Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Deference to the Player Feels Unearned

Welp…it is now impossible for me to look at my boss’s face without thinking about a baboon’s ass. Thank you for making my life a little better!

The way I see it, Asterion stays because he is lost and looking for safety (self preservation is his whole deal)…and he is used to being ruled over by someone. Wyll needs your help and let’s you take the lead to keep on your good side so you will help him keep his promise to the tieflings. LaZael would make more sense if you went the creche first thing, and thus her staying with you would be to do ready herself to deal with the traitor dragon rider with a force at her side…plus, she will never talk for the group as she does not understand Faerun culture (a convo u have with her in the grove). Gale and Shadowheart make no sense…unless they have nefarious reasons or a compulsion (which they very well might).

To me…this is the classic issue of having to suspend your belief in how much time is passing and not think too much about the order you are doing things…an issue with every rpg ever. Narratively, it could make sense for each character if u pretend u did their quests first thing (except for Gale and Shadowheart).

If Wyll lets you take the lead to stay on your good side, there should be dialogue to that effect. It's pretty extreme that the Blade of Frontiers won't settle a score with the goblin that took his eye without permission from Tav the Guild Artisan. Even more bizarre that the Blade of Frontiers stands to the side quietly twiddling his thumbs while Zevlor heaps all praise on Tav the Guild Artisan for saving the Tieflings from certain doom. Y'know, the Save the Refugees quest that Wyll recruited Tav to help him with.

It's hard to buy into the idea that he is this gregarious persona when he won't say two words to any NPC that you encounter other than Spike or the three Goblins chatting about him. Killing the Goblin leaders was his plan, but when we get to them, he doesn't say anything to Gut, he doesn't say anything to Minthara, and he doesn't say anything to Ragzlin. He won't talk to Auntie Ethel, and if you want to leave Mayrina in the hands of a monster, the most pushback you will get from Wyll is a disapproving frown.

Wyll is really just there to cast eldritch blast and to feed you exposition about his backstory when you click on him at camp. But since no rapport or dynamic is established with him during the actual adventure, I find that I am not particularly invested in his backstory.

The issue of how leadership is determined in a party full of large egos and extremely high stakes should absolutely be addressed in the game, and not left to the speculation of fan theories and headcanon.


I disagree wholeheartedly. Plenty of RPGs bend over backwards to address these issues. Tyranny establishes the leadership of the player by casting them in a position of legal authority. The entire prologue of Pathfinder: Kingmaker is dedicated to establishing how the player becomes the leader of the campaign into the Stolen Lands, complete with other characters vying for control, and the possibility of losing party members who don't like your leadership style. POE establishes clear relationships not only between the player and their companions but between each other. A lot of thought is put into why each one follows the player, and what they get out of it. And none of them are shy to speak their mind when you start talking to an NPC.

The dialogue in BG3 is beautifully animated, but ultimately not as rich and well thought out as other games of the genre. It left me feeling less invested in the characters.

All good points. Made me think of Dragon Age and how cleverly they constructed the reason why everyone followed you (because u were the last warden with treaty power) and why you were an underpowered chode (because you were brand new). Then you get some flavors of followers, from religious nuts to mommy figures…but in the end, they all just want to kill some darkspawn with u. AND may even turn on you if you screw around too much (Sten) or make the wrong choices (Zevlan).

I seriously doubt Larian will bother tweaking these relationships or the logic for your custom char to be followed. They have made it pretty clear that you *should* be playing one of the Origin chars. Ie, playing custom gets you less dialouge options (from mined datafiles if what origin chars get), less development (you have no personal story like the others), and less reason to be the leader of this group. That is a bummer for sure. Especially if you are like me and have no desire to play an origin char.

On the other hand, it is even more unbelievable to me that ANY kind of the origin chars would be accepted as the leader either. Why would Lazeal follow Wyll? Or Gale follow Asterion? And all of the chars are so arrogant, it is impossible to imagine them giving a crap about the other companions to bother talking to them in camp all that much. (Another reason I would not enjoy playing as any if them).

None of these people would ever follow each other around. Their personalities are too strong. If the tadpole brings them together, and the leader has a super tadpole or whatever…it needs to be explicitly defined (beyond dreams one may or may not get). But even then…they would def have more to say during dialogues where u take the lead (although to be fair they do interject quite a bit already).

I don't have much interest in playing an origin char either. I like building my own character. I think there are plenty of ways they could establish the player as the leader, regardless of which character they play though. There are also plenty of ways to make the game interesting and enjoyable without the player always having to be the unilateral final say in every situation. It just doesn't feel like there was any effort to address any power dynamics within the group at all.

I agree with some of the points discussed. They created the companions with very strong goals and motives which completely conflict with each other. And these personalities wouldn't take a back seat to the direct of your character based on current information.

I doubt Larian would go through rewriting all these characters. So the easiest solutions is build up Tav in somewhat to compel others to follow.

The game needs more party dynamics. You should talk with NPC as a party not as Tav. This would provide more feelings and thoughts from the other party members.

Forced or triggered events would be nice too. Such as Gale getting a cut séance when you find a magic item. Or Lae'zel gets cut seance pushing you towards here direction and even leaves.

Problem is Larian doesn't want to take the only Fighter from player. They want you to have all the choices. But in doing so they make all the choices the same.

Can anyone tell me how this situation handled was in DOS2?

The larger story goal was very grounding for DOS2.The characters personal quests were still important but solvable along the way. The characters learn more about their "special" existence overtime allow them to grow into the main story role. While seeing those pushing them power fade give them little reason to follow their advice. The need for someone or someones with this special status to take action is made more important as the story progresses. This gives story reasons for the group standing together after other events might allow them to drift apart. So there is more room from characters to work together or against each other in DOS2 through out.

The starter story in BG3 comes to some resolution during act 1. And the many paths for attempting to solve it cause your companions to pull in different directions with little reason for following their unpreferred path or reach for their personal quests. So holding the whole party together should be very difficult in BG3 but Larian is set on you building a camp of all the people and do not want to take them away from you.

If they include enough companion options, they could have companion not compatible with some story approaches. So this could get resolved with time. But that is being hopeful.

The current story narrative and Tav are key issues with holding the party together. I don't think making the other companions less dynamitic or interesting is a good answer to the problem. The Main Story or Tav need something to put good rails on the game.

It's been clearly hinted that you need to make some real impactful choices by the end of chapter 1 in regards to followers.
We just haven't seen it yet

Supposedly it will be the same as DOS2 where the ones not in your active party will be eliminated, which I HATE. I'm fine with them dying based on our decisions, but a blanket wipe of those that we don't at that moment have active is definitely not fitting for BG3 or even an RPG based around a party.

Except that you can play as all the origin characters. So if they want the player to be the leader all the time (which wouldn't be my first preference) they need to address leadership in the game with a scene in which the player can be established as the leader, regardless of which character they are playing. There could be a scene where they all vote on a leader. There could be a scene where one of them tries to leave the group, but immediately becomes sick when they do. The player could dominate all the companions into submission with their Illithid powers.

There are plenty of directions they could go to establish leadership and to justify keeping the group together without rewriting any characters if they want.

Right now it feels like there just wasn't any thought put into group politics or character motivations, or creating an immersive adventuring party full of characters that the player would actually care about.

Which is strange because it must have taken so much work to build cinematic animations for every dialogue sequence. You would think with all that work put into the visuals of the dialogue, and with all the beautiful visual storytelling in the opening cinematic, that characters and dialogue and story would be a priority for them.


This is truth. 100%

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Agreed, did forget to consider the alterative playing as the origin characters. Good Catch!

Yeah, they need something building the group dynamics that is on-going. They could add checkpoints where you get a major camp cutseane where character discuss their relationship with the group or even leave. Hmm

I do hope Larian does something to cover this.

I hope so too. I could honestly forgive pretty much anything else. If they never did anything about barrelmancy, bonus action shove-fests, free disengage, or anything combat-related at all, it would still be a great game if it just delivered on the storytelling.

Tav is able to establish a brain bond with other party members, right? Has anyone ever noticed such a thing happening without Tav, e.g. Wyll and Gale having a brain bond? If Tav´s tadpole is the only one that is able to do that, wouldn´t that make Tav´s tadpole the alpha tadpole? It would be the easiest solution to the leadership problem, as it is applicable to any protagonist you happen to play. Yup, it´s the old Chosen One scheme.

Only a slight tweak to the opening scenes is needed: obviously the prime tadpole needs to taken from a special, gold rimmed goldfish bowl by mr/mrs/ms squidface before it is brought to creep in your eye socket.

I'm not even sure Wyll and Gale know each other exist. My theory is that Gale is a hallucination, like Charles in A Beautiful Mind.

I think they have some "banter" but otherwise don't really interact at all iirc. Gale, Shadowheart, and Astarion all seem to be fairly active with each other, and Laezel and Shadowheart are super active with each other for obvious reasons.

Honestly, it rarely makes sense.
How do you look at it what was the point of everyone following charname in the first BG? We came across much more experienced travelers pretty quickly (at least on paper).
Aside from a few characters, most characters really have no reason to listen to the player.
The same can be said for Hawke.
Why also are we in charge of the DAO when Alistair is a more experienced warden? The game is trying to explain it, but it's pretty cheap.
I could still try to cite the first act of DAI (I know there are no acts, but not important) why is Cassandra allowing us to command?

Let's not be defeatist. Just because some or most historic RPGs do not take the trouble of establishing credible leadership is no reason not to signal this as an important omission in BG3 EA. One that is quite detrimental to immersion (which is a key component of role playing). Let there be progress!

Alistair was a pretty accomplished dodger of responsibility and when you first meet him he immediately steps back using the excuse that he's really just there as an observer. And then fills in with other excuses as the story progresses, and you find out his entire history is much the same, and his future will be too unless you play it very carefully. I kinda liked him but he was a pain in the arse a lot of the time.

Er anyway, in spite of that, I agree with the general complaint and I hate the way my character is suddenly considered to be some sort of leadership material because... well I dunno, for no reason at all, usually. Not least as I prefer to RP as just some rando who got swept along by circumstances and most certainly not some sort of heroic saviour of the universe.

I disagree completely. Why characters choose to follow other characters, why characters seek power over other characters, how leaders are born or made, why characters grow to accept their birthright as the Heir of Gondor, and how disagreements over leadership are resolved are all vital parts of individual character arcs as well as vital to the overall plot of a good story. I don't think glossing over power dynamics is a common storytelling practice at all.

This isn't really as good of an argument as you think.

Alistair defers leadership to you quickly because he flat out tells you that he's not the leading type. Not to mention that personality-wise, his interactions with the rest of the party quickly reveals that he's really not cut out to be a leader.

Hawke is a special case. The party in that game is sort of structured as a loose collective of friends and family held together by a mutual agreement and respect for each other. It's not so much that Hawke is strictly the leader of the group in the traditional sense, more than it is everyone else deciding to help Hawke when he calls upon them for assistance with certain matters during the actual gameplay sequences, as the game takes place over the span of several years. After all, Hawke does help everyone else with their own matters upon first meeting them. When the other party members are not in the party, it is made abundantly clear that they are still handling their own affairs elsewhere in the city, like Aveline being a city guard, Isabelle doing drunken pirate things, Varric writing novels, and so on. This is one of the things I really appreciate DA2 for, and I hoped that more RPGs would try to adopt this narrative style.

Cassandra allows you to command because you have a magical glowing hand that's critical to ending the world destroying threat, and no one would accept anyone else as the leader in that kind of context. She also explains to you that she has tried to find others to lead before, and originally wanted to seek out and recruit Hawke for that exact reason, but then everything happened and you came along by sheer chance. And it's not like you're making all the decisions alone too, the rest of the Inquisition handles a lot off-screen while you and the rest of the party are out doing the dirty work.

(On a side note, if I had to describe WotR's party dynamic, it's probably an interesting mix of DA2 and DAI in execution. You have companions that are there because they're leading a faction of their own people or wield political influence that can contribute to the crusade effort such as Seelah's group of paladins, Lann's mongrelmen, and Regill's hellknights, but there are also people that are with you for their own personal reasons such as the witch Ember and druid Camellia, to name a few companions. But they all also benefit from the main character's powers, which is like the DAI anchor in terms of being a plot device.)