Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion There must be more true friend companions in the game who support you no matter what

You think that characters have less content, less banter and less reactivity because it's the authorial intent and preference? Because of streamlining? You are free to delude yourself, not sure why youre trying to convince anyone of such ridiculous notion.

"streamlining" is also not some magic word. JUst like how they changed characters to be softer (like Shadowheart) is not for "streamlining" reasons but because they catered to people who gave feedback, that's why they changed, removed and implemented a lot of ideas, and not always for the better. Why cant you imagine that reasons for changing or not adding something could be a bad reason rather than part of some grand design? Its rhetorical question, youre just not taking critique of the game well.

The game suffered from lots of cuts and unfinished content and it was pushed out the door because of Starfield. If it was part of the grand design they wouldnt need to add substantial amount of content in Patches to finish some of it (epilogues etc) - the content which shouldve been in the game on launch. And if they cared about streamlining then Act 3 wouldnt be so bloated or overwhelming. Honestly arguing for streamlining would inevitably lead you to suggest cutting the thing you defended in the first place. It would be more streamlined without the playable origins, yes.

I was wondering, since you bring up Durge a lot, do you usually have more in-depth conversations about what happens in your quest with your butler?

Yeah, I'm currently going through a playthrough with Durge for the first time and it's offering a lot of direct comparison to my last Tav playthrough.

For some odd reason, I've noticed that in comparison to other Durge playthroughs I've seen for a resisting Durge, I actually did not get certain scenes I have seen with others before. Must be some awkward Long Rest timing causing you to straight up skip certain camp events at times. When it comes to the butler specifically, I don't think I've had a single dialogue option with companions to talk about the fact that I have this weird butler popping up in camp sometimes. Normally after refusing to kill Isobel or your companion in act 2, your butler is supposed to throw a fit early on in act 3 at camp and dramatically leave your side as you've defied him and Bhaal too many times, but I didn't see him a single time before entering Bhaal's temple where he was very welcoming. I think I have at most had the opportunity to say some one-liners in conversations with NPCs, the rest of the time it's as if he never existed.

In total I've had... the butler encounter with the dead bard in act 1, then after meeting Isobel I had the butler telling me to kill her, then after saving Nightsong and not killing Isobel I had the butler telling me to kill my romantic partner, then after refusing that he showed up at the entrance to Bhaal's temple. Aside from choosing some Durge specific intimidates, I've resisted the urge every chance I was given. From what I understand, with some patches they've mostly added things to a Durge embracing the urge, but the resisting variant is rather underdeveloped in comparison in my experience.

The nicest parts are probably the Jaheira and Minsc specific things, like having some Durge nightmares early in act 3 and waking up to find them watching over you and reminiscing about their time with a previous Bhaalspawn that successfully overcame their urges.

Alright, Ladies and not-Ladies, here comes my rant number IV

I thought I was done with that miss Congeniality, that queen of everything, that most beautiful woman in all of Faerun (according to the only person – herself). I really thought she was gone after I told her to get lost the second time at the Druid Grove. But nope - she popped up again out of nowhere when I reached the temple of Selune. And guess what? She asked to join me again, even though I'd already told her twice to get lost for good. And this constant stalking combined with her arrogance when you accept her as a companion - I just realized how repulsive her character is. So her owning the Prism clearly makes her the main key companion in the game, and the game designers really push you into taking her as a companion. Why then is she created to be so repulsive? Everything would be fine if I showed servility to her, but I don't want to, and because of that the whole narrative starts to fall apart. I told her to f.o. forever for the third time and left the prism with her, because I'm so chronically good-aligned that I can't even bring myself to harm non-hostile pixels in the game to take the prism from her. If I end up dying later just because I refused to conform to the designers' vision of accepting Shadowfart, it will be a very, very serious disappointment for me in this game.

I don't really know at this point. Some gamers love unhinged psychos with constant conflicts, tantrums, and toxicity. Others prefer calm, kind, and reasonable companions. If the game leans too far in one direction, either group will complain that the companions are either too dull or too psychotic and repulsive. It's a difficult situation, wouldn't you say?

In my opinion, a chronically good-aligned character would always take Shadowheart into the party regardless of opinions on her personality, because it makes sense for the bigger survival chances of the group and make everyone's chances of living greater to have another with the "get rid of the tadpole" main goal. Personal annoyances would be put aside for the greater good and at most you'll just have someone to fight alongside that you don't really communicate with much in that case. If anything, if you are chronically good-aligned character but haven't talked much to her beyond that, the shadow-cursed lands could make your character doubt bringing Shadowheart to Shar's temple and you'll just do that without her instead. Far more logical route in my opinion than taking her along for that part if you don't like her and don't trust her intentions at that point.

As for the rest, it's just kind of a rinse and repeat of you clearly having a far more negative opinion of Shadowheart than most people. She's not "created to be so repulsive", together with Astarion they are by far the most romanced companions. You unfortunately, for personal reasons relating to your view on servility, true friends and men-women relations, have such a view on certain female characters that has you see them in such a negative light and become repulsed by them.

Out of curiosity, which other choice-based RPGs where companions sometimes have differing goals have you played? And what did you think of the portrayal of the female co-lead characters/companions in those games?

No! Unless she proves she's loyal it's way too risky. She could just cut everyone's throat in their sleep for Shaar, or whatever twisted reason pops into her messed-up head.

I'll tell you a story. When I was a kid, some classmates would come over pretending they wanted to play - just so they could steal my toys. I didn't know what to do. My friend told me to keep a close eye on everyone, so I tried my best, watching them like a hawk. But somehow, they kept stealing anyway. I asked my dad how I could stop them, and he said "just don't let those mthrfckrs into the house". I still remember how struck I was by the simplicity and efficiency of that solution.

The issue isn't that she's repulsive. It's that she's such a contemporary character, it's easy to associate her with someone you dislike in real life - that's what happened to me. This is exactly why I don't support adding modern personalities into fantasy games.

Leliana and Wynne (DaO), Serana (Skyrim), Neeshka and Elony (NwN2). I can say this - I trusted them completely. The way we talked, the way they acted - genuine sympathy. I tried to trust Lae'zel too until she regretted not killing me in the camp. A little later,I realized what really triggered me. It wasn't her regreat - what really got to me was that she stayed on the team and even showed up at the farewell party in camp. I thought we were about to fight when she said it but the game just carried on like nothing had happened - and that's when I realized how sickening it really was. Karlach is a great companion but she's not human and not physically attractive. And after her emotional outburst following Gortash's death, I realized that either I kill her in act 1 (which first requires turning her into a freak with mods), or every single playthrough will end with me going to Avernus with her - which isn't great for roleplay. So all three female companions ended up being disappointments. I'll try romancing Jaheira this time. Idk, is she romanceable?

No. I'd say it would be great for roleplay if you played a character who's opinions and preferences differed from your own, but at this point it reads like you just don't like Shadowheart (which is fine) and are looking for more reasons not to like her. Although I am still surprised that with your standards for what is loyal or risky, you are ok with Astarion - or even Gale.

Sorry the way you play or interact with characters is not relatable, im not sure how you ended up making this thread when you know so little about the characters. Jaheira is a legacy character from BG1/2, she has kids and a dead husband and she's really old - no she's not romanceable.


Gale's and Astarion's personalities are more modern and they are definitely not trustworthy, they have their own agenda. Which is good if you want things to be interesting and a good story. Leliana is boring compared to someone like Morrigan. If anything i think Shadowheart romance is too vanilla compared to Morrigan, she is more like Leliana lol.

To be fair, a chronically good character wouldn't ever know she worshipped Shar. Pushing her to spill her biggest secret, isn't something a good person would typically do.


That's an interesting approach to life.

I always treat people as unique individuals. Despite my background in psychology, despite having met LOTS of people, thus having reasons to group people into categories and noticing similarities between people... I always try to take people as unique individuals and give them the benefit of the doubt rather than pre-judge them based on someone completely different (Which is honestly a necessity at this point, otherwise I'd consider EVERYONE to be an insufferably awful person)

For me roleplay is "what would I do if I were in such a setting" rather than "today I'm evil, tomorrow I'm good". Astarion and Gale are very transparent, with clear and simple motivations. They never turn against you, unlike Laezel or Shadowheart.

I’m not. I disliked her because her low IQ and fake indifference ruined the first date. From now on every playthrough she gets told to get lost, end of story. But, no, she's already shown up twice more asking to join the team. And honestly, it's getting on my nerves. Does she have two personalities - one begging for friendship and trust while the other pushes you away with arrogance? Again, if she doesn't like me - au revoir and good luck. But have some dignity and stop approaching me. It's just pathetic. Don't you think?



That's fine. Like I said, I always end up in the minority. I'm just curious to hear an argument that shows where I might be wrong. I explain why I dislike certain characters based on how they make me feel, but what's interesting is that no one explains why they like them based on their emotions. The only argument I ever hear sounds like "they are who they are, so you either like them or walk away". Everyone just gives backgrounds. Nobody writes "I like to submit to Laezel and do whatever she commands" or anything like that. You say "Gale's and Astarion's personalities are more modern and they're definitely not trustworthy" but you don't point out where exactly.

I'm not that lore guy who needs to read 10 books and 100 articles before starting a game with a rich background. I don't know, and I don't even want to know. I want to discover.

i didn't want it anyway :p


Is it because when a woman shows less respect and devotion she seems more exciting?

I would never pressure her to reveal what's sacred to her, but that discretion comes at a cost - she cannot be part of the team. Among battle brothers and sisters there can be no secrets. Because we stand as one.

Unfortunately life isn't infinite. If you waste it digging through every pile of garbage hoping to find a gem you might never find one. I only dig when I see a glimpse.

Astarion is not sincere when you talk to him usually, you get medium approval and he says "oh youre my best friend" almost sarcastically. I shouldnt need to point out why Astarion is more modern, if every character wasnt pansexual, everyone would assume Astarion is gay. Gale has very modern sense of humour and approves of a lot of evil player actions even though he gives a different impression.


You can go to Jaheira's house and you'll learn her history and they talk about her being old all the time, she calls you a "cub" (sees you as a kid).


Why would everyone be automatically devoted? People want characters with depth of personality, not a predictable doll, someone with their own desires and opinions. Yes those characters are more exciting and people dont want to auto-win the relationship, you should need to work for it to feel it's rewarding.

On other hand i recommend Dragon Age 2 romance, you can romance characters with maximum negative approval - actually its a different system and its called rivalry and you get a different romance if you go that way. But you can criticize and disagree with them on everything, it's pretty good.

Going by that logic, why accept Astarion into the party after his introduction is trying to trick you and putting a knife to your throat? Why not stake him when he tries to bite you in your sleep, clearly showing that he's fully intent on attacking someone in your camp?

Or why accept Wyll who's at the mercy of a devil and had already been sent to behead a different party member? He's unable to give details and clearly gets caught off-guard by fine-print, who's to say Mizora doesn't find another twisted reason why he must attack you or any of your party members?

And why not send away the walking time bomb Gale once you're aware of his condition and also that his usual magic item consuming is becoming less and less effective at keeping him from exploding? Later on he gets a mission to explode himself to defeat the Absolute, and not once is it on his own radar to consider the fact that exploding himself would mean exploding the entire group. Why would you trust him in this case? Even farther along he gets all googly-eyed for the Crown of Karsus like he's Gollum looking at The One Ring. Can you trust him to keep his priorities straight and not beeline to become the next Karsus at the expense of the group?

I'm not entirely sure how your personal story relates to the shadow-cursed lands, but I do know that it can apply to every single one of the companions in your camp. Who you consider "friend" or "classmate" in your camp will depend on personal preference, but there is plenty to be said why most of them are not trustworthy in some regards. Take it to the extreme though, and there's no one left in your camp and trying to do everything yourself is nigh impossible, so the mission will always be built on alliances with unusual bedfellows.


So if you take the core background and personality defining parts of Shadowheart's character, someone snatched away at a very young age and indoctrinated by a cult, that's easy to associate with someone you dislike in real life? To me, it sounds more like for one reason or another, Shadowheart made you think of someone you know and do/did not like, the rest is more projecting those real life feelings on some pixels unrelated to the real life person she reminds you of. In that case, it's not really about wanting the companion writing to be done differently like in your original post, it's about the unfortunate outcome of mixing real life bad experiences too much with fictional work.

As for characters having contemporary aspects, regardless of whether or not Shadowheart or other companions are in fact written in such a way, it's often a necessary element to have a little bit of that to make a fictional being relatable and evoke emotion. It's difficult to make someone care one way or another about incomprehensible aliens, but (somewhat) ordinary peoples going through extraordinary times can make you relate to their struggles, triumphs, dilemmas, etc. in one way or another.


I can't say much on NWN2 as it's been too long ago for me to remember clearly, and unmodded Skyrim has been long ago for me as well, but what I do know for Skyrim is that pretty much all characters are super one-dimensional and faction loyal rather than PC character loyal, they have no individual goals that can differ from the PC and outside of picking their faction's side or the opposing side, they never involve themselves in PC character choices. From what I remember from Dawnguard and Serana, there is never a situation where she can have a differing goal from you and things need to be discussed, it's just having option/faction A or option/faction B here and there and her going along with whichever you choose. Because of that it's also impossible to be at odds with her in the way that can happen in choice based RPGs like BG3.

For DA:O with Wynne and Leliana , they both have certain deal-breakers that will make them fight you regardless of high/maxed approval rating with them, much like all the BG3 companions have.

When meeting Wynne when the crisis is going on at the Broken Circle, if you have Morrigan there and make the "wrong" dialogue option, Wynne will immediately become hostile upon concluding there's an apostate accompanying you. She won't allow conversation or explaining, she completely disregards continuing to protect the younger mages or your intent to help the Circle, she'll just try to kill you then and there with reckless abandon.

And at the Urn of Sacred Ashes, Wynne and Leliana will both become hostile when present upon defiling the ashes, high approval ratings have no influence on this. Just like with Shadowheart and her god's wishes, or Lae'zel and what she considers to be for the good of her people. All four of these characters have deal-breakers that go against their core beliefs and no matter how much they like you and how important you are to them, you can make a choice that will instantly turn them hostile.

Leliana has a niche case for being hardened and being able to intimidate her, but that isn't discussing things either, that's just threatening her into staying.


So you don't find Karlach physically attractive, but to be able to make a different choice in a separate playthrough, you have to turn her into a freak with mods to justify killing her? Physical appearances aside, the entire idea about roleplaying the same story again but as a different character, is playing a character that has different morals than yourself and playing from their perspective rather than your own personal sensibilities.

Circling back to those physical appearances though, considering they seem to be a central theme upon which some moral choices are being justified for, why do you have to mod companions into freaks when you want to disagree with them and do bad things to them? What is it about their original appearances that requires you to mod their appearances to be able to make certain decisions when roleplaying the game?

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I'm quite sure I've already done so in regards to Shadowheart, but I can re-iterate more fully. In my first playthrough, finding lore on Shar and Selune through books and other environmental markers early in act 1, it quickly became clear to me that Shadowheart was likely an indoctrinated victim of Shar's cult. Finding that her (dis)approval points often didn't align with Sharran doctrine affirmed this for me. Insight during her wolf memory, as well as connecting the dots from the earlier found lore, made it clear for me that she was an abducted Selunite as well. That put together made me feel compassion for a lost soul, essentially a frightened young adult clinging onto the only things her abusers wanted her to know and being guarded over her "truth" being challenged.

This made me want to treat her with patience and acceptance, allowing her to open up on her own terms and being able to voice her thoughts and speak her mind without immediate judgement or backlash. I quickly noticed how positive of an effect this had and on my first playthrough, which was good-aligned, her approval skyrocketed the fastest out of everyone. As long as I was gentle around the indoctrination from her cult and I encouraged her to share her doubts on her own terms, alongside her approval of my good-aligned choices, it took no time for her to become very agreeable and likable.

The date option became available long before the Tiefling party and I found it very endearing. She appreciated my slice of life memory when telling something about myself, I could reaffirm that she was more than what Shar allowed her to know by mentioning the smaller things about liking flowers and not being able to swim, then we topped it off with a kiss. From then on in travels the romance was sweet and the cracks in her faith became more and more apparent to the point of it becoming an actual dialogue option at camp. My initial assumption about her situation and the way I chose to handle the trauma brought onto her was having a positive effect and I was convinced she could overcome the indoctrination from Shar's cult and come out of it as her own, free-willed person. She had my trust. And in many dialogue options, she also let me know I had her trust and affection as well.

From that point on, it was a pretty straightforward baseline of trust, acceptance and a balance in how to handle things. It was us against whichever problem came our way and if she was ever faced with a dilemma related to Shar, then based on earlier experience and dialogue, I knew the only thing I had to do was give her space to come to the right conclusion on her own, only giving my own opinion when she specifically asked for it. She had shown the capability to think for herself and question Sharran doctrine before, so I trusted her to continue to do so and believed this was by far the best way for her to overcome her trauma and indoctrination.

After sparing Nightsong, breaking completely free from her abusers, there is understandably still a lot of pain and trauma, but the dynamic of trust and acceptance remains unchanged. And her goal becomes very relatable and important to me as well, saving loved ones from the cult she was kidnapped into. There are no more remaining conflicts or friction points either, she just wants to be with me whatever happens and we'll do whatever we can to help each other. Act 3's culminating romance scene is also wonderful calling back to her not being able to swim and wanting to feel she can accomplish things without Shar.

But... They do though?

If you do things they dislike, they'll turn on you. Astarion especially. (Heck, Astarion will turn on you even if you do things he likes... Ascended Astarion can make him even more arrogant than he already is)


Actually... Yes.

It's one of the main things about her character.

She herself is sweet and caring.

BUT due to the Sharrans, she had her mind wiped and replaced with a horrible and cold personality befitting someone in service to Shar.

Parts of her actual personality shine through on occasion pre-Nightsong, such as her liking when you help animals and a few nice moments here and there. But she doesn't get to be herself until you save Nightsong.


Those are 2 entirely different things.

You're not wrong because you have a different opinion. Hence no-one trying to show you being "Wrong" because it's okay to have a different opinion. (Which is why people are mostly giving backgrounds. So that you can maybe adjust your opinion with a wider view of the character)

I've mentioned that I like Shadowheart and Lae'zel because they're nice and caring. Well, after you go through their character arcs where they warm up. Which is why they're nice, because they actually go through character development.


Weird... But how does Gale (Who hides the bomb in his chest) and Astarion (Who hides his vampirism) make it onto the team, yet Shadowheart (Who simply hides which of the like 3 dozen gods in the setting she worships) doesn't?


Except, you don't really have to dig? You just deal with people as and when you interact. You only have to dig once people show themselves noteworthy enough to be worthy and only if you want to go deeper.

What you're doing is pre-emptively calling someone trash because they somewhat remind you of someone completely different who happened to be garbage. This is not "Digging" this is you not even approaching the area where things are because you've already deemed it to not be worthwhile.

They half of the time don't know their own motivations. Astarion attacks you at night and is very much not sincere, as has been pointed out by the others. What Gale tells you about himself and how he presents himself to you is hugely dependent on what you play as (melee class, cleric, sorcerer &c ), if you romance him or not (he is a very private person) or how much you needle him about his secret. He has (potentially) the most drawn out and elaborate secret-reveal of the whole gang and it's arguably worse for a goody-two-shoes character because, to see how guilty he feels about keeping his secret, you have to be a bit of an ass to him and in general. And yes they both can turn against you if you violate their trust much like Lae'zel and Shadowheart do.

It's also not about "today I'm evil, tomorrow I'm good" - of course you can approach roleplay from the perspective of what you would to in the situation, you can also imagine what another character/person would do in the situation, how would they be affected by what's going? How would they further their plans?


I am not sure if you are serious or if you are just playing up the outrage for the fun of it and a spot of trolling, I am leaning towards the latter but if it's the former, that is a lot of upset over a pixel-girl.

Secondly, I never got the impression that she is approaching you, all of her meetings with you (iirc I haven't had the one at the goblin camp in a while) are staged as chance meetings. She is a girl on a mission, same as you she is aware that she needs a healer but she also needs to get her box to Baldur's Gate, so your paths cross, same with Lae'zel who is on her mission to find a crèche. Karlach is busy shaking off her pursuers, Wyll has bigger problems but stops at the Grove to gather information and help out (Good boy), Gale is stuck ... and Astarion has no planning skills at all so he just stands there until someone finds him. But they all have their own stories going on - On a meta-level, yes the game is pushing Shadowheart on you hard, but on a story-level you just bump into each other.



Yes, the Long Rest timing can be very awkward in some cases, I had issues with it during my first run (with Avatar-Astarion) too, but especially in Rivington it can be a problem because you just don't have to long rest a lot in the area naturally because it is so dialogue heavy. I missed Orin's Zevlor art-project that way, which isn't as much of a bummer as missing a scene for your character, of course.


I lost interest in Durge halfway through act 1 because of that. I got the impression that the Origin mostly caters to the deranged serial killer fantasy and does not bother with the anxiety of your own mind turning against you. I tried to lean hard into the horror angle both after the Alfira-incident and the first butler visit, but was a bit surprised with how little the game allowed me to freak out, lean into and stew in the discomfort of the atrocity my character had just committed. I think you can't even feed that damn cloak to Gale, but I might be wrong about that. To me it seemed to be heavily player-focused, tempting you to click outrageous chat-options to satisfy the itch to find out what happens, while resisting it is more about you the player resisting temptation than about Durge wrestling with their broken mind. But I only experienced the very start of it, so that might not at all be accurate.

Thank you for answering, I had wondered if the butler serves a similar purpose as Tara does when you play as Gale. While for Avatar-Gale all the companions have their normal, more or less elaborate reactions to his story-beats (if you debug them) Tara is present as your confidant whom you can discuss your quest with in more depth and who points you to the next stop of your journey (for example, she reminds Gale how highly he had always spoken of Sorcerous Sundries which otherwise is Gale's own suggestion) and I had imagined the butler would do the same for Durge. Some players seem to be quite fond of him.

Jaheira and Minsc are great!

I think act 2 is probably the most dramatic/involved when it comes to Durge. You can get additional dialogue with Isobel concerning your urges and I think she's the very first NPC to note that you have a split personality of sorts as a resisting Durge, rather than the urge and your conscious being the exact same person essentially. You can mention something along the lines of your blood boiling and screaming for her death. She responds quite relaxed and says that despite my words, she doesn't actually feel threatened. Then mentioning after that you will not act on it, she kinda squints and says "See, there's the real you.". It's similar to how Withers later says that Bhaal only killed Durge, but not the person you have started forming after the amnesia, leaving you with a Tav that grew beyond the broken Durge.

And if you're not about re-rolling/save-scumming, the part where the butler demands you kill your romantic interest can have massive consequences. With Isobel it's still all about choice, but with the romantic interest the dialogue choices and then the rolls are crucial to get a good outcome. So a Durge playthrough can significantly complicate an Honor Mod run during act 2 I imagine. Oh, and making the wrong choice in a conversation with the cat at Moonrise, Steelclaw, will have you remember how you treated it and it will immediately break your oath as a paladin. Apparently the act itself wasn't oath-breaking, but later remembering that you acted this way does have an impact.

Act 3 just has a lot of confirmation that your Durge definitely existed and has a dark past, but aside from being able to do a 1v1 duel with Orin, the rest of the act is mostly alternative lines with no actual special choices and consequences. It's still vastly superior to a Tav playthrough in my opinion though and I wished my first playthrough had been Durge. I don't necessarily enjoy relying on head canon too much, so having absolutely zero ties to confirm my Tav existed within Baldur's Gate before starting my playthrough made my character feel a bit disconnected, like I was more of a DM of sorts guiding the origin characters rather than the actual PC of the story.

Oh, and as an aside, Orin in her Slayer form was extremely underwhelming in the 1v1 with Durge because she doesn't even start with Unstoppable. I had the initiative, gave her a good smack and used Hold Monster, she was forced to skip her turn and second turn with everything being a critical hit in melee had her straight up die then and there. She was easier than any Bhaalist encounter leading up to her for me. So going there as Durge was very cinematic and I very much enjoyed the storytelling aspect, but it also ended up being very anti-climatic in the end.


That's so cool! I'll never do a playthrough as one of the origin characters myself, but it's very interesting to know the additions/changes can be this big. I imagine with Tara eating the messenger pigeons in Rivington, Gale is far less surprised to see her there, then? Or is Tara more of a projection throughout until Gale physically encounters her there?

I think the butler is probably the most enjoyable for a Durge that embraces the urges, he's more actively involved and a cheerleader of sorts, but even then he's still far less present and guiding than Tara is in that case.

I think my original point s pretty blurred now - we've gone too deep into character backgrounds and personalities which aren't really the issue. Give me a month or so to figure out how to record gameplay video, and I'll show why Gale, Astarion, and Wyll fit perfectly into the waifu category (after gender + voice swap), and why boss btch Laezel and streamer Shadowfart absolutely don't. It mostly comes down to how they talk. Also, only Laezel and Shadowfart have key moments where you're required to bend to their demands or lose them. Yes, you can lose other companions too, but only as a reaction to your actions - they never demand that you act a specific way upfront.

Just a quick thought about Lae'zel's dominant personality: if her dominance were confined to the bedroom only, like it is now, that would perfectly fit her into the "dominant waifu" archetype. However it's overdone, and she treats you like a tool in every other context too, which I find unappealing from a basic human perspective.

Gale demands you give him magic items to eat upfront.

Astarion demands you let him talk to Raphael upfront. (He also demands you let him drink your blood. He will demand that you never force him to drink blood again if you pusuade him to drink Araj Oblodra's blood Heck, upon first meeting him he demands you answer his questions with a knife to your throat...)

Wyll tells you to not confront Mizora (He won't leave if you do. Which is why he's a boring character, he has no spine to actually do anything most of the time)

Karlach will tell you upfront not to attack the grove.

Meanwhile, Shadowheart only tells you to let her do the Shar trials... Which you can completely ignore and she doesn't care one whit.

Lae'zel has a few moments of telling you to act a certain way, like going to the creche, being respectful to Vlaakith and saving Orpheus... But this is on brand for an indoctrinated Gith.

You're really jumping through hoops trying to portray Shadowheart and Lae'zel as far worse than they actually are, due to you attributing to them actions of completely different people that you know/knew in real life for some inexplicable reason.

Or rather now you're apparently just hating on the VA's for Shadowheart and Lae'zel while glazing the fan VA's for modded female genderswaps...

Hold on, now we've gone from "there must be more true friend companions" to who fits in the "waifu" category or not? In that case, there are many many harem games with fantasy settings out there where the writing might be more to your liking.

And we've gone from wanting true friend companions in the game, which should revolve around character backgrounds and personalities, to it mostly coming down to how they talk?

Taril already covered most of the situations where Lae'zel and Shadowheart definitely aren't unique in demanding things, and especially in act 1 depending on choices you will absolutely have companions leave you like Wyll, Karlach, and likely Gale too. Shadowheart, Astarion and Lae'zel are the most amenable in that respect in that they go along with both saving the grove and destroying it. Astarion will be bored if you save it, but that's about it. Wyll and Karlach will just leave if you destroy the grove and Gale needs persuading to stay.

I've listened to some of the voice-swapped samples of the mod you linked and while parts of the changed voice samples do sound good, personally it just feels icky for me to use AI to modify original VA work to make it fit a different gender. Feels like that's a scenario where you'd need original VA permission to alter their work, even when it comes to free mods. Beyond that though, simply changing appearance and voice doesn't make them a different character. They're still the same personalities and (almost) all of them are guilty of many of the same behaviors you're so aggrieved by when it comes to Shadowheart and Lae'zel.

You have a very wrong understanding of what "waifu" means. A waifu is a woman who loves you unconditionally - just for who you are. She can be any type of woman, not just a caricatured loli with boobs the size of a bus. Karlach for example is a classic waifu. Characters like this are in high demand in fictional literature. Why do you think the author of Fifty Shades of Grey became a multimillionaire? Because Christian Grey is a typical waifu.
And most gamers expect exactly waifus in games - not Shadowfarts. You know how badly I'm holding myself back from writing what I think about the "How am I holding up in your estimations?" line, what it means, and what kind of people are into such crap?

So yes, Larian quite badly failed to deliver male and female waifus in the game. If I didn't have 150 hours in BG3, I would've instantly refunded it after Lae'zel regretted not killing me in camp while I had 100 approval with her and the sunset scene at the docks.


I can't stand either Lae'zel or Shadowfart. Karlach makes my heart bleed, and hirelings are freaks with Wither's voice - absolutely out of the question. So how do you suggest I can beat the game on Tactician mode without companions? Yes, turning guys into gals is icky as fck, but that's all my options.