Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Total number of companions : disappointment over the Dark Urge

So, after watching the final Panel From Hell, I feel it might be useful to summarise the situation regarding Player Characters, Companions, and basically the kind of adventuring parties we'll be able to assemble.

Larian didn't give much details about mercenaries, as far as I can recall. Maybe I missed those though. Anyway, let me recapitulate the options for Player Characters and Companions only.

• A Companion is a Non-Player Character (NPC) that you can recruit in your party.
  
  
• An Origin Character (OC) is a character fully designed by Larian. They have fixed game stats, Backstory and personality. They can be chosen as Player Characer (PC) at the start of the game. Otherwise, they will be a Companion that our PC can meet in the game.
  
  
• A Semi Custom Character (SCC) is a PC only. We can customise their game stats, ideally their personality as well to some extent, but they have a Backstory, which is fixed and somewhat precise. (Example : Gorion's Ward.)
  
  
• A Fully Custom Character (FCC) is a PC only. We can choose their game stats, personality, make up the backstory ... everything. (Example : what we had so far in EA with the Custom Character.)
  
  
• A Backstory is a ... backstory, that is pre-defined and used by the game. (You might be tempted to call this an "origin", with lower case o, but I'd strongly encourage you not to.) Thus a Semi-Custom Character is a Custom Character with a Backstory, whereas a Fully-Custom Character is a Custom Character with no (pre-defined) Backstory.

It might sound a bit formal to lay down definitions, but communication is based on shared definitions. When people start changing the meaning of words throughout a dialogue, or not caring about the words they use, there's a risk of miscommunication happening.


From what we've been told, including during the Panel From Hell 8 (Release Showcase), the situation for Companions and PC is the following.


Origin Characters.

• Gale
• Astarion
• Shadowheart
• Lae'zel
• Wyll
• Karlach

Non-Origin Companions.

• Jaheira
• Minsc
• Halsin
• Minthara

So there will be a total of 10 Companions in the game.


Custom Character options.

At the moment, it remains unclear wether we will still be able to play as a Fully-Custom Character, the way we could so far in EA. That is to say, a Custom Character with no game-defined Backstory.

What we were shown during the Panel From Hell is the Dark Urge. This is a Backstory exclusive to Custom PCs. So the Dark Urge is a Semi-Custom Character. It is unclear to me whether this is the only pre-defined Backstory that we will be able to choose at character creation, or if there is at least one more but Larian showcased only one during the Panel From Hell 8.


Larian's previous communication described this as the 7th Origin :


Larian made it quite clear what they mean by Origin :


It is then plain and clear that the Dark Urge is not an Origin Character. You can't recruit them during your journey. For the good and simple reason that the Dark Urge is not a Character. It is a Backstory.

So, Larian's communication was incorrect. That's not entirely the first time.


Perhaps more importantly, that means BG3 will really have only 10 Companions. I had been hoping for 12. (Or even 14 in some best-case scenario, but I was hoping that 12 would be a realistic baseline. Especially after it was revealed in Panel From Hell 7 (Patch 9) that Minsc and Jaheira would be Non-Origin Companions. Origin Characters require more development resources than a mere Companion. So I was hoping that Larian having agreed to use Companions that are not Origin Characters, contrary to the goal they had stated before Early Access, meant they would be able to provide more Companions in total.)

Larian's Community Update 20 suggested that there would be only 11 Companions (well, at least 11 Companions, if you want to imagine that Larian revealed that Minthara and Halsin would be Non-Origin Companions but kept some others under the lid). That's less than I was hoping for, but ok.

Panel From Hell 8 (Release Showcase) just lowered the expected number of Companions to 10. As far as I'm concerned, that's quite the disappointment.



On top of the loss of one expected Companion, I also want to note that, with the latest revealed information and assuming that Larian does not have more Companions in stock, it is now clear that Larian has designed no Companion from any of the Short Races (Halflings, Dwarves, Gnomes). So long for diversity.

But hey, given how they wrote unique dialogue options for Races (Dwarves get access to unique quarrelsome lines, Halflings to unique diplomatic-friendly lines), and given that they decided to implement the Paladin's Oath as a rigid mechanics and to implement the Bard's Perform Action as Singing only, I was already seeing Larian as quite old-school and not much of a "21st century GM" who is somewhat interested in being open, flexible and making everyone feel welcome at their table. So my disappointment about this lack of short Companion is quite minor, compared to the reveal that Dark Urge is just a Backstory.

very nice write up! thx very much for summarizing this! - gonna have to think on it more after taking it all in
+1 i agree and has been a worry for some time now - really hoping to be surprised with more companions at launch

I mean, that might be unclear to you but that seems pretty obvious to me and probably 99.999% of everyone who watched. You will. Why on Earth would they remove that? It's just not within the bounds of an Origin character because it has no....origin.

I've always said we won't get anywhere near the 12 companions many here were predicting. And by my reckoning, the number of companions from Larian is actually 8, because Minsc and Jaheira are Bioware's companions being borrowed by Larian.

I'm not too happy with Dark Urge instead of a companion. All in all the lineup is a bit too edgy for my taste.

Really weird that they are calling 'The Dark Urge' an origin, since not only was all that bloodlust stuff already in EA in certain points (dream sequences, the boat sequence before Grymforge was added)-indicating that it was originally literally just Tav's story, but you can customize everything else about the character except possibly the name? It really just does seem to me like they took 'Original Flavor Tav''s content repackaged it separately as 'Tav 2', - possibly at the expense of the former's story experience.


If anything, the lineup just got less edgy, since this isn't a recruitable character. If you aren't playing as them, they don't exist, just like 'Tav'. Evil players now have one less evil party member than they thought they had yesterday, which was one more than what they thought they had the day before. What a rollercoaster.

They do seem rather edgy though, moreso than the Bhaalspawn from whom this seems heavily inspired.

Quality over quantity. I am fine with that.

I think it's basically:

1. blank slate (can you even call it Tav?)
2. origin companions
3. DARK URGE (COOOL Tav!!!)

Sorta unfortunate, because I didn't really want to play a complete blank slate-I kinda like being a little anchored in the story...like the Bhaalspawn in the Original Saga, Revan from Kotor, etc that sort of thing.... but IDK if I want to be an edgelord serial killer just so my custom character can have something going on for them in the story that the Origins don't.

Then don’t kill anybody as Dark Urge. They said in the stream that DU can be a hero or a villain just like any other character.

You guys know you don't have to kill people with the origin. You can fight against the urges, and still be good.

Maaan, such a long post, I promise I'll read it tomorrow (I like your posts man, they are always interesting to read) when I am not drunk and give some proper feedback... but honestly, I wish you people can finally enjoy the gaame a little. Imagine how cool would that be?

I just hope that the writing for the 'good' dark urge is as good as the 'bad'. I got the impression that Larian wanted to implement this as a way to pad out a more evil playthrough, not necessarily a good one. I'll be playing it for sure though.

The hope for 12, the belief there were 11 after the community update, and the fact that there are 10 is salient. It is anchored in your expectations and hence your disappointment.

There is nothing in the panel from Hell that indicated you would not be able to make your own non origin custom character, in fact quite the opposite. When they were stepping through all of the char customization options the screen clearly said non origin custom char. The Dark Urge is a new category, Origin char that you can fully custom. Fully custom non The Dark Urge Tav is still in game.

Yes they should update their FAQ now that they introduced a non recruitable Origin.

Me personally i am excited by this for 2 reasons. 1 it essentially allows me to play as if i were a Bhallspawn in BG1 and 2. 2) and this is more important for me, it opens up for future development work to marry the concept of Custom Origin char with the system that existed in Dragon Age Origins to have a D&D game in the future that is heavy narrative based and have a custom origin for every race that is fully reactive on top of pure custom chars.

The lack of short race companions is disappointing to me as well. Halfling werewolf would have been cool, although why does everyone need to be so exotic just like the intro to the game it is all a bit too over the top, again my opinion and my tastes/expectations there.

To me this is still by far RPG of the decade the work on it is amazing.

Will it have my char i play D&D with all the time an elven gish that in recent editions was bladesinger, no. Will it have companions that i inherently like given my worldview and biases, nope. Will i have an awesome time and will the companions actually be interesting chars, heck yeah. I will love the heck out of this game and i love the potential this game represents for the future of digital D&D gaming.

I mean The Dark Urge is basically Revan. Former murdering Sith that can continue down the path of murdering Sith or head down the path of a Jedi (no spoiler tags since KOTOR is like a bajillion years old and i am like a bajillion and 30 years old).

I fail to see why Dark Urge is a selectable origin instead of beig the default Tav story.

I mean look at some of the responses, some people don't want to play a prior sociopath even if it wasn't of their own volition. It's just not something they want to roleplay.

Yeah, it's not something I would want (there's enough going on in Tav's head already), but it looks like an interesting choice for other folks.

It’s also a specific story to a specific character (even if that character is undefined). Having two Dark Urges would be like having two Shadowhearts in a party.

I agree with both of these. I like Tav actually having a 'Tav story' But going from Larian's highlights this feels like Lohse and the Bhaalspawn rolled into one and dialed up to 10. I could kinda dig being Bhaalspawwn 2.0, but I don't want to worry about 'giving in to the dark urge' and sawing off companion's arms all the time. IT can be more subtle than that, surely? Or at least build up to being that bad that over the course of the game/indulging in your bloodlust? You meet Gale in like the first ten minutes of the game after the crash.

It's also kinda....redundant with the whole tadpole plot. IDK. Giving in and abusing your power/fighting it....you also have an entity in your head urging you to do evil...