Player Character Needs More Depth - 26/10/20 09:30 AM
Hello all. So far I am enjoying EA, and I am mostly happy with the gameplay. I haven't noticed any game breaking glitches or bugs for the most part, learning the combat system is fairly easy, and there are a lot of options to make battles interesting.
However, I do not feel like my character isn't represented as well as it should be. From the options I am given to create the backstory, to the actual visual customization, to how I am able to acquire the gear I'd like to build my character, to the choices I am provided to interact with the world, I feel like I am given extremely limited options, and it feels less like I am playing as my ideal character, and more like I am piloting a shell of a pre-made character provided by the game itself.
The core of playing DnD is about the PC's, your ability to tailor a character to become an extension of your ideal fantasy/adventuring avatar. It is about immersing yourself in a rich fantasy world, and interacting with it in a very personalized way, your way. Minus the social component of roleplaying with others, half the fun of DnD in my opinion is the act of building the characters, both at creation and throughout the course of the adventure. But I feel like much of that is missing, so far in BG3. So I'll break down what I mean exactly by this, as well as provide some suggestions to make things more interesting.
1. More options at Character Creation:
- There is a really dismal amount of voices, faces, and hairstyles for the characters in the game. I have made several characters already, and having only 2 voice options for male or females is fairly lacking. Faces are a little better, but I feel it could be expanded. You see and hear these features a lot over the course of the game, and because there are a lot of different races and classes to use, the game has a lot of replay value, so it would make sense to make the replay less boring than it has to be. I also think having every speaking character with the same cliche british accent was a creative mistake, but that's more a personal observation. As for the hair, it is the same stuff you see in every fantasy type game. But this is DnD, we should see all kinds of hair and styles from all over the world and popular culture, not just typical medieval european hair and the token 3 african hairstyles.
- Same thing as above, except with body types. In DnD, Humans, Half-Elves, Elves, and Drow do not have the same exact body type as each other. I won't go into it all but you can see this in any Players Handbook. It is extremely off putting to make a drow character, and his musculature, facial structure, height and weight are all identical to the human. There are no options to make characters thinner or thicker, muscular or wiry. And everybody is conveniently the same height! Must be so we can all share armor XD.
- More origin options would be nice. I assume this is a 5e thing(I haven't played 5e) and so you have proficiency tied to certain origin stories, but there ought to be more options. I would also add a "Mystery" origin or something like that which grants no proficiency, for people that want to make a flawed or more difficult to use character. Let's add some more flavor to this, not just some basic story background. How about one where you were a high level adventurer who died, and was mysteriously resurrected without any memory of who you were. This could give you the option to choose one of your choice. Things like this, add a more "fantastic" element to your characters story.
2. More in-game Character Building Options:
- Finding gear that you want to use in this game is a real problem so far I've found. The type of gear your character uses is just as personal to the character, as the origin, class, race, and how they look. I played for 15 hours on the my first character (exploring everything) to discover barely any merchants in the game, and the options they offer extremely limited. There needs to be a basic gear vendor in one of the major settlements in Act 1. No need to be fancy here with loads of magic items or OP utility items. But being able to find exactly the basic gear setup near the beginning or in one of the early settlements would be so much more satisfying than praying to Tymora, or hoping one of the merchants has something you're looking for. Sure, balance it, and you don't need to add every single weapon and armor type, but it needs to be much better. Some people I'm sure are happy with the "start with less than nothing" adventure playstyle of course, but I'm equally sure that those people will be just as happy completely ignoring a well-stocked merchant to continue playing their RNG campaign. In other words, more options are better than less. And the people that want less can choose to take less. But I'm not given the choice to take more.
- Speaking of Armor and weapons, some extra customization here would be nice when it comes to colors. Rather than giving us a slightly different handful of shades between regular and +1 gears, how about the option to dye our gear whatever color we want? This way we can proudly display the colors of our gods, or color coordinate in multiplayer, or just do something to break the monotony of seeing the exact same thing for hours and hours. I would also ask for the ability to change the basic look of stuff with some kind of crafting interface, but maybe I'm being too greedy there.
- More nuanced dialogue options. So far I have seen the options based on your class, race, and main story element. And that is great, and an excellent thing to be able to utilize. This isn't really a suggestion, more so a "keep up the good work" and I hope more options will become available as the game progresses. Options based on your religion, previous choices you've made or things you've learned in the game, or your origin would be great to see as well.
3. Improved Immersion:
- Without revealing too much, one thing that kind of bugs me in this game, and can flat out ruin immersion is seeing the various monster races all fluently speaking the common tongue at every opportunity for like no reason. Yea once in a while some character or another will say something in another language, but its like one word or a brief sentence. Look, I know its a pain to write a fake language for NPC's to talk in, but plenty of other games are doing this these days and DnD (Not to mention a series with the pedigree that Baldurs Gate has) should not only be as thorough as other RPG games, but should be setting the standard for RPG's as a whole. It would be cool if your character only knew a few languages, and if you could understand what this random monster is saying to you, then you might be able to have an interaction with it. And if it just sounds like gibberish well....thats what the random 'Attack' option at the end of all the dialogue choices is for! XD But seriously, it adds flavor, and makes the game more enjoyable and gives you more reasons for extra playthroughs.
- Player character quests. Now I see the mysterious option at creation to make a character that you are "attracted to." And that seems cool, and I'm interested to see where that leads to. But lets take it a step further, and similar to choosing an origin, you can choose a kind of "character goal" for each character you roll up. This would be akin to sitting down with your DM and discussing the goals and endgame for your character in a campaign. Maybe you are pursuing a powerful magic artifact, or want to take vengeance on a creature that murdered someone close to you, or want to go on a religious quest for your god. Obviously there would be a limit and the quests wouldn't exactly be wide open, but it gives you a unique quest for your character, similar to what your companions get but for you exclusively.
- And lastly, tying into the last point a bit. More religious paths for your PC. Now I can tell from what I have experienced in the game so far there is going to be some angle with the gods. And that's a good thing since anything religion related is very important in the forgotten realms. But I also expect whats in the game already to be more to do with the main narrative you're telling and less to do with your character specifically. It would be nice if every character could choose a patron deity, instead of just the cleric, and for there to be options available to you to perform tasks for said deity, provide dialogue and narrative options for you during the course of play, or even grant you exclusive magic items or other in-game rewards related to your chosen religion. Like armor or tabbards with your deities symbol on it.
All in all, I feel like this is a good game all around, and I realize it is EA and there is much, much more to come. But, as with anything there can be just a little more. And I feel like even small additions to add more personalization to your character can go a long way to making BG3 a very memorable game for each player for years to come.
However, I do not feel like my character isn't represented as well as it should be. From the options I am given to create the backstory, to the actual visual customization, to how I am able to acquire the gear I'd like to build my character, to the choices I am provided to interact with the world, I feel like I am given extremely limited options, and it feels less like I am playing as my ideal character, and more like I am piloting a shell of a pre-made character provided by the game itself.
The core of playing DnD is about the PC's, your ability to tailor a character to become an extension of your ideal fantasy/adventuring avatar. It is about immersing yourself in a rich fantasy world, and interacting with it in a very personalized way, your way. Minus the social component of roleplaying with others, half the fun of DnD in my opinion is the act of building the characters, both at creation and throughout the course of the adventure. But I feel like much of that is missing, so far in BG3. So I'll break down what I mean exactly by this, as well as provide some suggestions to make things more interesting.
1. More options at Character Creation:
- There is a really dismal amount of voices, faces, and hairstyles for the characters in the game. I have made several characters already, and having only 2 voice options for male or females is fairly lacking. Faces are a little better, but I feel it could be expanded. You see and hear these features a lot over the course of the game, and because there are a lot of different races and classes to use, the game has a lot of replay value, so it would make sense to make the replay less boring than it has to be. I also think having every speaking character with the same cliche british accent was a creative mistake, but that's more a personal observation. As for the hair, it is the same stuff you see in every fantasy type game. But this is DnD, we should see all kinds of hair and styles from all over the world and popular culture, not just typical medieval european hair and the token 3 african hairstyles.
- Same thing as above, except with body types. In DnD, Humans, Half-Elves, Elves, and Drow do not have the same exact body type as each other. I won't go into it all but you can see this in any Players Handbook. It is extremely off putting to make a drow character, and his musculature, facial structure, height and weight are all identical to the human. There are no options to make characters thinner or thicker, muscular or wiry. And everybody is conveniently the same height! Must be so we can all share armor XD.
- More origin options would be nice. I assume this is a 5e thing(I haven't played 5e) and so you have proficiency tied to certain origin stories, but there ought to be more options. I would also add a "Mystery" origin or something like that which grants no proficiency, for people that want to make a flawed or more difficult to use character. Let's add some more flavor to this, not just some basic story background. How about one where you were a high level adventurer who died, and was mysteriously resurrected without any memory of who you were. This could give you the option to choose one of your choice. Things like this, add a more "fantastic" element to your characters story.
2. More in-game Character Building Options:
- Finding gear that you want to use in this game is a real problem so far I've found. The type of gear your character uses is just as personal to the character, as the origin, class, race, and how they look. I played for 15 hours on the my first character (exploring everything) to discover barely any merchants in the game, and the options they offer extremely limited. There needs to be a basic gear vendor in one of the major settlements in Act 1. No need to be fancy here with loads of magic items or OP utility items. But being able to find exactly the basic gear setup near the beginning or in one of the early settlements would be so much more satisfying than praying to Tymora, or hoping one of the merchants has something you're looking for. Sure, balance it, and you don't need to add every single weapon and armor type, but it needs to be much better. Some people I'm sure are happy with the "start with less than nothing" adventure playstyle of course, but I'm equally sure that those people will be just as happy completely ignoring a well-stocked merchant to continue playing their RNG campaign. In other words, more options are better than less. And the people that want less can choose to take less. But I'm not given the choice to take more.
- Speaking of Armor and weapons, some extra customization here would be nice when it comes to colors. Rather than giving us a slightly different handful of shades between regular and +1 gears, how about the option to dye our gear whatever color we want? This way we can proudly display the colors of our gods, or color coordinate in multiplayer, or just do something to break the monotony of seeing the exact same thing for hours and hours. I would also ask for the ability to change the basic look of stuff with some kind of crafting interface, but maybe I'm being too greedy there.
- More nuanced dialogue options. So far I have seen the options based on your class, race, and main story element. And that is great, and an excellent thing to be able to utilize. This isn't really a suggestion, more so a "keep up the good work" and I hope more options will become available as the game progresses. Options based on your religion, previous choices you've made or things you've learned in the game, or your origin would be great to see as well.
3. Improved Immersion:
- Without revealing too much, one thing that kind of bugs me in this game, and can flat out ruin immersion is seeing the various monster races all fluently speaking the common tongue at every opportunity for like no reason. Yea once in a while some character or another will say something in another language, but its like one word or a brief sentence. Look, I know its a pain to write a fake language for NPC's to talk in, but plenty of other games are doing this these days and DnD (Not to mention a series with the pedigree that Baldurs Gate has) should not only be as thorough as other RPG games, but should be setting the standard for RPG's as a whole. It would be cool if your character only knew a few languages, and if you could understand what this random monster is saying to you, then you might be able to have an interaction with it. And if it just sounds like gibberish well....thats what the random 'Attack' option at the end of all the dialogue choices is for! XD But seriously, it adds flavor, and makes the game more enjoyable and gives you more reasons for extra playthroughs.
- Player character quests. Now I see the mysterious option at creation to make a character that you are "attracted to." And that seems cool, and I'm interested to see where that leads to. But lets take it a step further, and similar to choosing an origin, you can choose a kind of "character goal" for each character you roll up. This would be akin to sitting down with your DM and discussing the goals and endgame for your character in a campaign. Maybe you are pursuing a powerful magic artifact, or want to take vengeance on a creature that murdered someone close to you, or want to go on a religious quest for your god. Obviously there would be a limit and the quests wouldn't exactly be wide open, but it gives you a unique quest for your character, similar to what your companions get but for you exclusively.
- And lastly, tying into the last point a bit. More religious paths for your PC. Now I can tell from what I have experienced in the game so far there is going to be some angle with the gods. And that's a good thing since anything religion related is very important in the forgotten realms. But I also expect whats in the game already to be more to do with the main narrative you're telling and less to do with your character specifically. It would be nice if every character could choose a patron deity, instead of just the cleric, and for there to be options available to you to perform tasks for said deity, provide dialogue and narrative options for you during the course of play, or even grant you exclusive magic items or other in-game rewards related to your chosen religion. Like armor or tabbards with your deities symbol on it.
All in all, I feel like this is a good game all around, and I realize it is EA and there is much, much more to come. But, as with anything there can be just a little more. And I feel like even small additions to add more personalization to your character can go a long way to making BG3 a very memorable game for each player for years to come.