I have seen some discourse concerning the potential of the party being locked after Act 1, that every other companion will be locked out of the game and you have to commit to your party...

Dont

Simply that

Dont

It is not as clever as you think it is Larian, it is not as "true to life" as you would want it to be

The party you have set up in this game has a very good reason to be unified in their goals and actions (the removal of the tadpole), going there seperate ways makes no sense because the only other people any of our characters can trust is each other. As for everyone dying, you already dug the hole for why that cant work by having Talking Skelly Boy be a way to bring everyone back.

I hear Yall did this in Divinity Original Sin 2... all the more reason to not do it again. If you just repeat your old tricks, you are going to become a one-trick pony.

And the biggest problem of all? We who have been watching closely know that Minsc & Boo have been datamined as companions. When you are dealing with iconic characters like that, they become a "companion tax" meaning... they pretty much take up one character slot in your companion party composition.

Also it doesnt mesh at all with the multiplayer in this game.

Also different party comps would be used for different situations (Stealthy characters on stealth missions, muscle on muscle missions, intellectuals on intellectual missions)

Also... lets say im playing A Wizard, I am rarely going to bring Gale along with me because of party comp... right? But he is going to be a really good friend of mine, because both of the characters mesh and have a lot to talk about. If party composition didnt matter, I would bring along Gale every time... but it does.

Locking out party members after act 1 worked in divinity original sin 2... do not do that here, it will not work.

Yeah, I played D:OS2 and they did indeed lock you in. I only played with one companion, didn't like the rest of them much anyway so I didn't really care. I wouldn't be thrilled about it here but I could deal with it to be honest.

You do raise some good points though and I think many will be upset if they did that in this game, and if Minsc is an option he'd pretty much be a character I'd never be able to leave behind either haha! I guess if Larian really wants to, it is possible they could die in such a way they can't be brought back with resurrection, or maybe even be converted to the enemy as rivals. Rivals could be kind of interesting at least though?

If I had to pick a compromise, it would be "the party member with the lowest approval of you becomes a mind flayer, leaves, or dies"

Something like that, I think we could all deal with losing one companion... but not being locked into just three.

And there is a problem with the Minsc task, and given Shadowhearts weird box, and Lae'zels complete integration into the story... it just... they might have a bit of a tax to.

I honestly think it might take far more effort for Larian to write a plausible story with all the possibl permutations of three companions, than it would be for them to just keep all the companions.

for gods sake, they have to account for the fact that Gale has a nuke in his chest that can take out a small continent... if he dies, then a continent dies with him.

The Gale Tax is unavoidable.

Every "good" party would probably have to be Shadowheart, Minsc, and Gale in order for there to be anything resembling a happy ending.

The comments about this decision ranges from "I don't really mind it" to "no way this is stupid as shit".

I honestly don't know what are Larian motives for this decision. While it might have worked for DOS2 because of the competitive nature of the game (the idea that all the main characters are competing each other on a cosmic level) and had the potential to be really great, Larian seriously massed that up. So even if the attempt was a big failure, at least there was a great idea there. Or so I thought.

But it seems like Larian has different motives for this idea of commitment to a party, because they do again for Baldur's Gate. Weather they can find a compelling narrative reason for it remains to be seen, but at least it's clear now that they are doing it because of design philosophy, not because the narrative demands it. And it's very bad news for the story and characters.

It means they are forcing their writers to find ways to make all possible companions unavailable for no good reason other than this vague "commitment" concept.

To be honest this one really pisses me off

Repeating something they did from DO2 is not "design philosophy" its them turning themselves into a one-trick pony. Worst case scenario they felt they did the idea wrong in Do2, and felt the poor response was due to mishandling and are saying to themselves "we will do it right this time"

Instead of coming to the more obvious conclusion "this is a thing most games dont do... for a good reason"

And in this game, a game about a group of disparate people who are from vastly different backgrounds and existences, who under different circumstances would NEVER be friends... having to come together, and learn to work together to solve the same problem and situation they ave all been thrust into... is extremely undermined if the party is broken up for any reason.

Breaking the party up after Act 1, and forcing the player to commit to one party... is not mechanically advisable, it is not narratively advisable, it is not good for the image of there company... it is a bad idea.

I'm more concerned about how locking in one party could be a problem mechanics-wise. To me it just feels like there are too many roles which need filling for four people to handle well. That's tricky enough in EA when you can swap people out in camp, but if you've got just four and that's it, that's a lot of hats to wear, especially since it's not clear how much control you can have over an Origin's background proficiencies. Multi-classing has issues because it slows progress in class advancement.

Well, possibly, but we don't know their full stories yet do we? I do think the way Gale is written currently is a bit of an issue. I'd like the option to not feel forced to deal with him to be good and get a "good" ending, or risk a massive explosion the size of a big city. Shadowheart is not really needed as far as I know, just her artifact. We can get it for ourselves from her corpse if she dies. I fought her for it in the goblin camp when she approached me with it.

As for the rest I'm not so sure they are that important to the main story yet. I hope not as I really think as possible companions they should be written in a way that they at least can die permanently, or leave, without major plot holes at least. In my opinion massive plot armors for all is not the way to go.

Anyway, just speculating. Ideally, I'd prefer to keep them all if I want or let them die if I want. Having just 3 options after Act 1 would be really lame, unless they added non-origin companions after Act 1. Would be cool but doubtful.

Still, their stories are works in progress I guess, so they can do whatever they want with them to fit the narrative they want I suppose. So for now we can only wait and see.

The most support I have seen in favor of party locking is "I would be okay with it" which is a far cry away from an endorsement of the concept.

Being able to recruit non-origin companions after Act 1 is the only way that killing off all but 3 origin companions could work at all. Especially since the current origin companions are some of the more essential D&D classes (rogue for lockpicking, cleric for healing/buffing, wizard for spell versatility).

If we can recruit a non-origin companion for every class after Act 1 (mercenaries don't count), then I'll grudgingly accept Act 1 party locking. But I'm highly doubtful that Larian will add 12 non-origin companions...

The only companion I could even concieve of getting after act 1, would be using Awaken on Scratch? I guess?

It's a dog shit design decision if they decide to implement it.

hell yeah it is!

I did have a concept for a game that companion locking would work on, but it's a very different structure basically:

Act 1 - there's a collection of quests and side-quests available which leads toward building your party... but quests don't really hang around and just wait for you to take them...

So, off quest A, B, C, and D take quest A and leave area to head to do that quest do it then return to hub and now there's quests C-2, E, F, and G to take. By end of Act 1 you're pulled into a longer-scale quest that's basically you and the companions you already recruited (maybe enough to cycle some out for different side-quests) that goes to Act 2 which leads to Act 3.

Then on replay you can choose an option to set it in same time-line as prior games and run a different set of quests dealing with other problems and maybe encountering tale of your older party now and again.

You can argue terminology all day long. The point is that the reason they are doing it has nothing to do with the story they want to tell.

I think it's a shity choice as well. What I tried to add to this discussion is the fact that I still don't understand their reasoning. If they were to give a better explanation other than the "you have to commit" bullshit I might have considered their view, but since they haven't, I'm on your side.


I'm sure you can do it with good writers, the question is why do it? Is it important to the story you wish to tell or is it just something some higher up in the company decided and the writers have to follow in line?

It's a question of the chicken and the egg. If you do it because this is how you envisioned your story it could work and work well. But if you do it only because of some arbitrary bullshit decision and you build your story around it, the chances of the story working are getting very low.

Sorry if I derailed your point a bit with my response, but you have a really good point... honestly, I cannot think of a single reason why they would do this, beyond "its edgy and cool" and they think they are being edgy and contrary, which is NEVER a good reason to make a story telling decision.

(look how that blew up in Game of Thrones face in the long run)

The only thing I can think of is perhaps saving time and resources, but if you think about it for more than a minute you realize it doesn't change anything in the amount of work they have to do.

Because even if they lock us out of some content by removing certain characters from one playthrough, the fact we can choose our three out of all the companions means they have to account for any choice anyway and it's still the same amount of work. So I really have no idea what the hell are they thinking

In my case, the motivation is replayability in a way that the same game produces extremely different story arcs. I'd also have some story arcs available to some backgrounds that wouldn't be available to others.

Basically: I want to tell the story of this particular party.

Vs: I want to tell this particular story with this party.


Both valid and fun options, neither superior. Just different.

In this game.... it doesn't feel like it really adds to the story. I've heard rumors they're aiming at a shocker of some of your potential companions getting turned into mind flayers... but I suspect the shock will be outweighed by the frustration.

I talked about it before when this discussion came up, but what Larian are doing is also a way to increase replay value. A shitty cheap and lame way to do it, but still a way.

Yeah, as I said, I don't see much value in it here. You're not changing the core story really... you're altering some minor side-line issues at best.

Like the concept I had was more based on locking out certain questlines based on choices and some companions appearing in the locked out questlines. Much bigger difference when your Act 1, 2, and 3 on replays deal with entirely different circumstances.

When asked about this at one point, Swen commented that "It's just like real life, you have to choose.", as though it was not real-life feasible to have more than a few friends whom you keep glued to your side at all times, and that even if you try to have more friends than that, you'll invariably lose control of them and they'll leave you, if you don't keep them under your eye.

Someone should probably tell him that that's not, actually, normal or healthy. That it's normal in real life to have an array of friends whom you maintain varying degrees of regular or irregular contact with, but whom are all still your friends and companions who you'll help out and who will help you out in turn, when you need it, even if they aren't hanging out with you ever minute of the day.


Doing this doesn't increase "Replay Value". It creates drudgery, and makes false, unfulfilling replayability that no-one ever actually enjoys. The presumption of replayability is that you have to play a few times to see all the different content lines... but what that actually is saying is that you have to play the same game, multiple times through, and experience what will, in reality, be about 80-90% of the same content, over and over again, just to see that extra 10-20% that's different this time through. That's not fun; it's never fun. Sometimes a game is good enough that players will put up with slogging through it, but it's never a good way to handle things, and it's a terrible way to try to make your game have replay value.

The differing origin stories in Dragon Age: Origins is a decent idea, and well implemented, too bad that immediately after it becomes "now we have the set of quests that everybody gets".

The criminal or cop segment of NWN2 is a good idea but badly implemented (The thieves guild branch's storyline is just....bad...so it comes to a false choice) and then after that segment you're back to "and now the story that everybody experiences".

If you're going to choose, choose on the story not the people.

Okay, you chose to go help the siege, by the time you get back, the rumors of a haunted graveyard have blown up into a zombie uprising.

vs

Okay, you chose to investigate the haunting, by the time you finish that the siege overcame that allied stronghold.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker does this a little bit with time-constraints on some stuff. I just wish it was less time constraints and more "you chose X, so Y is going to be unavailable/different".

Agreed. Please, Larian, do NOT do this. It would be awful.

That was another 'ran out of time and budget' problem - the thieves branch was originally going to give you a completely different base location, to replace Crossroads Keep - If you'd sided with the thieves, you'd have been building up a place called "The Hollows" instead, and both Crossroads and the hollows were meant to be much more expansive and more detailed than it ended up being.

errrrrrrrrrg

I can kinda feel that. The keep in Pillars was probably a bit closer to what they wanted to accomplish, but even that's not the best.

Indeed, its neither true to Real Life, nor true to D&D... where any given party has many allies, even though not all join them in every adventure.

Also Ditto on the replayability thing.

And once this problem will be resolved ...
The only thing that was bringing them all together will be gone.

Why would they stick together afterwards?

Our characters had life before all this, and they all keep mentioning it ...
There are characters they trust, there are depts they have to pay, or collect ...

Gale will demand to pursue means to his healing ...
Astarion will demand to pursue means to kill his master ...
Shadowheart will demand to go to her people ...
Wyll will ( ) demand to pursue Myzora ...
Lae'zel ... i have no idea ... maybe she go investigate theese odd tadpoles, and search for their source, dunno.

But when they all will demand to do their thing first, since they all are on basic level (and they prooved it multiple times in EA allready) selfish a**holes ...
What other choice you have then simply pick one? O_o
Why exactly would any of them wait for others to deal with their business, before its his turn? O_o
And why he, or she should not simply leave and go his own way? I Dunno, to me it makes bzillion times more sence. :-/

It depends on death ...
Talking Skelly Boy cannot bring back Arabela, or Kannon, or anyone ese in fact, except your own group ...

The question here is if Minsc & Boo will be origin companions, or if they join us once our tadpole problem will be resolved, and we will allready be commited ... whatever that means.

How so?
If im corect with my expectation, it works quite fine.

There are no missions (thank gods) ...
And i really hope they will never be there ... since it dont make any sence. -_-

And now lets say that this "commitment" Larian was talking about, is only about determining wich companion will you follow on his quest ...
Maybe you dont even need to take him "with you" all the time (except some major story meetings ... simmilar to Wyll and Goblins) ...

Therefore if you are A Wizard, and you pick Gale ...
You, and your new party of companions (probably either minus "all" other Origin characters, or only those wich story was going different way) will be investigating Gale story, and Gale will (except those important things) wait in your camp for your report.

All I want to say is that the 'replay value' argument is not nearly as good or practical as many think it is. There is a certain point where chasing 'replay value' without a thought will only come at the cost of the first playthrough experience. And if that first playthrough isn't as magical as people thought it'd be, then I doubt locking party content behind a second playthrough is enough for people to replay the game again. Let's be realistic here. Out of all of the most celebrated games that exist today, which ones really emphasized replay value as being the major reason for their success? The only well regarded games that have replay value as a sticking point made it very clear that their game was about said replay value to begin with.

I mean, let's look to the future a bit, and compare DOS2 to another cRPG that's coming out very soon. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which is all in on the replay value. But the replay value is centered around choices that the main character makes that affects their builds and drastically alters events in the game purely based on your character's powers. As opposed to... DOS2's and potentially BG3's replay value being based on your choice of party members after an arbitrary point in the game? It's not hard to see why the latter is so divisive, when it comes off as limiting your options and a choice that only exists because of an arbitrary party headcount limit, rather than being an actual willing choice by your character in regards to the plot itself.

Chasing this kind of plot device again is only going to be to the future detriment of the characters in BG3. It will subtly steer the characters towards developing separately, and the overall party chemistry and the world building will take an indirect hit. This I can already forsee when I've played Pathfinder WotR beta extensively, while witnessing for myself how its large cast of party members developed as a whole and complimented each other, with each party member adding a lot to the overall world building throughout the entire game.

I would now go as far as to say that Act 4 of DOS2 wouldn't have been received so poorly relative to the rest of the game in the end, had Larian not killed off the other party members at the end of Act 1. A lot of the story beats in Act 4 literally relies on the presence of specific party members to have serious impact. Like without the Red Prince, the Lizard Consulate is just an awkward out of place necrofire dreamscape that's just kind of there. Without Loshe, the Doctor is just a super edgy opportunistic demonic villain. Without Beast, the Dwarves are just random turbo racists that happen to possess barrels of Deathfog. If you had all of the party members with you going into Act 4, the act would have been seen as a satisfying revenge tour against everyone that has wronged each of your party members before and throughout the entire game while clearing a path to the final confrontation. But what we instead got were a lot of dangling plot threads that suddenly had to be resolved in quick succession, with little to no emotional payoff depending on your party composition.

adding my voice here against party locking... this would be awful.

Bloodlines, whole Mass Effect series, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout series, both KotORs, Vampyr, whole Dragon Age series (even tho diminishing of your previous choices in Inquisition pissed me off), ...
That would be my list ... what i played ... what i concider to be really huge sucesfull games ... and what i cherish for their replayability.

And exactly how did those games emphasize replayability? By largely having it all revolve around the main character's choices. Instead of indirect means such as having party members permanently taken away from you, not because you had an actual choice in the matter or you had disagreements with any of the party members, but only because you couldn't fit them in your party for a certain part of the game due to an arbitrary headcount limit.

There's a reason DOS2's replayability is generally attributed to the combat system and the way builds work in that game. Larian learned the wrong lesson if they think the game's success has anything to do with limiting your party members early on into the game, judging from how most hardcore cRPG enthusiasts only regard DOS2's story as an excuse plot.

Well, it would be hard in most of them ... since you dont actualy have any party in any except Mass Effect, Dragon Age and KotOR, and as far as i know in most of them noone from you party in those even die (well, maybe except Mass Effect).

I never played DoS, none of them to be honest ... i dint like the look of the game, and therefore i never feel the urge to try. :-/
Therefore i dont know the story behind the kills ... and of course i cannot judge without it.

But there is many deaths in games you cannot prevent ...
I dunno, i gues im getting used to it.

Obviously there's no way of knowing, but it seems pretty unlikely to me that the tadpole problem will be dealt with by the end of act one. Maybe it could be, but then what would the story be? Because the tadpoles and mindflayers and all that have been built up as the main conflict of the game. It's possible that by the end of act one we'll be in a position where we definitely know that ceremorphosis is either not a threat or at least not a short-term threat, but I'm sure they'll still be a major factor within the game and the main thrust of the game story. It would be a really weird choice if the tadpoles and, perhaps more specifically, all the problems that the tadpoles bring with them (this business with the Absolute in particular) would just be settled in a way where the characters can move on without concern.


As I said above, it would be a damn weird story if at the end of act one everyone was in a position to just move on with their lives and not have to worry about the tadpoles and mindflayers and the Absolute again. It's not inherently a *bad* story, in fact that could be an interesting route to go with a game. It just doesn't feel like that's where this game's story is building towards. If you think that's the direction the game is going, I'd love to hear why. Like I said, while I don't think the game is building to that, I do think it would be a genuinely interesting story and depending on execution, I wouldn't automatically hate if BG3 went that route.



I think by missions he just means quests. And this is a point I'm kind of concerned about as well. I don't want to be in a position where I have to choose my long term party based on class composition rather than which characters I actually like. In crpgs I usually take an optimal party when I know I'm going to be facing tough fights, but otherwise I just keep a party full of my favorite characters.


You're basically saying here that "if things go differently than you think they will, then you don't have to worry about what you're worried about." I grant that everyone here is engaging in speculation, but I personally feel that unless you have an argument why a particular line of speculation isn't likely to come to pass, then it's only reasonable and constructive for you to engage with the argument already before you, as opposed to just presenting a completely different scenario that nullifies the first one.

I actually have no issue with party lock (as in for example companions from act 1 are removed from the pool for a set time or permanently) at the end of a specific act if the narrative makes sense.

I would also prefer it if certain characters left the party and re-appeared later, either as friends or enemies, with only a chance of death at the end of act x.

Companions lingering around camp doing sweet FA just to swap in and out makes little story sense (certainly not 3 or 4), even if it can be cool from a game perspective to swap in and out give a particular mission.

It’s another argument for having more than a 4 person party.

So for the kinda replayability I want (where almost the entire storyline is different between playthrough A vs playthrough B... and I mean that extending to the problems you deal with and the enemy you face... almost entire plot line changed out) would require probably a short play-through on each run.

Like assume a 20-30 hour run for one play through rather than 60-100 hours that a lot of CRPGs get to. But have enough plot modules that you could have 100-200 hours worth of story or so and have DLC be further plot lines that can develop or side-quest models and such. Wildermyth is sort of good for this, actually because of all the random story events that you can run across. Though I'd prefer a more choice driven story than an RNG one.

I'm not going to dive right back into Bloodlines immediately after finishing it once because it's really just going to be the same story completely over again.

Replaying 60-100 hours of story that's not going to change too much isn't appealing. I may let it set a while and come back to it some other time when I feel like returning to an old story.

"Oh, I can do Baldur's Gate 3 with different party members"...isn't really going to encourage me to replay it immediately. It's minimally replayable.

A lot of story based games suffer from replay-ability issues because why play the story again? Especially if you got the “best ending”, like Witcher 3 or Disco Elysium? I mean I did play them again because they were good games but Mass Effect2 I didn’t, because it couldn’t get any better/hadn’t missed anything (important).

Each person will differ in which games they replay, but unless the story differs enough, you’ve kinda seen it. There’s no competitive aspect so it will always come down to how much do you want to read that book again vs pick up a new one.

I do think removing characters and their quests/stories is one way of doing this. Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea, but if the matter of Gale or Wyll is never solved in my one play through, maybe I go for another one if origin character’s storylines prove interesting enough.

It doesn’t please everyone because there are always those who want the whole experience in one go, or the fear that creating a game with multiple strands dilutes the main experience.

I didn't like it in DOS2, even though I really enjoyed the game. Spend about 5-10 hours with all the companions just to have some of them die was stupid. I hope they don't pull that BS here. All companions should be able to travel with us, unless they don't like the player character.

Again, it doesn’t have to be black and white death/out of the game.

Maybe they just go their way and you bump into them again later, their stories having taken a particular turn that you didn’t witness or influence. Maybe they rejoin you later and betray you or help you in ways they might not have been able to do had they just stayed.

Killing all those off you don’t take, or taking them all with you without issue are two opposite sides of the spectrum, and until we know better shouldn’t be the only two options taken at face value.

Yes DOS2 did it one way, yea it’s fine to say “aaaargh, not again”, but to say the only option is to have X characters twiddle their thumbs round a camp fire waiting for the mighty Tav to solve all their issues is in my opinion equally dumb.

Here is the thing, the way this game is set up... there is one big reason they cant all go resolve there personal conflicts.

One tiny little reason... wriggling into there brain, eating and replacing there neural tissue.

This is a game about a rag-tag group of people who are thrust together because of there overlapping problem, on a journey to realize they are friends and family.

This is the breakfast club.

And there isnt a part in the breakfast club where 60% of the group is eliminated, and the remaining people (the ones that are in the most similar social click) go on to become heroes of the story.

Because that just isnt done in those kinds of stories, it undermines them.

Maybe you have a heroic sacrifice in these kind of stories (the one you would least expect to sacrifice themselves for you often works well), maybe there can be a betrayal...

This party lock will not work though, picking 3 out of 8 companions will not work.

But here is the thing, you saying "maybe they will rejoin you later" is just wishful thinking... and isnt what they have talked about happening, they have said that you have to commit to certain party members... that means THEY ARE NOT COMING BACK.

Your gues is as good as mine ...
But i would say:
Act 1 - Tadpole ...
Act 2 - Personal quests of Origin characters ...
Act 3 - Final confrontation with big bad wolf.

Well, as far as i know Larian specificly told us in one of interviews, that: "You have no idea so far what plot twist we prepared for you. *evil laugh*"
Also, many theoretizing youtubers are quoting some synopsis, where Larian specificly mentioned Dead Three.
So ... who knows?

Exactly what i would imagine ...
Finish of Act 1: We will be definitely sure that ceremorphosis is no longer a threat ...
Finish of Act 2: We resolve our dedicated companion problem ... and right after, either our Tadpole, or the Absolute him-/her-self will either remind us that our problem actualy was not so resolved as we thinked, or that story of our companions is tied to the Absolute more than we expected ...
And in Act 3: (since there is not much reasons to describe end game ) We will, now totaly sure that Absolute need to be dealt with once and for all ... start our final crusade. :P

Oh you missunderstand me ...
I see that simmilar to all our chances to remove tadpole in EA ... we will be offered a solution, our hopes keep building more an more ... and once we believe that our problem was finaly resolved, it will kick us back in our teeth.
Only this time, i believe that kick will take a little longer to actualy show.

And i hope my answers abowe will satisfy you.

I believe that when Shadowheart told us "we'l be going our separate ways of course" ... when you ask her what will she do after our tadpole will be cured.
That is actualy hint (maybe unintentional) from Larian about what to expect.

Well, since he is not first person who mentioned the word "missions" and usualy people used this word in connection with sending companions that stays in camp to missions, while we will be adventuring around ...
I just felt the urge to express once again, that i cant imagine worse idea.

That is entirely different story ...
Maybe i was not explicit enough, but i believe that there are two possibilities.

Either our companions split to two group, where one will be against the other ... or good, and evil ... not sure ... and we shall pick one to acompany.
Or, wich i concider to be more likely ... game will determine companions with wich we will have "enough reputation" ... we will have to decide one ... and everyone else will go their own way.

And since that point, we unlock non-origin companions, wich would make our group from now on.
What makes me think that is mostly the fact that all Origin companions so far (including Karlach) is created so they can follow the exactly same story, as our custom character ... therefore i believe Larian created Origin stories for each Origin character, and our custom character will be just following them in the same way.

Exactly!!!
Just imagine you decide to Follow Shadowheart in her quest, and by end you once again meet Lae'zel leading group of Gith, who will be on quest to reaquire the weapon?
I say it would be epic. :3

Sadly that is the only pair i can think about.

All of the points here are great, i'm on the "pls don't team" but i think there are ways this might partially work.
First of all, we do not know for sure how long Act 1 will be, will the scuffle at the towers be a beginning of Act 2, or the finale of Act 1 (which i hope for). In either case, i think it would be great, that after the tadpoles are removed, you get to keep the people that have high opinion of you, and the ones that you didn't got along with just go their way (Like, Shadowheart goes on with her quest, Astarion goes to Baldur's Gate and so on). It wouldn't be too OP since every decision comes with someone liking it and someone that do not. So there won't be a possibility to keep all of the people - someone will surely go away. I really hope they won't force us to chose by ourselves at the end of the act/story arc, because it doesn't make sense for DnD. In DOS:2 you could basically just scratch the character's skills and start all over, depending on your needs. In DnD it's not possible, so cutting us off so abruptly wouldn't be nice.

As said earlier in the thread... all of the origin characters are inherently selfish individuals to some degree. This said, once the tadpole issue is "resolved" there is ZERO reason to continue on with them. I don't feel emotional attachment to any of these origin characters after putting in over 300 hours playing this EA. I don't like there personalities, or the quirks, and would just as soon let them all die. The only reason to stay with them is the common thread of the tadpole, and after that, I would be spending my time solo, or picking up a new set of companions. So locking unwanted companions in at the end of ACT one is illogical at best from my perspective. And that action of forcing the player into a narrow combination of companionship would make this game very linear and likely make it less enjoyable to play. I also realize the Developers cannot produce an unlimited number of "add on" characters either. But some other options would be welcome, and a complete change of the guard (companions) at Act 2 might also be welcome to some. I just want more options. Don't throw me in a trench with no way out (figuratively).

I think I made my opinion very clear in other threads. Party Locking would not be good for this game in any way. It would be bad for the plot, how the player feels playing, and for the mechanics.

I would like to chip in and say I am also on the please don't do party locking bandwagon.

I would also like to suggest that IF Larian listens and does this, then I would also like to see two things added: have camp inventory unlocked, so we can cycle through all of the characters' inventories and not just the ones who are in our active party; and add an actual party management feature similar to the one in the original saga. This would resolve not being able to recruit new characters into your party immediately when you're already at 4. It would also consolidate the current two-step process of first talking to the person you want to drop and then talking to the character you want to bring along into the one-step process of simply talking to the character you want to bring along.

Some people just don't get along. Like Lae'zel and Shadowheart.

The party is forced to work together because of the tadpole, if it's gone it's the same as your high school classmates. Once high school is over, did you keep in contact with everyone you chilled in class with? Or only the ones you actually had friendship with?

I hope any party locking won't be as dire as Divinity: Original Sin 2. But having to choose between Shadowheart or Lae'zel is pretty cool.
Astarion and Lar'zel seem the most evil aligned, Shadowheart, Gale, and Wyll all seem neutral.

Right now it's looking like half the party versus the other half (pure speculation). Which isn't too bad considering Karlach is another character. So hopefully it will be group of 3 (A) or group of 3 (B), which is a lot more interesting than what happened in Divinity: Original Sin 2.

Has there been a categoric "Party Locking means no changing/finding new companions post Act1"?

Or is everyone jumping on this because Larian have previous in DOS2 and stated they want you to choose out of the initial companions which ones to go forward with?

Past experience with DOS2 and relative silence on the subject makes it seem like a tangible possibility.

Right now the argument basically revolves around whether the possibility of party locking is either going to be due to a willing player choice, or only ultimately enforced due to an arbitrary party headcount limit in the end. Considering how badly D:OS2 pulled it off so that it was squarely in the latter camp, people are right to fear that the possibility of it happening in BG3 will be along the lines of the latter once more.

I'm still missing the more down to earth companions like Eder, Ajantis, Branwen, Kivan, Keldorn, Jaheira, Valygar, Jan or many others from BG1 and 2.

I don't feel right forming a party where everyone is an alien, vampire, werewolf or has crazy over the top secrets if they are "only human". I want one of these characters so outlandish doesn't become the norm and the normal characters act as anchors to a believable FR setting. BG2 understood this and not everyone was an Avariel.

It also seems like you have a choice between an alien or devil for your party warrior and they're also both female. For such a basic role I would want to have an option for something more ordinary. Wasn't Eder by far the most popular companion in Pillars of Eternity, where you also have godlikes with flaming heads and such.

Good writing is much more important than creative or fantastical characters. If you have too many "special" characters it just becomes a weird menagerie where they compete who's the most creative and undermine the story.

In Community Update 7, Larian said"After the first act you are going to have to commit" combined with how DOS2 worked implies that the companions you don't choose will be killed or otherwise turned into antagonists.

Larian does take the stance that the origin characters are all main characters in their own right. That being said I would appreciate some down-to-earth party members as well.

To be honest, much as I love Shadowheart, I kinda wish they'd decided to make the origin characters options you could play through but which you wouldn't encounter as possible companions. Let them be full on main characters.

I think the locking down the party size to 4 and possibly killing off(or worse) those origin characters that don't make it in the party after act 1, as was done in DOS2, is a bad way to up the replay value by forcing players to choose what companion related narratives they can experience in a single playthrough.

In DOS2 it didn't work as a motivation to replay the game for me, since I never cared that much about the prospective companions I left out(the lizard and the skeleton were both massive toff douches, so no big regrets to abandoning them).

In BG3, I'd be interested in keeping all the companions around, even if they're rather tiresome bunch at times. Still, if the active party size is locked to just 4, then you'll be missing out on much of their storylines even if they're just lurking around at the campsite. Nor do their comments about the gameplay events make that much sense, since they're nowhere to be seen during the events they later comment on as if they were present.

However, I'm not at all sure if BG3 is actually interesting enough to complete twice, since the big narrative branching choice of the first act seems to be a rather humorless choice on whether or not to join a suicide cult or not. This forced choice, between pretty much every conceivable motivation ranging from good to self-serving pragmatism and plain dumb self-harming shambling, is annoyingly familiar: it's like the choice between aligning with the Shadow thieves and Bodhi's organization in BG2, and the choice between opposing or allying with the voidwoken in DOS2.

Ditto.

Party locking is a bad idea. However, I have no problem with the death,etc of the act 1 companions if if fits the storyline and that other non origin characters can be recruited. Not just mercenaries, but fully fleshed out characters….

Party members leaving because of your choices, that is fine... or even because of there choices (heroic sacrifices are cool for example

Having a "dramatic plot twist" where "all your party dies or becomes mind flayers" and you are stuck with three part members... thats not good

Agreed

You can't have 4 main characters together at the same time. It's like a textbook example of a paradox. Maybe that's the mistake here then.

That said, the cast could work IF we got at least two down to earth ordinary hero or anti-hero characters for companions. With great stories and personalities of course, just nothing as extravagant and incredible as we've already seen. Something more relatable.

Gale's story didn't have to be so far out either. His condition could have been caused by anything magic related and it didn't have to involve gods and planes.

Well, it's more that we've been asking clarifications about that statement since the EA started and we never really got one.
So yeah, a lot of people are defaulting to DOS 2 as reference since it matches to T what they are describing here.

Larian Confirmed it in Community Update #7. It's what mrfuju3 quoted.

I appreciate the callout, but for the record Community Update #7 was posted before the launch of EA and we haven't heard anything since from Larian about party locking since then. So it's also as @Tuco said; we're working off of a single paragraph posted prior to EA 10 months ago + our knowledge of how DOS2 worked.

Can someone (politely) explain to me why this is actually a bad thing? Since afaik without knowing any details of "the plot" how is it possible to say that this is good or bad? Surely it depends entirely on a mass of writing which we have not seen and only have vague speculation about? I can see ways in which party locking can work fine, and ways in which it might be jarring, but can't make a judgement until I see how it is implemented. It might be bad and it might be good - so as it stands I only have an opinion that if writers have an idea they should have the strength to commit to it.

1.) I don't want to be required to play the game multiple times to experience all the companions. Especially since, even if I did do 3-4 playthroughs to get all 9-12 companions, I'd still likely miss out on cool interactions between companions that I never had together in the same playthrough. I play rpgs for the story, gameplay, and companion interactions/quests. Locking out the majority of companions each playthrough severely hurts one of those 3 pillars.

2.) D&D is a class based system, and party locking prevents changing up my party to combat different threats. If I don't have SH in the party, then am I just locked out of a cleric companion for the rest of the game? If my party doesn't include the 1-2 companions with thieves' tools proficiency (let alone expertise), then lock-picking is made incredibly more difficult for the rest of the game. Am I supposed to heavily nerf one of my other companions, spending one of my very-limited ASIs/feats to gain said tool proficiency? Hiring mercenaries is a lame solution to this because you can't interact with mercenaries; see point #1.

3.) Finally, Larian's history works against them. The only data point we have is DOS2, where there wasn't a reason for the rest of the companions to be killed off. They just were, because Larian said so. Barring any comment otherwise from Larian, it's reasonable to be worried that they'll do a similar thing for BG3.

My take on it as that people don’t like this approach to replay ability due to locking out content from what might for some/many(?) be a single play through.

I also think it stems from the fact that DoS2 didn’t do it very well. I on the flip side argue that people with clear agendas hanging back in your camp waiting for Tav to get a move on makes little story sense so why shouldn’t they leave?

However I might be naive in the sense that I would like to think these characters play a part in the narrative another way and that other party options might become available to me in later acts. I think many don’t believe Larian will take this approach (or even like that idea, preferring the mass effect 2 style where you just rotate people in and out and experience the whole story as they see fit).

Basically I agree with all three points. Though I'd like to add, that I think it's not just Larian's DOS2 that makes me think party locking will be handled poorly, it's the way how poorly the gaming industry generally handles "meaningful choices" as more like a mere marketing scheme, not as a real feature. Meaning they don't offer real plotline branching and interesting outcomes based on your choices/blunders, and offer therefore just pittance of differing storylines/content to motivate you to play again.

I agree that Gale's story didn't have to play out the way they had it play out. But I would argue that Wyll's story is fairly down to earth. He's a guy who, as a young man, sold his soul in a moment of pain and anger so that he could have the power to prevent tragedies like the one he had just experienced. Now, after using that power to become the hero he wanted to be, he's chaffing at the things his deal requires of him and is looking for a way out. Unless I've missed something, that's not even an oversimplification of his story, it's just his story. And I think that's actually extremely relatable. He made a bad choice for complex reasons both good and bad, and now as he's seeing the full consequences ofhis actions, he's regreting them and trying to find a way out.

Also, maybe I'm missing something here as well, but Lae'zel seems to be a pretty standard example of her people. I'd never heard of the Githyanki before this game and I've never followed the Forgoten Realms lore so please correct me if I'm wrong of course.

That having been said, I still agree that locking the party firmly at only four characters would not be the right choice for the game.

Because the plot is irrelevant.
The idea is bad from a mechanical standpoint as it will severely cripple the amount and variety of characters interaction across a single playthrough (both in general sense and even worse when tied to a game that defaults to a small party of four characters).
Whatever they'll do with the plot will be their attempt to adjust to this mechanical decision, anyway, and not the other way around.

Most post here can be sumarized as "bcs i said so". :-/

Yet not one person has been able to provide any reason as to why its a good idea, beyond "play the game again" and "I wouldnt mind it either way"

I detailed MANY reasons in this thread already, saying "can someone politely explain to me why this is actually a bad thing" is willfully ignoring every point against it that has been brought up, and using Tone Policing as an excuse (dismissing anything you don't want to hear as impolite) to ignore peoples valid and well thought out points.

Similarly I would have difficulty under this criteria explaining why you shouldnt do just about anything, because any amount of response that amounts to "dont" can be inferred as hostile simply because of the nature of telling someone they shouldnt do something.

Roll Locking is bad for like, a bajillion reasons, and the only reasons people give for it being good are "trust in the grand plan" and "replayability" and "I dont mind it either way"

That seems understandable to me. O_o
Since we have no idea what will happen, we cannot know it that what will happen (aka that what we dont know) will be good.

I would say its more like you detailed many reasons for why you would not like it ... but that is pure subjective.
Or to be even more exact ... you provided us few your own constructed scenarios, and then told us why you would not like those scenarios you constructed.

Now, we can hope that Larian read it, and take it under concideration ...
But we all know very well, that if they "simply decide that after this quest everyone but MC will be dead" ... then, no matter how many of us would not like it, and no matter how much we would not like it ... that is what will happen.

I could list a half-dozen reasons why it's BAD to stick a fork into a live electrical socket, and zero reasons why it's good to stick a fork into a live electrical socket. But nobody rational would say that "maybe it's a good idea if you try it because we don't know."

You do realize what the point of Early Access is, yes? It's to make changes now, instead of waiting for the full release. Especially because major balance and story changes are very rare for Larian to do after the full release.

You consistently seem to dismiss most suggestions or requests to change something. Why? How do YOU know that the change will NOT be good? How can you say that the change will be bad for the game? This is why details about problems and possible solutions are better feedback than vague "maybe it'll be good" or "I like it now just because".



Since by that metric, anything anyone wants is subjective, then the same applies to you. Is your position "No one should make any suggestions to the game whatsoever"? A lot of the time, it seems like you're largely here to argue against every idea that someone else has, just for the sake of shutting down everyone else's ideas.



Sure. The DM can absolutely declare "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies" at some point in the campaign for absolutely no reason at all, or just for their own amusement's sake. But if they do, will the players come back to another game run by that DM? Probably not - and in this context, that means not buying future Larian games.

Just because the DM can do something, doesn't mean that doing something is a good idea.

You dont? O_o
In our country, electricity is teached on the most basic scool ... around 11-13th year i believe. O_o

Yes ... im all in in discuising for hours any change of litteraly anything that is in game. O_o
I dont quite see the reason why speculate about why some fan-constructed scenario, that may or may not be in game.

People presented what they created ... and they stated they dont like it ... what more is here to discuss?

You tell me ... im not the one who have that feeling.
From my point of view, YOU consistently seem to dismis any statement i make ... why?

It depends on change.
If we are still talking about THIS topic ... i dont, you dont, nobody except Larian employee do ... that is my point.
And if we are talking about other topic ... first thing we should do is move to that topic. :P

As far as i know, i never did.

Again ... i never did.

Sure it does, i would say there is not much point in stating obvious ... but yeah, you got that one right.

As i stated several times allready, i dont believe that any human on planet is physicaly able to state anything objectively ... every information is processed by our individual brains, and therefore its subjective ... even if only by tiniest of details ... by transmitting that infomation futher, our subjectivity is inprinted, and information is alternet futher by every other transmittion ...
If you want some example from real world ... there is some whispering game, popular between childern ... i believe its called "Chinese whispering", in english ... we call it "silent mail".
We are not robots, to spit out exactly the same information we get on input.

Therefore its only logical that we all state our subjetive opinions ...
And objective opinion is created afterwards, based on them.
Now of course you could object that person who will collecting our subjective opinions will altern them by his own peception ... and you will be right. But as long as that person is developer, i dare to presume that is only logical to presume that his product will be alternet by himself.

On the contrary.
But in this particular case, i dont see much reason to argue about that someone dont like scenario, he created himself.
Even more curious to me is the fact that some people (if you read whole topic, you should be able to find them ... i shall not name anyone) seem to be so angry about that scenario, as if they were convinced that this player-made scenario is actualy officialy confrimmed. O_o

Again, you said that, not me.

Wich, if we use common sence and logic ... seems like something Larian (especialy now, since they are cooperating with WotC, who have quite long history in providing fairly high quality entertainment ... and especialy, ESPECIALY NOW, since this certainly is not first topic on this theme? ) will not do ...

So what exactly is the point of talking about how much we would not like, unless we actualy believe they WILL do that?
That is answer i would really like to hear.

This is where you're going to get a reply along the lines of "I have endorsed plenty of people's ideas o_0, so your statement is just false :)", and other things that essentially boil down to "my opinion is correct and my ideas are superior and if anyone says differently they're definitely wrong" while ignoring the most important points.

EDIT: I was too late so the whole point of my post is kinda moot now. Oh well