Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Only 5 companions to choose from?

That's a kind of "glass half empty" observation.

A more fair observation is that Origin characters were "more interesting."


I'm glad that they are doing this. If I was them, I'd focus less on "Origin Characters/Companions" and more on "Origin Classes" and "Origin Races" that have the same depth and story integration of their current origin characters but with more space to feel like you are injecting your custom character into the roles. Even though you may have some history or circumstances that you're somewhat beholden to, at least people would be calling you by *your* name and you'd feel a little less obligated to "do what X would do" etc. In DOS2 you could always do something "out of character" if you were playing an Origin character, but then you were kind of knee-capping one of the benefits of having the origin character to begin with (i.e. a more fleshed out character that heightens the suspension of disbelief because they feel more "real" within the context of the game and story.)



Origin characters do offer developers a depth of integration that your typical custom characters simply won't allow for. My first experience with a multi-player DOS2 play-though had 3 origin characters and 1 custom character. The custom character played a female lizard enchanter. And, honestly, I feel like they missed out on being brought into the story as deeply as the other players because their character *wasn't* as integrated into into it. Cool, interesting and unique things were happening with every else.

However, they could have taken 95% of Red Prince's storyline and applied it to anyone who was going to play a custom lizard character. The same goes for just about any of the origin characters in DOS2 (who were, principally, race based because it uses a fairly classless system.)


We'll see what Larian does going forward, but it does seem like they recognize that they need to make custom characters a lot more interesting.

I very much prefer my custom characters to be blank slates. I would hate it if one of my characters had, for example, the Red Princes’s storyline. This is a D&D game, and a big part for me in playing D&D is coming up with why my character is the way he is. I don’t want to be beholden to an origin story.

Whatever way Larian is planning on more thoroughly integrating custom characters into the story I don’t want it to intrude upon my imagination. There are so many possibilities within races and classes that I don’t want them dictating any of that.

———————— Just going to separate this thought ——————————

Personally I never saw an issue with origin characters having more story. It’s a game that is over 100 hours. Do you really need to squeeze out that extra hour or two from doing 4 character specific quests instead of just 3 (when played with 1 custom protagonist)? And as far as feeling like the protagonist is part of the story and the world: I’m the party leader! It’s all my story. I’m the one making all of the discussions.

From what's described, regardless of whether you use a pre-built character or a custom origin character, your responses will ultimately be personalized - variations of class, race, sex , will all provide certain options in conversations, as will the gestalt of your previous answers along with any special pre-built options from a characters defined background. While you MIGHT be missing those background options - or have fewer than a pre-built character, you will still have a wide variety of options. By let's say the 20th or so conversation tree, you can expect player 1, player 2 and player 3 to have enough variety in their chosen responses that each will have different options - even if playing a custom origin character.

in DOS2 you could customize your origin characters all but tags, i wonder how much customization will be in this game for origins? classes probably are set in stone, starting abilities/spells? appearances?

I suppose the race and class would be fixed at least, because the story of Asterion, Wyll, Shadowheart, etc would have little sense if they´re a Dwarf sorcerer or something like that.

You can see Swen pick his elf cantrip in the Astarion playthrough, so picking your starting spells or abilities is a pretty safe bet. I’m going to guess you can’t change origin character appearances significantly, as unlike DOS2 this game has facial mocap animations. Maybe the ability to change their hair or skin color would be nice. I’d like to give Astarion long straight hair for more of an Elric look.

Will it be possible to have a party of completely custom made characters?

Yes. You can both make characters during your campaign or start off with up to 4 custom characters from the beginning.

Awesome!
Thank you for this info!

I am generally a little bit disappointed about the fact, that we only get like six to seven companions in the whole game. This doesn't even come close to Baldurs Gate 2, and to be honest, NOT EVERY companion in this game needs to have a complex origin story. This feature was really welcoming in DiV2 because DiV1 was an absolute desaster on the companion aspect, but I am not really feeling it for a Baldurs Gate game. Something I definitely would like to see though are specific companions per Act, since I just read that Act 1 is where you will set your origin companions for the rest of the game. Means, that there will be additional non-origin ones (no origins story, but still unique traits and voice sets like in Baldurs Gate 1) in the later acts if you want to mix and match without creating sterile template characters like in Icewind Dale. And if that isn't an option, give us at least the option to create custom voice sets, and maybe portraits, for custom characters, so that we at least can pretend that there is something unique behind them.

Where did you get the idea that there will only be 6 or 7 companions? We already have 5, they will be adding more, but they have never said or implied that they will only add 1 or 2 more. For all we know there will be 12, 1 for each class.

I'm curious to see if anything has changed in the colors. I didn't like the brightly colored comic look in the preview.

My personal estimation when looking back at the older Larian games. I just don't see it happening, having more than 10 origins characters with backstories, as complex as DiV2, in this game (not to mention the huge voice acting costs). I do think that twelve companions are a complete pipe dream.

If it only your estimation you shouldn’t refer to it as a fact. 😂

Larian is a much bigger studio than it used to be (it’s is actually studios plural now), BG3 is a much bigger game than anything they have worked on before and has a much bigger budget. 12 companions doesn’t sound likely to me, but only 6 sounds thoroughly unreasonable too.

We will see, though.

Any game can be desaturated if that’s what you prefer. I tend to desaturate lots of games I play just a smidge.