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

Yeah, It's definitely a concern for me as well, even with an all-good party or mixed party. It's just worse with an evil party since you have zero replacements for evil companions since Larian gave us just barely enough for a full party, whereas Minsc, Gale, Wyll, Karlach and even Shadowheart (since she has a very heavily telephoned redemption arc) fit well into a good/mixed party Plus Helia if/when she shows up. Good at least has options.

Certainly a valid way to play. In BG II you basically had to play 'hybrid' parties if you were evil because there weren't enough evil party members to fill out a full party. Problem is, Larian isn't encouraging 'hybrid' parties for evil characters. Siding with the goblins looks like it'll lose you about half of your party members straight off and lose six of the eight origins as romance options, while the opposite choice only loses you Minthara as a romance option. Good players can play with whatever characters they want to and romance whomever they want, but evil players are just left by the wayside. I played through BG I and II with hybrid parties all the time, even as an evil character, that just isn't seemingly an option in BGIII.


That's hilarious.

Also, it bugs the hell out of me that Larian would make such a high-consequence option like siding with the goblins so early on. Other rpgs have done 'points of no return' sequences for evil party members where you lose all of your good party members if you don't turn back (Kotor, Jade Empire, etc etc)....but those are almost always end of game scenarios. Here we have a choice that if you take, basically cripples your options for the rest of the game, and it's right at the start of the game. Basically the first significant story choice you can make.

They should make Nere a possible companion if you go this route.

I for one hope that IF we will have good influence and get some redemption arcs, we will also get some options to use our bad influence and have some corruption arcs aswell.

Last time i have seen this was in KotOR II.
It had no effect on gameplay, but when you were training your follower ro a Sith (rather than Jedi) you lead them to feel destruction and suffering in the galaxy, rather than peace and serenity.
Just minor cosmetic detail for flavour ... but it meaned a lot for character identity. :3

Unrelated to previous discussion but I just thought about something :


Did I dreamed this statement?

Yes, I would very much like that, too, I forgot to include this in my post. It should be possible in both directions.
I think from what we already know of our companions, there is some point in every character's story/characterization that would allow for them to be swayed a bit in one direction or another.

I think there are already some examples where companions do something that would maybe not fit our first impression of them, because there is something that is even more important to them, so that they might act contrary to their own convictions to achieve this.

Gale is the only one who does not approve if we reject Raphael's offer, because he is very (or a bit over-) confident that he can outsmart him. I think his primary goal is to find a solution for his magical bomb problem, and though his intentions are good, I wonder what he might do for it. His flaw might be that he is a bit too confident in himself.
When Spike promises Wyll to tell him where Mizora is if he tortures a man, Wyll would very reluctantly do so, because he desperately wants to get out of the pact.

Personally, I think that alignment maybe does not play the most important role in BG3, I think that the characters act according to their traits, ideals, bonds and flaws, and their backgrounds (like the character creation in the 5e Player's Handbook).
"Evil" companions might agree or be indifferent to something that would be considered "good", when it corresponds with their own goals. I think they do not choose one option just because it is the "evil" option.

I like that, I think this way, it makes for more interesting and nuanced characters.
Personally, I am very fine without the assignment of alignment. It does make sense e.g. for devils or demons, because they are the embodiment of evil, but I think that for "normal" characters, the characterization via traits, bonds, ideals and flaws works better.

They did say that they are testing the neutral and evil aligned companions first, yes, and Helia is indeed a werewolf (though the possibility that she's been scrapped entirely has been floated, since the data mine for her hasn't had any updated information in months).

That said; Alignments as given for sapient cretues are "for the most part the ones adventurers will encounter will mostly be like this" - if it's not a deeply intrinsic thing as part of their essence (celestials and fiends primarily), then that general rule is not an absolute, and individual instances of specific creatures may vary. Lycanthropes specifically do not fall into this category of 'essential' alignment - different species of were creatures have strong trends towards various alignments, in fact - were bears are commonly good-aligned, or example. Werewolves are most commonly CE, as written, but it's not an essential trait, and individuals can choose otherwise. This is especially true in the case of adventurers themselves, who are by general definition unusual. Astarion, for example, is not evil *because* he's a vampire spawn - he's evil because of who he is and how he behaves. Helia may be a werewolf, but she's also an adventurer and her own unique person, so we won't know how she aligns until we meet her; it's quite conceivable that she deliberately defies the way her curse inclines her, if she's slated to be in with our good companions.

Yes, I think so too, Niara. And that we do not get updated information about Helia through data mining might only mean that Larian is a bit more cautious now, so that not everything is spoiled before full release.

And I like that without statically assigned alignment (e.g. you're a werewolf or a vampire spawn, so you have to be CE), there is more room for character development. It would at least be possible

I hope the non-updating of Helia does not mean, that she is scraped entirely. I really look forward to her character.

That's my opinion as well, because these datamining Andys on Youtube will spoil everything before the game even comes out, which unfortunately keeps spilling over to the forums as well in completely unrelated non-spoiler discussing topics. So hopefully they severely cut off Early Access from future development's data until the game is ready to be released.

Honestly, I actually hope Helia got cut and is being replaced with some other character. Or at least, she's being radically changed. Werewolves are my favorite kind of monster, but I do NOT want a werewolf companion mixed in with everything else going on with this group. Also, a gnome werewolf in larian's hands? I feel like no good can come from that.

You guys found the companions of other games better? I mean, could you stand Viconia or Jaheira, or Aerie? Keldorn or Anomen? Edwin, besides comic relief? If your only experience with them was in a starting portion of the game, i would probably have ditched them altogether, but during the game, their characters blossom, and you can actually bond with quite a few of them. Don't get me started on the EE new characters, who were beyond horrible.

Also, evil characters would leave if you did good deeds and reached 18+ reputation, and the opposite for good characters. So it's not new to Baldur's Gate to have NPCs being against something. Keldorn could even try to kill Viconia if you didn't intervene, and there were other occasions where characters would not get along. You could also reach high reputation pretty early, if you were a good character and went after it.

We also have no idea how the EA area will be implemented in the official release of the game, so i don't really get why people are so concerned about the NPCs. Let's see how they are after we actually play with them, when they are fully fleshed out. Some people are already convinced that the writing is bad. They seem to forget how the writing was in other popular games.

P.S. I think to this day, the most annoying character i have ever met in a game has to be Morrigan.

P.S. Dragon Age Origins. To unlock the reaver specialization, you had to desecrate the ashes of Andraste. If Wynne was with you, she would turn and attack you. If you did it while she wasn't there, she didn't even care.

That's a tough nut to crack - Larian is combining hand scripted, linear Dragon Age style narrative content with a free systemic sandbox. Those will be forever at odds. Perhaps, Larian should try to govern story content through some kind of reputation system to conpensate (like - reputation with Wyll for every grove NPC kill - so even if he won't witness the conversation, he would leave based on your actions. Or even action take against druid grove outside the quest), but with how disasterously such stuff turned out in Deadfire I suspect it could backfire even further. That said, Deadfire systems were still tied to conversation choices making the whole thing moot - and they didn't manage to react to players actions anyway (for example companions who would leave you if you refused to side with their faction, would still stick with you if you just murdered the whole faction instead). Maybe tying BG3 reputation to player actions would make more sense.

I think we already got this with the approval/disapproval level. Companions will leave the party when the approval level is low, and I think the amount of approval/disapproval we get is also weighted depending on the importance this action has for the companion in question:

Something unimportant like mocking a Redcap who still pretends to be a sheep -not knowing our Tav has seen through the illusion already- by saying "Boo!" got me a little approval from Shadowheart and Astarion, who both seem to think this is funny (Of course, Lae'zel does not care for such nonsense. I can imagine her rolling her eyes at that).

Other actions that are more significant for a companion, seem to decrease or increase the approval level considerably at once.

I must admit that I like the current system (when it is not bugged), and the fact that the attitude of our companions, even the tone of voice and body language, changes according to our relationship.
I wonder how many versions for the same dialogue exist - I appreciate the effort, very much so. To me, it makes the game much more immersive.

Honestly? Yes. I'd take most of the BG II companions over BG III companions. They weren't as heavily written, but they often felt more real and relatable while still being interesting. Only characters I ever really found unpleasant were Cernd, Aerie and Jan, but in regards to the roster as a whole, there were plenty of options if you found one or two you couldn't stand. BG II has more than twice the amount of companions BGIII does if you include the Beamdog additions.

The thing about the reputation mechanic is overblown. It was only really a problem if you were playing a good character with an evil party, (since you couldn't pay money to a church to reduce your reputation)


The sandbox stuff certainly grates against some of the other stuff they are trying to do. Shadowheart's box is probably the most obvious example of this, such that Larian even talked about it. The multiplayer stuff, encouraging players to do stuff while in dialogue cutscenes The origin system etc. Lots of things that have a multiplicative effect on the complexity of the game that the devs have to then account for.

Ah, but doesn't this mean all these characters are essentially cliches?

"A Sharran priestess would normally be evil, but ours is not."
"A person who enters into a pact with a devil is normally evil, but ours is not."
"A werewolf is normally evil, but ours is not."

And so on.

Very convenient, trite, and pathetic to me.

Ah, good to know. I knew there was some system counting on the background if we get laid or not, but wasn’t sure how far it goes. I wonder if it could be a thing that Larian could utilise - unless of course, they believe that what Niara found is according to them a desirable design, which I wouldn’t put past them.

I am sorry but not only i disagree, but criticism and insults, even veiled ones, do not go together.

Now let's take a look at the actual argument.

A Sharran priestess. Do you know till the end of the story, who is the character named Shadowheart? Should i spoil it for you through datamining? You are assuming way too much. Let me remind you she has her memory wiped. I hope i gave you a hint.

A pact with a devil can come directly from your family having made the pact before you were even born, and even a non-evil char can make a pact if they are close to death and it's the only way out. Your imagination is the ceiling. Besides, regardless of the charade Wyll does as the Blade, you have to really get to know him to understand his motivations. So how can you dismiss it, even from EA?

A werewolf that probably doesn't even exist in the game, or we have no idea if they were scrapped, but it's somehow pathetic. And, again, we have no idea even how this hypothetical character would be written.

I think the approval system is utilised, but sometimes it is bugged. Even if companions who remained at camp did not learn about our Tav switching sides yet, they should definitely notice it once the battle has started and act accordingly (severe decrease of approval/leave the party, the same way it is when they are in our party).

I'm pretty sure there is/is planned some sort of 'low-approval party members leave' thing planned. It's just hard to get approval low enough in EA without *Really* trying. I want to say another Chubblot video, but I think I remember it being a topic on the reddit forums too.

Anyway. I'm generally a fan of party members having more ways to express autonomy. If they don't like you killing Tiefling children, they should express that. But I'm not crazy about the generally low numbers of party members, front-loaded into act I, with zero replacements except the likelihood of zero-personality mercs like DOS2 in later acts, combined with a gameplay experience that encourages a high-party member attrition. Particularly with the Goblins vs Grove choice early in act I which is essentially a landmine placed in the path of players right in the beginning of the game, designed to remove half of your options....combined with the end of act I party member culling....not great IMO.