Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Seriously. Scrap origins

No, it's not. It's the same as we are doing. Asking Larian to listen to our preferences rather than someone else's.

If you feel that way then play Gale as he is. All this would do is allow other people to have a comparable experience but in ways which make sense to them. How they could potentially play would not impact anyone else in the slightest

I might also mention - we have something we choose, in character generation, called "background".

If they fleshed those out from the hand book, into proto-story bases that pre-define a certain handful of details about your character, and then build on those details within the world using those background tags, it would at least somewhat do the job of creating an anchored feeling for our character that we nevertheless got to choose... all the groundwork for doing that is already there, and they could most certainly have focused on doing that, rather than creating dialogue lines that anyone should be able to say and gating them behind race or class tags (apparently, according to Larian's current design, only halflings are allowed to council people to calm down and talk our their arguments...)

It isn't what I feel like I'm doing, which is understanding that my opinion will be one opinion and it's up to them to choose what to take from it/ do.

My problem with the crappy origin characters Larian is making is that significant parts of their story happen before you can even touch them. Its basically starting Mass Effect with Mass Effect 2 - Gale relationship with a god and even reaching the point to even be noticed by her? You find out about it in the game. Astarions 200 year long life? Yeah, again you read about it, as a player you have no clue. Shadowhearts background? Once again, miss special has a lot happening before you even play her. Same with all the others. You have no authority of the character. Same as with Geralt in Witcher 1 and let's face it, it was a big issue for everyone not knowing the books. Its just a crap way to introduce a player character. This is ok for a NPC because you find out about their past by interacting with them, but it turns you into a spectator when it comes for your own character - you neither experience their past, nor do you have any influence on it, which makes it even worse when it has significant parts of the character building in it that define the character for the rest of the story. That's simply not a player character.


But to each there own. DOS2 was an utterly average game for me and BG3 is turning out to be the same based on the same mistakes they are making.

Dude, what is rude about praising Larian for what they are doing if I like it?

Well RPGs have some serious market share, but they are still niche. Not everyone has our ready familiarity with it and origin characters can inspire those unfamiliar with the potential of RPGs and excite their imagination. I think it is all to the good, honestly, though I agree these specific characters are way too over the top for my tastes. . .But when I think back to my first characters and how when I would write up their backgrounds, I would pull everything I had ever fallen in love with from all of the books I had ever read and pour it into them and I made a lot of garish characters before I acquired taste and restraint. I don't care for these backgrounds, but I am not overly bothered by them either. And. . .There is evidence some people really love them, and I wouldn't want to destroy something that means that much to someone simply because I don't myself care for it. I care about how the game is written and experienced through game play far more than how those aspects we don't experience were written about.

Just my personal opinion on that, not an argument

The rudeness is starting by petitioning for people to be ignored. Nothing about what your opinion actually is.

Yeah, I don't want to limit it now either. Its too late and all the bad influences for the game are already in there (like the way cinematics are done, story that has been writen, amount of time spent on making origin characters both NPCs and PCs,...). I just generally don't like this approach. If you drop your GM characters on the players show some restraint to leave room for the players to customize them and actually experience their story. But everything Larian is doing with characters is in my opinion very unexerpienced and causes issues. Especially if you keep in mind that the 'very important custom character' story is also only exerpienced by the player if he plays the way they want the player to do it (using the tadpole). If you don't do it, you get nothing.

So to me Larian made huge mistakes that have already put BG3 on a path that they can hardly correct. Being critized for it with DOS2 and repeating it for BG3 shows that they either didn't understand or value their own perspective more than what players say. I can just judge their work based on what they said BG3 would be and to me they failed to deliver a meaningful custom character experience because they stick to their ways.

But since they are already in the game, just let those enjoy it that do. At this point they can't cause any additional harm.

They would not need to do a survey.

I personally don't care about the voice acting.

That is not to say the voice actors don't do a good job. They do.

I had to LOL for this.

Like a adult head on a baby body

This. Yes.

Give the characters background, it is fine.

But making them the main cast over your characters? Meh.

Larian will make the choice they will make.

But I have faith that I have a voice, that I can state my opinion, and that Larian may take it into account.

"All the great prophets lack discretion and human understanding. I witness pain, old age, death, bad decisions in a videogame and I know that they cannot be overcome; but why should I spoil another's en-joyment with my knowledge? Suffering and the consciousness of its inescapability lead to renunciation; yet nothing would induce me, not even if I were to become a leper, to condemn another's joy."

Larian said they want feedback this thread is a good feel for how people feel about origins.

One for, MANY against.

The ball is in Larians court now.

I don't hate origin characters per se, indeed, I think it's a step forward for games in general to introduce both custom and fixed protagonists. This grants you the benefits of both: you can have very specific tailored story and reactions for your fixed (origin) characters and the freedom/versatility of custom characters. In theory, it's a great system and I hope it evolves into something amazing over the years.

However, this requires massive resources which are completely wasted if the dual system isn't done REALLY well. From what I can tell, it isn't in BG3.

What the OP calls templates, and I "half-origins" or "DA:O-style origins", is something I've been long advocating for. It's the best of two worlds: customizability and extra reactivity. You could have a whole spectrum of those: from something that could be mostly recreated with custom characters, but with extra backstory, to something very specific/"odd" like the oft-suggested custom vampire spawn. Depending on the chosen "half-origin", different things could be locked; only Criminal background (and everything else customizable) for a member of a certain gang, most things locked for a tiefling sage from Sigil or an exiled/runaway ex-Lolth priestess. An extra benefit of this system is that it would likely take less work to make a bunch of these than to make one origin. From what Larian said, BG3 origins are ridiculously content-heavy.

I am, however, against the option to customize existing, fixed origins. This would remove one advantage they have: expanded story and reactivity. Diluting those would make origins completely half-assed.

Regarding (D&D-sense) backgrounds Niara mentioned: I... half-agree. Backgrounds could definitely use more reactivity, but tying custom character backgrounds to specific backstories would remove some of the "custom" from custom characters. It would need to be done very carefully. I respect Larian's reason for removing background dialogue options - though, like I said, I still think something more could be done with backgrounds. Just... carefully and with lots of consideration.

Any chance you live in central California and enjoy bourbon? If so, I have a weekly drinking night with some buddies I imagine you might be welcomed at. Once the C-19 blows over anyway. its a closed circle til then

6000 miles away, according to google, but on the other hand I do like bourbon.

Well if you are ever in the neighborhood, just quote Cioran again to gain immediate entry and acceptance into whatever I am doing at that moment.

Those who love philosophy all too few in number anymore to simply disregard and accommodating any number of them is always worth the inconvenience for the sake of conversation.

Yes, but you still have to write lines which your program will use to generate dialogue. You have to fill these excel spreadsheet with something and you have to carefully plan it to avoid silly results.
This is why I love to create my own characters in tabletop RPGs and I don't really like to do it in video games - they will always be generic to some extent.