Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Opinions on amount of companions

I didnt like the line we are useing romance to say sex,
They are 2 diffrent things, i hope larian understand that

And give our characters actual opportunities to fall in love

To me the commitment comment just seems like a joke in an update about romance.

In an early EA stream one of the writers said one of the reasons to have a fixed party after the first act was that it was difficult to continue companion quests in later acts if all the earlier parts of the companion quest were missed because the companion was not in the party.

That doesn’t seem to make any sense. In previous games you met potential companions throughout the game and it didn’t have any bearing on doing their quests. This also suggests that you meet all companions inside Act 1 which is really sad because it takes away any spontaneity of meeting any new companions after Act 1. Another strange Larianism it would seem.

This is almost certainly due to the companions all having to be origin characters by definition. This is why my opinion is that Larian:

1. Needs to ditch the system all together. (Probably not going to happen and maybe it shouldn't if a lot of their player base really enjoys it)

2. Or a better solution, in my opinion... let's say that you have ideas for like 10-15 companions. Make the ones you consider the best ideas, 3-5 of them origin companions and make the rest 'sidekicks'. Characters who can become party members that still have some quests and stories around them, could even be romance options and stuff like that, but they are not characters you can actually play. This would allow you to introduce them in later acts, not tie them to the beginning of the game or have to share so many similarities with one another. It would even open up the ability to tell different kinds of stories with them.

Just based off the responses earlier in this thread it does seem some people really enjoy the origin character thing - which is cool. I actually prefer pre-defined main characters (as an example using CDPR games - I much prefer the more defined Geralt of The Witcher over the more vague build your own V in Cyberpunk 2077). But that being said for party based games like this and with Larian's approach, I much prefer the build your own character thing.

I think a lot of that is probably because none of the DOS2 characters really clicked with me though. I loved them all as companions, but I didn't see myself really playing any of them. Even when I tried I wasn't a particularly big fan of it.

The same goes for Baldur's Gate 3. I like all of the companions so far (some more than others) - but I don't really see myself playing as any of them so much as wanting them as party members.

All the Origin companions have to be in Act 1, so if you play them you start in the same place. I hope there are non-Origin companions, too, but his comment is likely about Origin characters.

It might also have to do with the design of having companion quests able to be completed without the companion. In some other games I have played the companion is required to start the companion quest, so if there is a multipart companion quest, the companion couldn’t do the third part without having completed the previous parts.

To your first point... I think everything we have heard so far from Larian indicates that there will be origin companions and storyless mercenaries you can hire/fully customize. But I am with you - I hope that they add actual companions with actual stories that are also not origin characters.

To your second point... I agree, this is one of the reasons why I think you have to choose. In DOS2 you could even miss certain quest points even if the companion was in your party if you didn't talk to someone, do things in the right order or go to the right place. Usually later in the story there was a way to kind of pick back up on the companion quest even if you missed things earlier. But I imagine you are right - this probably dictates the need for a decision.

One more point to add - having a camp full of like 8-12 companions and all of the other people, animals, etc. you pick up along the way would likely be an enormous pain for them to try to sort out. So they likely want to try to control the number of companions lingering around so they can keep adding to the camp as the story moves along.

It's really funny to me to see people trying to come up with all kinds of convoluted spin to try and justify Larian's choice about locking us into only three companions and no more after Act 1. There's really nothing to explain or justify. It is absolutely a terrible game design choice, something that fundamentally takes away from the roleplaying element of the game and thus degrades the game as an RPG. My only hope here, just as with too damn many other aspects of this game, is that it can be removed/fixed with modding.

Who is coming up with "convoluted spin"?

It seems like everyone agrees they wish there were more companions, non-origin companions, companions after act 1, etc.

I still believe that comitment is missunderstood by many people ...
But that was allready said enough times.

Personaly i welcome it, if that is the case ...
I hate it when you wait half game for your favourite companion to finaly show. :-/

Thats also one of reasons i rarely even use Wyll ... by the time i meet him, i allready have my party ... i have no use for him. :-/

I got from the answers here, that even the people, who are ok with a smaller cast of characters are not ok with killing Off the companions, that aren't in the group by the end of act 1.
I did understand, that no one likes the idea of being stuck with three companions for the rest of the game.

I can only agree there, and I think this can be paraphrased further : I hate it when you wait half game for any cool features. Looking at you and your mythic paths WotR...

I can think of a lot of scenarios where choices we make throughout act I put us into situations later where we lose or have to choose between our companions. It might be an interesting way to put into your group, companions who you wouldn't have chosen to adventure with, something conducive to drama.

Anything that would add value to our decisions, both good and bad, gets straight +1 from me Sozz. :3

I'm all for actions having consequences, I love a good tragedy, even. But that's distinct from the idea of being punished in the sense of bleeding content and ending up with a shallower experience as a result of fairly mundane choices (as in, not 'lets see if I can break the game by murdering every npc I come across'). I know I have harped on the disparity in content between the 'evil options' and 'good options' in this game before, but it really stings in regards to party members. We already know that it's unavoidable to lose Wyll if you side with the goblins, and fairly easy to Lose Gale as well, and you lose your romance option with three of the existing five party members if you choose to do so, but it gets even worse in the datamined stuff.


In additionally, in regards to a future conflict not yet added to the game but revealed in datamined stuff:

So keeping in mind that if you choose to play an Origin character you'll have one less party member and one less romance option, you could be looking at a party size of one+your PC and 1-2 romance options before you even reach the much dreaded 'party member guillotine' or w/e it ends up being at the end of act I-just based on your choice of Origin character and siding with the goblins.

I'm pretty sure Larian has talked about making failure interesting in the past, but I really hope this isn't it at the end of the day.


But yeah, the rate of attrition for party members in Act I is extremely high, and we absolutely need understudies/more party members to fill out the gaps if they want to pursue that sort of high-turnover story where your actions have consequences and people end up dead that otherwise would be with you till the end of the game.

Given the similarities with DOS2 it would not at all surprise me if the companions are not killed off - rather I imagine they will show their faces again later in the game. They will be corrupted by the tadpoles, full blown Mindflayers, bodyguards to some big bad or something like that.

I hadn't even thought about the evil path angle before. That's actually pretty nuts how you basically lose nearly half the party just by doing that already. Even more that it's your only two sources of arcane magic if you aren't playing a class capable of casting that magic yourself.

I suppose it's generally fine for actions to have consequences, but it seems like playing with fire to do it with such a small cast of characters so early in the game. Similar stuff happens in WotR based on your choice of mythic path and handling of companion quests, but that game has a cast of about 12 companions and it all happens in the second half of the game.

Well, the bottom line still continues to remain for me whether I'll even have enough companions to fill out a party under the best of circumstances:

(1) I won't accept any evil or evil-leaning companions in my party.

(2) I won't accept having to play with empty-suit no-personality hired mercenaries.

So am I even going to have three companions that will satisfy me? I rather doubt it at this point. So for me, talking about losing companions I don't use is a moot point when I may not even have the necessary minimum of three companions that I *will* use. And this is all not even factoring in that I will only play BG3 with a mod that allows me to have a 6-person party, in which case I will need a minimum of five companions that I would be willing to have in my party.

Thing is, it is evident we don't know a lot about Larian's intentions, still. Things could have changed.

I mean, if i remember correctly, in dos2 you could only play a origin char in EA. People asked for custom chars, and larian changed their mind. Maybe that's why custom chars seemed like an afterthought in dos2.

I hope some more info about what is in, and what is not in the game is available at some point soon.

Instead of flashy panels from hell i would prefer a panel where they talk in depth about what is going on concerning things the community is concerned about.

I am sure we will get more companions, until now, only the "evil" and "neutral" ones are included. I found the interview with Swen Vincke, where he addresses this point:

Interview with Swen Vincke (Updated: Nov 10, 2020):

The interview is from 2020, but I don't think that this has changed; so certainly there will be "good" companions once the game is fully released. And I am optimistic that once we've got all possible companions, it should be more easy for players to choose characters they would find acceptable for their party.


I like to play "good" Tavs, and I like the challenge to form a group with companions who do not necessarily agree with everything she does. I think we have a strong external motivation to form a party even with people we do not agree with: If I were my Tav, I wouldn't tell random people that I might turn into a mindflayer any second, so I would stick to people who share my problem, whether I particularly like them or not, and find out what is happening/get help.

Of course, it is not always easy, there are some arguments, and there is some back and forth with approval and disapproval, but personally, I find this very interesting. I do not choose my options in order to get any companion's approval, but according to the way I imagine this particular Tav. And I'm curious how the companions react to this Tav.
My Tav will tell Astarion that she is sorry that he has been tortured, but she will also say that this does not give him any right to make racist remarks towards Gandrel. She wouldn't let Lae'zel humiliate Zorru, and will intervene. And so on.

I tend to play characters with high social skills, and I like talking to our companions, learn more about them, find out why they act the way they do (yes, sometimes I get the feeling my Tavs are the group therapist )

Will my Tav have a bit of a positive influence on some companions, or will someone stab her in the back? I don't know, but I am very curious to find out.

I can understand that this is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think on full release, there should be group constellations for all (or most) players.

Just as an amusing aside:


Funnily enough, it's actually so badly hung together, design-wise, that this is maddeningly simple to circumvent and creates complete non-sequiturs. On my most recent playthrugh, when I tested the minthara branch briefly, I engaged went to her with Shadow, Lae'zel and Astarion in party, and helped Minthara assault the grove, then agreed to meet her there... I returned to camp, swapped in Wyll and Gale, who had not objected due to not being there, and not left me, and then went to the druids, where I promptly betrayed and slaughtered them, with Wyll and Gale standing alongside me, and then doing most of the druid-murdering heavy lifting, with narry a complaint from either of them the whole time.