Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Which Origin Character are you looking forward to playing?

That is fundamental thing about D&D, pregen characters might have a backstory but never do they force you down a linear progression story path. I and many others have said it before, the overly convoluted nature of the "origin" system has literally hamstrung Larian into 10 times more work than it should be.

The fact all origin characters have a unique totally unlikely "personal" motivation other than "the tadpole did it" is justy bad story telling. A single character (generic_Tav) with a vast network of progression possibilites would be less work and more appealing to players. You create a story in D&D you are not told one.

Then we come to world building. The world is static, unchanging and dull which is simply terrible. In my opinion Larian have designed the game arse about face. First you build a world THEN you write the story. It pretty much writes itself when you have 50 years of D&D lore to work with. They didn't even need to worry about game mechanics as the core ruleset is written in stone.

As an engineer I follow two general rules.

1) If it aint broke dont fix it
2) Make something work, then make it work better.

D&D ruleset and world mechanics aint broke, Larian never even tried to make it work. At he end of the day we all know how the "tadpole" story ends, reject it or accept it.......with all characters. What story lies in the middle is immaterial if the ending is set in stone.

That is interesting question ... i would like to join the "none" group ... since i also love to create my own character ...
But i gues my curiocity about them will be too strong to not at least try them to find out how different that experience can be ...

And if i say different, i dare to say that difference will be main aspect for choosing ...
And therefore Karlach (wich, acording to her story, should not be tadpoled in the first part of cinematic) will probably be my first choice.
Presuming she will be Origin character ofc.

If not, then Shadowheart ... same reason.

I think Gale is the most interesting one to play for me. Though I do enjoy him as a companion as well.
Astarion would probably make an interesting play as well.

I for one do love a good background story to given to me for my PC. I'm just really bad a making up my own characters background etc, and I rather put my effort in playing a part than creating a part.

After my own chareacter that I would create:
In order I would choose: Astarion (I have a thing for vampires), Shadowheart (love the mystery surrounding her), Gale (what is he hiding?), Wyll (Second, least favorite but I will still give him a chance) and Lae'zel (don't really care for her but sure why not).

I want to add that something I have noticed in many threads is people consistently mentioning how something is done on tabletop DnD and how it should be in this game. Larian has made it very clear in interviews that this game is "based" on DnD and not a 100% translation. Swen said that Larian will stick to their roots that they are known by, ex: DOS. Swen said this is their "interpretation" of what they like in DnD. They will try to add as many mechanics from DnD as they can but if it doesn't work for their game or what their vision is, they will not put it. Swen emphasized how this is first and foremost a video game. Swen also said that Larian is you DM as as your DM, they have the final say. As some videos on YouTube of DnD players say, "Your DM is LAW."

Swen also said that the reason for the way they are doing Baldur's Gate is that they also want make this game for everyone. WOTC has also backed this up by saying that people to do video games, comic books and novels are separate from tabletop DnD and those are perfectly acceptable in their eyes.

Edit: An example of tabletop game that was made into a video game "based" on that tabletop is Cyberpunk 2077. Where CDPR did good there is they made it a open world RPG instead of trying to mimic a tabletop. Maybe this is the problem with BG3 and why so many are having a problem with it.

No one. DOS origin system is awfull.

The Origin stories will obviously be revealed on your first playthrough because they are also companions. Why would you replay as any of them?

Your own PC you can replay because it's a brand new character every time. Origin characters will just be more of the same.

I just think the whole Origin concept is a huge waste of resources. And it sucks because we already know too much about them as companions before even meeting them. Their background and secrets are just blurted out in char gen description.

My character personally; however, I have no beef with being able to play an origin char. After a few years of playing I will have tried them all. That isn’t a dig, I play games for years. Still play skyrim, Planescape, BG, etc.

Speaking of origin charecters - In Planescape, Torment you only had the option to play one single charecter. It was one of the best CRPGs I have ever played. So there is precedent. He still became your charecter as your action made him. If the origin charecters have even a bit of that moldability (new word? LoL), the origin system can be fun…

I too am very firmly in the camp of none, because the concept of origin characters is a wasteful and idiotic concept that goes against the very idea of what playing D&D is and has always been all about, which is to play a character that you create.

I've yet to play an origin character in DOS2, so likely none, but I don't see the option as wasteful, just as catering to people who are not me, but whose enjoyment is just as important as mine.

None. I prefer as much freedom as possible when playing a character.

I tend to agree with this position. I only play custom characters in RPGs.


Well I plan on playing a Lawful Evil Necromancer, so a vampire companion would be appropriate.

I might be persuaded to try an Origin character if they add a dwarven OC. But even then I would rather make a custom character and take that OC as a party member. Don't have anything against the idea of origin characters, but I have very specific gameplay and roleplay preferences, so it makes more sense to create custom characters for me.

Great responses everyone. Not exactly where I had envisioned this conversation going, but that is why it ends up being really good feedback. Put the time and resources into making a really compelling game for the Custom character first and foremost. Give us more options for NPCs to join our party, but don’t waste the time and resources to make all of those NPCs Origin characters, since most people won’t play as them anyway. I liked the suggestion above of having Origin characters as an expansion rather than the core game.

In 20+ years of playing the Baldur’s Gate series of games, I never once used one of the prerolled characters that they had available. In DOS:2, I did play as an Origin character because the party size was limited to 4 and I wanted to learn all of their back stories. Also, the Custom character in that game missed out on a bunch of content and side quests. I am worried that it could be the same here if they do not spend more time on story elements that make a Custom character special. (Also, expanding party size to 5 would help in being able to experience more of the characters stories.)

I'm not sure if 'most people' shouldn't be seen as relative to the forum.

The pre-gen characters in Baldur's Gate are more or less what I see Tav as being, so how does that square with the convo?

Let's not get carried away.

I'll bet you Larian has data that says otherwise. I'll bet most people *will* play the origin characters, and there'll be streaming videos of it happening with tens of thousands of viewers, if not more in some cases.

There's less than a dozen people here saying "bah humbug" about origin characters. I appreciate their opinions, but I also recognize that they're not necessarily representative.

Exactly where would they get such data from?

“ Exactly where would they get such data from?”

They have data from DOS:2 regarding how many people played an Origin character versus a Custom character, but I’m not sure how representative that is because the game character build mechanics are completely different. In DOS:2, you can basically spec or re-spec any character into any specialty, so when you choose an Origin character you are only choosing their background (and racial features). In BG3, you are choosing their background, race, and class. There are a lot more differences and limitations between classes in BG3 than specializations in DOS:2. In DOS:2 you can sample all of the specializations if you want to, so picking an Origin character was not as limiting as it will be n BG3. I hope that Larian will consider this when looking at their “data” from the other games.

As you suggested, one must be very careful about using data from D:OS2. One reason is that playing with a Custom Character in D:OS2 was a notoriously sub-optimal choice : you would get to miss story-content exclusive to the Origin Characters and get nothing for it in return (and from a gameplay perspective, it was the same, since you could build every character the way you wanted).

Say you are selling salads and you offer the option to have them accompanied by either warm and crispy white bread, or stale and borderline mouldy whole bread (advertised as such), you shouldn't be surprised if your data shows that people predominantly ask for the white bread. (As an aside, if you were to give the warm and crispy white bread to half the customers, and the stale and borderline mouldy whole bread to the other half (randomly), you shouldn't be surprised to observe that people given the whole bread didn't finish it.)
Does that mean that people prefer white bread to whole bread ? I would certainly not say your data allows to conclude that.


Of course, the above remark has been made dozens of times already. And it is just common sense. I just felt it was worth recalling.

I don't know all that fancy stuff about bread and salad, but I sure do know I'm looking forward to playing from Astarion's perspective. Just like I'd enjoy reading a book from his point of view.

As far as data, I figure a company of Larian's size probably knows a bit about market research. But whatever. The proof will be in the pudding, as they say.

Using information from DOS:2 also poses another problem in this regard, because how interested you were in the origin characters depended a lot on how interesting the over all story was, which didn't seem like a high priority for that game compared to the mechanical aspects.

I've also seen a bit of a correlation between DOS co-op gamers and who dislikes the origin system. I don't know how big a factor the multiplayer was in that game's popularity, but I see its fanbase echoed a bit whenever BG:3 is compared to it here.

For people interested here are a few of the other threads I could find talking about similar subjects:

Does anyone like the Origin system?
Companions in BG3 are amusment parks
How does BG3 compare to BG2
Dragon Age Origins - Next Gen RPG

Just the few I could find quickly, I know there are more