Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Unique Story Elements for Custom Characters

I don't know that Viv or anyone else is 'upset' - just hopeful that custom play isn't a notably watered down experience compared to origins most likely....and it's a valid concern coming out of the tags implementation in DOS2. What Adam stated is hopeful and promising, but generalized still rather than specific as to the actual depth involved.

I too hope that it's so deep in permutation content that it makes us all chuckle in hindsight, but as of right noe, none of us have a way of knowing the true extent involved.

Yes, upset wasn’t the right word. I suppose I meant anxious.

On top of that, it is also important because D&D is meant to be a system that is all about custom characters and creating your own story to share with the other players. I understand that we can't have as much freedom as tabletop, but the essence of it should remain. In other words, the feeling that you have created something unique that impacts the world differently than other things should still exist.

It is exceedingly rare that D&D offers premade characters. It only really happens in starter sets, like 5e's Lost Mines of Phandelver. That is actually a perfect example because LMoP offers premade characters because it's assumed that it will be run for new players who might feel overwhelmed by character creation, which is a great reason to provide the premade character option. But, players who know how to play or are new but want the full experience can still make their own character and feel good about it, because there's no down side.

Agreed with most of what has been said.

I'm waiting to see how good the custom character experience is. DOS2 was great game but not an immersive one -- I was playing someone else's story and not mine. Again, while it was fun to play as the Red Prince I wouldn't ever say that the red lizard was 'my' character like my BG2 characters were mine. And if you played a custom character in DOS2 you lost out on much of the story.

Hope those who play EA make this point loudly and repeatedly. The custom characters experience should be as good or better than the premade character experience.

So long as there are plenty of options that take into account our custom race and class, as well as the world reacting to what we do in the game as those particular races and classes, I'll be happy.

Well said, the both of you. This is where I am too. Playing *your* character is the very essence of D&D. I too don't have any issue with the game providing a few pre-made characters for any who want to use them (though I personally just cannot fathom why anyone would). But if my custom PC's experience is noticeably, meaningfully lesser than the experience one has playing one of the origin characters, that would be (for me) the biggest possible strike against the game. Based on what Larian people have said thus far I would be shocked if this were the case. But at the same time, I am not yet fully convinced/satisfied it is not the case. I'll have to wait and see on this one.

My primary reason for preferring to play a non-Origin PC, is that I'd rather discover who my character is in the course of playing rather than try to determine who they are at the outset. That said, one thing I really liked in DOS3 was that at various points in the game (the beachcomber in Fort Joy, the elf in Fort Joy who asked if my character's tribe had similarly few children, Ifan when trying to determine your Lone Wolf name) asked you some rather revealing questions about yourself. I would be happy for them to do a little more with similar exchanges, e.g. using them to assign additional tags.

My concern with additional content for custom characters is the same as my concern about voiced protagonists. It can be great if the content/voice fit your character, but an irritant if they don't. However, so long as it doesn't feel inappropriate for specific characters and doesn't threaten to take too many resources away from other areas of the game, I'm fine with it, even though I'm also fine if it doesn't materialize.

Did DOS2 really have much less content for non-origin characters? I've never played it as such, but I don't think there are any encounters or significant content locked away behind Origin characters. They add a lot of flavor, their background stories and some lore, but you still encounter all the same characters and big quests.

I'd expect same to be the case with BG3. It's impossible for Larian to read your free form text description of your past adventures, so you get a blank slate. The game will react to your class, race and actions within the game. Those shape your unique story.

Actually yes, there are contents locked away behind origin characters
and on top of that, there is an origin character that related to the world more than any other origin character and that is Fane

So if anyone want to have the full potential of DoS2(story and lore-wise), he/she should not just choose an origin character, he/she should choose THE origin character
and I hope the history does not repeat itself here

Two things if they have it in this game, i would not bother having origin characters:
1- MY custom character has to have the same depth(if not more) as any origin character(this thing has been address a lot here and Adam Smith talked about it too, so hopefully it will become a reality)
2- Not finding all origin characters from the very beginning (we know Shadowheart and Gale will find them from the very beginning, Wyll and Laz'el maybe 2-3 hours in? and Astorian is the only one we do not know where to find him)
But thankfully, there will be more origin characters in the full release, So hopefully they will spread them out(Like finding some in ACT2 and)

Yeah, Sven confirmed they´ll be more origin characters in the "Dropped Frames" interview.


https://youtu.be/S5__muccL1c


He end up saying they´ll be in the good/neutral axis too. Well, in the theoretical axis, because they said in the game they will follow the modern policy of WoTC that "alignment is not a thing", but yeah, He said that they want the players to try "evil" playthroughs in the EA.

What content is that? Sure the dialog is different because you are different person, but what big things do you miss out on? Fane does offer more history and background information, but you get a lot of that with Fane as a companion too, IIRC.



Could you explain a bit what do you mean by depth here? Larian doesn't know your characters history and cannot make any quest ties to their past. How can they add more depth to your character they don't know anything about besides race & class compared to origin characters with fully fleshed out "hardcoded" backgrounds, personality etc.? This isn't just a pro though, because a lot of stuff is hardcoded, you get less chance to coherently roleplay them as you want to, they aren't as fully yours.

I suppose D:OS2 issue was that it wasn't a very reactive game. Players had freedom to do what they wanted but game would rarely acknowledge what we did. That's a main reason I consider D:OS2 a multiplayer game with an optional singleplayer - once you don't have friends to react to what you do, the game becomes far more static and unresponsive.

That's is not a problem unique to custom characters, but if you play as one of the companions at least some characters have a reaction to you and you get some story arc.

Custom vs. origin character might not be an issue, if the game is build to acknowledge and react to our choices, even if origins provide some unique options on top of that. RPGs can work wonderfully without rigid Bioware style story arc, if the game is reactive enough (see classic Tim Cain RPGs).