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

I mostly agree with you except BG1’s MC was interesting from the start :b

It was a two strikes rule with her wasn't it? Or did you just have to worship her?

Two strikes, though there are few ways to anger her and worshipping is one of them.

I never said something to contradict that. Again, not what we discuss about

I have it on good authority that the OP wasn't talking about how the MC is built. Rather it's about how the companions are built. It isn't just that they didn't give the companions a compelling reason to obey the MC. Its more egregious than that. They went out of their way to give them reasons NOT to obey the MC and then just ignored all those reasons when making them obey the MC anyway, without explanation.

Lae'zel is given strong motives to find her creche. Not only is it her duty to her Queen, but from her perspective, it is her only hope of getting the tadpole out and not turning into a mind flayer. And then a Tiefling tells her that Githyanki were spotted not a five-minute walk from where we are standing. She should be making a beeline for that bridge no matter what you say. But if Tav the Guild Artisan decides to just head into the Underdark and fight some minotaurs instead, she will abandon her duty to her Queen and accept the almost absolute certainty of turning into a mind flayer in order to follow Tav the Guild Artisan around like a lost puppy. And this very dramatic 180 for her character is never addressed.

Gale needs to eat magic items in order to survive. But his obedience to Tav the Guild Artisan is so extreme that he will beg for Tav to let him eat a magic staff that HE picked up and has in HIS inventory. Why in the world would he not just eat the staff that he picked up from Ethel's lair? Why is everything anyone finds on their journey automatically the property of Tav? If Tav's ownership of all the party's property is going to be a plot point, shouldn't there be some explanation of how that ownership was established? What compelling reason does Gale have that he would literally rather die than do something without Tav's permission?

Even other games that don't give particularly strong motives for characters to follow the MC at least don't give them the strongest possible reasons NOT to and then make them do it anyway. BG3 is hands down the worst culprit I've seen in this regard.

I understand it as the two questions cannot be reviewed separately. This is like my whole point.

Again, don't think the situation is much different than other games. The party has a good reason to stick together - they all have tadpoles that try to kill them and so they have a common goal. Why they specifically follow the MC? No good reason. I think there are two reasons for it -
1) like I said, it's a crpg trope, and it seems hard to construct a main character who is both a completely clean slate of sorts (in the DND sense that the MC could be a charismatic bard or a stupid barbarian) and a guy you have a good reason of following.
2) the origin system - the fact that anyone of the party is also the potential leader, depending on who you chose, makes it very hard to create one unified reason for the party to follow.

I can think of some. BG1 & the easy trick to get rid of one of the paired NPCs (by letting them be killed), which I think quite a few players have used over the years. BG2 also lets you do some funny things as an evil character with good NPCs, because most of the companion reactions are tied to reputation, and that can be bought at temples. Pathfinder Kingmaker, where no matter how badly you treat Linzi, she stays as the punching bag. Ironically, the same can be said for the player character, because even though the game gives you a very good reason to get rid of her (when she steals from you), even an evil character won't be able to execute or exile her. In general I've found that - except for Ekundayo and Tristan - the good characters in PK didn't care much what my evil baroness did. Quite funny, considering the evil kingdom looks like one of the dungeon levels from Diablo.

The Alpha Tadpole. It could be administered to anyone.

Interesting idea. This could work actually

I don’t think that dominating your companions is what makes a good adventuring party. Adding some personality to the MC and giving him enough dialog options will work better.

Counterpoint: The main character still going around with a small party is still believable because they are still the only one capable of sealing the numerous rifts along the countryside. Plus they run into numerous enemies who get completely caught off guard by the Inquisitor's party banging on their front door. They're not doing that while holed up in Haven or Skyhold, and coming with an actual army would have basically just told all the enemy forces where the Inquisitor was (and where they WEREN'T), and what they were planning to do.

The menial tasks and stuff I agree with though. But that's really on Bioware for thinking Inquisition needed to play like a single player MMO more than anything else.

Still, Corypheus was an awful, awful villain. Accomplished jack shit after Haven, basically disappeared entirely up until the last two main quests, and you would think he'd have tried to attack Skyhold at some point. Though I also remember reading that the Fade sequence after that warden fortress was originally going to entail falling into the Deep Roads and meeting a certain sentient Darkspawn from DA:O Awakening, and it got replaced by a clearly rushed Fade sequence with a convenient amnesia subplot instead.

The main character going around with the small party is the part that doesn't make sense. What you describe - a small force doing surprise missions - is the job you give your agents, scouts, spies or soldiers. It's not the job you give to the only character who is capable of closing the magical portal in the sky, because if they die, you lose. Yet no one cares if the inquisitor elects to go on a solo adventure travelling around the countryside.

Well, like I said, there are still tons of rifts along the countryside, and no regular small surprise force is going to be able to do anything about that. Hell, the game even flat out shows you that there are scouts assessing the situation in each area right before you arrive for the first time, meaning that steps have already been taken to minimize risk to the Inquisitor as much as possible. The Inquisitor is only brought in when the situation is severe enough to be brought to your attention and there's no other options.

Inquisiton had a lot of problems, but how it handled the main character was really not among them. Sure, you can go on solo adventures with the Inquisitor, but I chalk that up to gameplay oddity instead of an actual narrative fault, since you can do something equally dumb from a narrative standpoint in most other party-based games too.

Yep, been re-playing this recently while waiting for Patch 5. (because I never finished it when it first came out - my bad, I know!) The question of "why am I running around doing all this when I have henchmen to do it for me" never entered my mind. You already send people to do plenty of politicial/menial tasks via the War Table, and you ARE the only one who can close the rifts - nobody else can do it for you. It is after all, a game - a single player adventure game, where you are having the adventures. It wouldn't be much fun if the whole game was you just directing other people via the War Table to have adventures for you.

Even if it is a trope, doesn't mean it's something that necessarily has to be followed. I think possibly the most elegant solution for the problem would be if the main character was the one who took 'ownership' and is the one that came up with a plan to save them; whether it's going to find a healer or whatever. Maybe when he wakes up on the shoreline the character see's evidence for a druid enclave nearby and knows the general location for where it could be found.

Droatia, in case you read this comment too, maybe Lae'zel stays with the MC simply because despite all of her (considerable) bluster, she isn't stupid enough to charge off into unknown territory with minimal armaments (and skill - as she's somehow only lvl1). There is (comparative) safety in numbers after all.

There are signs that they mean to expand or modify the opening of the game, with having a key to shadowheart's pod. It is possible other Origin companions will be added and their deference comes from the player controlled character being the one who rescued everyone from the mindflayers and hell?

I was not talking about sending small squads to close the rifts, but rather, that they should handle the other jobs. Because your inquisitor is not, in fact, only closing the rifts. I didn't have the impression inquisitor was "only brought in when the situation is severe enough" when playing DAI. The maps are full of inane quests, such as "bring back my lost cattle". But no one from your inner circle, or your companions, ever questions the stupidity of such quests, or the inquisitor risking themselves doing them. Even Cassandra, who went against the chantry to establish the inquisition, doesn't care if the inquisitor wastes time picking flowers or goes to solo fight a dragon. My impression was also that, ironically, there is no reactivity towards closing the rifts; you can leave them open, and still nothing happens and no one comments on that either.

It's not a matter of gameplay odditiies; the gameplay in DAI just doesn't support the narrative it is trying to build. Companion reactions (or rather lack of) included.

Sure. They could have told that story. But they didn't. Script it so that after the Tiefling reveals the location of the Githyanki, going any other direction will trigger a conversation where Lae'zel says something to the effect of:

"The Tiefling said they saw the Githyanki this way."

Follow this up with some dialogue where some companions want to go find the Githyanki and others think that Nettie is the best bet at getting the tadpole out without ending up as Githyanki slaves. The group is evenly split and the MC has to break the tie. If they don't choose to go stright to the Githyanki, we should see the indecision in Lae'zel's face, and the moment she reluctantly decides to stay with the group. If that was the story they were trying to tell, then this decision is the most pivotal moment in Lae'zel's arc thus far. It doesn't get a pursuasion roll, or a cutscene, or any acknowledgment of any kind.

And it's more than just Lae'zel. The legendary Blade of Frontiers has taken it upon himself to help the Tieflings in their hour of need, and enlists Tav to help him. But as soon as he joins the party, he is an obedient little sycophant, living in the shadow of Tav the Guild Artisan. He is literally so obedient that he won't settle a score with the goblin who took his eye unless he can get permission from Tav first.

Gale needs to eat magic items in order to survive. But his obedience to Tav the Guild Artisan is so extreme that he will beg for Tav to let him eat a magic staff that HE picked up and has in HIS inventory. Why in the world would he not just eat the staff that he picked up from Ethel's lair? Why is everything anyone finds on their journey automatically the property of Tav? If Tav's ownership of all the party's property is going to be a plot point, shouldn't there be some explanation of how that ownership was established? What compelling reason does Gale have that he would literally rather die than do something without Tav's permission?

I am not so much concerned whether anyone can come up with a fan theory or headcanon for any particular contradiction that will help them continue to enjoy the game. I am more concerned that fan theories and headcanon are necessary to justify really fundamental things about the characters. It does not give me any confidence that the people making the game care about who their own characters are and what drives them. Even worse, I feel like the people making the game have an attitude that telling a story that makes sense isn't important because "it's just a video game lol." I would love to be proven wrong about this.

Okay, yeah, I'll give you that. I just don't particularly recognize the more inane sidequests as canon, as they're obviously padding from the unfocused open world direction that DA:I took. I really hope DA:4 reins it in.

Come to think of it, Pathfinder Kingmaker had that problem too, it was just kind of less noticeable there due to the massive amount of downtime in between chapters just managing the kingdom masking it all. It must have been bad enough for the devs to take note, because I just looked at my quest log in WotR beta to compare and notice an overall distinct lack of sidequests that one would consider padding filler. Reading through it, It appears everything I've done so far has been relevant to the overall narrative or the party in some way...


Hm. That is something to consider.

I've noticed lately that for some characters, a lot of the discussion in regards to their appeal revolves around what they MIGHT be in the future, not what they are as of now. Like a lot of the excitement for them, Gale especially, is based on fan theories more than anything else. This is pretty dangerous, because the expectations for them are going to go through the roof. If Larian fails to deliver, we're going to end up with a lot of upset people telling Larian how they should have handled them. Kind of like what happened with Dragon Age Inquisition and Pillars of Eternity 2 in regards to how they both handled the main quest (which was VERY poorly).