I was actually thinking specifically of Wyll when I mentioned current party banter feeling predictable. He's a kinda sleazy womaniser, that's quite predictable and frankly it would have been more surprising if he weren't.
Totally agree the banter should be better and more revealing, but specifically on this point (putting in spoiler tags as probably strictly speaking off topic):
While to me it would feel in character for Wyll to be performatively hitting on folk left, right and centre if he thinks that was what they would expect of a swashbuckling hero, the specific way it comes off doesn’t work for me. Of course, Wyll could actually have been written as a sleazy womaniser (or personiser as he’ll proposition all genders of PC), but there are a few things that make me read him differently as actually wanting and expecting people to turn him down: feeling he needs to act the part but doing so in a way that he knows folk probably won’t respond favourably to.
Partly it’s that he’s so obvious and stereotypical-as you say, it would be more surprising if he weren’t that way-that in 2023 it feels it must be intended as a kind of twist on a trope we saw in different ways in BG1/2 (looking at Coran and Haer’Dalis here). But also if we get close to him we find out that Mizora is actually pretty jealous and probably wouldn’t have let him sleep around, and his comment to the PC about not often sharing his blanket of course might be a line, but I read as implying that while he might act the “charming” hero he both avoids and misses intimacy of the non-hellish kind and has been isolated in more than one way since his contract. Plus there’s a kind of naivety and clumsiness about his chatting up of Lae’zel and SH (and the PC) that doesn’t feel like someone who is really the rake he might want us to believe.
And if I’m right about how he is meant to come across, then I actually quite like the idea, and think it has interesting potential. But I’m not sure because while I can give the above evidence in favour of my reading, it’s certainly not the only one or even the one that feels like it fits best for every interaction Wyll has. And while I don’t expect anyone in real life or fiction to be totally consistent, there’s a point at which lack of clarity in characterisation just becomes confusing and annoying. I wouldn’t totally rule out this particular aspect of Wyll’s character being satisfactorily resolved just by getting more of his story in the full game, but my sense right now is that it doesn’t in EA start off as well as it should so Larian have given themselves more heavy lifting than they needed if they’re going to pull it out of the bag.
And none of this is to say that, even if Wyll’s sleazing could work for me (narratively!), we shouldn’t also have more substantial party interactions. I definitely agree we should.
