Wait, did I miss something ? Were Non-Origin Companions confirmed ?
Yes!!!
Minsc and Jaheira are confirmed nonorigin companions.
Oh ? Ok. I heard about them, but I was unclear about their status.
Minsc : I don't remember how clear it was before EA that he'd be at least a Companion, but I feel it was the general sentiment that he would be not only recruitable, but in fact be an Origin Character (I suppose this was at least in part because Larian announced that they wanted all Companions to be Origins). Then at the start of EA, some Minsc-related content was data-mined. So I fully expected that we'll be able to have him as Companion, at the very least. If he was moved to non-Origin Companion, great. But it's not clear to me that this is now official.
Jaheira : for a while, all we had was data-mined voice lines, indicating that we'd most probably meet her at some point in the game. That much has now been made official. But how official is it that she'll be a Companion ? From what I can see in the two trailers where she appears, she sounds more like an ally. Similar to how Halsin functions (so far, in EA).
...
I was about to ask, "So, does anyone remember if the info was given in PFH7 ?", because I thought I couldn't be bothered re-listening to it. But as it turns out ... it was said early enough in the
PFH7 (at 11:40 to be precise, and later again at 38:30). So, yeah, it is confirmed that Jaheira and Minsc will be a Companions.
And given the situation, I think that Jaheira couldn't possibly be an Origin Character. For Minsc, it's not 100% clear, but I feel he's probably not though. So I guess Larian has, implicitly, informed us that we could have non-Origin Character.
Hurray. I hope that means that folks like Halsin, Minthara, or some of the Tieflings or Druids in the Grove (Alfira, Nettie, etc), now have a higher chance of becoming Companions.
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And to be clear : I don't consider that a hollow, personality-less, malleable/editable/make-your-own Mercenary will do the job.
But isnt this exactly why they exist?
Yes, sadly. They will exist. And, most likely, they will be blank-page, hollow sacks of meat, combat turns, carry capacity and skills. I just wish it wasn't so. After all, BG2 didn't
need to have mercenaries. I hope that, whatever Story Path choices I make in BG3, I'll be able to play with actual Companions and that I will not have to resort to using mercenaries.
If not, I'll have to necro that old thread about "are you playing BG3 the way you wish it could be played?" and say "no, I wanted to make story choice D at that point, as it made sense roleplay-wise for my character, but that would have left me with only 2 companions, so I reloaded and selected choice C instead". Anyway, mercenaries were a minor point in my post.
My wish, regarding future Companions, is that : provided I play a sensible character and follow one of the available main Story Paths, I will have sufficiently many compatible companions, so as to (a) feel that I am choosing my team (not taking the only 3 compatible with that Story Path) and (b) feel that I can assemble a balanced party given the pool of companions available to me.
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I would much, much, much have preferred it if Larian had not made any of the Companions an Origin, and had instead put the saved resources to use toward 4 more Companions.
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May i ask on what is this this gues based?
Hm. It took me some time to understand your question. I assume that by "guess" you were referring to my opinion that Origin Characters are more costly than non-Origin Companions (not the hope I expressed in the now-deleted part in [...]).
Swen explained in the very early communications, before EA, that when playing as an Origin Character, you get to see more of their story. For example, in the PAX East presentation from February 2020, we saw that if you play as Astarion, there's a scene where you have a dream about Cazador. Those extra scenes require development resources (writing, animation, voice acting, etc).
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I really wasn't happy about two slots going to companions, we already had in two games. I never liked Minsc and I don't know what more there is about to learn from Jaheira.
I really hope, we don't get more recycled characters.
I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I too would be interested in seeing new characters. On the other hand, several Larian characters have an improbably epic-level backstory (hi Gale), while many of the BG1&2 characters were more ... I don't know, grounded. Humane. Reasonable.
(This reminds me of that awesome
VLDL sketch. Basically, Larian makes Fargrim The Great backstories for their characters, and I'm not super fan of that.)
So, if Larian was to ask us who we want to the last character slot(s), I'm not completely sure where I'd land.
