Originally Posted by etonbears
I suppose it depends which things that Larian say we choose to believe.

When Larian talked about wanting the BG3 release to feel fresh, I did wonder exactly how much of what we have played in EA will remain the same at release. DOS2 was criticised for Act 1 of the release being almost identical to EA ( I can't judge as I have not played DOS2 ), so it seems to me they might have heard that criticism and have an intentionally different EA build, at least in some details, if not the overall story elements.

I have wondered particularly about our meeting and intereactions with companions, not all of which seem to make sense to me. Gale popping out of the fast-travel glyph near the Nautiloid crash seems odd, since logically he would need to have accessed some other, more distant glyph to manage that. But likewise, the interaction with Karlach does not seem to allow her as a companion, although we think she will be.

If what Larian said about having to commit to companions by the end of Act 1 is also true, then we should expect ample opportunity to meet, recruit and interact with those companions, but in EA Karlach now runs off to BG on her own, and we don't have more than the 5 companions we have always had.

So will our companion options in Act 1 change markedly at ( or before ) release? Or does our end of Act 1 committment only choose between a subset of companions, with more available to be recruited later?

I can see how with our existing EA companions and the choices available for story progression, we would likely have companions leaving naturally to follow paths we do not choose. To me that would certainly be a better way to "commit" than making some artificial choice at the end of Act 1 as some people seem to be fearing.

Karlach is basically ready, if Larian wanted. By which I mean all it requires is a change to the end of her quest. We can interact with her and deal with the others and Larian just changes the end of it to her joining us instead of saying see you in BG.

That only leaves 1 or 2, depending if cut, expected origin companions left to be added in Act 1. That isn't really much for Larian to squeeze into the map somewhere. That should then be all "real" companion options. They mentioned a mercenary system very early in EA and I believe implied that would be our non-origin companion option.