As I said in
another recent discussion of companions, Wyll is the party member who so far is resonating with me least, too.
But while I agree with some of the criticisms made by the OP and others, I’m not 100% of the same mind.
The problems I have with Wyll are:
- As folk have said, his stats don’t work for his character concept. I agree with this proposal for updating him.
- I also agree his entrance, clearly using warlock powers, is ridiculous given he’s presented as trying to hide the fact he’s made a pact with a devil. I really want this to be changed so as to not blow his cover immediately.
- I also agree his character background is a mess. I think Larian are trying to pack way too much into it, and as a result it’s confusing, unfocused and implausible.
- E.g. why are we told he spent time as a thief? It doesn’t fit with any of his current skills, and is in my view is an unnecessary complexity. It just makes me think Larian were originally considering a Charlatan background for him, which I think would have been a feasible way to go with him and does fit some other elements of his character, but once he’s been established as a Folk Hero that could have been dumped.
- Also, why a noble? We already have Astarion with the Noble background, and while we don’t know about Gale I get the impression his childhood was relatively privileged as well. Having Wyll noble just means there’s less variety in the back stories of the party and again just gives me the impression that Larian’s writers were at one point dithering about what D&D background to give him.
- I just wish they’d lean into one or two main elements of his character. For example, he’s presented as a (functioning) alcoholic, constantly drinking in camp. His bluster, boastfulness, rambling, overconfidence and anger management issues are all consistent with drunkenness. And his despair at his predicament with Mizora and the mistakes he has made would feasibly drive him to drink. Why could he not just be the feckless son of … say merchants, not poor but not rich, who fell in with a wild crowd, took to drink and extravagance, was given one last chance by his dad to join the Flaming Fist and sort himself out or be disowned, but failed to mend his ways and screwed up a mission because he’d been drinking, then drunkenly charged a bunch of goblins single-handed and lost his eye. A character like that could easily have the self-loathing and hopelessness needed to be vulnerable to an alternative vision of themself as a hero presented by a beautiful, mysterious woman, as well not being clear-sighted enough to see the obvious trap. And perhaps the pact did initially help him to become sober and less of a loser, and he liked being seen as a hero rather than a waste of space. But it would also set him up to fall off the wagon hard, once he realised exactly what he’d committed to. I think a lot of that is there in Wyll already, but there’s also so much extraneous stuff.
- I also think that both Wyll’s animation and voice performance are too often oddly wooden and stilted, particularly when compared to Astarion and even Gale. I wish both aspects were smoother and more expressive.
I don’t, however, care whether Wyll is likeable, as long as he is engaging and has the potential for various different story arcs, including both tragedy and redemption. And I don’t care that there are perhaps too many party members who used to be more powerful but have been nerfed for one reason or another, and will happily sacrifice a bit of plausibility for the sake of characters having interesting stories as companions and (with origin characters) as protagonists.
I do think his character has potential without significant overhaul, and mainly requires some streamlining and tidying, better animation and ideally a different approach to his voice performance. Oh, and some tweaks to his build to sort out his stats … and I would also be all for Wyll being level 3 and Pact of the Blade when we meet him. I agree that would help make more sense of him as a character.
EDIT: I did see a short clip of some data-mined content of Wyll as an origin character and it did get me intrigued by the potential of playing a warlock with a fully realised relationship with a patron, which is something we’ll no doubt have to head-canon as a custom warlock. And I don’t mind that Mizora isn’t presented as massively powerful. I don’t think she needs to be, in order to have helped Wyll fight the sorts of monsters he’s been battling, and the D&D basic intro to the class does say that some patron/warlock relationships can be more like master/apprentice than like cleric/deity, and the former seems to suit Wyll better.
