Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Dead. Good.

I recently watched a youtuber who played a 'pacifist' run through the game and it got me thinking.

There's this line in the opening room of the game when Tav loots the dead mind flayer. He says, "Dead. Good."

What if Tav doesn't think it's good that the mind flayer is dead? What if Tav doesn't believe any life should be spilled? Or views it as a tragedy, even if it was a necessary tragedy?

Later on with another mind flayer, Tav says, "Death is too good for it."

Then there's the line on the beach. It goes, "I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone." And I started thinking, well, I could see Tav wishing a much worse fate on some folks.

Another example: Laezel says something about how weak and fragile all the tieflings are in a banter moment. Tav responds with something like: "Enough. They're survivors, not soldiers." Laezel responds that she fails to see the difference.

*

Is it me or all these examples of a character personality that might not fit the Tav the player created?

I don't know if this is a reasonable complaint, but it's something I find myself thinking about. Maybe all the comments are 'vanilla' enough that they work fine for most players. Just something I've been meaning to mention.

(Ii think you might still have me blocked.... but oh well!)

Larian as done this all over the place, unfortunately. They forcefully characterise the player character in a number of places, either because they have in their own mind a character for the custom character (Such as the first "dead, good" line - there are many, many characters who would not make such a strong expression, not just more pacifistic ones - it's too strong a reaction for the game to be putting in the mouth of a custom character), or because they need that character to say or act a certain way in order to be a springboard for their origin characters; essentially being the patsy and a line-feeder to help their own origin characters show off their personalities (Such as lae'zel's warrior line). In this latter case in particular, the play character's personality swings around quite a bit, because they are made to mouthpiece whatever line they want the origin character in question to counter - and it's always the origin character countering and negating whatever the player character says, and having the final word, in these cases.

In each case where it's visible, the issue is that the comments are forcefully aligned and invested in one direction or another; if they are going to put dialogue lines in the player character's mouth and have them speak them without our input, they need to be neutral enough that they shouldn't conflict with a majority of personality types a player might be imagining; they currently don't do this.

It absolutely is a reasonable complaint, yes!

The underlying root of it seems to be that Larian are at first brush unfamiliar with, and generally not comfortable working with the idea that players may be interested in having their own personal character, roleplaying it, and having a personality of their own design in mind; when they first started working on the game, this seemed like a completely alien concept to them, and it hasn't improved much. It harks back to their days working on D:OS2 as well, where initially, origin characters were your only options - the ability to play a custom character was added later, by popular demand that Larian didn't seem to understand, but they did it because it was so strongly requested... but what they delivered was an empty sell with no reactivity and no content they they could engage with, and missed out on large swathes of content that was locked behind being an origin character. Coming to work on BG3, we have custom characters from the outset, because I believe it was contractually required of them, and because they knew it would be wanted... but they still don't really seem to "get" why players want to play their own characters, or understand it very well.

...boy you said it

JandK, you might also be interested in some of the other threads that brought this up

Dragon Age Origins - Next Age RPG c. page 3
Dragon Age Origins - Next Age RPG c. page 8
Character Acting, Demeanor, and Personality
Will there be a prologue

by no means all of them, but the only ones I've got handy

Yeah... Can't really say I share this concern for being excessively mean toward brain-devouring monsters, but for what is worth I still stand to every single word I said two years ago in these threads you linked, Sozz.
Especially the part quoted in the opening of this one:

I definitely find this stuff annoying. Facial expressions and the random comments both are rather jarring at times.

I feel like a long time ago there was a mod that allowed people to play as the origin characters. Do you know if they had anything special to say at these points or were they treated like our characters?
I agree with you, but the cynical part of me thinks it also has to do with how many people in the real world act nowadays. People are constantly trying to force unnecessary emotions and opinions into facts to attempt to influence how people think. Perhaps Larian doesn't see anything wrong with doing the same because it seems to be normal behaviour now.

I've said it time and again, but this is all a product of a fundamental difference of opinion on what Larian thinks "role playing" means.

They think it means they make a story, you pick one of their characters, and you play out their interactive novel and do the combat. This is the core of their games, their "origin" characters, etc.

Most of us more traditional role players think role playing means we define a character and plot a path through a more generally plotted world, with flexibility in how we act, who else is or isn't in the story with us, etc.

Resign yourself to the fact this is just how it is, because it's a Larian game.

Actualy blocation of this forum works pretty interesting way ...
It only hides the post from person who you have blocked, but you can still read it and react on it if you wish to, it only takes one click on "show me" button.


I have simmilar feeling ...
Even tho i would go even one step futher and claim that Larian is not exactly full of good and experienced Dungeon Masters ... so this is just another way from them to railroad our custom characters the way they want us to think ... but that is just my speculation.

But im not quite sure if there even is option to create coments "neutral enough" to fit any character ...
In my honest opinion, that is just another argument for completely silent protagonist.

Yes... I find my enjoyment of BG3 differs depending on what character I create - if it aligns with Larian's hard coded responses it is enjoyable, but in other times the game actively goes against the character I created.

You make a good point.

One such issue arises for me as soon as I leave the nursery in the tutorial and notice the dead imps: "Devilkin... am I in the hells?" The comment certainly fits with religious characters like clerics (or paladins once we get them) or someone with knowledge about the planes like wizards, sorcerors or warlocks and maybe bards. But a fighter, barbarian or rogue would be unlikely to come to that conclusion.

What might help in cases like this (aside from keeping the comment as neutral as possible) would be class-specific voice set options. Certainly not an ideal solution either, but as we need more voice sets anyway it may be an option.

I absolutely love some companion interactions... but others feel like mary sue fanfic that's meant to highlight a certain companion to the detriment of the character you've chosen to play; sometimes, Tav comes across as a DID patient à la Split's Connor/Patricia/Hedwig. If I'm not playing X companion, they don't need a witty comeback to everything I say. Always having the last word doesn't make someone cool, it makes them annoying. If I'm not playing Shadowheart, she doesn't need priority interjections everywhere. I'd rather have Speak with Animals active every day and talk to Boo.

Most RPGs suffer from this problem to some extent but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like BG3 to come up with solutions or workarounds. I wrote a whole post about it on steam back at patch 1 and there were plenty of good ideas being thrown around. For example, I remember some people discussing the option of personality types; choosing a personality type at character creation. Going with that idea, a pacifist wouldn't say "Death's too good for it!" but he might tell Lae'zel "They're survivors, not soldiers". Or, it could be linked to the chosen voice (since we know there are 8 recorded voices of which only 4 are available now). A brutal commander/hardened warrior & a shrinking violet/pampered noble would react differently to the same event.

It makes even less sense when you think about there supposed to be an evil path to take, so how's that working?

+1. I would love class-specific barks as well! Companion barks are great, especially Gale’s, but Tav’s are too generic for me.

Voiced PC is basically a huge negative in every single game I've ever played. The best voice for the PC is the one in the player's head that speaks up when they see things and think about them.

The only voice lines I think are accepted are combat noises and spell casting. Beyond that, the only words my character thinks or speaks is up to *me*.

On the contrary ...
Class-specific barks are usualy recipe for disaster. :-/
Especialy with custom character ...

Take Rogue for example ...
Can be anything from Beggar, to Thief, to Mafia Member or even Boss eventualy ... but also simple wanderer, Assassin with his own moral code or noble Blade dancer, who focuses on his speed and cunning rather than strength and endurance ...
Bron from Game of Thrones was great example of Rogue ... and he was a Knight.
How would you create class-specific bark for such character?

Or take Barbarians ...
When you say "Barbarian" first image most people have is primitive, savage, bulky, smelly, half naked dude that have more scars than brain cells ...
And yet, the most well known Barbarian ever, Conan, was a King.

Paladin ...
I shall borrow Warcraft here for example ... not going too deep into story, if you put Silver Hand paladin, Argent Dawn paladin and Scarlet Crusader next to each other ... you have completely different characters ...
Im not too well educated in Faerun factions, but i would bet some overzealous paladin order who would rather exterminate humanity than let it fall into demons hands would be there aswell.

And if you just look at Arcane Traditions for Wizard ...
It should be quite easy to see that people who specialize their study to Evocation, or Abjuration ... will most likely have different mindset than Necromancer.

Definitely agree about voiced pc being a negative, usually end up playing most games with sound off or just environmental sounds on because the voices are so annoying and do not match my character.

I don't really like combat noises and spell casting either though. Never understood why we have to screech spells at the top of our lungs when casting, pretty sure vocalising can be at any volume. Most combat noises I find to be immersion breaking as well, especially for stealthy characters. Non stealthy types I can accept a bit of noise from, although they often end up sounding constipated to me.

Agreed.

My thought is that "Hya!" and "Rrra!" and other such sounds are a far more acceptable use of voice than your character deciding for you what it says or thinks. I dislike when the narrator does that for exactly the same reason. "You see something and it disgusts you." No, it doesn't, my character thinks that's cool, don't tell me what my character thinks. When you choose a voice in character creation, <None> should be an option. Beyond that, your voice should simply determine the tone and demeanor of your character's grunting and such in combat.

As for casting spells, vocal components to spells never really made sense to me except as a means to nerf magic casters by making it possible to prevent spell casting by silencing them. To that end, I imagine the volume of the spell, or the effort spent to vocalize the spell, might translate to the power of the spell. Speaking softly, you might also mumble, or slur your speech, weakening or ruining the spell. If the volume doesn't matter, silencing a caster would have no effect, because they could simply move their lips the right way and succeed in the cast anyway. That's a somatic component, not vocal.

So long as the game says that vocal components are a thing for some spells, it makes sense that you'd want to hear your character say the spell when you cast it. Does that mean it needs to be ridiculously loud and post-processed with weird magical reverb? No.

Yea, there's a lot of this, unfortunately.

Loosely related: Maybe unpopular opinion, but I wish we didn't have these "cinematic" dialogues in part because I'm so tired of seeing my hardened dwarf barbarian constantly making a wide-eyed and slack-jawed village idiot face every time the camera cuts to him.

Mmm.... not a fan of them imposing characteristics to my persona either.