Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
I'm torn about this.On the one hand I do think that a game made like that would be interesting, genuinely. But for BG3 in particular, I don't really like the idea because our custom characters are already pretty nothing presences to the plot. That sort of dynamic would only add more emphasis to the origin characters at the cost of making our custom characters even less important than they already are. If we're not even the character everyone defers to to make decisions, then what's to keep Tav from faiding to the background compared to everyone else?

Also just from a technical angle, I don't think trying to implement that at this point would be a good idea at all. I think for a system like that to work, it has to be envisioned and implemented from the ground up. And for it to work with a custom character, that custom would need to have their own 'thing'. Their own motivation that's either directly tied to the main plot or seperate to yet still influenced by the main plot, same as the companions. Otherwise their reasoning for following or not following any given option that the others provide boils down to 'I don't want to.'

I think the problem can be illustrated thusly- the origin characters each have more narrative weight, you could call it. They each have stuff going on around them that impacts the direction of the story. Our Tav doesn't have that. Nothing about any Tav you can create will fundamentally alter the ability for the plot to happen. Tav is always incidental to the story and the plot. No matter what backstory you create for your Tav, they don't bring any of it into the story. They can just be plucked out and narratively speaking, any ofthe companions could step into their place. To tie this back to the question of the thread; we know for a fact purely because of the presence of the origin system that if Tav dies, then narratively, one of the other companions can just step in and take their place and nothing will change.

Originally Posted by robertthebard
The same thing happens here, in a narrated cutscene even.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you're refering to when you say this. I mentioned a couple different things in my post.

They agree to follow you, because of the tadpole. A cutscene plays every time we meet one of them, with a tadpole interaction.

I guess, instead of leaving us with a narrative "out" for the main character dying, they need to just run a "Game Over" screen and take us back to the last save, because it's sure leading to a lot of misconceptions about why it's there. Someone posted earlier in this thread that if Tav's dead, the other companions won't talk to whichever companion you're currently controlling. I think they said it was "I'll talk to the boss"? Yeah, it'll suck for those of us that do understand why it's there, but it sure seems like subtlety and nuance are lost w/out it. Although, it would be funny to start reading the posts from those that sincerely believe that once Tav is rolled up, they're replaceable, when their romance subplots won't play out because they chose to leave Tav dead. So maybe, just for comedic value, they shouldn't add the "Game Over" screen?