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

Off the top of my head:

BG2: 16 total
Romance options: 3 Female / 1 Male

Enhanced Edition: 4 Total
Romance options :3

Just for argument's sake, in the original BG2:
- You could not make a full Evil party.
- One third of companions are mages, three of them mage/thief
- There was no evil male to romance
- All romances were restricted by race and sex. [Which, I actually prefer. I dislike the 'everyone is into you' thing.
- There was never an ability to change things up; they came as they were and were locked in that class. [as per raw]
- They could easily permanently die outside of narrative choices.


So no, I don't think BG3 went backwards in this regard. The characters they added are *way* more interesting [save for, probably, Minsc who is more than likely the exact same]. There are twelve hirelings alone that you can recruit for your building and balancing needs. So with the eight *romancable* story companions, you're on par, or even exceeding here even numbers-wise.

Also, I'd like to point out that, it's pretty likely you can get comfy cosy with NPC's that aren't in your party per se.

Disclaimer:

A bit. They are certainly limited compared to bg2.

I must admit i am...

Come on larian where are the hot gals!

Yep this is really one of the things that game are lacking hard. For me personally the existence of at least two more companion, a dwarf(any class) and a bard would be sufficient. Ideally a one more arcane caster, no matter sorc or wizard.

I don't think people realize what it would mean making 20+ companions in a game like BG3.

Fully animated, voiced companions. With quests. Different outcomes.

Compared to a one voiced line at the start of each text conversation, no animation, no quest (a few of them had one), no way of influencing them.

I still prefer what we have now.

I have no stake in this, so there is no "you". Again: you're arguing for the state of her. Some people are talking about the Shadowheart that wasn't brainwashed. See it as mud on a white car. Is the car brown? Yes. Is the car's original state brown, or the one it's likely to revert to? No.

Similarly, did Shadowheart chose to be Sharran? No. Does she know what Shar truly stands for? No. Can she be witnessed committing evil? No. You cannot prove SH is evil, as much as you cannot prove SH is not evil. There is no right of wrong answer on her alignment, but different systems of evaluation. It's not as straightforward as the consequences of being a vampire spawn.

So the same work as for any other bigger NPC in the game.

I doubt Gortash and Kethric are anywhere close in number of lines to the companions.

Ok smart guy, show me a modern RPG with 20+ with BG3 class companions.

I'll wait.

Given that each companion has a fully flushed out story arc, the number of companions makes sense.

We never got the alignment scales balanced as inferred, but it is what it is.

Im honestly wondering how hard it was back then to create a companion ... "compared to BG-3"

I mean, all characters looked basicaly the same, only few collors was changed so we can distinguish them.
As for voices, i heared that old BG games contained only barks and some cruicial dialogues and the rest was silent.
Not sure about personal quests, since i didnt play it.

Always odd when people say this. Why, exactly, are you spending so much time looking at a character's ass which in turn makes you switch to one that's more appealing? What zoom level and camera angle are you using that forces so much of the character's ass onto your screen? I can't think of any 3rd person CRPG where it takes up even 5% of the sceen at default camera angle and zoom. And in BG3 the camera is top-downish most of the time so it should be even less of an issue here. But putting the technicality aside, aren't there also more important things to look at? The enemies, their actions, your characters' location, active spells and surfaces etc. etc. Of all the things visible on the screen at any given time, I have no idea why people think butts is what they need to keep focused on for hours on end.

To answer your question: probably easier. Characters in BG 1 were mostly a bunch of portraits attached to a class and race. The amount of dialogue varied a lot per companion but voiceovers were largely relegated to maybe the first lines of some key dialogue and other than that they had some oneliners for being tired and so on. Still, most characters had their own quests asociated with them and not all 15 companions had equal substance to them.

For BG2 the canon party, e.g. minsc, jaheira and Imoen were a lot more fleshed out etc and they introduced romances and so on. So yeah characters evolved between tge two games, while many were mere cameos in bg2. Well written characters on the whole, but in more modern games the approach to companions is quite different than in 1998 and early 2000s. Game development took less into account too lol. Way fewer efforts to try and make dnd appeal to a wider public, but times change.

The real Shadowheart is the one that is in your, mine, or any other player's game. That's the beauty of it. You can stick to the character sheet if you want, but other players are looking forward to shape Shadowheart's character based on their actions throughout the game. You may have your preferences about joinable characters and that's fine, everyone likes different type of characters. Do I miss some more characters? Hell yes, we don't have a dwarf or any representative of short races for that matter. Nobody will be fully happy with Larian's set of characters they offered in B3. You are not happy, I'm happy (not fully maybe, but the cast looks at least interesting) and that's the way it is. You cannot please everyone, and if they'd try that, this game would be a failure for sure.

I could use one or two more good-oriented characters, but definitely of a more ambiguous story (like Keldorn), rather than a straightforward, unrealistically presented beacon of good (like Ajantis). And to be honest I'd be scared to play a properly implemented lawful good paladin, because those tend to be zealots, who doesn't care about collateral damage in their desire to purge the evil from the face of the world. I've seen a good bunch of such disturbingly written characters in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. But if such a zealot paladin would be written in style, I would not exclude playing an origin like that. It would be a new territory for me, something I always like to explore. I'd also welcome such a companion i my party, especially if there would be a way to straighten their views more to a good part of his alignment rather than lawful (which I believe is the root of their zealotry). I won't look at companions like just a character sheet, with just class, stats and alignment, but I'll try to shape their story however I find suitable, sometimes even straying from what I would do in RL. I think this will be the most fun part of BG3.

Judging by statements on the forum and subreddit and various social media, the two characters most demanded as companions would be:
-Barcus (Gnome, class unknown)
-Alfira (Tiefling, Bard)

Where are your no's here coming from? I see a SH who knows exactly what Shar is about and chose to become her faithful. But, for the sake of argument, if SH tries to claim 'no,' per your claims here, why should I believe her? Claiming to have been "brainwashed" is exactly the kind of bullshit a Sharran would claim!

And so it is easy for you to say what you are saying. If things had ended up the opposite of this such that you were the one not happy, you'd be singing a very different tune.

Nope, if I were so disgusted about the way the game I'm looking forward to is shaping, I'd drop my interest about this game long time ago and would find another game to play. Simple as that. It's like you are torturing yourself for no reason.

...

*Or* you can simply choose to loosen up your restrictive views about BG3 and try to find fun in it. By standing in the middle, you are really doing yourself a disservice.

But to be completely honest with you, I don't really care if you like the game or not, it's the fact you are trying to present your view as "the only truth" and the way how BG3 should look like that is annoying. Your "true BG3" may differ from another person's "true BG3", doesn't mean one is better than the other. It's ultimately coming down to how good BG3 is sold, not if one of us likes it and the other not.

And yes, if BG3 turns out to be the game I won't like, I will be singing another tune. But I won't torture others with my singing for years now.

So you won't be streaming a half-orc bard with 3 charisma playthrough then?

I had simmilar thoughts ...