Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Companion Silhouettes

Companions/Origin Stories in BG3

One of the things BG1/BG2 did best was companions. So much so that they still stand out today compared to nearly all RPG companions from the games that came after. One of the reasons for this was the uniqueness of the characters. They were all larger than life and highly interesting. (Personality & Visual Design)

Currently, Lae'zel is unique/interesting because she's a githyanki. Astarion is also interesting and larger than life (regardless of whether you like the character or not).

To me, that's it. Shadowheart is very generic. If someone did fan art of her, you'd have no idea who she was. Just another fantasy elf. Gale is similar. A very generic character. If you think in terms of comic books, one of the reasons those characters stand the test of time is because their visual design highly stands out, and the personalities are over the top (BG2 understood this). If we have to play for an hour or two to "find out" why Shadowheart is interesting, then the game has failed to make her interesting. It should be instantly apparent why she is enticing to have as part of your story. We should know immediately why Gale is cool. No one wants to play for hours with a boring character to discover if they aren't boring. Why would I go see a movie to "find out" if the characters are interesting? The trailer needs to hook us on the characters or we never go see the film.

Wyll - We've seen so little of this character that I'll reserve judgment, but so far he looks/feels almost interchangeable with Gale. They just have different skin colors. In the right light, they look like the same character, which is a MAJOR fail (just look at the banner at the top of the page). Each one should be so distinct that there's no mixing them up.

As a follow-up, in BG1/BG2 they only had a portrait and one or two lines of dialogue to immediately convey who/what the character was. They were just these muddy little sprites, so the character design had to be very strong. If Larian thought in these terms, they could enhance their companion characters for BG3. A quick visual and a single sound bite should hook us on who these characters are. If you can't do that, the characters aren't strong enough.

There were certainly some strong companions in BG2, but I don't think that applies to all (or even most) of them.

I don't mind characters revealing themselves as time goes on. As it is, none of them look interesting to me. However, in recent demo they all seemed to have things to say, reacted to things in beliavable way, and responded to PC conversation choices in organic manner. I have hope

BG2 had a lot of companions. They couldn't all be winners. But if we only have 5? They should all be unquestionably amazing. Even if we get 2 or 3 more, they should all be winners. We should be struggling to decide who to bring because they are all great. Not struggling to decide because we're indifferent.

I agree with you that the conversations/responses were fine. Obviously that stuff isn't going to change. I'm talking about basic design decisions, which very much can still change. Opening dialogue, character introduction, and visual design. It's okay to reveal character story over time. It's not okay to reveal if the character is boring/interesting over time. That should be immediate.

Whilst I did like a lot of the BG characters, often I made choices based on party composition. They’re stories weren’t that great that I struggled to kick my adopted sister to the curb when a more useful character turned up.

If I don’t have need for a mage (because I’m one for example), then it doesn’t matter if you appear in a plume or smoke and offer me flowers and a tale of woe, the cleric stays no matter how boring her intro because I need the healing.

If it turns out later she was hiding some great story lines that she was only willing to share at a later date then that’s a bonus.

Don’t get me wrong, companions should definitely be interesting and offer interesting replayability options depending on composition and choice but I don’t need all of them to have some instant hook, but I guess I’m not going to mind if they did.

This actually emphasizes my point even more. While we would love to take the most interesting companions, gameplay will dictate otherwise. The companions should be strong enough characters that we will be excited when that happens instead of indifferent. Gale in particular is so bland and generic that I legitimately wonder why they even bothered. He looks like random citizen #3 holding a staff. If he was a merchant in Baldur's Gate, no one would bat an eye.

If a character claims to want to be the most powerful wizard in Faerun... well that tells me he's a bit eccentric, or at least he should be. Nothing about his dialogue, personality, or design has shown that. Visually this guy should scream "wizard". Compare the iconic design of Elminster to Gale. Think of how interesting the Syous / D'raven characters looked in Shadows over Mystara. Even the whacked out DM from the old D&D cartoon has a stronger look.

But what if it's not his character? There are only that many Gandalf wanna-be one can digest before throwing up.

And while using stereotypes can be a useful shortcut, with how oversaturated fantasy is, I don't think that is particularly interesting way of doing it anymore.

And as you bring Elminster - I don't think you mind generic designs - he is as generic as it gets. It's just that companions from BG3 might not seem like your type of generic.

You may not like Elminster's design, and he may have old-school wizard aesthetics, but he is not "generic". If you see a pic of Elminster, you know instantly who it is. We don't mix him up with Gandalf. We don't think it's just some random wizard. They don't have to label the picture as "Elminster" so we aren't confused. It's immediately recognizable because he has strong design, even if that design is dated.

The Battle Chasers comic is an example of having many different wizards, all looked dramatically different, and each had unique design. Some looked like nobles, one was a strange, green-headed halfling, and Gnolan was more traditional wizard, but even his design was unique. You could pour through mountains of D&D art references for different ways to make wizards look unique and still look like wizards (and nothing like Gandalf).

Gale could be any random merchant selling shoes. He looks like no one. Why have concept artists? This character could have been auto-generated.

I won't, because I've never seen him.

In fact, all of them could have been autogenerated. Except Lae'zel, but in this case it feels like the 3D artists had trouble translating the concept art into a decent 3D model - or higher ups intervened and messed it all up. There is plenty of concept art around, they can look decent. In this case it looks like they took a basic female head, shrank the nose with proportional editing and enlarged the lips, done. The result looks ridiculous. No nose (or a real gith nose) with a smaller mouth would look way better.

I agree with you...
As I said in another topic, I think this is a problem due to the concept of origin characters.

They need many many ressources => Impossible to have lots of them => we had to be able to choose which role they'll play (classes/alignement/...) => they have to be designed to suits with nearly everything => their design/backgrounds/personnalities need to be limited to "random/usual" things.

I think their class is fixed? Even if you pick them as an origins character.

Not sure about it but it's not how it works in DoS2.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Just to be contrary, I actually liked the fact that Gale and Shadowheart look to be "normal" people caught up in the tide of the story. Not that a Cleric of Shar and a Wizard are necessarily that normal, even in the FR. The fact that the characters don't look or sound outrageous actually endears them to me, and these characters are more likely to be in my initial party than a Gith or a Warlock, while Astarion has no chance of being allowed anywhere near my camp.

Which just shows how difficult it is to satisfy everyone's fantasy.

On shadowheart: what baldurs gate companion LOOKED fancy? Portraits wise they all pretty much lookd like people. Besides obvious ones that you get later in the game....

Yes, in BG1/2 the companions were, by and large, "normal" looking, which was fine with me. The OP seems to be disappointed that the BG3 chracters are not in-your-face cinematic icons, with obvious, compelling characters; I don't have that need, though I wouldn't care if they were like that.

I don't know, to me he looked like every Gandalf look-a-like. That said I don't know Elminster outside BG1&2, but the only thing which stuck in my mind that he is essencially Gandalf knock-off.

Which leads me: you recognise Elminster design because you know who he is. BG companions were generic. You can even pick their portraits and their portraits will change! But you remember and recognise them because you got to know and like them as characters. Outside Haer'Dalis I don't think a single companion in BG stood out to me on look alone. I agree that they could look more "cool" but that's not what makes a good companion.

Misc is a great example. He is a ranger, but he doesn't look like a typical middle aged man with a beard and shoulder length hair wearing a hood. That would be boring, so they came up with something far more iconic. His look has stood the test of time.

Since we're talking wizards, let's discuss the 3 most common wizards used in BG1. Dynaheir, Edwin, and Xan. Dynaheir has all the layers of jewelry, the over the top pose, and the thick accent. It's very apparent that she's not just some lady. Edwin has the gauntlets with the orbs on the backs of his hands, the sharpened fingernails, the stern look, and the starkly red cloak. Never for a second do you think this guy is there to sell you shoes. Xan was always one of my favorites, even if he is annoying. A chronically depressed elven noble wielding a moon blade that would make Eeyore squirm with jealousy. And an enchanter, which made him less useful but more cool. These are memorable characters that took all of 10 seconds to figure out what they were about.

Solas from Dragon Age is a perfect example of what we're talking about. He's one of the most popular characters in the DA series, if not THE most popular.

When concept artists first designed him, Solas was interesting. He was bald, and had several small imperfections that highlighted his character. Over time, through refinement, the character slowly changed and became more generic. He got hair, he was cleaned up, he got more handsome. By the end of that process, he was boring looking, and some of this art made it's way online. Near the end of development, Bioware took another look at Solas and said to themselves, "Why isn't this character working anymore?"

They went back to the drawing board and made him "uglier" as he was originally designed. The end result was a very compelling character. And he is NOT ugly. These things are subtle and the reason why you need good concept artists. It's the little details that make these things work.

Maybe what you could suggest is that you can change your companions looks to better fit your tastes like you can do in DoS2. That would better fit your demands because making companions that are liked by everybody is a pipe dream. I think you are just talking about your personal preferences.

"I want to be able to initiate a dialogue with my companions" or " I want that particular XYZ rule or spell to fit the 5e ruleset" would be fair suggestions but something in the way of "I want the companions to fit the way I portrait a mage and also I want them to look and behave in a way that I like" seems a little silly to me, no offence. Because if you ask 1000 people you will have 1000 different answers and I do not think Larian (or any other game developer) has the budget or resources (or the will) to do so.



I think your companion classes are fixed. When the Character creation UI is showed in the first gameplay, Sven could change the class in his custom character, but when he changes to an origin character like Shadowheart or Astarion that option disappears.
That´s ok in my book. That way you can fine-tune his story and background.