Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion STILL wishing for more party banter

More than halfway through Act 2, but I'm disappointed by the lack of intra party dynamics in conversation form, also known as banter, a prominent feature of character-driven party-based RPGs since Baldur's Gate 2. The companions have stuff to say if you talk to them, and they will comment on the world, but they rarely talk to each other in the world, and when they do, it's only 1-2 lines apiece. I feel non-Larian RPGs have given us WAY more in terms of banter, from BioWare to Owlcat to certain Obsidian games. It feels weird that the sequel to the franchise that revolutionized characterization through conversation in RPGs is so limited in this aspect. Further, the banter that is present seems front-loaded in Act 1 only. I've gotten maybe 2 chatters in Act 2.

Either while traveling, long resting, or short resting, we should be getting more chatter between characters moving forward.

My guess is that the story underwent severe revisions past Act 1 and there wasn't enough time to rerecord banter for the events of later acts. It's really conspicuous and unfortunate.

Hope they fix it for definitive. The game is magnificent but it really brings it down as THE definitive modern party based rpg� let alone the sole rightful successor to the classics.

Right now, I'm hoping for some kind of vague statement from Larian. And I completely agree with you. Act 2-3 Camp and Companion Content Extremely Limited

I'm also disappointed how little banter there is. But what's more disappointing is the lack of interactions between companions in our camp. There was literally just one scene with Shadowheart and Laz and that was it. I hoped for more and I had nothing similar for the whole game.

Dragon Age games and even Mass Effect 3 handled that stuff way, way better. Not to mention romances, boy, I was disappointed how little "romance" content Shadowheart had compared to the others.

Unforutunately, after act 1 it feels like the quality of the game dropped drastically in every aspect.

I am also disappointed with Astarion
I'll say more, the quality starts to drop from Grimforge.


It's a little funny, but I'm so frustrated with the amount of companion content in Act 3 that I have to turn off those beautiful musical compositions in the camp and the city

Yeah, after Larian talked up how detailed the romances were, it was pretty surprising to see it fall under the same 'one scene per act' structure that feels like it's been done since the Bioware days.

+1 to all this

That is what disappointed me.

I think Larian wrote the stories well in general. I like their stories (even if not all of them are interesting to me, it's just for my taste) It's just that in the 2-3 act, a small amount of content is very felt.

I would agree, although I will point out that we might also be looking at previous titles with rose-tinted glasses. Companion banter in BG1 was very limited. In Mass Effect it was basically down to a few remarks in cutscenes or elevators. I do not recall much interaction between companions in DA, but there were a few dialogues for sure.
Even in BG2 companion banter or dialogue was limited to a few sentences over the course of 1-4 sessions, even if it was slightly impactful or tolerably deep. I recall Korgan and Aerie for example, which had about four dialogues where he constantly put her down until she snapped back at him, for Korgan to state that he just wanted to toughen her up for the world. That is memorable to me and I liked that, even though it really wasn't all that much in terms of quantity. I think Aerie in general had a lot of those interactions, some might not get anything. Generally I would also argue that the impact was bigger, because the game is paused in those instances and it just takes time to read and hence sticks more to your mind.

Here companion banter is always in-game without pause, meaning you might completely miss what is said, because the text disappears and you are kind of distracted with stuff. Yesterday I was in inventory and I only got what was said, because I save-scummed for a perception check. I would argue there are more lines in total, but they often play in one long sequence. For example, I just used Karlach in Act 1 for the first time, just to have all interactions thrown at me in the first minute, with everybody bantering with her. Not a whole lot has been said since.

There is also not a lot of interaction anywhere else, they might comment in dialogue, but nobody else makes a remark, and they never talk to each other. I really do not like that. Pathfinder games do it better here, especially since everyone takes part in conversations through their skills and everybody will usually voice there view. I recall in Early Access though that I thought companions were always critisising me in my decisions. I did not enjoy that much, but it was interaction at least and all that I wanted was to maybe have some approvement thrown in there as well, or general feedback and "penny for your thoughts"-interactions. Considering that the richness of the characters was, as it appeared to me, a selling point of this game, I do not think the result is optimal.

Dragon Age Origins didn't have much, but DA2 improved upon it and DA Inquisition had quite a lot companion banter and scenes between companions. ME1 and 2 also felt a bit short on that end, but ME3 and ME Andromeda improved upon it once again and there were a lot of banter and banter between our companions. Felt like they were truly alive, because they talked to each other and visited each other.

There definitely isn't much, especially after the existing EA ones get exhausted in Act 1. However, it's possible that they made a decision to shift it to the reaction companion lines - like how everyone will respond to things like Wyll and Karlach's first encounter, if you go around. But it's a bit indirect and not ideal.

True, true. I might be forgetting some things. Still it somehow isn't enough to really ever made me feel like it is a natural party, regardless of the game. I would very much rather have real dialogue between the companions than just some remarks that are so easy to miss in the world. Often it is also not very engaging, like when we would make our runs around the Normandy to update everyone's dialogues. I do similar stuff in the camp now.
After all I think BG2 did it best, but it might have been very companion dependent, Aerie just had a ton of interaction, like 3-4 dialogues with Korgan and Minsc alone, a couple with Jaheira. Really gives the party a lot of depth, too. I do not know whether there was much interaction among the others though, I always have a rather set party.

Okay, finished Act 2 and am going through Act 3, and I'm still VERY annoyed. How hard is it for Larian to put together a bunch of interesting conversations between companions that can be used regardless of your choices? Just shooting some mundane shit with a semblance of comedy or character insights. I am very worried that once I finish my companions' quests, they'll revert to hirelings without personalities, like in DOS2. Sebille was entirely braindead by the time I got to Arx.

These are interesting characters being done extremely dirty by a lack of non-quest, non-romance characterization.

"Dragon Age Origins didn't have much"
Dragon Age Origins:


That's 3.5 hours of companion conversations.
Inquisition had 5.
I can't find any on the final cut of BG3, but here's everything from Early Access (Act 1):

Most of this is stuff you'll experience as the bulk of Act 1 banter. It's less than 20 minutes.

Here's Owlcat's Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous banter, part 1:

It's one of a four part series, over 2 hours of banter.

Obsidian's PoE 1 was short on banter, but here's almost 1 hour of PoE 2:

That is quite amazing, a great find. That does put it in perspective. In any case I have seen far less banter in Act II, sadly. What I am really missing though is some form of deeper discussion between the different characters.

I finished Act 2 recently. There's almost no banter or companion-to-companion conversations at all.

As discussed in the suggestion forum here and other forums, there is alot of banter content that because of the games random interjection system, the player will never see.

If this is changed (and pointing to those other games, this was also a problem in PoE2 and was one of the first popular mods was the one that fixed it there) then the amount of banter/interjections it feels the game has will quadruple because you will actually see it without having to re-roll every scene and hope for good RNG.

totally agree!! hope we could have more banter in future update