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

So I'm trying to picture now what playing Lae'zel as the Main Character Protagonist is going to look like.

Presumably the choice to select "Origin: Lae'zel" comes during the 'Who Are You' screen, immediately following the tadpole opener. We've just watched a mind flayer float over and put a worm in Lae'zel's eye from a 3rd person perspective in that one which is kinda odd if we're meant to be her, but whatever. The opening cinematic itself I suppose works reasonably well for Lae'zel as MC. She's the only character we see there, so I guess as the player we just put ourselves in her shoes and ignore the perspective that the scene is being shot through.

Then do we wake up on the Nautiloid? Somewhere else?

If waking up on the Nautiloid how does it proceed from there? Does somebody else jump down, call us "Abomination" and then instruct us about Mind Flayers and how we need to fight the Imps to reach the helm?

Is that now Shadowheart's job instead? Is someone else is in the pod banging to be released? Or is it Astarion making the jump down, and now it's up to him to sell us on the urgency of the whole Nautiloid escape? Do we skip the Nautiloid altogether as Lae'zel and just begin in the cage being mocked by Teiflings? Is it an entirely different introduction to the game? Like how's that all going to look? Because right now Lae'zel does pretty much the entire hook for the game in it's first level.

It's not going to have anywhere near the same impact, if Lae'zel is not the one delivering those opening lines. Just watching the slightly updated animations for her expressions during that scene in Patch 6 is a little taxing. Trying to imagine Wyll or Gale or whoever doing that first bit instead, it just seems like it would fall pretty flat by comparison.

This then has me think that the whole introduction on the Nautiloid must really just be a placeholder for that to work, and that none of this opening set up could be final and still fly. I mean if it has to change that much just to accommodate Lae'zel being the MC, how much else goes out the window? I think of it like the start to the Story and many people treat it like it's set in that way, but as soon as I'm playing as Lae'zel instead of a custom character, it all starts falling apart at the seams right at the outset.

Does everyone get this same Nautiloid intro except for Lae'zel? Is it musical chairs with substitutions? Or is it a completely different intro on the beach or somewhere else for each Origin character?

What if I choose Wyll instead of Lae'zel? Does another character then get slotted to blow the horn during the Gate fight, and in all those intro Tiefling training sequences? Does that stuff just disappear? ​

It doesn't seem like it's going to work without scrapping the whole sweep of the intro. I have a hard time picturing it and so fear the worst. I think they should put it out there, with an example in EA to show us how it's going to look, and demonstrate how it's not going to just tank everything about how we enter the story. If the way we enter the story isn't important, cause it's EA and this isn't it anyway, then shouldn't they be changing stuff around more regularly to really get us used to that idea? Each patch so far has just refined the introduction and built on it, it hasn't totally changed the intro. But if that's what's going to happen with the Origins, I think they should be priming us for that.

Also, an off topic Lae'zel curiosity, but when we meet up with her again and she's in that tielfling cage, one of our dialog options says something like "You abandoned me, why should I help you" but for all we know she was thrown off the ship and landed straight in the tiefling trap. I mean a couple seconds delay in getting thrown from the ship and she could easily have landed more than a couple hundred yards away from us right? To me that's the only sensible explanation for Lae'zel getting caught in the trap to begin with. Just like really bad luck, coming off a free fall after getting brainwormed and fighting her way to the helm, just got dumped in the wrong place at the wrong time and sprung the trap in one extended series of calamities hehe.

If I was playing as Lae'zel, I would prefer not to have to group up with Shadowheart as my first NPC companion. Astarion can come along as our rogue I guess, but I'd like to ditch him too. Give me the Novices or someone else to command as Lae'zel. Let me side against the Tiefs from the outset. Playing as an Origin character but doing that with these same Origin parties all over again would feel pretty boring to me. It would be much more fun if Lae'zel could recruit different NPCs, where being Lae'zel means access to those companion NPCs specifically. That might be an interesting approach. As a Custom PC, we should have access to a larger pool of possible companions, and as an Origin PC it would also be more interesting to have more recruitable NPCs available as companions. Just let me roll as Lae'zel with Scratch. They'd make a good team, she probably respects Scratch more than Gale or Shadowheart anyway. Then maybe let her bring Sazza into the fold, someone she can bark at but also who also talks back. That'd be way more entertaining to me, and maybe then I could see some purpose to playing the game out as Lae'zel like a pre-gen. I prefer the origins as companions, but I think they are insufficient there, we should have many more possible companions and varied combinations of those for potential parties.

This, but also because if I *had* to choose my preference would probably be Karlach and she isn't even available yet

Eh, we already went through this a dozen times at this point, but since someone is asking: count me in the pile of the "Don't care for Origin characters" people.

There are several problems with the concept, for the most part already mentioned across the thread so far, but the main one for how I see it remains how disproportionately wasteful it can be as a design choice compared to the (optional and opinionable) benefits it introduces.
Especially in terms of what corners most likely needed to be cut in other areas to allow this feature to exist.

Why would it be rude? It is a perfectly reasonable position to have.

You are absolutely correct, @Gray Ghost, and I am quite sure @JandK knows and understands all of this. He is choosing to post in his 'in your face' way for his reasons.

lol, so adorable

An NPC githyanki will replace "Lae'zel" position in the prologue. His voice line has been datamined from files already.

These are all wonderful questions, and the possibilities have been bouncing around in my head for a while.

Which is why I'm so looking forward to playing as some of the Origin characters. It's a brilliant approach, in my opinion, and I imagine it's going to create the opportunity for a lot of replayability.


Because it's a thread about sharing excitement about which character you want to play. Not a thread about spreading negativity.

It's like: "Hey kids, which Disney ride are you most excited to ride!"
And someone responds: "Disney sucks!"


I'm posting my opinion, that's all. I think:

1. That I'm looking forward to playing the Origin characters,
2. That playing the Origin characters will be more fun than a custom character because the writers can cater to known characters, and that's just the inescapable nature of the beast,

-and-

3. That I don't personally need to play a chosen one character who's slightly better than my companions.

Nothing about this is "in your face." Unless you consider confident and well-reasoned disagreement with an established group of posters here to be "in your face."

But what if the franchise is based on building your own Warhammer 40k character and the Disney characters available really do suck? Is one then supposed to pretend that they're super good, because otherwise one is being negative?

You do come off with "an attitude", though. I don't know if it is intentional or not, but there's a certain feeling that some of us simply being critical of Larian is rubbing you the wrong way. Also, you're not just posting your opinion, you're posting your hope, and your hope is literally that all of us who want to make our own characters get to have a worse experience.

As for your point 3, customized characters are not simply about "being better" but about being the logical center of a story. The player is controlling the party so it stands to reason that the player character is the party leader. But why is that the case? Why is Mystra's boy toy, a weirdo vampire spawn that isn't following vampire spawn rules, a chosen of Mystra, a hyper-racist Gith, and a local folk hero all bending the knee to Tav the total nobody? Why would any of them bend the knee to any of the other origin characters, for that matter?

Lastly, your arguments aren't all that well-reasoned, in my opinion. Arguing that D&D isn't about rolling your own character and that going pregen is totally a common thing does not appear to be sufficiently supported. My observation is that a dramatic majority of people have a different experience of what D&D is. Look around the internet too. There's plenty of advice for how to make your character but I don't seem to find places that exist to provide lots and lots of cool pregen characters that people can just use cookie cutter style for their campaigns. Build guides, sure, but full characters? Not so much. However, a lot of people are happy to talk endlessly about their own characters that they created and had fun with. Why do you think this is so? And isn't it reasonable to want some of that feeling in a computerised D&D experience?

I won't ever play any origin.
I'm not playing such a game to play and write someone else's characters story.

There's a time and a place. The thread wasn't: "What do you think about the Origin characters?"

It's in the general section of the forum. The thread title immediately gives someone the impression that it's a place where they can come and share their enthusiasm and excitement.

Instead, it's an uncomfortable environment where what they like just keeps getting defecated on by the same usual suspect posters who have coughed up more hate and venom in more threads than I have time to count.

The question was why would it be considered rude to do that?

My reply wasn't that someone shouldn't be allowed to do it. My reply was simply explaining exactly what was rude about it.

A place where community enthusiasm is shut down so haters can once again monopolize the conversation. In my opinion.


What I come off as is someone with a different opinion than yours.


No. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Even me.

That said, you're probably picking up on how unimpressed I am with some of the opinions I'm hearing. Specifically, opinions that are masquerading as fact.


I have no idea what you're talking about.

My hope doesn't enter into it.

I've said that I think Origin characters will naturally be more interesting due to the nature of the beast. Meaning that since the writers know the Origin characters, then the writers are capable of providing a story that fits those characters well.

As opposed to writers dancing around a nebulous character that only really lives inside the player's head. And with millions of players, well, that's a lot of shifting personalities fitting into Tav's boots.

I don't hope you have a bad experience. I'm engaging in an intellectual discussion about writing a story featuring a main character who gets to interact within the confines of the narrative. Again, I don't have hopes for your experience one way or the other. I can't even imagine why you would think that, and really, truly, honestly, the fact that I have to explain that is tiresome. This is not a difficult concept to parse, in my opinion.


There's no "reason," at least of the "in-game" variety. It's all a conceit of the video game, and disbelief has to be suspended.

The practical reason it works this way is because the developers want to satisfy the ego of the players. In general, the player wants to feel like they're making the decisions, and in reality, the player actually is making the decisions for the companions, and so... Tav becomes the leader.

This is the way it works in countless games. There's a little push back, of course. There's a system that tries to quantify whether the companions like or dislike Tav. And if things go too far in certain directions, you'll see companions leave.

Personally, I don't like that the player character is almost always in charge. I don't like chosen one plot lines, and I think the suggestion that Tav needs to be a little more special than the other companions is unhealthy, weak, and cringe. I don't like it at all; in fact, that level of ego need makes me enormously uncomfortable.


My argument is well reasoned. Yours however...

Let's start by establishing what the argument was about. Someone said, roughly, "DnD is all about playing your own character as opposed to playing someone else's character."

Now, no one is arguing that playing your own character isn't a part of what DnD is about. No one, literally no one, has said that people don't play their own characters in DnD.

But you just made an entire argument supporting that people do, indeed, play their own characters in DnD. A big argument insisting on a point that no one ever disagreed about.

The question was whether or not DnD was also about playing pregenerated characters. And the answer to that is unequivocally yes. It's *also* about playing pregenerated characters. Because it's about playing characters, and how you get your character isn't up for judgment.

Heck, even you admit to build guides in your comment. There are a lot of build guides being used, and let's not pretend everyone of those players using a build guide took the time to build a personality to go along with the numbers. Plenty of "Bob the sniper" characters out there.


Because people like to talk about things they're preoccupied with.

Basically, everyone loves to talk about the character they came up with, but not many people want to hear about it. Have you ever heard that saying before? It's true. Largely because most of those characters kind of suck. They don't have interesting stories and backgrounds for the most part. Sure, there are some exceptions, but most of them suck.

But you know what a lot of people like hearing about? Stories written by professionals. Because those stories don't suck. Again, there are exceptions, but we're talking on average here.


I can *want* the writers to cater to my custom character all day long, sure. I got lots of wants.

So JandK, I think you make a lot of good points and I agree with a lot of what you're saying. There are some things I disagree with, but I think those things really come down to a matter of taste. The one point I do want to push back on a little is your comment about people wanting their custom Tav to be more special. I have no issue with Tav not being a chosen one or even the idea of Tav not being in charge. (though I think the reason why CRPG characters consistently do end up in charge or special in some way is because if someone else is in charge and stays in charge, it really hamstrings the player's ability to feel as though they're directing the narrative at all. It's not impossible, but it's tough) I do however, think that as things currently stand, our custom character is actually a little LESS special than the companions. They have such big stories and big personalities, and our Tav can't really compete on any plane. There's nothing that makes Tav feel really unique among the group. They all bring a lot of unique stuff to the party (though companion interaction is, in my opinion, unimpressive at this point and fails to capitalize on any of it) but what does our custom character bring to the table? Do we lose something from the actual story because Tav isn't there? If not, then I think that does make Tav less unique in the story, which is a problem for a crpg, especially one based on D&D.

I think the key problem is that our character has no sort of connection to what's going on around them and no way to make unique connections. I think a custom character should, from act one, no matter what class or race they choose, have some sort of unique interactions that the origins can't access. Ideally that would tie into race and/or class choices, but I can understand that making some sort of meaningful, story-spanning things for every race or class would probably be too much. So like, there should be options available to all custom characters that aren't available to origins and that impact the story on the same degree as the origin characters will. It doesn't need to tie into their background, just be something unique that allows custom characters to have a unique, meaningful way to engage with the world and story.

As I write this, I actually am reminded of Dragon Age 2, where your character isn't in charge or special by any real metric. Hawke is a victim of circumstance just trying to get through a difficult time. Your party are with you because your friends, people who have a genuine bond and decide to stick together out of respect if not always fondness. That story works specifically because Hawke is at the centre of the story. The companions you have around you are pretty wild there in many ways. An escaped slave with magical tattoos, a dalish elf who uses forbidden magic, a pirate, on the run from an army she robbed, a mage freedom fighter, just to name a couple. They all have in depth stories and strong personalities, but because Hawke is definitively at the centre of the story and is who we always see things from the perspective of, we never feel drowned out.

Guys, this ain't the feedback forum, yet you're treating it as if it is. When not posted in Suggestions & Feedback, and phrased in such a way that is a very clear and obvious question. Have none of you ever come across the typical "Rate the avatar of the poster above" threads?

Sure, you can have the opinion of not being excited for any origins, and say "none of them", but what's the point of that? I don't go into a neighbor's party and yell "Booooring" just because I don't happen to be into themed parties. Kind of makes me look like an ass. What I'm saying is, I'm very close to closing the thread if all people want to do is argue with eachother and get into a passive-aggressive fight over something that isn't even in Suggestions & Feedback. Nothing in this subforum is within the scope of discussing or lobbying for change in development. Any reply any of you make in that regard, in this subforum, is already out of place. Particularly if just playing the "You said, I said, semantics, I need to win this argument" game, that has nothing to do with the OP topic.

Now I know it's tempting. Passionate talking-points that we have burning opinions about is hard to just keep in, but we don't have to derail and make every single thread about it, particularly when it's well outside the feedback category.

I for one am struggling with whether I'd want to play as Shadowheart, or a custom to get all flirty with Shadowheart.

If locking or moving the thread, perhaps also update the description of the General forums section and maybe add a stickie that describes what this section is meant to be in clearer language. Right now the General section is still framed including labels like "concerns, speculation" and also "heart's desire." The Feedback section mentions "praise" and "cheese." One of my first ever threads on these boards was moved from the General section to the Feedback section which is how I started to figure out what the difference was meant to be. I also didn't touch the General section at all for like 4 months after that lol.

The note about spoilers indicates that the General section is meant for subjects that are more of a gloss and non specific i.e. nothing that might spoil the game for someone who just purchased it or is considering a purchase, whereas Feedback seems appropriately much more EA spoilerish.

The impression I get is that the General section is meant for enthusiasm and levity, also descriptive rather than prescriptive, not for judgement or debate really. The Feedback forum by contrast seems to be all gravity, and judgment and debate. Put yet another way, the General section is supposed to be Fun and humorous like play at recess, whereas Feedback is meant to be more serious and not fun, like graded schoolwork I guess. But this could be clearer. Subjects tend to drift back and forth between these two sections, with a fair bit of reduplication and overlap. For that reason we probably have half a dozen threads on any given subject (say "Origins") in each section, with similar talking points, but different participants.

Most threads in the General section are framed as Questions, whereas most threads in Feedback are framed as declarative Statements, but this can also lend itself to confusion, since an open question in General tends to drift into Feedback territory. General should perhaps be seen as watercooler or polite small talk, also brevity. I always seem to fail on that last one hehe.

I think moving the thread is probably more productive than locking it, even if it was hijacked. I think I may have been too feedbacky and too speculative in my initial reply on page 1 once the door was opened. Apologies there. It's too much my mode I suppose. I'll still vote for Lae'zel in the multiple choice here, since 'none of the above' seems a bit too fraught for this section. Also appreciation for your efforts at moderating, it's a tough gig and often doesn't get enough appreciation either. But yeah, Lae'zel for sure! Why not! Hehe

Dragon Age 2 is did some great things with it's storytelling in that regard, things I was sad to see didn't really get replicated elsewhere. I think the discussion about that game never went far because of it's other shortcomings.

That point about how only a custom pc will be able to see how all the origin characters operate independently is one of the more compelling reasons I have for playing as one.

I have no idea what can and can't be done with threads, I've seen threads put together, I'm not sure if they can have chunks moved around.

For me the General section is about top level discussion, the very fuzzy concepts that draw upon the genre as a whole, while the feedback section if for very specific things you've encountered in the EA, so talking about a Day/Night system is General, but talking about how flags and triggers aren't procing because there's no mandatory rest occurring is Feedback. I'm not sure if that's the best example.

+1

wait what? General discussion can't have suggestions or comments that discuss the topic but from a different angle? We should just start making "Shadowheart love thread!!! haters stay out!!!!" posts then lol

No no, those threads are reserved for the Steam forums already. But now that you mention it, how come Minthara has her own fan club and Shadowheart doesn't?

It might have something to do with the fact that Minthara is strong, independend, adult (even tho a little psychotic, narcistic and sadistic) woman ...
While Shadowheart is more like edgy wannabe teen.

But im just guessing here.

Wait, what!?! This thread didn’t go where I originally thought that it would go, but it has provided a lot of really well thought out and well written feedback and discussion. I don’t like it when it veers off into one-on-one arguments that turn somewhat personal, but overall there has been a lot of valid (passionate) feedback that should be helpful to Larian. It sounds like you are saying that no one at Larian will read this or take it as feedback because it is posted in the General forum and not in the Suggestions & Feedback forum. Please clarify. If so, as the OP, I request that this thread remain active but get moved to the Suggestions & Feedback forum. I really hope that someone at Larian reads the feedback that was generated here. They can choose to do with it what they wish, but I hope that it gets seen.