Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Here is why companions in DOS2 were more endearing than in BG3

Until I stopped playing this game due to Larian removing the ability to recruit Minthara and Halsin together I couldn't help comparing the other companions to the ones in DOS2 and how shallow the ones in BG3 felt in comparison.

At first I thought it's because of the writing and voice acting but I think it's more to do with the way they are introduced.

In DOS2, you encounter the companions as normal npcs that you cannot recruit initially. Then you encounter them again multiple times thereafter and each time you can choose to recruit them, do quests for/against them or just ignore them altogether. They 'live' in the surrounding world and feel part of it.

On the other hand, in BG3 it doesn't seem like the companions exist beyond the point of being your party members. You don't get to know anything about them before you recruit them and even after you do, they treat you with disdain until they flip to desperately wanting to suck your d***. There's no foreplay, instead it feels like a passive aggressiveness that you have to constantly deal with in order to find out anything endearing about them.

Shadowheart and Lae' zael are a little more nuanced because you get to know them a little in the prologue but it's brief, and besides being companions, it doesn't feel like they belong in the story.

Minthara and Halsin are an exception however since you get to learn about them for a significant part of Act 1 and Act 2. You can work with them or thwart them, even decide on their fate. Which is why I grew attached to them before I could even recruit them.

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And having got so fond of Minthara and Halsin that manner, I still can't understand why Larian doesn't want us to have them both in the same party.

Wyll's sole motivation in life appeared to be to kill Karlach, but he doesn't mind her joining the team. He will happily work with her without batting an eyelid. Karlach didn't care that Will wanted her dead either.

On the other hand Minthara has absolutely no idea what a Halsin is. She just seems to have a problem with furry animals. She doesn't even know where the grove is so the idea that she would have worse reservations than Karlach and Wyll for eachother is weird. Halsin seems angry at 'the leaders' but given Minthara can redeem herself, and taking consideration of the Wyll/Karlach thing above, why doesn't Halsin react to that redemption arc accordingly?

Couple thoughts.

First of all I feel you are looking at D:OS2 a bit with rose tinted glasses. Not that your feelings are wrong, but I think it's been your imagination feeling a lot of gaps. The biggest difference between D:OS2 and BG3 is that companions in BG3 have a decent amount of content.

As to BG3 specificely.

It seems to me you have an issue with origins rather than how companions are done. Acting as playable character does put them in an awkward spot, as far as they companion status goes. Halsin and Minthara feel better (well, at least until they are recuited. Halsin didn't make much impression on me afterwards), because they are just recruitable NPCs. As such they are closer to what a companion usually is, and narratively feel more natural.

As to why Halsin and Minthara are exclusive - this is pretty much the reactivity to consequence of saving/destroying grove. They are hostile companions, like Edwin/Minsc in BG1.

DOS2 is not the best comparison, but when you look at Wrath of the Righteous or Kingmaker its obvious that the BG3 companions are very lacking.

Partly because in BG3 everyone must be sexable by anyone, so companions like Regil are impossible and partly because of the origin system which causes most companions to be deeply tied to the plot, but because they are optional when you are not playing them thise ties are left dangling and are not interwoven with the story no.

I agree with BG3's needless overfocus on sexing the companions, but I do not agree they're lacking in comparison with WotR.

Yes, Regill is standing out, maybe Daeran as well, but they're still not better in any way that, let's say, Lae'Zel. Not in writing, not in quests, especially not in voice acting.

At the same time, I think that owlcat's writing is horrendous and tasteless overall, so maybe I am biased.

Uhm yea I think the point you guys are making about origin characters needing to be more 'streamlined' (at least in the beginning) than the companions recruited later on makes sense. Although I do still think there was more depth to origin characters at the very beginning in act 1 of D:OS2, maybe it's because they moved around in the map rather than standing stationary at camp like they do in BG3. Then again, I do think D:OS2 is the best RPG ever made so I am biased. I have not played the other games you mentioned because they didn't seem to be fully voiced which is a must for me.


Regarding this, the way to recruit both of them prior to patch 1, was by not destroying the grove and not killing Minthara. As a result, in that particular scenario they had even less reason to hate eachother.

As for romancability of companions, it makes me sad that we don't have dwarf, halfling, gnome and goblin companions. I feel sorry for players who pick a short person as their main character and not having a fellow person of similar stature to be happy with...

I don’t think any of the companions in DOS2 were all that interesting. At best, they were serviceable.

Seems kind of a weird point of comparison to me.

And tracking down Karlach was not Wyll’s singular purpose in life. It was just another task from Mizora. Given that Mizora obviously mislead him about Karlach’s nature, and his own morality and temperament, it would have been weird if Wyll hadn’t dropped his pursuit of Karlach. There was nothing off with that.

If you don’t recruit companions in BG3 they also move around the map, and you can recruit many of them in multiple different locations.

I think "origin characters" was a bad idea, more so in BG3 than DOS2. It restricts those characters to fit the same role of the MC in the story, and doesn't let the story focus enough on the player created characters. In DOS2 that was less of an issue since the story was a less significant part of the game. BG3 is all about the story, so it's a bit of a bigger issue.

Well, I didn't like D:OS2, so lets agree to disagree .

Personally, I think that "Origins" are a straight up rotten idea, making origins/custom and companions troubled in design. You make a game with pre-determined protagonist or custom. Writing content that would fit both customs and pre-made, and write characters who can act as playable protagonists, and recruitable companions dilutes each implementation to the point that I find each individual application of them dissappointing. That's a general tendency of Larian, that doesn't gel with me - trying to conflicting ideas at the same time, rather than picking a line and sticking to it.

I am also disappointment there isn't more variety in companions, even putting romance aside. While overall I found companions to be pretty alright, with some really enjoyable individual sequences, I am not convinced BG3 companions are so deep as to make it up for the small roster, though. I haven't really found them to be more, than what we ususaly get from cRPGs.