What I mean is that if you look at the written scripts for the characters, the structure of the sentences across companions are fairly similar. Like [adverbial clause][addressing noun][adjective] etc. Every character has their own personalities and manner of speech for sure, but they are fairly homogenized in the syntactic and connective quality of their speech.
Ah, I had thought that was only part of your point and you were also talking about differences in mannerisms and the way they spoke more broadly.
I agreed on that specific point about syntax, but as I said I would put that down to the four other than Lae’zel all sharing a language. Different sentence structure to me usually just comes across as annoyingly affected unless it has a rationale, usually in the form of different first languages or at least different dialects.
So, if you think about DA:O, we have Leliana from Orlais, Zevran from Antiva, Sten who is Qunari, Oghren from Orzammar, Shale from a long time ago, and so on. They are a more geographically diverse bunch than the companions we currently have in BG3 so different grammar because of different languages and dialects makes more sense than it would for our four Sword Coast natives.
Or perhaps I am still misunderstanding your point?
No, no, you've got it.
It's hard to capture what is meant by "mannerisms" because it is clear that all of the companions have different diction, personality, tone, manner of speech (Wyll=boastful, Astarion=dramatic, Lae'zel=aggressive, etc.). I'm not a linguist, but I can tell that the "connective tissue" of their speech is relatively homogeneous relative to some of the more praised games in the genre.
The reason for my point is that it popped into my head when I recruited Merrill in DA2. Up until that point, I had Carver, Varric, and Aveline, and all of them had a very continuous, confident speech pattern that was unbroken and took one from the characters' preambles to the point they were trying to make fairly efficiently (Especially Aveline, while Varric did a bit more tangential dazzling). Then in comes Merrill who rambles, goes on tangents, makes short observations, occasionally stutters, and has a different accent (Welsh I'm pretty sure) from the rest of the team. Very different from everyone prior. I then realized that I never noticed such differences in speech patterns between characters in BG3, but definitely saw it in DAO.
Funnily enough, there's not a lot of accent variation in the game between companions. I get they're going for English Accent=Fantasy Accent thing, but I've lived in England (though raised in the States) and not everyone has the same accent? There's A LOT (like A LOT) of local accents that are specific to different regions and cities. I think Gale (of Waterdeep) should've had a different accent to Astarion (of Baldur's Gate). You're from the UK, so you probably know this better than I do.
