Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Wyll should make his own decisions

Are you saying that you see the companions as sort of Schrödinger's companions, and that makes it impossible to analyze their characters? To a certain extent that may be true, but I think the companions do have enough characterization that it doen't feel like that for me. All decisions are impacted by circumstances. Tav encouraging something is an external factor, but, for example, so is Shar telling Shadowheart to kill. Other times, it does feel like the writing keeps things deliberately ambiguous, so players can headcanon what they want. Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you.


Does it help to know that if Tav is dead and Shadowheart confronts Nightsong alone, she apparently always kills her?

Yes.

And no.
(hehe, reverse Bilbo xD)

Indeed ... it just feels a bit too strong to me.

Its probably just a matter of my suspension of disbelief ...
- Lae'zel was brainwashed for who knows how long, bcs there is no time in astral plane ... even asuming her being on material plane since she hatched, its like 18 years at very least ... she seems to be older tho, i would say like 25-30.
- Shadowheat have simmilar amount of brainwashing on her side ... but improved of strategicaly removing every memory that would shape her in any other than desired way, this process was not perfect as we know, but they certainly tryed.
- Astarion is entirely different beast ... here we are talking about 200years of constant abusing and torture ...
- And Karlach ... ok, she spend "just" few years in hell ... but fck, its was LITTERALLY HELL! People who played tabletop DnD know effects of spending just few seconds there ... its called "hurl trough Hell" and it gives 10d10 psychic damage just for being there for quite litterally two turns, that is 12 seconds ... imagine what it does to you after even if just one whole year, im not calculating that.

And sure, then there are Wyll and Gale, but they are not exactly usable for this example.

My point is...
On one hand, you have this HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE bagage they bring from previous lives ... and on other hand, there is influence of your Tav.

Its perfectly fine to me that when you take them with you, care about them, help them to face things, when you fight side by side, when you talk to them ... it creates certain bond ... and that bond affects people, that is good!

My problem is, that when you just put them in your camp and ignore them for several weeks, or even months as someone pointed out here previously ... they create exactly same bond and are affected exactly same way ... for no reason at all!

That second part sipmly dont make any sense to me.

A little bit ...
It only shows that im right after all.

But as far as i know, there is basicaly no way to check it ... its only speculation.

On that front, and because I always love an opportunity to praise his writing, they did a clever thing with Gale as well. I might be missing some dialogue here because I am usually on very good terms with him, but it seems that unless you romance him, he never singles the player out as being special. It's always "you and our friends" who are important to him and he is shown to have a good relationship with all of them, he's even stoked about helping Astarion against Gandrel despite their rocky start. Karlach is much the same, I think. I know it doesn't change anything about approval, which is tied to the player, but making the relationships between the companion feel more important eases out such bumps because even if Tav doesn't care, the other companions do.

This is interesting. In my case with the evil DU, Shadowheart still spared Nightsong. The only difference is that I didn't ignore her, and she got her noblestalk. She calmly walked “good” in the “evil” group (calmly in the sense that I didn't notice any particularly annoying moralizing on her part), saved her parents (simply because I visited all the right places with her in Act 3 and she got her memories). I felt like her decisions depended on how many “memory bricks” she could gather. But basically, the video posted by SteelTempest explains everything.


I think so too. Wyll really wants to have a reputation as a “good guy”, you can see it in his banters and remarks, he will say nasty things where it is “allowed” in his society. Mizora may have also used this trope in her manipulation - Wyll can't appear to be “not a hero”. He's very worried about the horns, why? Probably because it might cause other “heroes” to accidentally mistake him for a “bad guy”. Of course he wants to break his contract with Mizora (it would be weird if he wanted otherwise), but if he voices it, he'll stop seeming like a “hero”. And if it's voiced by Tav - that's fine, he just wasn't allowed to sacrifice himself. But he will still sacrifice if Tav voices it as a necessity, playing on Wyll's “goodness” as Mizora did in her time. Perhaps he will convince himself that it is the right thing to do. Wyll decided not to make a decision. And his decision doesn't affect anything - if the player wants to do well for this character, they will easily do it, after Mizora's refusal it's only worth looking in the diary, and it's immediately clear that Ravengard can be saved. The choice here doesn't even make plot sense.


+1

That was in BG2. It was in BG1. Larian has every chance to do exactly that with their next game, which they will do in their own setting, without any outside influence. I would really like to see realism in the game, logical consequences of certain actions, living characters not limited by narrow alignments. Characters can change their opinions, the influence of Tav, of course, has a place, but it should depend on many factors, realistic factors, the main thing - do not try to make of the main character a kind of “teacher of life”.


I want to clarify a bit on this issue, I'll try not to break the rules, it's just that there is one fact in the game - Astarion is unable to decide his own fate, against Tav's wishes, due to purely physical limitations. Astarion desperately asks for help, there is a choice to help him or not help him, but he can't slice the scars on Cazador without Tav's help. Even in the scars scene, Tav draws the symbols in the sand rather than on paper, though paper would be much more realistic, and there's plenty of that paper in the inventory. But, in that case, Astarion would have been able to save and memorize the symbols, which would have prevented him from depending on Tav's decision. We'll never know if Tav would have been able to convince him if Astarion hadn't been dependent on Tav's help and could have completely decided his fate on his own. A failed die roll and that's it, Astarion will leave the group if you don't help him. (“I would say good luck out there, but honestly? I hope you die screaming.”) Also, Astarion has a line: “And I want to live a full life! Not some half existence, hiding in the shadows for the rest of eternity.” I prefer logic and facts, and logic tells me that there are more important things in life than “morality” and notions of good/evil and people in reality are more often guided by those more important things - hunger (“The pain from the hunger alone - there's nothing like it. ” © Astarion) has always been and will always be a far more significant motivator than morality. But, since, most players are people who have never experienced hunger, the meaning of the line: “I... I can't feel it. That ache in my stomach, that hunger - it's gone.”, tends to slip away and other narratives come to the fore. My opinion - this Persuasion is not to change Astarion's mind, but to convince Astarion that Tav loves him (or is a friend) and sees him as “good”. Astarion is well aware that if Tav doesn't help him, there's nothing he can do about it, and Tav convinces him of their motives, that it's not out of malice or stupid paladin principles that they're denying him the opportunity to have a fulfilling life, that they see him as a good man. It's a conviction to accept this cruel reality as it is in this case. Astarion can't be told “decide for yourself”, he's already made up his mind, you can help him or not help him, and the choice he makes (in the case where the player didn't help) is between acceptance and anger and hatred.

“Husbando” is a pretty good point, the character does turn out to be very relatable and his personal charm is a surprising compensator for the fact that Larian made the story far from perfect. The reflection of me should have been my Tav/DU ( this is what she should be, not a “narrative tool”, in an RPG there should be roleplay and personally I have far more complaints about that aspect than even the independence of the companions) and LI is someone I relate to as a person I love. But he's a separate person, I never saw LI as a projection of myself. But Astarion chose everything, he talks about it, from the moment he learns of this opportunity, he chose what many in his shoes would have chosen. It's just that if you don't give such importance to alignments, what difference does it make who is “good” and who is “evil”, they are just convenient stamps that we used to use in DnD and RPGs, but these definitions can never reflect the full range of character manifestations of a living person, and if you look at it from the point of view of realism, you can see the situation differently. Ask any person what they would prefer - to be rich and healthy but judged by others (like “evil”) or poor and sick but “pure” in other people's eyes - most of them will answer “ pure”, because nothing really depends on this answer, and you will never know what the percentage of “evil” and “good” really is, you can only understand what percentage does not care about other people's opinion and they certainly answered honestly.


Not always, to be honest. I actually didn't talk him out of it at all, and Gale just gave the crown to Mystra in the epilogue. On my own, I didn't have any lines to convince him to take the crown for himself. There are necessary conditions that need to be met in order for Gale to take that Crown without romance. For me, he is just perceived as a character hesitant, has in his character both ambitious aspirations - the desire to comprehend all spheres of magic and become a God, and the desire for a quiet peaceful life, and he satisfies one of these aspirations, and the other aspiration will be forced to “move”. And he feels good in both cases.

If something, I'm not against Wyll making an independent decision, I don't care what he does, if his fans want it, let him make it.

Okay, let’s keep this thread on topic and about Wyll and avoid derailing it further with detailed discussions of other characters, and particularly Astarion given the specific rules there.

No more of that, please.

In fact no more derailing of this thread, full stop, after I’ve looked back over the past couple of pages.

Plus please, everyone, keep things constructive, friendly and know when to agree to disagree. And avoid the temptation to blow up the thread with ever-longer posts picking up every point of others’ arguments: accept that others can understand your point but still not see things the same way you do.

Thank you RQ: Would it be possible to just cut the part, that derailed, off and put it into it's own topic? Like for example 'Companions agency''? I didn't look in here yesterday, but before that, it was actually a pretty friendly and fruitful discussion, that just was OT.

As for Wyll: I also wish, there would be more interactions in the city with him - like during Gortashs coronation. I always have Wyll and Karlach there, since the coronation has the most storyimpact for them. Karlach has her scene with Gortash, which is nice, but Wyll should be getting recognised by at least some of the nobles. Yes, he was away for 10 years and has now horns, but I think, he is still recognisable - Florrick at least seems to have no trouble.

K, gues thats it ...
Enjoy rest of the topic, im sure you will have plenty to talk about.

That's what I don't understand. How is it that Wyll is the son of the grand duke and has a backstory that's connected to Baldur's Gate more than the other companions, but he just gets ignored? All of these details are included in his backstory, but it's like it leads to nothing. That silly artifact Shadowheart carries around gets more attention than Wyll's story. Even useless granola crunching tree hugger Halsin who's awkwardly forced into the storyline seems to be treated as more important.

So yeah, I agree with OP on this.

Thank you. Story wise, Wyll is the most important companion in the game by far through his involvement with the main plot. I'm sad, he gets sidelined so much.
I came to like Wyll a lot because he is the one companion, I would very much be best friends with in real life. He has a lot of good things going on for him. My other favourite is Karlach, but she already has enough people speaking out for her, and Lae'zel and Gale, but their storylines are pretty good already.
So I started to campaign for Wyll a bit, since I actually like the rewrite and think, that Theo dies a really great job as a voice actor ( have you seen the DnD campaign with him, Sam, Devra and Neil? Hilarious). They should have invested in calling him in again and give him some more dialogues, because judging by the DnD campaign,where he plays Wyll, he could do so much more with the character, if they would let him.

I actually love, when games have a down to earth, best friend kind of character in a game, like Varric in Dragon Age or Mercurio in Vampire Bloodlines.

Yes! I think Theo really understands the character. If he would have had the same opportunities as for example Neil and Jen to portray the character and infuse it with his own flair, I have no doubt he could have made it just as iconic.

When it comes to building choices and consequences into the character arc, that is already a part of his original class. That the one character that is a warlock is the one that has the least amount of importance and agency to his choices is really weird.

I think Wyll would make a good protagonist in BG3. To be honest, I don't have much of an interest in most of the companions except for Astarion. A few are just okay, and some I just can't stand. I lost interest in most of their backstories. I started playing this game pretty late, so I never followed most of the updates. But from what I've seen so far, it seems that more focus was put on the dating sim side of the game and less on the story itself.

It would be cool for Wyll's voice actor to be given more opportunities. Hopefully that happens.

I mostly don't care for Astarion, Shadowheart and Halsin, I'm pretty invested in the rest - I like the stories of Wyll and Lae'zel the most and love the personalities of Gale, Karlach, Jaheira and Minsc. Well, Minthara is just funny, she doesn't have much content, but great lines, that make me laugh.

For me, Wyll is a great bridge between the pnp campaign Descend to Avernus, which is basically the prelude to BG3 and introduces hells and Duke Ravenguard, Lae'zel is great to explain githyanki culture and the illithid thread to us.