Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Gale's New Bio - Heavy spoilers even for EA Players

In my 'super boring examples' which of those three wouldn't want to go into perilous places?

You are acting like someone suggested that housewife who has a fascination with baking should suddenly want to go dungeon crawling with you.

No, sorry you're thinking about a 'story'. This is an interactive story. Like DnD. Whatever you do happens and whatever you did last playthrough doesn't. The PFH showed the same scene but from 2 different perspectives. There's no one 'story'. You can kill Shadowheart on the beach and she's just a dead person with a strange artefact. The Dark Urge gameplay shows you can kill Gale. That's it. No orb. No Mystra. Presumably no game over too. What you're doing is metagaming here. All you know about these companions is what you find out through gameplay. You can tell Wyll to get lost and he's just some dude with a rapier and a big mouth. You can yeet Lazael in hell or let the tieflings kill her.

Honestly this is kind of like a dm mentioning an npc ooc and everybody in the party using that info in their rp.

The devs have specifically said if you do Wyll's starting quest and make a certain choice, you end up killing Karlach. As far as you're concerned, no demonbane, no Zariel, just a dead tiefling.

You completely misunderstand and you really sound like you never experienced a proper D&D campaign. It never a competition about who's the coolest or trying to be cooler and it shouldn't be because that kind of competition destroys the game. A D&D party is and should always be about being in a group where you and your friends are all awesome together. And if we're being real in a tabletop D&D game a sole character would have a very hard time surviving alone no matter how powerful because every class has key weaknesses that have hard counters...that's why everyone in the party plays a different and vital role. Wizards are powerful but soft, they can't take too many hits, barbarians are often tanks, clerics are often healers, etc. Everyone has a role to play and everyone works together. Nobody in a D&D party is a commoner, those roles are left to NPCs.

I don't think we can tell that yet - best example the strange artefact. Shadowheart had it for a reason. IIRC it was something she had with her and not from her time imprisioned, right? So people will be looking for that artefact. You might not know why she had it, but I doubt Larian will write permutations for every kill at different points in time.

I guess it can be simply solved by leaving details a unknown mystery to your character and finishing the main quest treating all companions like failed quests would end up in other epilogs. So I guess you are right

Not everyone who plays appreciates all the artsy immersion stuff. Some people just want to feel powerful and unique. As if they're cool. As if they matter.

Big background stories help with that. This is your chance. You can be a powerful wizard... perhaps even a challenge to the gods themselves. And in your chest is an orb of ancient power. Only you can learn to control it.

it's like, alright, hell yeah, I'm a badass. Who are you playing? Oh, a pig farmer? In overalls? Okay.

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The rub, of course, is that this grandiose character might just be your companion. As opposed to your main.

While plenty of players want to feel powerful and unique, they can also feel left out when some of the attention strays away from them.

Why are you looking at Gale and not me??? I wanna Netherese orb in my chest!

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That all said, sure, there's something to be said for playing a nobody character coming from nobody roots.

I was just imagining playing the game as Mayrina's brothers. How great would that be? You and a buddy get together and take on the role of the brothers. One of you grabs a pitchfork and the other takes hold of a cleaver, and off you are, going to save your sister from her own dumb, albeit tragic, decision.

Of course, the difficulty level would have to be lower, but it's a game I would thoroughly enjoy.

But I'm one person. One. Compared to all the thousands upon thousands of people who would look at that same story and say, "Gosh, wouldn't this be cooler if one of us could teleport and the other could regenerate?"

You guys realize there are more characters and ideas than just...

Completely unskilled nobody with a hand axe vs. nuclear bomb implanted in your chest by a god/demon because you tried to steal their power/sold your soul to them...

Right?

Just to clarify here. Again, with high enough approval, Shadowheart tells you that she was part of a special Sharran crack team that had their memories wiped and were sent to the nautiloid specifically to 'retrieve' the artefact. She wasn't scooped up in Baldur's Gate like the others, she was caught on the ship, and was the last of her team to survive. Really, as far as we know even in EA, the only special thing about her is she survived and has the artefact. She might have a special snowflake backstory, but she's basically just a soldier for Shar. A lot of people have speculated that there might be more to it and knowing Larian there probably is, but as far as the player is concerned we don't know.

Of course people understand that.

I think the point is, once you start applying skill, muscles, looks, weapons, abilities... there's a natural inclination toward power creep.

This little thing then that thing. Oh, and maybe it would be cool if...

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And then you're competing against all the cool ideas everyone else had at the company meeting.

You're in a writing room. Folks are pitching their idea for a new origin character.

You have this really swell idea for a character. Well thought out, interesting person.

But Bobby-Boy, your competition for next week's promotion, is pushing for his idea. He wants folks to play a demi-god with an entire shadow plane of existence buried in his chest.

There's even some talk about putting together a focus group of players to test Bobby-Boy's character idea versus yours. They're looking to see which idea the focus group has more fun with.

How do you think you do?

I feel like you are conflating game mechanics with roleplaying. You could still be a kickass wizard at level 20 even if you started out your adventures at level 1, fresh from the academy or if you start as a level 1 wizard that was the coolest badass ever and a lover of Mystra herself. In the end, you both are just level 20 wizards with the same power.

I think game directors and writers are capable of having restraint, as well as focusing on making a good game as opposed to a theme park ride. And I am not saying Baldur's Gate 3 will be a bad game, I actually think it is going to be a great game. Hell, it might end up being the best RPG ever made.

But if what you are saying is true then every game would end up as an over the top thrill ride. In The Witcher 3 Geralt wouldn't have just been a Witcher, suddenly he would have even more magical superpowers because that could make combat more fun if he was hurling fireballs everywhere and had the skills of a sorceress, right? And they would reveal that Triss' heart was actually a dying star that could explode at any moment if Geralt chooses Yen over her - then she would destroy the whole city she was in. And Yennefer would actually be an alien from a different planet sent on a secret mission to do some random who knows what or whatever else. Ciri being who she is would have lost a lot of its value and impact if everyone else was also some crazy 'child of destiny' along side her.

Game of Thrones is another good example. Some of the characters who are the least powerful in terms of physical ability, stature and strength ended up being the most popular due to their personality, wit and ability to punch up in the world. That show and the books would have been awful if suddenly everyone had a claim to dragons or other magical creatures just as powerful or had magical superpowers that ended up rivaling them.

The point being...

Great fiction doesn't always have to be over the top. Not every character needs some outrageous backstory like the origin characters have. Characters can have great stories that are far more 'normal'. I get the allure of it. I even think the origin characters are, for the most part, really great. Larian could just do with blending in a bit more grounded stuff so that not everything you are encountering is completely out of control. When everything is over the top, then it all starts to lose its impact.

Could you provide a link to Gale's backstory? I will be very grateful to you.

Hm. No.

Why? The Witcher and Game of Thrones are a different kind of fantasy. Low and dark. D&D is about dragons, fireballs, stopping evil gods and ascending to godhood. It's a power fantasy, always has been.

You don't even have people half as powerful in the Witcher or GoT as your random mid-level adventurer.

Here's my theory:

Gale will begin to uncover the secrets of the Netherese orb. When Gale finally manages, after many difficulties, to get in control of the orb, then Gale will ascend to divinity. Maybe a demi-god or some such, with a name change, of course.

At which point Mystra will appear before him and let him know that she only cursed him with that orb so that he could learn to control it and become a god and that way the two of them can be together forever. Lady Mystra and Lord Myster, custodians of the eternal weave.

My theory is Gale is getting sacrificed at the fist possible opportunity and if I get the orb to maybe to anything with fine, if not then also fine. End of Gale's story. And frankly, imo he deserves nothing better. Mystra is not an evil deity and no valid reason is provided for his betrayal other than he was greedy and thought he could replace her. I definitely wouldn't trust him and have no intent to help him.

Click on the Words "Baldur's Gate" at the top right hand corner of this page then scroll down. You can't link directly to Gale because of the way the page is set up.

But will Larian allow us to do that? To call out companions for their bullshit? I highly doubt it. If they did, I would be all about calling out Gale, Wyll, and SH about their bullshit. I'd even laugh at Gale's claim he and Mystra were lovers and refuse to believe it.

Right now it is becoming increasingly clear that every single one of the ten companions, plus Dark Urge, are all going to have a backstory involving having been some super-duper mythic character who got downsized to level 1 by being tadpoled. How original!! I'm shocked they didn't make Elminster a companion! Heck, why bother with SH when they could've just made Shar a companion?!!

I am pretty sure you can even do this right now and it yields a pretty satisfying reaction from him.

Right on.

The roster of Origins characters already at times feels like those memes about players who show up to their session with an epic backstory about being the heir to the throne, a magical prodigy and a veteran of the demon wars w/e.....level 1.

I hope to heaven Gale isn't actual literal Karsus because that would be jumping the shark so high it'd be up there with the Tears of Selune.

It's so unnecessary.

Would we love Gale that much less if he was *just* 'slightly arrogant, but well-meaning dad-wizard' maybe with a life-threatening condition that we'd have to fix at some point over the course of the game as his personal quest? The grandiose heights Larian seems compelled to take each and every origin seems just so much more....extra than it has to be. A lot of the most memorable D&D characters, from games and elsewhere never needed to be puffed up so much to be memorable.

Actually, this would be soooooo much better, a whole lot more interesting and original. Being an ordinary Joe nobody at level 1 is, for me, D&D at its best, what D&D was originally meant to be.