Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback This doesn't feel like a Baldur's Gate game (or D&D)

Except...there are several already legendary characters who have the same condition, except they are sown into the story and you are just a random unknown dude in comparison.

Sorry. Not sure where you're going with that. How is that so much different from the originals? In the first two, it was you and Imoen. So there was still more than just you. In this game, it is you and five others. It's still relatively the same premise.

That is the beauty in Custom character ...
They can be anything you want them to be ... starting with random unknown dude, over secret son of a King, and ending by demigod personification with memory loss, or just wanting vacation ... the only limit is your imagination.

Oh...they have. It is disguised (like BG3/DOS2 intros) but it is there.

Companions - extensive backstories and woven into the plot. 5000000000 lines of spoken dialogue.
Tav - Cloned in a mindflayer tank as "level 1 - insert class".

Well they did give Tav 2 lines in the polt.

"this looks like a good place to make (warp) camp"
"Something something something absolute.....curious"

Hahahahaha!! The player character is basically an extra in a B movie.

Honestly, I personally hope they don't give Tav too much spoken dialogue. I think in a case like this, having the dialogue of the main character be unvoiced is probably for the best.

As someone who LOVES to give their crpg characters intricate backstories and complex internal lives that grow and develop as the game progresses, I will say that the game could do more to make players feel like their backstories have some degree of grounding in the world (also there's the fact that new players really don't get any insight into the workings of the world at large, which makes coming up with backstories that fit the world harder). It's really as simple as having characters ask about your background a bit more, maybe give us a couple more opportunities to say what we are and aren't familiar with. Little things like that would go a surprisingly long way towards helping us connect with our character a bit more, make it feel like we can bring some of what's in our heads out into the game world. And honestly I still maintain that if the game worldbuilt better, that would actually help as well, since it would make it easier for us to really conceptualize where our character could fit into the wider world.

Actually, I agree here. They should not be non-standard in the form of spoken lines IF it is to be so rarely.
They should either sound most of the dialogue lines or not at all.
I don't know about the others, but it didn't irritate me so much, but surprised me for lack of a better word.

I really liked that the main character was voice acted until I created an evil character and found that none of the voices match at all. I never wanted my main character to not have a voice so much until I did this. The voice so did not match my evil drow sorcerer that it really ruined a lot of the evil playthrough for me whenever he spoke.

There are still a few currently unavailable voices in the files, so who knows, maybe you will find something for yourself.

I kinda understand where this came from ...
But it seems impossible to me. :-/

You would need to implement litteraly any and every story, so your companions can react on that.

Unless you mean it as give option to say "never heard about it, tell me more" or "yes, im familiar with this concept" for everything our companions wish to tell us about.
That dont seem so hard ...
I mean when i played my Gith i would certainly appreciate not being so clueless moron who asks even what is Creche. -_-

That is common prolbem with voiced characters ...
There will ALLWAYS be somoene who will feel like "my character would never ever say that" :-/

Yeah, I mostly mean just giving us the option to know about stuff. Maybe even to be able to explain certain things to our companions if it would make sense for your character. Like when I had the opportunity to tell Lae'zel that I'd heard of gith before, for instance. Being able to say to Gale, "I've been to Waterdeep and thought it was beautiful/a dump, etc. More moments like that. Another example is, when you interact with the Zentarim, maybe being able to say that you've heard of them before, or you've had dealings with another branch or something. Just sprinkling little opportunities for your character to voice their experiences and flesh their own backstory out. They obviously can't provide for every idea a player could create, but something is better than nothing. Plus not every player is going to have a fully fleshed out backstory in their heads, and little prompts like that will give them something to latch onto.

Yeah i would like that.
You should probably send this last message to Larian through official feedback, this will get easily lost on paige 15 in topic that will soon be once again full of complaining about how things was better in the past.

A plot twist: It is WE who are the NPC.

It means that while the plot has similarities, the storytelling is completely different.

BG1&2 are about you. The other bhaalspawn being your sister is also about you. You have a supporting cast of companions.

BG3 is about Larian's NPC's first and foremost and about you second. They are not a supporting cast. It's an oversized ensemble cast where every one of them is legendary and awesome already at level 1. And when everyone is, no one is. And if you like to envision your own level 1 PC as an actual rookie, it hardly makes sense with your companions being so legendary already.

Dragon Age games are also about the player and the companions are always the supporting cast. The storytelling has more impact that way. That's why BG3 is leaving me cold so far. I hope they can somehow improve their storytelling and poke some emotional response out of the player. But it's much more difficult when the focus is on NPC's instead of you.

Ah. Ok. Makes sense.

I don't see them changing in this regard, it's just part of their DNA.

It can work with a single awesome sidekick. In Andromeda, Dylan Hunt was your typical hero but you had one side character, Trance, who could basically manipulate timelines. This did work because you only found out far into the story (before she was just depicted as extremely "lucky") and it was only one character.

But yes, the other characters necessarily had to step back compared to her.

The problem in BG3 is that the origin characters are supposed to be played by you, so they have to be awesome. But of course, if there are so many of them, it gets too much.

Maybe a solution would be to just have ~3 origin side characters and most others "normal" characters. More is not always better or can be added by expansions.

Honestly, it's still a game you should play. If only because it'd give you a window into understanding why there's immense pushback in seeing anything remotely similar to DOS2 in BG3. Many fail to understand that the whole 'BG3 = DOS3' criticism isn't mean to disparage the DOS games, it's a warning to Larian that they shouldn't expect to blindly take aspects of their own series and insert it into a DnD-focused world and engine and expect it to go over well. Especially since some of the things that obviously did make it over are also the most harshly criticized parts of DOS to begin with (the toilet chain system for instance, the idea of the origin system, and the fears that we'll end up with all of our inactive party members dead at the end of act 1 like what happened in DOS2, though it looks more and more like Larian has reversed course on the latter since none of the datamining is showing any hint that it is even on the table anymore).

Beyond that, it's still a great game for what it is, even if the balancing becomes questionable about halfway into the game.

I actually like the DOS2 party members. My issue with them is that there's literally no party banter between them at all (you will not see party members talking to each other at all, they only really talk to the designated player character. They will only comment as a group and tell you what they would personally do before you make a major choice). Because of their overall lack of interaction between each other, it's a contributing factor as to why they mostly come off as selfish murderhobos as the game goes on, as they don't really get much opportunity to showcase any sort of depth.

BG3 isn't quite that much better yet, but my standards in this department are also admittedly very high, almost unrealistically so, with how lively WotR's cast of party members are. At face value, WotR's characters aren't that much different from Larian's characters, the primary difference is their party banter gives them numerous opportunities to show true depth. It's probably the only game I've ever played where one can make a convincing argument that the entire cast of party members should be judged as a complete package, instead of on an individual level.

This...this right here, is one of my biggest hangups. I love party banter and convos. I desperately want the BG3 characters to interact more and share their opinions together as a party, not just one v one with the MC. Some scenes make sense as one v one but some should definitely be party interaction. One thing that makes D&D what it is has to do with party members getting closer, becoming friends as one cohesive unit.

I'm not sure there is such a big difference.
While exploring, companions in BG3 talk to each other very often, unlike WotR.
It's hard for me to consider saying literally one sentence as a conversation, as is the case in WotR, especially since many of these "conversations" are written so that they could fit more than one person.
What WotR does better is that the companions join the conversation. Only here are two things to consider.
First of all, considering the whole game is a bit unfair.
We only have less than 1/3 of the game.
Secondly, full voice acting is quite expensive so of course there will also be a more limited number of combinations.
It would be nice if companions joined conversations more often (it's much better than it was at the beginning of EA), but you shouldn't have unrealistic expectations.