Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Are you dissapointed with companions variety?

I would say that the dark urge is more of an evolution of what Dragon Age Origins did than what the Divinity OS2 origin system does. If anything Origins aren't an especially unique or original concept at all. They're just pre-gen characters.

Yeah i'm quite disappointed, i feel that they should have left the Origin system i Dos2 and focused on making a couple of companions more.

Astarion is an Evil vampire and looks like some kind of aristocrat too boot. So he is out.

Shadowhart is a follower of Shar(i don't care what people teorize about her, that is my first impression so that is what i have to go by.) Not to mention she calls herself "Shadowheart". So she is out.

Gale is actually quite plesant to be around even though he gives me vibes of not being totally upfront with me. Not a huge fan of his backstory though. So he is in for the time being.

Wyll is also quite pleasant to be around, a bit of a showboat, but there are worse character traits. Sure he seems quite weakminded and stupid by agreeing to torture an innocent man to get info from a goblin, instead of just torturing said goblin instead, but atlest he seems sinciere in wanting to do good but not really getting it right all the time. But he is kind of in for now.

Karlach occupies the main spot so unless i mod the game to allow for a bigger party she has no room in it. Her backstory is on the same caliber of Gales though and also a bit cringe. So she is sidelined.

Laezel is an Evil Alien racist that shouts at me and is generally obnoxius. So she is out.

Haslin, Seems like a nice enough dude, i would like to get an ingame expanation to his physique though. Was he the designated lumber carrier since ha was a boy or what?
He is probably in.

Minthara dies by my hands so even if she wanted a redemtion arc it's to late.

Minsc And Jaheira. I liked them both in the originals, but i have no interest in seeing them in this game.

so i guess i get enough for one party, but not much variety or flavour in it.

I'll just say that opinions of every other character aside, Karlach is very much not evil. She was sold into slavery to a devil and spent that time fighting demons. But she's described as having a heart of gold and the glimpse we got of her is insanely wholesome.

Nothing about this is revolutionary. Dragon Age Origins is basically that without a predetermined character like Shadowheart and the others.
I don't have an issue with the Dark Urge. Its a fine orgin - IF there are alternatives. But all of them are following mostly the same trope with some difference in the detailing - dark secrets, evil tendencies, maybe redeemable... and they all get a heavily prefered treatment compared to your own created character.



It comes down again to communication. If Larian said in the beginning we would be playing the role of the Dark Urge and had the potential to play alternative origins... well it still would have been pretty boring set of origins and characters, but they would set the expectations correctly.

Telling you can play Tav, with his/her amazingly meanlingless backgrounds as main character of the story and then sneakingly introduce the origins which all steal the show right in front of boring pointless Tav, just to crown it all with edgy 'Dark Urge' as a player option... well, we see where it ended. People feel like their expectations, nutured by Larian themselves, weren't met.

Sad that dragon age itself heavily dropped their own origin system. It was amazing. Dark urge is definitely something in between, larian created an origin character and removed the companion from the game. If they give you the "mistra cursed" origin and remove gale from the game it would be quite similar.

But I don't agree that they are "just pre-gen" characters, not in the videogame genre at least. They have their own plots, they have some special interactions and sometimes unique mechanics.

A pre-gen character makes me think about the pre-gen that pathfinders games offers you, just a meaningless random pick of race and class.

No

They are far closer to Witcher's 'Geralt' than Pathfinders pre-gen... see Amiri in pathfinder is a perfectly suitable companion, but not meant to be a player character.

The origin system from BG3 is... yeah... if you like to play someone elses fantasies they might be cool. Personally I don't. The only reason I played Geralt and ended up enjoying it from game 2 on is he has a character that resembles my morality well enough so I got along with him. But playing a predetermined class and a story in a game system that prides itself to empower the players imagination and wants them to experience their own stories - I don't see how the non-Dark_urge origins could ended up as a priority in the development of the game. To me they are infuriating. So many hours of content was created for a very small group of BG players ignoring the main audience expectation.

Again, if they would have been like Dragon Age's orgins or like the Dark Urge it would have been different. Just more backgrounds to choose from. Its 'fine-ish'. I'm bored as fuck about the edgelords we get, but it would have been more choices for players. The current origin characters are nothing more then the DM's personal favorites that if you don't want to play them, will get the spotlight while you watch them be heroes.

Yup, said this in a different thread... I hope in future titles Larian gives us 3-4 Dark Urge type backstories to choose from, then gives us a host of companions to fill out our party.

I think Dark Urge is a great idea, they just need to offer more than one option of that type in order to make the system really come to life.

I honestly like to play as origins companions, because I can take their plots and make them mine. What if I want to play as edgy-astarion? That's cool. What if I want to play as an astarion that is ashamed of his curse and refuse to harm others? There is a lot to play around it.

Anyways, despite what we think about origins and whatnot, I agree that this game feels like it need a good day of sun. A character full of hope and positivism and good all around. Just one.

Yeah, I get it that maybe someone wants to play the Astarions and Shadehearts variations... but at the same time you could take all that development time to give a much wider usuable 'Dark Urge'-like background - that isn't locked to look, race and class. Its nice we have such a great character customization so we can create a great looking bystander to other people's hero stories or just not use it and go with the origins

At the end of the day I'm very curious to see the success or lack of the origin option in this game. DOS2 was a selffulling prophecy by a clear prioritization of origins. We will see what BG3 turns out to be.

Okay so not only are there no sorcerer/monk/bard companions and two druid companions, but all but two companions (Gith and Tiefling) are either elf, human, or a mix of the two. So no dwarf/gnome/halfling/half-orc/dragonborn companions. I'm not against a few classes or races not being represented in story-driven companions, but there is a gaping 3-class, 5-race HOLE in the party options that can only be filled by custom characters.

I guess the best way for me to get around it is to play the game three times with three completely unique parties and play as those three missing classes for each one, with one of each missing race 3 times.

" ignoring the main audience expectation."

Sorry to burst your bubble here but you have absolutely no idea about what is the main audience expectation. Perhaps if you didn't assume the small cadre of obsessive doom posters on here were that and maybe checked other forums, discords and youtube content you might see a very different tone. Certainly a more positive and optimistic one generally. But even that isn't the main audience. The main audience are what you might call 'normies' who maybe played patch one or two or maybe haven't even played EA. And we have no idea what they're going to make of this game yet. But I feel confident in saying that their expectation is going to be a fair bit different from yours. Or mine for that matter.

DOS2 was a very well received game and many people recommended playing as an origin for a second playthrough, usually Fane or Lohse.

I have a feeling that one of these origins might end up the same way and I have a sneaky suspicion (without facts obviously) that the Dark Urge might be the recommendation for this game, judging particularly from what the developers themselves were saying about it. But judging from the early youtube videos it really does seem like a lot of people are very interested in this origin particularly.

I really hope that this is not the case. It was one of the major defects of DOS2 and they should have learnt better.

I haven't played the early access, so I don't know much, but I hope that Tav is already shaped like the dark urge. Maybe the other orogins will not have the same interaction with the illithing as Tav? I remember Tav dream of someone and you have to create it when you create Tav. Will the other origins dream this person too?

One can only hope.

Devs are more active on the subreddit than on here and I have a feeling it might be because we're somewhat unBEARable

I have not been using the tadpole and basically had only some class or background statement options in conversations, which also happens with the companions. Also as far as I understand it the tadpole is available to every character that is part of the playable group. So nothing about it would be limited to Tav.

Its a level 12 story. You can't really have down to earth at that point.

You guys...

Everyone realizes that once you hit level 12 people are going to get extremely powerful. That doesn't mean that they have to start that way when you meet them or that they have to be in league with some god or something.

I do not understand how this is difficult for some people to process.

I'm super excited for the game. I think it is going to be great. I loved Early Access. You can both like the game and offer criticism of it.

I was hoping there was some special Tav-centric explanation for why everyone gets dreams when Tav uses the tadpole and doesn't get them when Tav doesn't. I guess that didn't pan out.

I'd have liked a second good-aligned origin, at least one shorty, and for at least one or two lower maintenance party members. For one thing, angsty back stories just lose impact when everyone has one. For me the specialness of Tav comes from her being the group decision-maker. I expect to discover who she is as I observe how she responds to the situations that confront her. That assortment of situations is enriched by the texture of story and choice contributed by each companion.

Ok, true enough I don't have the numbers. But I'm also seeing how Larian is treating statistics and to be honest they show a questionable understanding of what the players are doing. Example we have seen 'spreading surface damage, increasing chances and effects that break concentration defacto heavily de-buffing crowd controll spells and then claming people prefer damage spells based on the usage'... but we also saw people complaining about evil path being badly written and therefore not being played and Larian claiming in the PFH that people want to be goodie-two-shoes.

Now you are saying people recommend playing as origin characters in DOS2 for a second playthrough - well, isn't the main critisim of that game that custom characters were neglected? So is it surprising that no one recommends using non origin characters? I've played the game, I wasn't a fan, but I won't claim its a bad one because that would be a stupid claim. Its up to personal taste, My main issue was gameplay and encounter design itself that I didn't enjoy at all.

Yet BG has its own player base, not just DOS2 players and I think we all saw what direction BG3 has been pulling when it came to 5e vs DOS2 mechanics. I would be very careful saying people want a DOS2 influenced BG3.