Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Hopes for further party members

“Pleasant voice”?! As I find myself saying so often here, this is clearly a matter of personal preference, as it’s fingernails down a blackboard to my ears. But wouldn’t life be dull if we were all the same ?!

Wait, did I miss something ? Were Non-Origin Companions confirmed ?


I didn't want to derail the thread, so I avoided mentioning Origin Characters in my previous post. But since you've opened that can of worms, let me briefly say this then. 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.

I mean, let me rephrase this in a way that fit within the scope of the thread. My hope is that future party members will all be Non-Origin Companions.


This makes me sad. So sad.

Yes!!! Minsc and Jaheira are confirmed nonorigin companions.

I want more variety. So far, we have too many humans, elves, half elves. I want gnomes, halflings, dwarves, dragonborn.

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.

And I don't want to loose the companions, not currently in the party, after act 1. That is a really stupid mechanic.

So all in all more race variety, especially short races, less recycled characters and I don't want to loose them after act 1.
Oh and another rogue would be nice, so I can ignore Astarion.

But isnt this exactly why they exist?

I mean ... feel free to corect me if im wrong, or if you played DoS and know how Larian handle mercenaries ...
But i fully expect them to be blank paige with no personality, story, or dialogues ... just being there to fill the gasp between point where you loose companion, and point where you get replacement.

If i pick the only example from EA: Second siege of the Grove...
In final release i expect:
- first of all for our companions to leave us before the battle
(It looks really stupid when Wyll is murdering civilians with us, just to afterwards, still covered with their blood, yell at us that we are evil and he leaves us.)
- Wyll leaves us, no question asked ... bcs this is too much for him (as it is)
- Gale wants to leave us for simmilar reasons ... but can be persuated to stay (as it is)
- Lae'zel leave no question asked ... bcs this is foolish delay, and we are supposed to search for Creche, rather than stand for weaklings (if we decide to help Tieflings)
- Astarion wants to leave us ... but can be persuated to stay (bcs there will be battle, and killing goblins will be fun)

Then, after the battle is done ...
I would expect at very least Wizard and Warlock mercenaries to be recruitable from some forces that belong to Minthara (if we kill her, then too bad) ...
And some Fighter and Rogue mercenaries recruitable from Groove forces (my personal prefferences would be Aradin, and the girl with a Bow from his group)

Until later in story (like Act II.) where we would meet proper replacement companions with story and personality.

-

Reasoning is quite simple:
Every companion have two roles ... story and combat ...
And while i kinda like loosing story aspects for my decisions, bcs that are consequences, and the heavier consequences, the more impactfull my decisions feel ...
I dont really like the combat aspect ... bcs when you loose Fighter zhere is nothing positive about it ... and the worse part is that Fighter can only be properly replaced by another Fighter. :-/

I mean ... Fighter may not be the prime example since some could Argue that Barbarian or Paladin can be proper replacements ... but that is THE important part, they only can be and only if you play specific builds with both original and replacement. :-/
Its certainly harder to replace Dex-Fighter, or Eldrich Knight with Barbarian.

This is much easier in Dragon Age, where you only have Rogue, Warrior and Sorcerer ... or in Mass Effect, where you only have Tech, Biotic or Combat ... and in both cases, unless you leave some of them completely, it doesnt really matter how will you asemble your party.
But here, with all that options and especially with 4 members only ... it feels much morw important. :-/

//Edit:
May i ask on what is this this gues based?

I mean, as far as i know, the only difference between Origin and Non-Origin companion ... is that Origin companions were on Nautiloid, and so we can play as them, bcs their story counts with them starting at same place as we do. O_o
So ... i would dare to claim that if our companions would be non-Origin ... it would save ... nothing basicaly. :-/

Aha around zero, Astarion is vampire spawn first of all.

He's an elf that was turned into a vampire spawn. He's still an elf, she's just spawn on top of that.

I would like to know how companions will work in the release. Will the group be closed after Act 1 (a stupid feature which I hope will not be in the game)? If so, will there be companions you meet later on, so you have more than 3 as possible party members after Act 1? Actually should be the case, otherwise when in Act 1 could we get access to them?

Personally I don't need more companions, my party will probably consist of Cleric, Wizard and Warlock, and I doubt we would get more than one companion per class. I prefer humans, elves and half-elves, so I don't miss other races. I also doubt I would like a Larian-made Barbarian companion visually, so I would make me a mercenary here, if I needed one.

On the other hand, variety is always nice, so 12 to 14 companions, at least one per class, would be a good number. And I get the argument that modders need some basics, that also counts for more companions.

Larian said we get a team of 4 to keep and take into act 2 (obviously they might have changed their minds).

From act 2 we can put our non main characters in camp and take mercenaries.
If they are like dos2 they are blank slates and we can hire them and keep them in the party for as long as we want.

I'm still hoping that some "camp followers" can join us on missions that are core to their stories.

And when we have a keep in BG we can ask other NPCs to stay with us and they can help with research, crafting, trading.

As far as i know the exact quote was:
"After the first act however you are going to have to commit, also just like in real life."
Source: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=677277#Post677277

Everything beyond that was all comunity speculation, bcs nobody ever (to my knowledge at least) officialy bothered to coment on what they mean by that.
And people asked ... a lot. :-/

Both points I very strongly agree with.

On the second point, if this mechanic remains in the game, what happens if at the end of Act 1 you choose to dump all five origin companions and have no origin companions in your party and have only your custom PC? Wouldn't you then need a minimum of three companions available in Act 2 to form a party of four?

He is an elf first. Plus we might Halsin and Minthara as companions - two more elves.
My baseline was, that the 'normal' races are overly represented, while there is no one from the small races for example. Possible dragonborn and halforc companions won't probably be announced until those races are implemented in the game .

Yes, of course you are right. The most recent example is Elesh Norn, among many others. Some colors would otherwise go completely empty as far as characters are concerned. In the upcoming Middle Earth crossover, Gandalf the Grey will also unexpectedly be assigned to Red and Blue.


Yes Alora I only mentioned because we have no alternatives in Rogues. Unless they bring Krydle, as I had edited. I'm totally with you and others on not recycling any more old characters. The same goes for Edwin.

Otherwise, my listing of MtG characters is an attempt to narrow down which characters might appear in BG 3 as companions. Quite a few are already known so far as NPCs or companions (Zevlor, Minthara, Kagha, all 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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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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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'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.

There was also a German article that said they weren’t Origin characters: https://www.pcgames.de/Baldurs-Gate...Edition-Patch-9-Panel-from-Hell-1409094/

Here is the translation (from Google):
Game Director Swen Vincke told us in an interview that Minsc (and Boo) and Jaheira can be recruited as followers, but they can't be played as Origin characters themselves like Elf Astarion can, for example.

Hopefully so!!!🤞🤞🤞

True ...
But lets be honest, that is hardly fair comparsion. :-/

I had same feeling ...
Lately, after some thinking about it, im not really sure if such approach wouldnt affect veight of my decisions.

You know what i mean right?
You decide to help certain group ... and certain companion leaves your party for that ... that decision feels strong, important, or at least impactfull ...
But when you get replacement companion right afterwards ... all that impact seems quite significantly reduced. :-/

That is where i believe Mercenaries are working just as designed ...
Your party (aka combat efficiency) is not affected, or at least not too much ... and as you walk different path now, in time (so it feels more natural) you get a replacement, that would be locked otherwise.
Bascialy you could say that i hope Mercenaries would be just temporary bandages.

Now i dont say it would be impossible to still make it feel good ... just harder.
So far i know only one game, where make all bad choices actually is interesting and that is Mass Effect II., where IF you screw your companion missions, and dont upgrade your ship, it have very interesting (at least to me) consequences!

Well, close ... i was mostly talking about amount of those resources.

You said that if there wouldnt be origin characters, we could have 4 more followers ... that seems exaggerated to me.

But i must admit that i didnt realized all those special dream sequences, that will exist only for speciffic origin characters, and unless we take them as PCs ... we actually never see them. :-/ That indeed sound little like waste.
So certainly thank you for reminding me that.

Drow are not a "normal" race. They are still a rarity. Also, having an overwhelmingly human party makes the non-human party members stand out a lot more, so if you want to preserve the uniqueness of other races, I think at least half of all the companions should be human.
In a party of 5 humans a single elf seems special, even a half-elf stands out. But if you have a tiefling, a githyanki, a drow, a dragonborn and a tabaxi, nobody's race stands out because there is no established baseline.
If you want races to have any singificance, there must be a vanilla baseline to be different from. But if everyone is different, then everyone is the same.
Naturally I think it's okay to have special companions, but the only reason they are special is because they are unusual, but if you are making most of the companions non-human, you are making the unusual the standard.
This will make humans the most interesting race for not being like everyone else. It's super interesting, that when the marginal becomes the center, the center becomes cooler by becoming the marginal.
I'm going to play humans in this game a lot because they are just so unusual in this world of unusualness that they actually stand out lmao.

Point in case: The NPCs in this game are overhelmingly non-human, making the human the most unique and interesting race to play for me.

I don't need those races to stand out, I don't want humans, If that wasn't clear. Give me halflings, dwarves, dragonborn, tieflings ...

I don't want the 5 humans, I want diversity in races and classes.
Hope, that is clear enough now.

The gnuman is the pinnacle of diversity.

I see your point here, but I also politely disagree. I pretty much never play as humans in games where I have the option because regardless of the makeup of the game world, I see humans every day. I AM a human. For me, the weirder the better in a game. I want a party full of weird companions so I can fully enjoy the weirdness of the setting more. Humans are always humans and you always know what to expect with them. Elves too are the other super common, "typical" fantasy race. The setting has a vast swath of interesting potential characters but instead the party is just full of humans and elves. I come to fantasy for for fantasy.