Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Companions and Approval/Disapproval

In EA, it was common for you to get Approval and Disapproval from companions who weren't even in your active group.
Has it been confirmed/denied somewhere that it will stay that way, or are you only getting these things from active companions now?

I don't remember it seeing mentioned anywhere but I would assume that it will be the same in the final game...word gets around and all that stuff so if you do something a companion would really hate they'll probably still hear of it even if you left them back at camp. But also important to remember you can shift the alignment of party of some, if not all, party members...so you could behave in ways they really hate now but that behavior might open an opportunity to bring them to your way of seeing things later and after that they'll like it when you do those types of actions.

For example Shadowheart who is a Cleric of Shar starts out as a fairly good hearted person and will hate acts of evil but that may open up the ability for you to discuss with her how Shar is all about that stuff and really when she thinks about it, that behavior would make her a better servant of Shar(all actually 100% true as Shar is one of the most evil deities in D&D, her goal is to literally destroy all that exists). And that may be enough to help bring her on a path with a lot more stabbing and more aligned with Shar, her goddess.

I've heard this argument before, and while it makes sense in some cases (it's hard to hide from the rest of the party that you slaughtered a druid sanctuary) it doesn't make sense in others.
It's rather silly to assume that active companions will interpret every sentence you uttered to the rest of the party while they were in camp.

Bloody gossipers, tattle-tellers the lot of them, you know how it is.

But not sure how it will be in the final game...maybe toned down, or maybe not.

Truth be told, I don't want to spoil everyone's story right away, so those I don't actively want in my party will most likely be not recruited/killed/sent on their merry way to begin with.

Well, there are certain moderators among us who have already played something close to the full game and might know the answer...

Sorry, I didn’t notice anything that would be helpful here. In fact, I’m not sure that I actually had any approval events after getting my fourth party member. In my short time with the game I recruited SH, Gale and Lae’zel and had them in my party, then one of the last things I did was recruit Wyll who went to camp, but I didn’t do anything he’d have approved or disapproved of afterwards.

To me it's not about spoilers but sometimes your companions want to talk to you immediately after something happened...and this is obviously not doable if someone is back at camp. So you may be on to something...it might be for the best to only take three companions per playthrough to get the most out of their quests.

Well, on the other hand.. Say if you want to get on Shadowheart's good side, you want to piss off Laezel as much as you can. So, you know, there is that factor, too.

Yes, I noticed that too.
Sometimes, when you do something that your companions really love/hate, they have an exclamation point above their head that allows you to have a short dialogue where you can often gain/lose additional Approval.
I guess that's at least something.

In patch nine, there's not much approval or disapproval from a companion that's not in your party, meaning the ones you left in camp. I believe Gale still shows up a couple of times in the approvals even if he's left back at camp, but other than that, most of that stuff is already cleared up. It used to be different in much earlier patches, of course.

Still, when it happens, I tend to look at it as a tadpole issue, mingling minds. So while the character expressing approval or disapproval isn't actually there, I imagine they're connected enough via the tadpole to have feelings about whatever's going on.

Well, people have already started making memes about this topic

Yeah, I don't remember seeing anything pop-up in patch 9 like that. Big things like grove resolution or how you handle some of the possible 'healing' options to get brought up. But I haven't seen "Gale Approves" type messages if he isn't in the party.

Anything that happens at camp/night is considered to be 'in front of' every companion you have.

This made me chuckle

I can still feel the second hand embarrassment from going through Gale's Weave scene with Shadowheart furiously trying to open that damn artifact in the background

I get such Rubix cube vibes from Sh and her little box.

Wich is really weird, if that is true. :-/

I believe you can make it happen in your initial conversation with Zevlor. And I also believe it still happens (as of patch 9) when you stand in front of Arka's crossbow.

But it's obviously just a lingering issue from earlier patches. Back in the day, like circa patch 4, the companions would weigh in their approval/disapproval everywhere you went, whether they were in camp or not. It was discussed here on the forum a bit, and folks often pointed to the tadpole as the reason why, suggesting that even though they weren't there, they were picking up on what was happening via a tadpole mental link. Which was also how you knew they approved or didn't approve.

Actually, this makes me wonder; could you turn those notifications off? I don't really want to know what goes on in everyone's head, really.