Originally Posted by Taril
Originally Posted by Anska
I know I am in the minority, but I really like the Origins. Tavs are boring to me and Durge lost me pretty quickly, but I enjoy my Origin play throughs greatly and don't feel like I am missing out on anything. (Well, in Gale's case maybe because he is Mister Exposition and the explanations he gives - about the shadow weave for example - do not get provided by a different source.) Each of our tadfools comes with their own mission which is just as important to them as dealing with the tadpole, which gives you a different perspective on the events and the primary mission for your game depending on whom you choose. To me, this is appealing and offers an experience that is sometimes even better than when they are my companions.

The issue is that in most cases, you experience the vast majority of these Origins from them being a companion.

You get a few special insights from actually playing versus simply having a companion (Even fewer if you have the companion take the lead in conversations - Not as easily done since the PC prioritization update, but still possible)

While what Durge provides is wholly unique to playing Durge.

I'll admit that Durge's actual story is not to my taste, the concept of having a unique Origin that can only be experienced as a PC is very much the sort of experience I'd expect from an Origin character.

To me that isn't an issue. I like taking on the perspective of a character I like (or maybe not like so much) and experience the events of the story from their perspective in the decision making role. The additional scenes and insights do support that experience but they are not the reason why I choose the origin as my avatar. All my play throughs with companion origins have felt unique even though - as I mentioned above - the immersion could always be improved - and oh the bugs, the bugs.

And just to make it clear, I don't think Durge-like origins are bad. I mean I did try it, I even fussed with character creation and talked with a mate who had played it about character input and such. That it absolutely didn't click with me isn't the fault of the general concept. I simply wanted to voice that I do value the option to choose one of the companions as my Origin and play as them. I would hate to see this option not be present in future games.


But since you brought up PC-prioritisation, I hope there will be a better solution for this. In my Shadowheart-run I started out by letting Astarion, Gale and Lae'zel do most of the talking for me because it felt very sneaky and the three of them come with dialogue proficiency (opposed to Shadow who has no charisma and no proficiencies in dialogue) This was pretty cool, and made it feel like we were acting as a group - until it stopped working easily.

Last edited by Anska; 15/05/25 08:08 PM.