Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General If the main hero dies, and you don't revive them, can you still finish the game?

A completely valid preference, of course, but for me I think it would actually increase the sense of connection of my custom character to the plot if, rather than have this dictated up front, a core element of the story was how they came to be the hero (or villain) and the leader of a powerful group that defeated their foes … or how they came to alienate everyone and die a lonely and ignominious death … or somewhere in-between . And I do think that there is a trade-off between the freedom to make whatever character we want and how connected their background is to the plot, so having their in-game connection being what happens in the course of the adventure maximises that freedom while still allowing us to give our custom characters a personal story that we can tie into their imagined pre-game history.


One problem I have with the story setup so far is that sometimes it seems that it has been envisaged that way, but then in other ways it treats our character as the leader from the start. I’d say that Larian need to jump firmly into one camp or the other rather than what currently feels like half-arsing this element, but I’m not sure that it would be technically much more difficult to go one route rather than the other. In fact, I think a lot of stuff that would be needed to make my preferred option work would be beneficial anyway, such as: making our custom characters a stronger presence on screen, making them less purely reactive in conversations with party members, better writing of the protagonist’s dialogue, continuing to add content that reflects our characters’ races, class and background and having multiple ways quests can be achieved that can suit different characters’ stories, showing the party interacting more as a whole rather than having so much mediated through our player character, and having our party more vocal and involved in dialogue and decisions while adventuring.

But I am not a writer and so could well be underestimating the challenge involved, or the frustrations players might feel if their characters weren’t established as the leader of the group from early on. And, given that we’re now only a few months from release and the game’s dialogue trees are clearly hugely complex, I’m sure that whatever direction Larian have already implemented into their full release is now pretty much locked in, so all we can do now is keep our fingers crossed for our own preferred solutions!

They agree to follow you, because of the tadpole. A cutscene plays every time we meet one of them, with a tadpole interaction.

I guess, instead of leaving us with a narrative "out" for the main character dying, they need to just run a "Game Over" screen and take us back to the last save, because it's sure leading to a lot of misconceptions about why it's there. Someone posted earlier in this thread that if Tav's dead, the other companions won't talk to whichever companion you're currently controlling. I think they said it was "I'll talk to the boss"? Yeah, it'll suck for those of us that do understand why it's there, but it sure seems like subtlety and nuance are lost w/out it. Although, it would be funny to start reading the posts from those that sincerely believe that once Tav is rolled up, they're replaceable, when their romance subplots won't play out because they chose to leave Tav dead. So maybe, just for comedic value, they shouldn't add the "Game Over" screen?

Nah, I definitely still want it to be possible for my party to resurrect my dead PC with a spell or scroll or go back to Withers at the camp to get him to do it.

I think it would be quite a fun feature if the game could continue indefinitely if our main character died, but not enough to want Larian to put any significant resources into this. I’m happy for inability to remove our dead PC from the party or to full rest with them dead to act as the push to resurrect them if that’s what the story needs. Or indeed for the party to limp on and complete the game but without any meaningful interactions between them if that’s feasible with the existing game mechanics and someone particularly wants to play that way.

Though it might also be fun to have some specific dialogue between our party members the first time our main character dies, in which they give their views on bringing us back and more or less grudgingly agree to do so .

The tadpole moments always read to me as just your minds melding because the tadpoles are reaching out to each other, and serve as a way to force the issue of people who might not share their tadpole situations sharing their tadpole situations, not as a sign that our character was imposing some kind of psychic will on the others.

As for the game over thing and the narrative 'out', I've never liked that the game just goes on after Tav dies. Maybe I'm just too used to how games typically handle main character death, but it just doesn't feel like it fits. Bringing Tav back afterwards is just needless hassle and I feel like actually coming back from the dead should warrant some kind of reaction. It's one thing if, on the death of our pain character the game ends, that just goes along with the time-honored assumption that when we die in a game, it's not actually canon. But this game makes it pretty clear that each death is defiitely canon, thanks to this and to the whole Gale situation, and if they're going to do that, there should be some reaction. Also it bothers me that despite us seeing tadpoles leaving the body after death, nobody really voices that as a potential solution. I think it wouldn't be a good solution, but if death and resurection are going to be canon things that the characters perform, it feels wrong that no one at least talks about it. Overall that aspect doesn't really feel like it adds anything and it introduces too many cracks in return.

That’s a good point, and given that revival and resurrection are valid parts of D&D 5e (and therefore should be in the game, and an option for my PC, in my view) it does feel as though the possibility of death and resurrection to get rid of the tadpole should be addressed at least in a conversation. I think it should be fairly easily dealt with, however, insofar as the tadpole has access to your thoughts and therefore would be aware that the intention was to resurrect you and so could decide to wait rather than abandon the corpse. Well, assuming the tadpoles are aware and can think, anyway. I’ll admit to much haziness about the lore on that point!

EDIT Btw, I do think bringing characters back to life is too cheap in EA and hope that it will be made more difficult and expensive in the full game, with penalties more in line with 5e, once we have the alternative option of more party members or mercenaries to replace dead companions.

The game being very casual...flippant even with player/party member death is another thing. Like there are more consequences to getting Volo's surgery then there are gettign your brain *eaten* by the mindflayer in the crashed ship. Hell, asterion will even tease you about him accidentally killing you the next day, and Gale has lines basically amounting to 'boy, the Fugue plane sure is dreary'.

And of course we even have a certain hard-to-ignore skeleton chilling in camp who provides resurrection for bargain basement prices.

Other games (including D&D games) treat readily available resurrection magic (or even just bringing back KO'd characters at 1hp at the end of fights) more as a gameplay/narrative break that's necessary for play, but not narratively acknowledged. They also typically give you a game over if the main character is killed off (if there isn't a revive at 1hp at combat end mechanic) for narrative purposes.

BG III treats death narratively as an inconvenience. Something you have a chuckle with your friends over later. It also has a loose definition of 'main character', with the player's avatar's main distinguishing feature being that they are the default conversationalist/centerpiece of cinematics and cutscenes. Combine these, and the significance of the player avatar as the 'protagonist' of the story feels rather lacking, IMO. Particularly if you are rolling a custom character, since you don't really get anything in the story that's unique and created specifically for your character that Origins don't get.

Same, we have access to too many "Scroll of Revivify" : Tav and several companions have each a couple of them from the get-go, everyone can use them, Withers can resurrect any party member for cheap and several vendors sell the scroll as well (I think Withers constantly have them restocked in his inventory).

I'm hoping that this (and the abundances of food supply, potions & co) is only to make EA easier, so players can focus on other aspects of the game to give feedback on.

Very good point.

I don’t mechanically object to Larian’s implementation of death - while dying is a bit harder in BG3 than it used to, a game over popping out because our PC has fallen have been annoying in BG1&2.

RPGs in general have been avoiding sudden death for a while now - be it by splitting health/endurance in PoE1, Injury system in PoE2&DA:O, maiming in pathfinder games, or most post Bioware RPG removing penalty of falling in battle all together. And by an large I see those changes as positive.

However, keeping death, but treating it like “falling in battle” does have a negative impact on how engaging the narrative is. Very quickly deaths have the impact of a Groundhog’s Day Death montage.

Yeah, that's more directed to the "Tav is totally replaceable, see, because you don't have to resurrect them" crowd. Although, now I'm curious if you could even try the tadpole removal dialogs w/out Tav/the main character. If not, and I'm betting that's the case, then the game's going to come to a screeching halt pretty fast.


The tadpole moments provide a reason to work together, you know, removing it. Especially for anyone that knows what it's supposed to do to them. That we, as players, know it's not a really big deal yet shouldn't be factoring in to whether or not the assorted cast would join forces to find a solution to their mutual problem.

I'm curious why you've been treating "We should travel together" as a phrase synonymous to "I'll follow you and defer to your decisions". Those are two different statements with two different meanings. The tadpole provides a reason for everyone to travel together and work together; everyone agrees with and acknowledges that (meaning everyone involved in this discussion thread). What it does not do, however, is provide a reason for the main character being thrust into the leading and decision-making role. Shadowheart saying "We should travel together" is not a synonym for her declaring you the leader and agreeing to put her opinions secondary to your decisions. Wyll saying "We should team up" is not a synonym for that either, nor Gale's "You and I need to find a healer" (indeed Gale's dialogue, given his personality, comes off very much as him assuming the leadership role). The tadpole is an element that everyone shares equally, at the moment - there is no internal story beat that pushes the player controlled character (whether that be an origin character or a custom one) into the leading position, to justify or explain the deference that they all drop into counter to their various self-directed and headstrong personalities. That's one of the things that numerous people here have found jarring and damaging for immersion - and a thing that most other games in this genre make some degree of effort to address.

I have definitely gotten the eye surgeries with party members and not Tav before (since I didn't want to debuff my main character) I just initiated conversation with a party member I didn't care for instead.

Personally, I'm most curious how the game handles character-specific scenes when party members (such as the MC) are dead. Liek if you fight off the goblins at the gate to the grove, find the dead boar, kill all your party members except asterion, then recruit another one (lets say, Lae'zel) do you still get the bite scene? (with Lae'zel?) Would you still have a dialogue option about how she found the boar (even though she would havve no way of knowing?)

Anyways, I think it would be better to reserve game overs for stuff like the Asterion bite scene and the mindflayer eating your brain. Just have characters revive with 1hp and a debuff until you long rest.

Don't know how to handle stuff like bottomless pits and lava, since obv you can't just stand up from that and in fact your body might even be in an inaccessible place-even Larian I think struggles with that even with how casual it is with resurrection- there's even an npc just for recovering characters who die like that in EA right now!

You mean "some" other games? I gave you a list earlier, am I wasting just as much of my time typing this as I did that? Hell, I even acknowledged this "other games doing it better", maybe even in the same post. For better or worse, this trope is a very real thing, and it's going to be a thing whether it's Tav, or Shadowheart as the main character. Pick your poison, the "Player Character Syndrome" is a very real thing. Even in some games where there's an eventual reason, such as Dragon Age Inquisition, initially, there's no reason for the main character to be making decisions, and yet, you still do. After you meet Leliana, the decision on which route to take to the temple is on the main character. Why? Nothing is decided on the War Table in Haven w/out your approval. Why? Why aren't you reporting the results to the staff, instead of having the staff bow to you? By all rights, until you seal the breach, you should be a subordinate, but you're not.

As I said previously, this makes sense in Mass Effect, since, in so far as the human crew is concerned, you outrank them, and everyone else is on your ship. In Inquisition, you're in chains, and suspected of destroying the enclave, which resulted in the death of the Divine, but they're following your orders like you're an established military leader. Why are Varric, Cassandra and Solas all level 1? I mean, there's a movie about Cassandra's exploits prior to the events of Dragon Age 2, that explains how she became a Seeker. Presto, however, and she's level 1. If you played Dragon Age 2, you know Varric should be much higher than that, and Solas talks a lot about his experiences, so there's not much chance that he should be level 1 either. Yet there they are, all conveniently leveled to the main character. It's all down to the same reason the companions follow you here, "Player Character Syndrome".

So tell me, would you rather they all just rejected you outright, made their own party and left you on your own to sort it out? That would be an amazing game, wouldn't it? Hey, maybe they should decide the main character by forcing everyone to fight it out the first night in camp, last person standing wins. That would be great, wouldn't it? Is it something that's going to have to be repeated every time we meet a new recruitable character? Of course, it would also have the potential to nullify the player choice to have Tav, instead of an Origin character, if Tav doesn't win. Alternatively, Shadowheart follows you because you freed her from the Pod, or tried to, if you did, or saved her on the beach. Lae'zel has already proven to be insufficient to lead, or she wouldn't have needed rescued from the tieflings. How'd your initial conflict with Astarion go? If you schooled him, and then accepted him, would it be surprising that he'd follow you? How many are already following you when you meet the others? If you've already got 3, would it be surprising to think anyone else would follow too?

I haven't read all the of the posts in this thread, but I would say that the games you mentioned at least have SOME reasoning as to why the MC is calling the shots. In Inquisition, even though you're in chains technically, it's very obvious from the start that they don't really think you're the big bad, and mostly treat you as "okay, show me what happened" and you're not just a random nobody off the street.

Baldur's Gate I and II all have good reasons for why the characters start following you, Mass Effect, even more so. WotR, it starts as survival, but quickly turns into the player is the chosen one sort of thing, so that makes sense.

Baldur's Gate 3 though? There's nothing other than 'we're in this together'. But there's no reason why the companions would not just talk amongst themselves and decide to ditch the MC if they wanted to. It's just the obvious, "this is the player character, so they are the leader", which some people find lacking.

Of course, the problem is that the player character CAN'T be someone special, because the game is designed around the origin characters. They'll never be more than the origin characters, because the game has to be beatable in coop without Tav.

I don’t think BG3 handles companions much differently than BG1&2 does - companions join your party and in exchange tend to have requests of you. Laez asks you to locate crèche, Shadowheart I suppose just wants to protect the weapon and having bodyguards is convenient. Wyll joins you under he condition you help him kill Gobbo leaders (while having further more selfish agenda agenda), Gale hopes you will find on your adventures artefacts and feed them to him.

Honestly that is all fine and on the level of other RPGs. But of course, the issue is origins - because they don’t only see you as a help in achieving their own problem, you also all share tadpoles and have divergent, strong opinions on how to go about it. If companions were written more softly - suggesting a direction, but being hesitant to making decision themselves that would be fine. Alas, they scream and belittle player for not doing what he tells them but they never behave in a way that would be believable. They don’t leave, they don’t try to convince you or anyone.

I think if companions were more aware of each other, it would solve a problem - for example a scene where companions bicker about what to do, and then they turn to Tav to take a side. Of course, extremely open nature of BG3 would be a problem - one gains companions at unpredictable intervals with no early progress gate to schedule such scene with all or most companions present.

The clash comes from how hard companions try to seem independent and opinionated - is it ludonarative dissonance? Game tells us that we travel with equal or superior to us characters who are untrustful to us and will go their own way if they feel our company doesn’t benefit them anymore, and yet gameplay wise they are clearly our puppets to control.

There are a bunch of ways they could fix the break; turning the conversations slightly differently would be all it would take, or they could indeed use the tadpole to single out the player character (origin or otherwise) as having some sort of extra nudge that inclines them to need to be the decision-maker for the party. More conversations between other characters, with the opportunity for the player character to mediate might also be a good move, and be another way in which we are conveyed as the decision-maker. With the characters defined as they are, there needs to be something to counterbalance it to make their deferring to the player character make narrative sense, or at least to have a narrative excuse until a bigger, more direct reason reveals itself.

In NWN2, the reason you lead the group is because the element of the plot that ties to you is unique to you, and it's a little bit more pressing than the objectives and needs your companions have, and you don't have the option of ignoring it - it's not relevant or related to your personal character backstory, apart from the predefined elements of it. Before that comes up, however, in the intro stages of the game, you're still the player character party leader, without everyone being aware of this bigger plot point. The game still justifies you leading, until the major reveal, with some dialogue that sets up the idea that, for whatever reason (that you're free to define), your character has sort of always been the instigator or leader in your small band of friends. It's a small extra couple of lines that ties that up in a believable way, and it's not hard for games to do, if they care. It's smoothed further by having early companions that have personalities that are supportive and friendly, and who want to help you with what you need to do - the more headstrong and difficult characters show up later, when the importance of what you're doing is enough to outweigh their independent characters without drowning them.

==

Because the short questions get the point across. It's really hard to justify not being a subordinate in Haven, until after you seal the breach, and give them a reason to follow you. It's hilarious given that the reason they'd follow you now is given in the cutscene after they find you, and before you head out to find Skyhold. It's even more hilarious when you take Cassandra's dialog when they're making you the Inquisitor into consideration: We need someone to lead us, someone that has already been leading us. Roughly paraphrasing there.

I'm not looking for a party full of Skyrim/Fallout level companions, that only exist to provide support and to marry. I much prefer them to have something going for them. I have run suboptimal parties more times than I care to count in party based games because I liked the companions I was using over the other choices. The first half of that last paragraph was indeed being facetious. However, the last half lays out valid reasons as to why they might want to follow you. You see, there's a reason that I haven't been here every single day since the launch of EA. I don't want other player's agendas messing up my experience with the game.

Now, what is it that I'm arguing against? The idea that Tav is replaceable, once rolled, as the main character. The idea that there's no reason this cast would follow Tav. I understand why you think this is fractious, but that doesn't mean that you're right. As I see it, the reason you believe this is that if the developers read a post that runs contrary to your agenda, they'll ignore your agenda. It's not like I have no reason to believe this either. I distinctly remember you derailing a thread about positive things that Larian has been doing because you had to be a "squeaky wheel".


Which you posted in response to this:


Who's "fractious"?

I don't think anyone here needs any additional help determining the answer to that question, Robert. Thank you.

You are absolutely correct, the person trying to convince someone not to let negative posters run him out of his own thread is the most divisive person on the forums. Surely everyone can see that, right? Right?

The more I reflect on "but they can be the main character, so bad", the more mystified I am. I played DOS 2, as a custom character on my first playthrough. I didn't realize until I came here that there was anything "amiss" about that. Of course, I have played lots of CRPGs with party based systems, and the vast majority of them have interesting companions, so when the DOS 2 companions were interesting, I just thought it was par for the course for this kind of game. I had no idea that it somehow adversely affected my experience, because it really didn't. The main game was my character's story, and the companion stories were side quests.

When I play Skyrim these days, it's heavily modded. The vast majority of the mods I use are custom companions, because the mod authors gave them interesting stories, some more so than others, to be sure, and interesting dialog. Some can play music for me, or sing to me, while others can read me books. That is very interesting and provides a better reason to use them than cannon fodder, or as stewards for Hearthfire content. So, when I see that we're going to have interesting companions here as well, I'm not disappointed, but happy. It means, at the very least, that I will have another reason to replay the game, for the different companion interactions, on top of choices in the main plot.

So, I don't buy into the penis envy that is "but they can be the main character". I also don't get the "but Larian needs to give me a reason to play as Tav". There's a whole host of reasons, including different race/class combos, let alone anything that comes up on launch with multiclassing. I neither require, nor desire for Larian to lock me into a specific character or build, which may well mean that I have lots of hours into this game, with multiple completions, before I ever get around to actually playing as one of the Origin characters, assuming I ever do.

I suppose we just appreciate and expect different things from an RPG Robert, as you keep bringing RPG titles that I would consider narratively inadequate: Inquisition, Skyrim, D:OS2 are not titles I would never use as an example of good narratives in RPGs, and I expect better from an RPG, especially a self proclaimed sequel to BG1&2.

In a roleplaying game, I am asked to roleplay a character - so build a character in my mind and try to act as him or her in game. If relations between my PC and companions don't make sense, Interaxtions between my PC and companions collpase. Game sends me mixed signals narratively and mechanically, and that prevents roleplaying. How can I roleplay? The game is being a bad *acting" partner, pitching you a scenario but than not following through on that.

Except that the scenario I painted out doesn't just include Skyrim, or Inquisition. I mentioned DOS 2 because it has the same situation with the companions, you can play them as the main character if you choose to. I never saw it as a problem then, and I don't now. However, the "the story is the main character's story" happens in every RPG, except for, off the top of my head, both IWD games, because there we made the whole party. So, because there's no good character interaction in those, they aren't good narrative games? Then there's the whole "what happens with the companions in Act 2"? What about Act 3? In the epilogue? How much are you expecting to get in Act 1? Or is it the "but Tav doesn't have a personal story" thing? The entire game is Tav's personal story, if one rolls Tav up after launch. If that's bad story telling, then it's pointless to compare this to any other game, because they're all bad. The main campaign is always the main character's "personal story". It's more than a bit odd that this wasn't a problem in any other games. But here, where the initial battle cry was "but DOS 3", it's suddenly a major problem?

It's one thing to not like the companions. That's a very subjective thing, and people are going to be all over the place. I despise Alistair in Dragon Age Origins, for example, while he's fairly popular around that community. It's another thing to dislike them but say "but they can be the main character, and Larian shouldn't have done that, and shouldn't have spent the development time creating their stories". This is an argument that I've seen on these forums, after all. To the point where "game developers that make interesting companions always give them something" is a rote argument. It's interesting that I point to Skyrim specifically because I don't want these companions to wind up like the Vanilla companions in Skyrim, that exist to be cannon fodder, or stewards, and to marry one for a shop in one of your houses. They have no intrinsic value beyond that, and that's what "Larian shouldn't be spending any dev time on them" will deliver. No thanks.