If they change things massively, sure. So far the player is just some random nobody whereas Gale is a chosen of freaking Mystra, Shadow is a special operative chosen for a massive mission to pick up some super-gismo that is a major part of the story, Astarion is a weird centuries-old vampire spawn that somehow has enough control to not be the least bit vampire spawny (looks perfectly normal and isn't prone to losing control), then we have an in-the-flesh local folk hero, Laezel is high enough in the Gith hierarchy that she expects help to be cleansed rather than just having her head cut off, and are we going to get that tiefling "I was a badass kicking ass and taking names in freaking hell" lass too?
So far we've seen no indication that the player has any story at all. Except the main story, of course, which seems to revolve much more around the Origin characters.
Theres a thing with all of that. The PC has no option to tell if they are lying or 'bending' the truth for most of the dialogue. Which lets me believe its one of 2 things. 1: Its a joke from Larian where they are taking the piss out of a trope of new players, who tend to write very large, long elaborte backstories for their characters completly forgetting that they are lvl 1. Or 2: the characters were indeed more powerfull but got taken down a peg either from the tadpole, or some other machination that overcame them. Gods for example are fond of punishing their followers if they trangresse in some way or if they really went against their teachings. Or a god might curse the follower of another god if they opposed him.
Even so, it could just be easily be that everyone is full of shit and is talking trash....
-Gale could very easily be making himself sound more important then he actually is. Hes a squishy wizard who think everyone but wizards are uncultured barbarians. If they poke him with a stick though he keel over dead as his health pool isent amazing and he cant wear armor. Better make himself sound super powerfull, smart and important so they dont get any funny ideas.
-Shadow comes across as a simple cultist send on a fetch quest that went south somehow.
-Astarian IS a vampire-spawn, but prowling on unsuspecting nobles (who are basicly lvl 1 NPC's with like 5 hp) doesent take a great deal of effort or guile.
-Wynn by his own admittance is no hero. But people believe his tales and he made a pact for his warlock powers. Hes a charmer though so that could easily translate into people believing stories or him bluffing.
-Lae'zel comes across as a grunt who is just repeating the stuff she has been indoctrinated to believe. I dont believe they have a cure other then lobbing of the effected peoples heads so they dont become mind flayers and she just doesent know it. The Thiefling I have run into, but it was a while ago. If I was half bleeding-out and people who I suspected were coming to kill me id say im the biggest meanest bad ass on earth as well so I can hopefully bluff my way out of death.
Actually, BG1 and 2 were absolutely stories about the protagonist, but the various plots out in the world that the protagonist bumbles into were of course not all directly about the protagonist as such, because that would be ridiculous.
All of the mess in BG1 does indeed turn out to be the work of someone who wants to be Lord of Murder, but it's your party centered around your character that ends up figuring that out, and you are the main actor opposing the big dude with bigger daddy issues. Then in BG2, you and your friends are captured by some unpleasant dude who does some torture and murdering and then gets snatched along with your sister, meaning you have a very strong incentive to find out where they went. You. The rest of the party are supporting characters of various backgrounds but you are the central character. And then TOB, where the plot makes very little sense, Cespenar smacks you with a stupid stick whenever you fall asleep, you're pretty much the mindless henchman of a "benevolent" advisor that totally tries to solve all the problems, but bar none you are indeed the central character who can clean up the big mess and finally sort out the whole Bhaalspawn saga once and for all.
Guess our opinions differ then. Although any game where you control a character it could be said that the game resolves around you so in that sense generally speaking every game we play resolves around the player...
No time system, weird movement system, weird way that time fractures around those in combat and those outside of it, and of course the ridiculous inventory that lets characters move stuff from one inventory to another across any distance. And the game is set up so most dialogues are completely agnostic regarding which member of the party they're talking to, which can happen at any time regardless of what is going on with the rest of the party. Also, have you noticed the lack of "you must gather your party before venturing forth"? Yeah, not much sense in a SP game letting the party split up like that but of course it makes perfect sense in an MP coop game.
While BG1 and 2 did have a day/night cycle its effects were minimal. In BG2 they were more impactfull thanks to the vampires but even then time was rarely a factor. You could find a quest at the start of your game to save a guy who is dying and totally needs your help or he will die, and then proceed to come back 2 months later and go 'oh right, I still havent finished that quest' and save the guy in the 'nick of time' so uh....how much it REALLY is a factor differs greatly. Sometimes companions had a set that they wanted a quest done before they became a pernament companion like Minsc while for other quests you could as long as youd like. Personally, if time matters I want it to matter ALL THE TIME because otherwise it just feels like a cheap gimmick to arbitrarily make me fail a quest or something. And that isent good game design either.
The biggest problem is that the area to explore is just too small and too full of stuff. It's like the Mojave desert in Fallout New Vegas, around every corner there's something. How often was that the case in BG1 and 2?
I see your point, and counter that its a game. If you want to play a fallout game where the map is the actuall size of the Mojave desert then all the power to you. But I dont want to travel REAL LIFE DAYS before finding anything of notice. It isent fun either. A medium has to be found between small game space and real life sized desert. Sometimes realisme just doesent work as much as we think we wouldd love to see it...
You could not use pre-generated characters in BG1 and 2. You could use pre-generated profiles for your character that has your name, your choice of background, and your choice of personality. It was still your character, just using a suggested setup. Origin is different in that they're in no way imaginable "your character". They are Swen's characters, designed by Swen, with a personality dictated by Swen, with Swen's choice of background, with Swen's choice of future goals. They are the equivalent of turning up at a TT session and asking the DM to just quickly put together a toon that you can use. How is that in the spirit of D&D?
You could. And I have. Sorry but if you say that you couldnt pregenerate a character before clicking on new game then you are full of shit. There was an option in the menus to go to character creation and then export that character.
You did just that though, just create a character. It had no inventory, spells and whatnot. But you could do so. Infact you could play an entire player created character by making a multiplayer game, and moving the save file from multiplayer to singleplayer so you dident constantly have to deal with the multiplayer menus. Only the 1st character in the group would be 'the Bhaalspawn' but it was a fun way to play a game, especially once you had already played with all of the npc's and wanted a more optimized run through with different classes.
Honestly the origin characters are only special if you play them. Otherwise they are npc companions who have backstory. All of the BG1 and BG2 characters had backstories of their own. Some more interesting then others. In that sense I dont see the origin characters as any different.
Except Larian is ignoring 5E whenever they feel like it, so arguing that they're tied by 5E rules is hardly convincing. But given the other details it does make sense to not have more, because how slow would this turn based system be if we had to go through six people on our side and a suitable number of enemies to maintain challenge? But that is a function of Larian's other design decisions. 5E in general does not in any way force Larian to only let the player character bring three friends along. And Swen has fairly strongly hinted that they'll do that whole party wipe thing after Act 1 so rotating party members won't be possible either. You get three friends and only three friends and that is the entirety of the party. And that doesn't leave much room from bringing along someone just to bring them along, even if they're not strictly speaking pulling their weight, does it?
I see people say that here and there. You think them beeing tied to 5e rules in unconvincing? Why. WOTC doesent let everyone handle their IP and specially not one so famous as baldurs gate or otherwise wed have had a dozen baldurs gate games by now. If Larian really wanted dos 2.5 they wouldnt have rolled out the massive amounts of changes to their engine that they did. Seriously why would they bother if not to adhere to 5E?
What I mean by slow combat is that it is just that, damned slow. You get into a fight against a dozen kobolds with a full party and a couple of summons, how long does that take to resolve in real world time? It takes a while, because every character has to spend time on every single action in isolation. This was also how 2E worked, as I recall, and yet it didn't completely grind everything to a halt in BG1 and 2, did it?
Honestly I havent had to wait for a full 15 minutes while one of my players decides what spell to cast so compared to pnp DND the combat is bloody lightning fast if you ask me! If its slow then something sounds very wrong. Do you take long to decide on your actions? Does the AI? The AI is quite rapid with their actions for me but specially when the EA was just new the AI tended to be rather slow at times. Its improved alot for my game but maybe something is still slowing your game down?
Nalia is a betrothed noble whose father is dead and whose only resort, if she can't make the protagonist take over as keeper of her estate, is to run away from her commitments. She is *not* a powerful spellcaster when you run into her and she's not a skilled thief either.
There is Keldorn, a mighty and high ranking paladin who is on guard duty in the ass end of a sewer. He is old, he has some seniority, but he is not in charge. He is not in line for commander of the local chapter of the paladins.
There is Anomen, a pathetic little clown of a man, a fighter->cleric dual class who is not a paladin and who spews platitudes but is very short in both wisdom and competence.
There is Cernd, a wishy-washy druid that you meet in the local jail of Trademeet, where he is locked up in part for his own protection. He is not the archdruid of a grove nor even all that powerful at the time you meet hime. But he is one of precious few characters that make me seem short-winded and prone to using only 15 words when maybe the same could have been said with 17.
Jaheira, yes, she is a harp and a seasoned adventurer, but she's not a Harper boss at all. Just a fairly low level member.
Imoen, yes, she is a Bhaalspawn but she never manifests any powers at all. Fundamentally, she's just Imoen, your sister, gifted but not one of those world-shaping people. She might end up becoming that powerful but that's epilogue rather than during the games.
Aerie, a winged elf without her wings that is stuck in the illusion of an ogre inside a circus.
Viconia, a drow on the surface.
Minsc, a ranger who is very good at hitting things but who suffers from a traumatic head injury and relies on his stress relief animal for sage advise to a worrying degree.
Shall I go on? None of these people are the chosen of Mystra or anything like that. If we think of it from a lore perspective then the most powerful of your companions is probably Edwin, at least until ToB where Sarevok is an option, but Edwin is powerful enough to get himself into big problems and just not quite powerful enough to be a realm-shaper. And he has some hilarious issues with an actual chosen of Mystra, doesn't he? Well, she, I suppose.
I dident go into specifics because I thought it was clear what I meant. For Nalia for example she has alot of POLITICAL power. Beeing a noble actually means something in most dnd settings. They have alot of friends/connections, a good source of income if you have the keep and you literally can become a lord of a...uh...barony I suppose? Small kingdom? Either way. Thats alot coming out of just 1 npc and while her combat skills might be mediocre the overall RP picture is pretty damn fantastic.
For Cernd when you fight him hes in prison because if hed have to defend himself it would be a massacre and that wasent why he was there. His personal quest is to challenge a druid for the role of archdruid (which in my game he won easily) earning yourself a companion thats the ruler of a druid coven. Yes. Totally no power at all there....................
Keldorn isent 'on guard duty' in the sewers. Hes investigating the cult of the eyeless. Which is a bloody beholder cult. Did you play the bloody game at all or are you oversimplifying everything to try and score internet points or something?
I wont go over every single character because if I do il need till tomorrow to make this bloody post. Point is, some of the people you meet are pretty bloody powerfull. And while maybe not chosen of Mystra, if you bring them along till the end since you find them they would be about equal on power to chosen of Mystra.
