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

Eh, every character is somebody's favorite. And every character is somebody's least favorite. There are fan clubs for the characters of Twilight, for all that that's a measure of quality. And what frustrates me about this roster is that so far, all these characters feel like, if left to their own devices they'd end up evil. I want more characters who go the other way, and would be good unless consciously pushed down a dark path.

I think the origins/companions are all pretty interesting. I enjoyed most of the DOS2 companions.

I just wish we had a couple more 'obviously good' types in the group with 'obviously good' motives.

something interesting details. the dragonborn in the video wears a sorcerer robe but the dragonborn in the splash art wears a paladin of devotion outfit.

Why do Paladins of Devotion where crosses, there is no Christianity in FR?

That's not a cross, that is a plus sign.

The Knights of Division wear a slightly different look.

I think so, too, I think they are all very interesting and well written.
Even if my character would often disagree with some of them, I'm invested in the characters and their stories.

I can understand my Tav's emotional turmoil, for example, of feeling sorry for Astarion when we learn about him being tortured and basically mind-controlled for 200 years, and then being angry at him for acting selfish or saying something cruel again. And my characters will definitely tell him when they disagree.

Or being annoyed about Lae'zels commanding tone and behaviour, and then realizing that she has never experienced anything else in her life, that she grew up completely isolated from other influences in her crêche, indoctrinated to follow her queen blindly.
But my Tav will still tell her to shut up when she starts to humiliate poor Zorru.

A party with different views works fine for me. And since we all have the same condition, I think we also have strong external motivation to work together, even if we don't agree.

And I can see a potential for each of them to take slightly different paths, and this the most interesting part for me. I think - or I hope - that there is some room for character growth.

But I can understand very well that this more "difficult" party is not everyone's cup of tea.

It doesn't matter that much to me who will be the final origin character, but I hope for everyone who would like to have more classically "good" characters that the mystery origin character is revealed to be a "good" character.

I'm looking very much forward to having wild magic barbarian Karlach in my party, especially with my wild magic sorceress. Finally someone who can understand when my Tav unintentionally blows up everything 😂 I think they're going to be best friends.

And her description of having a heart of gold and seeking justice for the opressed does sound like a "good" character. I like her already.

Well, one last thing I'm still holding out a modicum of hope for is that these companions will be at level 1 and we will have complete freedom to take them in whatever class direction we want. So, for all of them we'll lose one level (their first), but after that we could set them up any way we want. In such a scenario, I could potentially keep someone like Karlach but dump her stupid barbarian class and multiclass her into something else entirely.

According to this guy who interviewed Sven, multi-classing won't be in at Launch. I don't know if that means PC launch only or both PC and Console launches, or when it might come after that.

Multiclassing: Not “at launch”, but at “Not at Early Access Launch”. This is an old video and much has changed since then.

Multiclassing has already been confirmed to be at full game launch.

See

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=103661&Number=853745#Post853745

The thing is, if you play a character that's not straight forwardly good then immediately you're on the same page with everyone. Be out for yourself, be violent as you need to be, don't give a damn about anyone else. Gale approves of us being good but he doesn't really push us to be. Wyll, for all his talk of being a hero falls back to violence and cruelty whenever it comes to finding Mizora or dealing with the goblins. Shadowheart only cares about being cured. So we only have Karlach as potentially advocating for the party's better angels on a consistent basis. Does that not seem imbalances and a problem? They only clash with a character that tries to be stalwartly good.

I'm also very annoyed at the concept of good characters being written off as simple or incapable of being morally complex. The fact that we lack that sort of firm good character just tells me Larian lacks the interest or ability to unsersrsnd what makes one interesting, which to me is a mark against them. I think most of the nuance these characters have shows up accidentally underneath the frustrating need to make everything "edgy" and "cool" and "morally gray" and that for example, Larian has considered the moral questions of Astarion's character far less than you and I have. They just wrote "tortured vampire" and accidentally walked over depth.

That much seems proven to me by the fact that they don't even take advantage of the clashing personalities and ideas in the party. Everyone seems to get along with everyone else just fine, it's only us they clash with. If Lae'zel weren't a githyanki and she was the same in all other ways I don't even think Shadowheart would have a problem with her.

I think you can't really put edgy, cool and morally gray in one category, all those concepts convey different meanings and the only one that is directly comparable to 'good' is the last one. I don't see a problem of a good character being edgy or cool, because behind an unpleasant or a rough facade the heart of gold can be hidden.

Gale is actually advocating for good deeds and pretty actively, yet I won't expect him to override players' decisions and I think it is a standard approach to an RPG, remember Alistair and Dragon Age: Origins - same thing basically. Kill an innocent, get some 'Alistair disapproves', thats it. There is 100% something going behind the scenes for Gale, but having a secret or being in a delicate situation doesn't clash with 'good' necessarily.

I"m a little weirded out by this fan imperative for good. Like yeah, most of us want that in our lives. But we make trade offs for it. And since most of us aren't offered great power or magical ability or whatever in exchange for moral waffling, it's easy to make good decisions most of the time. But are we really that good? If we had a (whatever that is to each of us) sexy-as-all-get-out demon offer us power we couldn't comprehend in exchange for our sense of selves... a younger me wouldn't think that's a difficult choice. A me that hasn't been punched in the life over and over and over would think that's an easier choice.

But me that's entering middle age with every goal hope and love dashed on account of bad luck and poor decision making? Being susceptible to those "evil" choices for control of one's life feels much more understandable

(sorry if I'm being weird... some major life shit went down tonight involving my eldest (14) and his mom, and this how-does-one-relate-to-life is on my mind)

The type of good people are advocating here for is purely archetypical. They largely want a virtue of morality, who'll oppose murder and other bad deed and at the same time be a 'bigger person' when exposed to evil influence. Gale and Wyll are not good enough because they showed weakness, Gale values his life and magic and Wyll values being something bigger than a spoiled brat, he values acknowledgement. But what people seemingly need is a paragon of tenacity, some kind of a pure soul with everything in life figured out. As people say in my country "If you want to help others, start by helping yourself". Archetypical good characters have their dilemmas sorted out therefore they can very effectively channel their good energy towards others.

True, but both characters have genuine empathy. They care in their hearts for people who aren't them in a way that isn't about themselves.

It sucks your having a bad time at the moment i hope things get better for you quickly, what i personally want are fantasy good tropes, like the hero vs dragon good vs evil having one npc fit the good stereotype with out being cheesy or edgy in some way, its not necessarily the most believable its just diffrent to what larian normally does, and personally was living in hope that larian would branch out.

I think this is why im fairly disappointed because all larians companions are a very similar flavour even though the personalitys are diffrent, and this writing style probably wont lead to a good minsc of jaheera imo , so thats an underlying fear too. I Have a feeling larian will focus on jaheeras most annoying traits from bg2 and she will be an overbearing judgmental mom type, like shes not changed at all in 100 years, and minsc is going to just be the comedy act, and will i want these personalitys every time i want to be good, nah not really.

So what are we left with Karlach? Dunno what her personality is going to be like but probably tinted with the feeling of being used just like wyll and gale

And thats your good party, no holy warrior or kind priest
The fantasy good tropes i like are all missing and if this last companion is some mind controlled serial killer it kind of sucks

Frankly I'd be happy for someone I could trust not to betray me if I'm trying to play a good person. And let me remind you, Wyll is willing torture a man if it means getting evidence of Mizora's location, setting aside his hatred for the person who was by all evidence actively responsible for the worst thing to ever happen to him. I think that him doing that makes no sense based on everything he does and says leading up to that moment, but at that point saying he's a good person is a major stretch. Even before then, as soon as Spike comes into the picture Wyll forgets about helping the tieflings so quickly and completely it's laughable. He doesn't even pretend like it still matters to him. Gale is probably the most morally reliable and good member of the party. But Larian themselves said that these characters are evil and neutral, that's their own judgement on these characters. I have no problem having them in my party, I think they'll be decent people if my character pushes them, but lauding them as these deep, complex characters just rings false to me. Gale might be, but the others just seem full of clumsy writing and obvious signposting, and I don't see why that's any better just because they're more willing to be violent and do bad things than if they weren't willing to do those things.

I think that the new origin character is us, Tav

I think it is our custom character

We wanted a character as deep as the other origin characters (or even deeper), so it might be us, the 7th, 7th of July (7th month), the true chosen !

And I remember they said we will discover the way our custom character is special at launch... we have to have our own show

Maybe with something special as an ability to jump into others body... ? It would be a new way of playing

Oh great, another edgelord companion - and of course none of the small races. If they would have dialed back on the humans, elfs and in-betweens, we might have had an interesting roaster.
I don't want a dragonborn murderer on top of the vampire spawn murderer, I want my halfling bard.
I really hope, this is a bad joke.

No, I'm getting defensive. And planting my feet just for the sake planting my feet. I stand by my complaint that it feels like all these origins seem to have evil as their natural endpoint if left unattended but I'm being far too harsh. I don't hate Larian's writing even if I don't find it as amazing as everyone else does. It's clearly not for me. I think the companions are fine. They aren't my favorite, but they're fine, I have no problem having them in my party, interacting with them, I shouldn't be being this harsh. I'm just frustrated because I got my hopes up for something Larian is clearly uninterested in providing. However I don't think that what I was hoping for is in any way less interesting, less realistic or less complex than what Larian has already provided. I've defended Wyll and Gale as being decent people. A large chunk of my complaining is born from frustration that's pushing me to find reasons to be mad, moreso than any deeply held feelings I already had. Once the game is out and I'm actually playing it I'm sure I'll be fine.