Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General who do you think the new origin character will be?

As always, it's so interesting to read different folks' takes. I must admit Astarion doesn't look particularly young to me. And this is despite the fact that as I advance in years myself everyone under the age of 30 increasingly looks like a child . Not that he looks particularly middle aged or old either, just appropriately well preserved for an elf who has been stuck as a vampire spawn for a couple of centuries. Though don't tell him I said so. He'd be appalled

And I do agree that none of the origins yet diverge hugely from what a fair swathe of Earth humans could be anticipated to find conventionally attractive. Other than, as was said, Lae'zel but of course she has her winning personality to make up for it

But personally it doesn't strike me as though their appearances are so unlikely - it's not Hollywood level, for instance - though I'm glad that Gale and Wyll were aged up and made a bit more battered in later patches. And while I am sure it's correct that at least part of the thinking behind the companion design is so that they might work as romance interests for a broad enough constituency , there are other reasons for not making them too out-there. I'm not saying that I'd never use a old lich-like vampire in my party, but it feels much more niche than the Astarion we have, who so far can work in any moderately tolerant party, even though he might sulk amusingly in a too goody-goody group. Plus we already get complaints that companions are too weird and wonderful. I find it hard to advocate for the lowest common denominator, but I do accept that game designers can't completely ignore how useful the bulk of gamers are going to find a companion as both a party member and potential love interest (though I definitely don't think that every companion should be designed primarily or even mainly as the latter).

Anyway, apologies all as that's taking us off topic. Bringing it back, I don't think that even if value as a potential romance is a consideration for Larian, that's a reason not to hope for a shorter race companion. In fact, I'd hope it would be more of a reason, given that our shorter-race Tavs currently don't have any potential love interests their own size, if that's what they prefer. I'd be perfectly okay with a conventionally attractive gnome, halfling or dwarf companion .

Provided the beard was sufficiently luxurious.

Funny you mentioned that.
I don't think there has ever been a female dwarf, halfling or gnome with a romance anywhere in the history of all RPG games.
All romances options are always humans, elves, and half-elves.

That might have something to do with the fact they always are either sidelined to the point of having no character or simply put there for the comedy of having a short person around (which, by the way, stopped being funny before I was born, and that was quite some time ago).

My dislike for the smaller races stems from the fact I didn't see a single compelling character that was either a dwarf, gnome or halfling in any RPG. And after 30 years of consuming media where they all are a monotonous sea of jolly drunks or, worse, comic reliefs, I just can't see them any differently.

And jRPGs where they are those sweet, annoying childlike companions. Ew.

So yeah, it would take a lot for me to see past that in a video game setting. The character would have to be mind blowing to break those years of neglect.

WotR has some nice dwarf and gnome companions. They are here no because they needed a comic relief or for some cliché, but as real characters with interesting motivations.

Because humans are never comic relief?

Minsc
Edwin
Khalid
Garrick

Not to mention Edgin!

Oh, need to give it a solid go then. I did two attempts, but never got that far. Maybe that's my journey to discovering insteresting smaller races representation!

Never said they are not, but there are enough actually meaningful and deep characters that are human (or half-elf, elf etc.) that a silly one here and there makes no harm to the general opinion.

Also never seen Khalid as a comic relief character. I mean, he was a kick-ass warrior with his kick-ass warrior-druid wife, all he did was stutter

Speaking of BG characters - there was Mazzy! Says a lot that I didn't even remember her

Firstly, Edgin is also the lead of the movie. Second and more importantly, humans have been played for comic relief before but the problem is Vitani has only seen small folk them in comic relief roles as opposed to humans who he's seen in many others.

But yes, both Pathfinder games have really good short folk characters.

I think a kick-ass warrior who was actually kinda nervy and panicked and ran away when things got too tough was definitely meant to be funny. That said, I think pretty much all the BG1 companions were played for laughs at least to some extent. Perhaps Kivan and Viconia are exceptions? Oh, and maybe Faldorn and Yeslick? I tend to forget details unless I've had them in my party very recently.



Sounds to me as though there's a real opportunity for Larian here . I hope they'll take it, especially as I think they already have some great shorter race characters in the game already, with Barcus being perhaps my favourite NPC so far. So wanted him to be a companion .

Though, while I'd admit that shorter races have not been done great service in the past, I do think there are some good examples. Varric in DA2/DA:I is friendly and humorous but I'd not call him comic relief. And Regill in WotR is deadly serious (admittedly almost amusingly so). Not that I personally have any objection to comic relief characters anyway. Tiax rules all!!!

Scout Harding in DA:Inquisition. [And no, I haven't. I don't do romances and the 5 or 6 years of totally debauched Skyrim were definitely not romantic.]

You could flirt with her just like you could with absolutely everyone regardless of the romance.
And her "romance" was a total of about 10 sentences of text.
You can hardly call it a full-fledged romance.

Also Pillars of Eternity.

And Dragon Age 2.

Also Frodo Baggins. Some of his mates might be funny but Frodo wouldn't know a joke if you slapped him in the face with a wet fish.

And Gollum. Seen his video game? That's definitely not funny.

I don't think that game studios have the balls to introduce a shorter race with romance in this woke age.
I bet there would definitely be some idiots who would try to accuse them of pedophilia or something stupid like that.
A hairy male dwarf with a long beard might get pass, but shortstack woman certainly not.

May I remind you that you can make a custom character and that explicit scenes involving it are already in the game?

Erm, I think that suggesting romances with adult but short women was somehow equivalent to paedophilia would be the very opposite of woke!

Though I also think that the word "woke" now carries so much political baggage and different meanings to different people that it's become unusable in sensible online debate and is best avoided in any place, like here, where political discussion that's not directly related to the game is discouraged.

Personally, I'd never even considered that folk might object to romances with gnomes, halflings and dwarves on the grounds that they are "childlike", and that's not how I see those races at all. I'd hope that any studio would have some evidence of such attitudes, and that they were both widespread and worthy of being taken into account, before second guessing public opinion in such a way. But perhaps such evidence exists? I'll admit it's not a discussion I recall seeing elsewhere.

Honey, there are woke extremists who complain that Avatar is a racist movie because the main cast of the movie are blue people in places that should have been black people
Woke extremists really are THAT stupid. And it is not an isolated case, there's loads of stuff like that going on.

If there is something that someone might feel even a little bit offended by, you can be sure that they will make it known loudly.
And companies are so scared of the cancel culture that they prefer to bend their backs, cancel everything, fire rational thinking people and write public apologies for them.

We live in sad times indeed...
But I'm really getting off topic a little bit.

Getting off topic a lot, especially when I said "woke" was a term that had too much political baggage and these forums discouraged political discussion not directly related to the game. That was NOT okay.

And I'll admit, calling me "honey" like that is going to put my back up in a big way, so that is probably best avoided too .

No more anti-woke polemic please.

Not a romance but I remember Dragon Age 2 having a dwarf (male) prostitute?

I dimly remember the first DA2 trailer even ending with said dwarf posing on a bed and the sentence "No one can resist the dwarf"

Because it makes you too happy or too mad ?

Sorry, English is not my native language and in my country it is normal to address some women as "honey".
There is nothing sexist about it, I call my mother and aunt that way too.
It's a playful and friendly way of addressing woman.

I do appreciate that differences in language and culture can cause misunderstandings. But to me it comes across as patronising in the extreme to call a woman "honey" and then "explain" a bunch of stuff to her that you should be able to guess from the context she doesn't want to hear and probably is going to disagree with strongly. But not then be able to reply to say why because that would be more political talk that we should not be engaging in in this forum. As she's just said. So, err ... yes, because it makes me mad. *Breathes deeply*.

I'll chalk this one up to linguistic & cultural differences, but now you know! I like to think that I'm generally fairly easy-going and relaxed, so congratulations on finding one of the few things that can really set me off .