form the game could use that to help track specific scripts. You're still going to have moments of dissonance but the instances would decrease by a fair margin.
Like sure you can make a pasty Elf rogue, but not an Astarion with all the foppish flamboyant gestures and whatnot. You could make an aggro female Gith Warrior, but not a complete performance like we see from Lae'zel. I don't just mean the locked models/voices/animations, although those are definitely locked too, unless you're trying to unpack stuff in mods. We just don't have access to the same kinds of character tools that the devs do. They're in the directors chair with the casting call sheet and the big bag of tricks. What's left for us is sort of the b reel material that wasn't quite good enough to make a unique feeling Origin companion, and feels like it was just ditched into the "Custom" trash heap.
This is one of those scenarios where it feels like the devs are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Because the more you define a background for Tav, the more you take away from what the player might have in mind as a background. You ultimately can't cover every possible permutation and at some point have to make a concession one way or another. I've already seen some complaints that the more 'common' races currently available have the Baldurian tag, and that's a fairly broad strokes tag that can mean a lot of different things.
For me, it does help that I tended to play drow in most of my run throughs. Drow have a lot of unique reactions and dialogue that help separate them from the Origin characters. I never really felt like my character was lacking a specific niche comparatively. And there's something to be said for roleplaying a more 'normal' character to balance out the surrounding melodrama, lol.
The writers are aware of this issue, though, and have stated they want to try and find ways to circumvent it. Whether or not they'll succeed is another matter entirely.
Though I can see what you're saying. Iterated out to the Nth degree the Origin companions could probably do that something compelling, along the lines of "it wasn't me who stole the cookie the cookie jar, that was me being Montaron!" like in the meta POV. If they made a full on Origin for Misnc, where I'm in his headspace would that intrigue me? I suppose, but probably not enough to carry the game.
The other potential area that the Origin system can shine is if you want to roleplay a character who isn't necessarily the de facto leader. It's not something I've tested yet, but I do want to try a run through where my Tav mostly lets other characters make major decisions while she just hangs out in the background and acts as the team social butterfly. (I'd most want to attempt this as a bard, I think.)
As for Minsc... he just seems like such an odd choice for an Origin. As far as I can tell (I still haven't finished BG1 lol), he's intentionally written to be a flat character, and the Origin characters are all written with very specific arcs in mind. I'm not sure what to make of that decision.
I could see the player controls Viconia as an origin character, and then through that vehicle they are clued into some stuff about Drow culture. Whatever that's meant to be now in the 5E new conception of Drow. Or the Religion of Shar. And like when you play as Viconia, Shar actually talks to you and shit like that. So it becomes like an instructional tool for the game universe that teaches the player about things they might not otherwise know lore-wise. This makes the game more like a passive tv or movie watching experience a bit more than I think of with a D&D crpg, but I suppose I can picture it as a means to a casual hook.
BG3 already sort of does this with both the drow character and Shadowheart (for example, if you select Shadowheart when interacting with a certain mural in the grove, she'll give you information about Shar you never would've received otherwise). As for Viconia, my understanding is that she dies at the end of BG2 if you change her alignment, although if they could figure out a way to bring back Minsc, they could probably figure out a way to bring back Viconia.
