Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Wyll's Hyperbole?

When Wyll says: there was a time when I could tussle with Hill Giants without breaking a sweat but now a mere werebear could swat me away...or something like that...is he serious?

He is a level 1 character so when was he really taking down Hill Giants?

He seems like a big liar to me

I think its related to his backstory and how he was able to perform the things he did as the blade of frontiers!

I mean, Wyll is a lying liar. That's his thing...

Well, he is liar as people say indeed ...
But also, concider that all origin characters are talking about how powerfull they were "before tadpoling" ... maybe except Astarion, but that is probably just bcs all he ever did was come to party, charm some lady and bring her to his master ...
That is not something that requires any special heroic skills.

Well, yeah some of them love to boast.

Wyll: as we established, he is talking out of his arse for most of the time.
Gale: he had some real juice when he was the favored of Mystra (maybe Chosen even). But then blew it and lost most of his stuff.
Shadowheart: She was brainwashed and memoryviped, probably multiple times, and never really brags about her skills.
Astarion: I mean yeah, he was basically a lapdog for a couple of centuries.
Laezel: She is basically a teenager according to the standards of her race and she loves to boast about her abilities, like some teenagers do.

I commented about this some time ago, but in the end... Yeah, It's still somewhat confusing to what extent

- characters are inflating their own past achievement,
- Larian wrote their backstories without much of a worry about how they would be starting the game from level 1/2 at most.
- it's supposed to be canon that all of them used to be more powerful and got hit by the NERFHAMMER pretty hard.

As I said in the past, if the third option is supposed to be canon, the game should be a better job to stress it explicitly and in no dubious terms, because right now more often than not it just comes off as an accidental, unintended incongruence.

I understand your issue, the backstories are a bit convoluted. On the other hand, if you ever played tabletop and saw your average player's backstory, then you know that starting at level one never really makes sense.

For me, the only problematic origin hero from this regard is Gale. It seems that he is being honest about the kinda power he used to wield and now it is strange for him to be such a wuss.

I think there's going to be a lot of head-canon to explain a lot of this game (some people prefer that)

It has nothing to do with "lying", as he literally bares the scars of most of the fights he talks about, and is the only character in the game that will fight , all the characters talk about how they're much weaker now.

Right. He's not lying in that statement. He literally was granted powers and he was actually able to accomplish those feats. That's how he became the Blade of Frontiers. The lie is just that he didn't train to become so great, and lacks the actual hero spirit behind them.

I think the abilities pushed him to become this, but his fine tuning is his own. He obviously trained with a sword/combat. And I believe even Astarion will comment on how strong and fast he is, which doesn't really come from the abilities. He has most of these scars I would assume due to fighting these beast upclose. And when you first see him, the first thing he does is jump straight to a goblin rather than blast them.

Well, incidentally I have a gripe even against shitty player-made backstories.

But more than anything I wouldn’t really expect any professional production to justify its shortcoming using trash-tier fanfictions as a scapegoat.

Yeah, I feel like people prefer to see him as an incompetent liar, but there are merits to his skill. At the Burning Inn you can give him a complement in that regard about being good at combat.

Right, and people are too critical of his wanting to be seen as a hero. If you know his past, it's clear that he wants to convince himself of it because he never wants to feel like he's in a weak and helpless position like he was back then, there's not much in the Early Access but in the romance with certain options you start to see that he is indeed vunerable and quite human.

People in this fanbase are far too critical of the more neutral characters and far too lenient on the not so neutral ones.

The other idea I read in these forums were that characters with the OTT backstories lost their powers ‘because tadpole’ which I find to be rather a contrived and over-convenient plot line.

I really hope we meet some more grounded NPCs, which despite the fantasy setting, have more relatable stories.

Wyll is famous for being a Hero.

That means people talk a lot about him.
His legends expands wether he wants it or not.
People like to always exaggerate stuff a bit more.

Of course the real Wyll will notice.
Maybe he finds it funny?
Maybe he feels pressured to match up to the rumours?

But certainly it will influence his mind one way or the other.
And he too will inevitably adapt the same mentality. Since this is just how the Blade is seen by the masses.

For me, i always kinda got GoblinSlayer Vibes from Wyll. M~aaan, he HATES these little Buggers with a Passion!


I "could" imagine that he once managed to wrestle with Hillgiants or so on, "IF" the Being that made him a Warlock, gave him some crazy Extra-Powers back then. Otherwise, a LvL 1 Human wrestling with another Humanoid Being several Times his Size i think wouldn't go well for said Human.

Im not entirely sure whats up with the cast. But I think 1 of 2 things are at play here:
1: People are lying and are making themselves sound alot bigger then they really are.
2: Theyre speaking (partly) the truth and have been nerfed by things out of their background (gods, pacts with other entities etc.) or by the tadpole.

Maybe its a combination of these 2. Who knows honestly. Or it could be option 3.
3: Its a jab or joke from Larian about players having grandiose backgrounds while theyre only making a lvl 1 character. Which alot of new players are guilty off.

Heck maybe it could be all 3 at the same time. Someone (or several people) at Larian was responsible for the backgrounds and came up with this. And to make it fit with lvl 1 characters they used the god nerfing them (for Gale) and/or tadpole to make the characters fit while still making them lvl 1 characters, but with a story.

Gives you more interesting characters then 'I decided I was tired of farming for my entire life so I saved up enough money for a longsword and im taking to the road' story thats more plausible for lvl 1 characetrs but abit plain at the same time.