Larian should have added a FULL custom party upon creation as they said they would. For some reason, they also got rid of profiles which makes this even harder for a multiplayer game.
They lied. End of.
The worst part of EA for me was the limitation to the party. Whenever Gale was being coy about a secret he told me three nights ago, or Shadowheart displayed dreadful slight of hand to "conceal" her artifact, I would remember that promise of a fully custom party.
I'm with gaymer; to me, this version falls short of fulfilling Larian's promise.
There's the fact that you can't roleplay as 4 dwarves.
Pitch : They're part of a commitee to fight workplace discrimination against short-folk. At their weekly meeting, four nautiloid tentacles crash through the window; one immediately snatches Tav. The tenctacle seems surprised to have snatched a dwarf, whereupon the other three tentacles back off from Tava, Tavi and Tavo. The three remaining dwarves immediately recognize this as racism. They refuse to be seen as a lesser race, so they leap onto the tentacles to be teleported into the tutorial. (This could work with a mix of dwarves, halflings and gnomes, but the truth is the politics of workplace advocacy are complicated. Though they claim to speak for all short folk, Dwarves have yet to fully include shorter folk as equal partners in their fight for civil rights.)
Mainly, though, I will miss the ability to roleplay team dynamics. Tav is currently an orphaned bachelor by default. No family, no worldy ties. Even with just 2 Tavs, you could be mother/daughter
Pitch : Tava had Tavi when she was only 14. She had no choice but to hide her pregnancy and secretly give Tavi away at birth. Decades later, Tava hires a seer to find her long-lost daughter. On the day of their reunion in Baldur's Gate, a nautiloid ship appears in the sky...
newlyweds
Pitch : Tavo and Tavy love each other, sure, but neither would deny the convenience of their arrangement. Tax and inheritance law being what it is, being married just makes sense. But after encountering the Illithid, their priorities shift. Camp fills up with suitors to answer one question : would you stay married if you had days to live? It's Love Island : Faerun edition.
co-workers
Pitch : an up and coming politician and his right hand man are trying to make their mark on Baldur's Gate. They lie, cheat, steal, (and murder here and there, when needs must) until they get given tadpole powers and a new following. The world will soon know of Tav Underwood. (Underwood needs a confidant; he would never trust a hireling with his darkest secrets and most critical tasks.)
room-mates
*90s sitcom announcer* : Galdur is a straight edge enchantment and divination tutor, Bate is a wacky cook with dark urges, and they share the servants' quarters. Things are already bad enough when they get thrown to hell and back. How will they cope? Find out next week on Galdur & Bate.
detective partnership
Thinking this one over makes me a little disapointed because there are so many cop-duo tropes. Every Tavlock Holmes needs her Dr. Tavson. There's no Batman/Robin, no Chris Tucker/Jackie Chan, no Troy/Abed pretending to be cops...
Anyway, pitch : Tav is young, smart and very imaginative. So much so that her imaginary friend (Shmav, a pink tiefling with no horns) seems to exist in the real world, just like anyone else. On most other planes of existence, a quirky detective with an imaginary friend would find no clients, but in Baldur's Gate, people have seen weirder. Now it's up to her to investigate the Absolute with her best weapon : the ability to speak directly with Shmav, her subconscious mind.
Duos are a big part of pop culture. (Name a more iconic duo than memes and this sentence.) Hirelings don't cut it for me, here, because they don't go through the
traumatic event inciting incident. So I can't play through the story of Batman and Robin going to hell, it has to be Bruce Wayne getting tadpoled alone and then hiring a young boy :\
