Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Discussing introductions/starts to cRPGs - How Baldur's Gate 3 starts in compatison to other games

Grobnar and Alfira are my examples of Bard-No and Bard-Yes respectively.

Qara is alignment trope Chaotic Neutral but actually just Chaotic Evil... Bishop and Ammon Jerro.... well Mask of the Betrayer gave me the opportunities to deal with them.

Shandra is one of top gaming heartbreaks.

Sand is good. Elanee is fine, she's a bit ignorant/naive who doesn't know she's being a bit bigotted and doesn't mean to be. I have hope Elanee can be decent and she has some growth.

Cassivir is very whitebread and yeah, the romance for him is... so paint-by-numbers.

Khelgar is about my limit for quirky and he does show character growth.

The Gith cleric is a bit fun, but she comes SOO late in the game.

Grobnar felt like somebody was given a vague description of Jan Jansen and then told to write more of that... and then did a terrible job of it.

He did have a good line where he referred to a Khelgar as a unit of height, but aside from that it was like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard.

Star Wars: KOTOR, you're on a ship that's being attacked and have to fight your way to an escape pod.
Mass Effect 2: The Outer Worlds:
I get the feeling Larian went with a more typical sci-fi beginning than high fantasy.

Dragon Age: Origins - Noble Dwarf
You enjoy your day as a noble, keep geting hints that you get screwed by your stupid, but strong older brother ...
Only to get screwed by your younger, cunning brother. (I actualy kinda liked that twist in the end.)

Dragon Age: Origins - Poor Dwarf
You did your job to your best abilities ... but you get screwed by your crimminal boss anyway ...
So you kill him, and run.

Dragon Age: Origins - Dalish Elf
You pay the price for either your, or your companion curiocity ...
Depends on your choices.

Dragon Age: Origins - City Elf
Human noble deciced to do whatever he want with your people ...
Its revenge time.

Dragon Age: Origins - Mage
Your friend becomes acused from using the forbidden magic ...
You help him, only to find out that he IS uing the forbidden magic.
Then you get recruited.

Personaly i love how DA:O started ...
Those starting stories seem to me even much more interesting than rest of the game.
The only odd thing here, is that Duncan allways traveled just there where your character is, and all the other travels are cancelled. :-/

I like this description.

Mass Effect 1 would be:
You are soldier, here is your mission, this collony is under attack.

And Mass Effect 3 is:
You were concidered terorist, now you are not, also the Planet (or as it soon come out, the galaxy) is under attack.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

Thanks for the reminder. This is defiantly at the bombastic end from the small amount of gameplay footage i have seen, what with the
It looks like the closest to BG3's tone afaik.

Tyranny - a regular day in the job as a fatebinder goes wrong when your boss gives you an impossible deadline on your current project. Now you have 8 days to deal with the rebel scum, all the while trying to get 2 separate and feuding departments

Pillars of Eternity - A casual pit stop by a caravan goes wrong when everyone else gets slaughtered while you went for a strode. A magical wind then hits, which leads to you taking shelter in a temple where you run into a bunch of cultists doing some sort of magical experiment. As a consequence of being too close, your party is killed while you are given super powers.

Pillars of Eternity 2 - Your castle from the 1st game is destroyed and you get stepped on by a giant foot of a resurrected god. You are brought back to life by another god to deal with this aforementioned rampaging god. You wake up, resurrected, only to have your ship attacked and beached by a scumbag pirate named Ben.

Fallout - after the initial cutscene intro, you are immediately placed into the world outside of Vault 13, and are free to roam the world to to progress your main mission

Fallout 2 - you begin the game completing a final rite of passage, a final test prior to accepting your mission in the outside world that will let you save your vault.

Fallout 3 - you are given your protagonist's life story (literally), and then dad goes out for a pack of cigarettes and doesn't come back. Your vault isn't happy about his choice to leave and decides you should be the one punished, forcing you to leave the vault into the outside world in search of father.

Fallout New Vegas - a regular day in the job as a delivery person goes wrong, and you take a bullet in the head thanks to a scumbag named Ben. You are rescued by a robot who brings you to the village of Good Springs. The village will soon be under attack by a local gang, and you have the choice to help either side, or beeline towards Vegas to hunt down Ben.

Neverwinter Nights 2 - Mask of the Betrayer - you awaken in a place that you must escape from, with an affliction that seems impossible to get rid of, but will ultimately kill you in time. In the meantime, it does grants tremendous power, and drawing on this it causes you to manifest tentacles and eldritch imagery. The true source of this affliction is unknown, but there is strong hints that it is a results of the machinations of Myrkul, one of the Dead Three. Your first companion is a female belonging to an organization with a reputation of being morally dubious in the Forgotten Realms. Oh, you are also in possession of a powerful Gith artefact which may be the key to solving this whole plot.



I absolutely loved these two intros, especially Dragonfall with the heist gone wrong. They do such a good job introducing the tone, the world, the cast, and the motivation behind the story.

Well, in BG3 you awaken in a ship enroute to slaver base, just when it is about to fall to pieces, and with a control instrument jammed into your head, so the intro premise is basically just repeating the intro of DOS2 in a different fantasy setting.

Sci-fi and Dragon Age, i'd say. Origins has a pretty chill start, but both 2 and Inquisition throw you into the action from the get-go. I only mention this because this game feels DA inspired to me, and specifically a blend of Origins and Inquisition.

I have to admit that out of all the intros mentioned, I like the IWD one the most. I find it so charming how refreshingly simple and down-to-earth it is, not to mention very D&D-like. It begins with a little tale of the region (relevant to the main plot of the game), and then you start out in the tavern of a small rustic settlement located at the northern edge of Faerun, with a very frigid yet cosy winter environment. It's also kind of liberating in that it doesn't force a specific backstory upon you; you can imagine your character to be whatever from where-ever. Someone who just happens to have arrived in town at the same moment it's troubles emerge. This sort of beginning also helps make Icewind Dale a very replayable game imo.

Other than that the Dragon Age Origins ones are my favourite, because it offers you so many different and colourful intros determined by the origin background you pick.