Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Origin and Multiplayer

I have been trying to do research in how Origin characters work when in multiplayer (Origin character being played by a player in the game).

I seem to come up with information that romance will most likely not work as how odd the interactions would be between two players but there was some post a long time ago that Larian said this will be possible. Of course, a lot has changed since these posts were placed.

But, this isn't what I am interested. What I am wondering is how Origin dialog/story/quests will play out with another player playing as an Origin?

I would imagine it would work similar to just playing a single player game and you pick an Origin character instead of an Origin character being a companion, but I can't seem to find any information.

The main reason why I am asking is because I will be playing the first play through with 3 others. They all want to make Tavs, so player interaction will basically be non-existent, but if I play, say Wyll, will we get to see Wyll, played by me, getting talked to, see Mizora show up in the camp and have interactions with her, and reactive dialog when quests/events come up? Will we see interaction of playing the Origin and if the other players are around me, they can listen in to what is happening?

Another reason why I bring this up is I would like to add some interactivity between party members as three others are going to be Tavs and adding a PC Origin character might bring this but, if me playing as a PC Origin will just remove all interactivity because all other players are also PCs, then there might not be a reason to play Origin characters in multiplayer sessions of BG3. I was hoping we can experience the Origin story while all of us playing the game together.

From what I gather, I think you can, but I'm an baffled as to how that would work.

Just, imagine. You can play as an OC, and as an OC you can date other OC's. So, by that rationale, in multiplayer, you can date each other all being OC *or* Tavs. The logistics of this just absolutely baffles me. If they really pulled that off - It's an incredible achievement. *SO* many options and permutations, it's absolutely insane.

And, by *that* same token - If they recorded ALL those lines for OC's dating OC's, than NPC OC's might even get chummy with *each other!*

It's absolutely rudicrous, it's so far out of the realm of what we're used to seeing in relationships - romantic or otherwise - in games that I can hardly believe this is what it is... But from everything that I see and read, that is exactly what they did.

It's also why I get a little aggrevated when people say; 'There's not enough companions' - Areth thou kidding?

I don't think it would work the same at all because with other players controlling the origin characters they can really screw things up for you. You might want to try keep Wyll from attacking Karlach for example but with two players controlling those characters Karlach might not feel like being friendly or Wyll might decide to attack immediately, etc. It really creates a huge amount of problems. Generally speaking I would treat multiplayer for this game no different than the D&D tabletop game: ONLY play the multiplayer with people you personally know and are good friends with in real life. Never under any circumstance allow someone you don't know to join your party unless a friend of yours vouches for that person and is there in the game session. If you can't have your regular D&D friends in the game with you for whatever reason then treat it as a single player only game. Especially because a lot of people who will play BG3 have never played D&D before and some will just want to join others games to create as much chaos as they can except there is no undo button once they do something really bad in your game. Plus with all the possible permutations in the longer term this has to be a single player game no matter what because you want to be in full control of every choice in the game without anyone there to screw up what you are trying to do or to argue about doing something else you've already seen, etc.

Unless you love Chaos! Muahahahah!

Or you know, you can always load an earlier save.

Well, I am looking from a single player perspective if an OC has a single decision tree, it's totally based upon the actions that single player took in their game.

In a multiplayer game, the same single decision tree reacts to the exact same situation. This single decision tree would never fire unless my OC character is at that position at that time. If I am not, that OC-specific tree is just lost forever, thus making that decision of never doing something in that tree forever a flag in the game state, thus can trigger other actions.

But this is completely independent of if we are playing a single player game or multiplayer game. The only thing that I could see different is if the OC is a companion, the OC will react/make decisions based upon what the actual PC player will do. IN multiplayer, that same OC that is controlled by a player will have the same decisions to make as if playing a single player game, playing that OC.

This is why decisions of OCs are predetermined based upon actions by the player, but if actually played by a player, those decisions are no longer predetermined and thus the same events would give a dialog choice to do. But, basically, the dialog choices are only for any OC-specific events, thus will be not too much different than a Tav PC.

An example, let's say Wyll, has an event in camp that Mizora comes out and tells the party that she wants them to kill an NPC.

During a single player game with the player playing anything other than Wyll, this plays out as you expect, with Mizora and Wyll dialog along with the party talking, you making decisions.

During a single player game with the player playing as Wyll, this plays out exactly the same way, except it's just Wyll making decisions on what to do instead of Tav reacting/talking and seeing reactions from Wyll, but the outcome is the same based on the same dialog decisions.

During a multiplayer game with Wyll as a companion, would play out no different than a single player with Wyll as a companion.

During a multiplayer game with Wyll as the PC, it would play out exactly the same as a single player game but as Wyll being controlled by the PC.

You can see, in these situations, the there an illusion that there would be odd decisions/interactions but, really, the exact same set of trees and decisions are made at the exact same time, the only thing that changes is what dialog would happen. But this is probably why Larian makes the PC dialog have no voice over, or else the VOs would be too large. But, mechanically, this isn't too bad to perform.

Of course, this is all speculation.

I see what you are saying here, but the mechanics, logic, and decision for the game to progress is agnostic to how the PCs play. As long as all the decisions still boil down to specific actions that Larian programmed for and allow, any chaos in the system still works.

What can lead to unexpected situations is a player expecting to get a specific outcome but didn't happen because the other players perform something that sets flags that causes those outcomes to be locked out or already determined for you, unexpectedly.