Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Only 5 companions?

In BG2 we had 25 companions, which are playable and recruitable characters throughout the game.

In BG3 we're going to have only 5 (or 6)?

It's been 20 years. Standards have changed. A Lot.

Each new companion is a custom model, a writer, new animations, and a voice actor at minimum. If each companion has their own companion quest, then it is designers, more writers, more animators and more actors, and much, much more time and money. We are just not in an era anymore where you can bang out generic companions in an after new with a junior staff writer and a portrait.

Sad but true: Once you go full voice and performance capture, you have limits... if Larian needed to do that for a Baldur's Gate game? Well, that's a different question. Personally, I wouldn't have minded reading, and reused animations are usually fine if they are subtle enough.

If Larian is going to stick to only five characters, then this is a pretty pathetic degree of variety. We have a chaotic evil rogue, a lawful evil gith, a cleric of an evil deity, a devil-dealing warlock, and a power-thirsty wizard. Not one classic hero (or even an interesting anti-hero...) in the bunch. I'd rather use hirelings than just about any of these assholes.

Please tell me we're getting hirelings.

Still BG is known for having a lot of companions. Sure we dont want 25 of them, but at least say 8 or 9? Why? Well I want to build that good hearted heroic adventure group but I also want to be able to play a group of their evil opposites, of course with a few neutral that fits into both. With just 5-6 characters you are very restricted, you MUST know about the characters in advance to know if you can even get a party that you are hoping for. And you will even more end up running with the same characters. Also this goes hand in hand with that we need to have larger parties, 4 characters is just to little. 5 at minimum but I would prefer 6. Just to give you a flexibility with how you play and with tactics since tactics are important in this game at a whole other level then it was back in BG 1 & 2.

You don't even need performance capture to make it impractical. Look at DOS2, or better yet, Pillars of Eternity which was blatantly going after the Infinity Engine diehards; you still don't get more than a handful of companions, because even things like writing standards have gone up so much in the last few decades that churning out two dozen companions with one defining character trait just is not an option anymore for AA and AAA production.

Don't get me wrong, I played all those same games in the 90s / 00s and loved them, but that's just not where games are anymore, and there's just not much of a market for it. Personally I think it's all for the better, and would MUCH rather have 4-6 fully developed companions then 20+ who I barely care about and a dozen of which I will never even use. /shrug

There are more than 5 companions. 5 companions is only for EA for now.

I played basically every AA and AAA RPG in last two decades, and I really can't agree with that. I mean, sure, there probably is MORE writing per individual character in, say, a Mass Effect Andromeda, then there was for most of the roster in BG2 combined, but quality wise? Nah, sorry, but a "good" character doesn't have to be "overwritten" to be memorable and feel developed... it still mostly comes down to writing skill, as it ever was.

In POE you had 8 companions in basic game and then 3more in the expansion. In POE 2 you had 7 companions and then 6 sidekicks which are not as fleshed out but still there to give you the variety. Also you had 5 party members. And in another recent RPG that is seen as a child of the D&D and BG you have Pathfinder: Kingmaker where you have 12 companions (or thirteen depending on how you count) and 6 slots for your party. Something this game is lacking, to properly honor the heritage of BG 1 & 2 so do I think they at minimum need to get up to 5 companions but I would prefer 6.

I've seen a few people say that, but none of those people were associated with Larian. What's the source on this?

The fact that the game's a DIVOS game and not a DnD game can be papered over with some UI and balance changes, but crappy companion choices are forever.

Look, this is precisely the point. So far, EA has only opened 6 classes, and the companions cover 5 of them. Why don't we have, say, a classic hero like a paladin or a neutral caretaker like a druid? Well, probably because that class isn't ready yet. I do get that the personalities of the companions they released from the get go could have been more varied, but this is verymuch a work in progress.

And honestly, the fact that there are more classes yet to come also implies (to me) that there are more companions yet to come. We might not get a gigantic 25-person roster, but I would expect 10-12 by the time the game releases.

I sure hope so. Not only is the current selection quite limited, it also feels like something a very inexperienced (and edgy) DM would come up with...

They have stated it multiple times in panels and AMA's. The only 5 now are all evil or neutral types because they want people to do evil options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboLvZ5YQSg

It's somewhere in that panel. If you really care for a source on these companions just being the mean ones, you can watch it yourself.

Yea, that reasoning kinda makes sense to me. They have certainly done a lot to make choices matter beyond an on-paper alignment statement, and they want people to explore that.

Yep it was confirmed.
For now you’re just getting the neutral to evil companions in the EA for testing purposes.

All the goody 2 shoes ones come later.

Up. Looking for more opinions.
If we have few companions to choose from (and considering that we always carry 3 with us) the game becomes monotonous.

I don't expect 25 like the BG2 (or almost 30 like the BG2ee), but at least double what we have now (10/12).

--sorry for my english, it's not my native language

We're going to have more than 5 companions. At the very minimum 8. (Adam is writing A character and one writer is said to write two linked ones, so at least 3 more, as I understand it.) It's been said though it won't be as much as in BG1/2.

Sources:
Panel From Hell, 1:25:45 - what's coming during EA.
Yesterday's interview (link on Swen's twitter) - somewhere in there is included a mention that the current companions lean towards evil (can't remember where it was first stated, Dropped Frames interview perhaps?); it's a 30 minute watch, I recommend it as Swen talks about EA plans and also confirms dialogue will be heavily tweaked (something people here suggest a lot, for good reasons).

As for my personal opinions/estimations, I think 10-12 is likely. 12 would be great as you can have one per class. (More would be even better, of course...)

I could be mistaken, but I believe BG2 had 17 NPCs (with 3 or 4 more in the EE version). Regardless, I know there was an interview where Swen said they were working on more Origin characters/NPCs. No reason to think they have released them all just yet. Not to mention, I'm sure a few will pop up in Baldur's Gate itself.

Got to agree that we need at least a few more companions, and I'd prefer to see some more variety in their backgrounds i.e. some more on the neutral/good side. Obviously whilst they are working together to get rid of the worms in their head they have a reason to cooperate but aside from that it would seem fairly obvious that the current companions are going to be disagreeing with you pretty much all the time if you want to play a hero character.

Two words: Early Access. You're welcome.