Originally Posted by robertthebard
Whether Tav is the leader or not, it's Tav, through us, that decides what happens. So, we get our consequences, and the comps decide you're not taking it seriously enough, and leave the party. What then? There's certainly precedent, Khalid and Jaheira will do it if we don't go to Nashkell soon enough. Minsc can attack you for not rescuing Dynaheir soon enough. Sten will attack you in Origins if you're too busy with side quests to tackle the main objective, in order to wrest control of the party from you.

Why does Larian need to justify your character's existence, or explain why you're the one making the decisions for the group? Wouldn't this have the affect of just creating another Origin character, with the only difference being you get to decide what they look like, and what class? Isn't that part of the problem in the first place?
The strictures of logic don't stop in fiction, if all that is required for you to believe your personal character is the main character of the story is that you are the playing him, then you really don't care about the internal logic of the narrative. But to be clear, I don't know how many more ways we can put it, I think maybe you're on it now, our gripes aren't with the existence of the party, or even Tav being leader, it's the inconsistency between the characters, and their behavior to generic Tav.


Originally Posted by pachanj
I could see it being kind of neat if player character death meant rerolling a new character inserted in to the narrative at the same point like playing at a table, but otherwise the ergodic nature of player agency within a videogame negates that possibility. When playing at a table, agency is shared with the whole party; when playing at a computer, agency is entirely in the player's hands, so it is far more practical to have a save system than a reroll system.

I never liked Larian's approach to "origin" characters for the very reason mentioned above: it's not Tav's story, it's not MY story as a player. I really have no agency over the narrative.

Warhammer 40k Darktide does something similar where the story is actually about the NPCs who send you off on missions, and you're just a reject prisoner doing grunt work for them. Doesn't work there very well either.

I know it's been said to death ... but BG2's companions are a platinum standard that have yet to be matched in any game since. We've all been seeking that level of interaction since and it's not there.
I like the idea of switching characters if you die, or chose to write yourself out of the party. I've seen this dynamic in some Rogue-likes and adventure games, where your progress isn't reset, but the character changes if you 'fail'.

dumb, pseudo-intellectual and polite homophobe