Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback "I loved seeing how you handled that situation, although I wasn't there."

Just a thing about companions. And my apologies in advance if there's a whole thread about this elsewhere.

Wyll was at camp the whole time in my playthrough, because the character limit couldn't afford a slot for him. Yet when I went to camp to rest, he was eager to talk about how we handled the goblins, despite the fact he didn't participate. You could say the same about companions approving/disapproving your actions, although they're not in the party.

Yes, we'll miss out on some companion story arcs if they only progress when you spend time with the characters, and some contents would seem wasted, but wouldn't that inspire people to replay the game, to discover the other story arcs?
Larian loves eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too gameplay, we know this from D:OS, but I think it would be nice if making choices also made you miss out on things.

It makes a bit more sense than in certain other games, the tadpoles probably allow for everyone to spy on each other. A reason I can see for them to keep this current system is that by removing it, people would switch out companions to take only those who would approve of whatever they are about to do and not allow it to develop naturally. Making choices should absolutely make you miss out on things, how it is now you may piss off someone enough to leave the party if their approval is too low. Can't please everyone, replaying would allow you to make different decisions and cause different companions to leave the next time.

That makes sense. It only felt a bit artificial, reminding me that conversations are prerecorded lines and not a spontaneous communication between living beings.

Those tadpoles are gossipy hens and staying at camp gets boring. Of course they were tuning in

It does stretch credibility a tad. It makes sense the party would share tales of their exploits but the concept that every detail would be known to companions not there at the time seems a bit flawed if the only possible suggestion is the tadpole, which in itself as a story arc has plot holes and flaws at present. The companions might be ‘connected’ by the tadpoles but we certainly can’t see into every facet of eachother’s minds.

I’d like to see more consequences to your decision making rather than the have your cake and eat it too mechanics. If a companion can’t be present during a certain incident, then let it be. You can try them in another run through another time...that is half the appeal of these types of games: replayability.

There is of course a rather simple and much requested remedy for this situation: make a party of 6 possible.

In my first run, I finished off the goblins before I even met Astarion, but at the party he was talking as though he was there. There's a lot of meta-misalignment around how your camp works and what your companions are doing that needs to be resolved.

It does, though it's been a problem with every RPG, since they allowed us to essencially keep everyone - stuff like "I have been observing you for some time!" from a guy I added to my party for the first time since recruiting him.

As mentioned tadpole could be used to explain how others know of your actions, but it still makes it awkward when they say it, as if they have seen it with their own eyes. Ideally, I think it would be nice if the game recognised if they were or weren't present and played a different line "I heard what you did!".

I'd actually like it if they started to emphasize that they are knowing cause of the tadpole and that it is kinda weird for everyone involved.

It's more or less Act 1, they said that the party could be set after Act 1, so no one would be waiting at the camp while you're traveling once you get past a certain point.

Err, tbh I don't like that. It is something I didlike in another Larian game and with BG as a series, you are usually able to recruit various people and mess around with party composition for the entire game. So if it ends up that everyone else dies because you don't select them, I will be really unhappy with that.

That's because Larian has everything on triggers. And they don't differentiate currently, so yeah...

This could be explained by the tadpole uplink conceit, or even more sensibly, we could just assume that everyone at camp is basically the B team in the rear, always arriving late but essentially participating in every encounter and every major story beat. That idea might be strengthened if we could summon and dismiss all our companions from a simple menu without going to the camp, or having everyone in the major cutscenes, like Swtor style. The way they have created the camp, is basically like the ship in Kotor games. It doesn't have a helm, but I suppose someone could pull out a map, and point and it'd work the same way. Then you'd really have to decide who you're taking on board though, since the whole game isn't split up into factions, and presumably the camp would get too large to feel like much of a party anymore if its just all in all the time.