Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Are custom characters flat and pointless compared to Origin ones? [Spoilers]

kanisatha: I have problems quoting again.
You don't need to use the tags there are plenty of answers, that will suite different playstyles, but some of the tagged stuff is quite good.

Heatinf that Durge actually gets unique plot perspectives annoys me, actually. Because not only does playing Buege mean a different experience, but an experience that involves learning more about the main plot of the game and tying directly into it. To me Tavs getting unique tags really isn't enough. I've always maintained that Tav should have some unique experience of the main plot and story that no other origin gets. After all, every origin has unique tags. It just so happens that being Tav let's us choose any combination of them.

This is it exactly! This is what I'm trying to say as well. Interractions based on Tav's race/class tags are not meaningful, because those are generic to ANY character that has those tags, including the origins and any mercenary character we may create and include in our party. There ought to be things in the game, meaningful and important things that are central to the game, that are unique to Tav, things that no other character gets (be they origins or Durge or a mecenary or an NPC).

I wish that Larian had decided to lean more toward a DAO type origin system (but without the origins being tied to race/class, as DU is not) rather than going with the origin character system. The only customizable origin is DU and, while I love it, I understand why it's not for everyone.

I don't understand the point of playing the set origin characters, I guess. It makes things easier for multi-player, for those who don't want to spend time creating their own character?

If the only reason you would accept playing as Tav is that the game will outright say "hey, you're different, you're unique, you're Tav", then you won't enjoy playing as Tav for sure, because the game simply doesn't do that. There is nothing in the game that uniquely identifies Tav as Tav other than the fact that you create them how you want, with whatever background in you're own head, and you avoid having Dark Urge tags/cutscenes. That's the reality of the current game.

For me, all of that is a positive. I'd much rather be able to be a clean slate with no special background, just whatever I bring to it. I've said it before, but my Tav always felt like the main story in my game, she took the lead, people called her a hero, they asked her for help, they loved her. She was MY character. Not Larian's. That alone is worth so much imho. There were no pushes to act a certain way, no existing ideas of her personality and struggles, just who I decided she was. With BG1/2, you HAD to be Gorion's ward, you had no choice. Same with Mass Effect, you WERE Shepard. Do I love those games? Yes, but it is nice to have a wrath of the righteous situation where I am who I chose to be.

I can respect being frustrating though with Larian's choice to have the only unique Tav story be the Dark Urge. I would have liked to have a couple more options in addition to DU and Tav. But it is what it is, and for me, it's enough, but I can see why it wouldn't be for you.

I don't want a special background, I want a special present. I want Tav to through the story get something unique that no origin gets. I agree that Tav being a blank slate is good, but it feels like Larian didn't put in the effort to make Tav a good blank slate. We hardly ever get to express our internal lives, hardly ever get the option to express even vague backstory beyond the set backstory tags we're given at the start. Hell, if you play a character with the Baldurian tag then at several points people will randomly say they can tell you're Baldurian, not to mention multiple places where you're unable to express pretty obvious thoughts and feelings a character might have in the situstion. To me that is the game pushing us to do certain things and be a certain way through mechanics if not narrative. So as a blank slate Tav isn't even a good example of one. It's average at best and bad at worst. And that's why to me this game cannot rise above "pretty good, impressive in some spots" but it's not some special, transcendent example of the genre. If I truly felt like i could make a truly unique, deep character like I have in other games, I'd be singing this game's praises.

I hold up PoE as the best blank slate I experienced because it went to effort to actually let me establish and expres my backstory at least once. and all of that still doesn't mean that our character's specialness has to come from backstory. Just being able to do and see unique things is what I want. In my opinion, playing as Tav should be the only way to get the full, clear context of everything that happens in the game, for one thing.

With all honesty Tav is boring as hell, I'd highly recommend going Dark Urges even if you have to deal with extra rolls (or not) or any other origin.

You are some Balduran guy and thats it, the game makes no effort to build a background for you. The whole schtick is I lived in Baldurs Gate and I know who is Duke Ravengard.
No family, no friends and no (insert your favorite insult here). It suffers from DoS 2 issue, custom character is bland as a raw potato.
And people complaining about negativity, I got 120 hours in game and finished. Enjoyed it. But doesn't make the game immune to any sort of criticism and my criticism won't make your game disappear from your steam account. I expect the feedback to either help build a better Enhanced edition or for future reference in any future Larian game so they put effort in custom character background building.

I agree with this, too. Although I don't think the way blank-slate Tav is handled is the worst (at least it's better than the PC in Neverwinter Nights OC, for example), I would have loved to see a personal storyline for Tav that no other character gets. This could be based purely on something that happens to Tav during the story, too, a scripted event like Alfira is for DU. Then Tav would have their own special events like all the other origins. Granted, Tav still gets all the tadpole stuff, but that isn't unique to a Tav playthrough.

Though I prefer it when the PC is treated as the main character with ties to the story (like BG1 and 2), I'm okay with blank slates as long as they get some personal connection to the story (like the PC becoming king/queen in Pathfinder: Kingmaker). I like the PC being the main character by virtue of more than "he/she is the only one who gets stuff done, so they are the hero."

As for DAO style origins, they could have even made "Baldurian" a real origin instead of a dialogue tag. Then you could interact with people Tav knew from their life in the city, come Act 3, and have a personal quest.

@Gray Ghost already said a lot of what I was going to say in response. I agree with everything you say here, and this is what I want and value too. I totally get that a clean slate custom PC cannot have an infinite # of backgrounds/backstories that the game responds to. I merely want a clean slate custom PC whose *in-game* actions and choices and behaviors are respected and acknowledged by the game. Key word there: in-game. This is not something major or crazy to ask for in a cRPG. Many other older cRPGs have given us this exact thing to one extent or another, and as @Gray Ghost points out PoE did it quite well. All you have to do is to add tags to the PC whenever the PC engages in actions and behaviors and choices in-game that are unique to the PC, and then have the game respond to those tags. Not tags for my generics like race and class, but tags specific to my in-game actions. So for me, the only logical conclusion I can possibly come to is that Larian chose, intentionally, to not provide this to us, for whatever reason(s).

I'm actually not opposed to being a sidekick for the origin characters, but I'm very much imposed to my custom Tav being some magical construct created on the naut with no story beyond FAKE dialog tags. (Fake as in you can say something, but the game doesn't *include* the Tav in the history of the world. Tav doesn't exist before we take control of the body of our Tav on the ship.)

I can't even write my own made up background, because I have to CHOOSE a background in the game and until some wiki or site writes down a list of what dialog is triggered by the background, I can't be sure my avatar isn't suddenly claiming to be from baldur's Gate or that he is Elminsters love child with mystra, because the background just doesn't specify what "tags" get applied.

I agree that something's missing, and some of you here summed it up perfectly - in my eyes. The thing that would solve it would be Tav having their own arc developing in the game that the companions would react to same way we react to theirs.

That's what happened in BG1/BG2, we got to play a custom character (with a simple backstory, yes, but it was flexible enough to allow for all sorts of roleplaying around it). We played the Bhaalspawn and that alone - getting to discover things about my character, choosing how they react to it, and talking about it to NPCs was what made me attach to them and see them as a character in their own right. I don't agree hence that the Bhaalspawn was as bland as Tav is.

Things that come to mind quickly would be - if Tav, not Shadowheart, had the artifact, but didn't know where from and why (we could see her trying to steal it for added drama). We could have an arc about finding out what it is and how to make it protect our companions as well, making us both central to the story, useful to them, and having some interesting choices to make. Toss in some funky reveal about why we were the ones chosen to hold it and control it and there you have it.

Another thing that would help tremendously, I think, would be adding some more bits to say about our character while talking to companions. Ages ago, I played what was probably the best written romance mod for BG - Haer'Dalis romance for BG2. Not only was it unique and well done, but it was also smart about allowing the player to not only learn about the NPC, but to shape their PC increasing immersion and roleplay. AFAIR Haer, as a bard, wanted to write some sort of little chronicle about their perilous travels and would ask PC questions about their past, or their opinions about plot events. I remember it being *very* effective at creating the impression of conversations going both ways, developing the character, and forging a reasonable bond with the NPC

I will say I'm kind of surprised there isn't at least a replication of the tag system from D:OS2 where you could flag your character as a soldier, scholar or whatever and it came up in some conversations. I guess you do define your character's background by picking Soldier, Acolyte or whatever during character creation, but I don't think I've seen a single line of dialog that references that background once you're out of character creation. I don't find the game is boring with Tav as a main character, but it is kind of weird how your chosen background is never once even mentioned.

Not having a background would be fine if the game gave you more options to define your character as you play and having the world react to you accordingly. Sadly, as the story picks up the game feels more and more like it's railroading you into playing a bogstandard hero. There's no real character defining moments like siding with the Goblins in act 1 that actually gets respected by the world and your companions. It just ends up feeling very unnatural like the game is trying to be very open and choice-based in the first act but then gets increasingly linear and claustrophobic towards the end culminating in one of the worst endings to an RPG that I've seen in a while.

Custom is best choice. I have no interest in playing a pre made characters, and according to laruan's research, that goes for 97% of players overall.

I thought Durge was the only way to play a customizable character. I didn't even see the custom char button at char creation until someone pointed it out to me. I've always liked the rogue/mage playstyle so both Gale and Astarion seemed appealing. I don't use companions so I have to play the origin characters to get their side of the story which why I'm one of those 3% who will never play a custom char.

Where did it go? I went back to play custom Gith Tav and every now and then when I get sick of it I play Durge. I am in Act 3 with custom gith and I can tell you since the beginning of Act 2 nobody recognised that I play a githyanki except the Madam in the Sharess’ Caress. The githyanki story continues to focus on Lae’zel to such extends like when

So yes, where exactly did the Gith experience go?

Basically at this point I must repeat what I said before. I think the custom githyanki race was just an afterthought. The idea must have been that Lae’zel was made a playable character and had gith specific dialouge choices, so why not just use those to allow the custom githyanki characters. Which, again just means that the custom characters are an afterthought behind the Origin characters.

Oh, yes, the title of the topic says everything I've been thinking about now that on my second playthrough I play Durge.

You can see the difference! It would've been much better if the Durge story was actually implemented in the random Tav story instead of ..nothing? We are nobodies, just random Baldurian hanging out with origin chars and experiencing the plot. And it would've made more sense storywise considering BG1,2
Random Tav playthrough now just feels like a sidekick Baldurian. Can't wait to finish the semi-good Durge playthrough and when the epilogue patch gets implemented will do a full good Durge.

Tell me when you can play a completely good Dark Urge without having to pass difficult skill checks and/or metagaming to purposely knock out certain characters.

The metagaming to ko someone is mostly pointless because it just changes who the bad stuff happens to, it does not prevent it. But that's not your character's fault...it just adds an extra bit of complexity. The only one you can save strictly through metagaming is the squirrel...if you don't initiate the interaction it lives.

Now there are the difficult wisdom saving throws yes, and those can go VERY wrong but the good thing is they are limited to one event...granted it can have dire consequences for your entire playthrough if it blows up in your face, but still...if you can manage that you're good.

But there are also great benefits to playing the dark urge...specifically two major scenes: a major revelation about the main story of the game and one insanely epic event that you can't get as any other origin or custom character. As far as I am concerned the Dark Urge should be *the* way to play BG3.

Yes and no. Yes, you can play Durge to be mostly the same level of good as Custom Tav. Ther are, however Wisdom checks, some of them are quite difficult, and if you fail them things will go very bad indeed. Also, there are unavoidable situations where things go bad. Very, very bad. Arguably not your fault, but part of the Durge plot and can be quite frustrating if you play good. All in all, I think a good Durge offers an interesting playthrough and a character with some depth as far as I got, but in a way that makes me think of someone with a multiple personality disorder. Good Durge is a person with a very dark personality twist, not your paladin fighting some basic inner vices sort…

For example, if you play Durge and you wanted to save Mirkon, the little boy in the druid camp, from the harpys, you absolutely can. He will be very sweet about it, just as normal and you can be kind in your repies, just as usual. However, the first reaction Durge will have upon seeing him standing on the shore is thinking how their favourite kind of dying/killing involves the body disappearing under water. You can be shocked by this thoutght, but it will be there. Another example could be Durge drooling over the roasting dwarf at the goblin camp, despite playing them as a saint. Yup, Durge is into cannibalsim…