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?

Even the most nihilistic of postmodern literature has a concrete protagonist, going all the way back to Roland Barth.

Nowhere did I say you're not the protagonist. This is more a question of what kind of story you're a part of than being in a story.

I think the confusion is from what can't be translated from a video game to a movie, or book.

Anything written down in a script or a novel isn't incidental, even if it's purpose is purposelessness(x5). But because the script of a video game splines out, atemporally sometimes, you get incidental dialoguel couple that with a character unmoored to the story being told, you can actually have meaningless dialogue.

"I'm sworn to carry your burdens" That's so vague it could be used after giving her a sweet roll, or it could be after fighting a pack of werewolves. For Tav, you're partaking in conversations that other characters have more meaningful dialogue to say, but Tav gets, [Baldurian] Yes, I've heard of you or [Baldurian] No, I haven't. After which, because these options are made to be so vague, the following dialogue doesn't even need to account for which you choose. If that happened in a novel or script, it would be considered poor writing, but because it happens in a video game, we get threads on forums about what the nature of character customization is.

Does the ability for Geralt to change his hair cut and grow out his beard make him the same as Commander Shepard. It seems like putting a wig on it is all that is required.

This AND that

I'm genuinely not feeling Tav as a side-character in my play throughs.

Patch 9 play-through Tav (Baldurian noble oath of devotion paladin) was straight line consistent. The oath break near the end was a friendly fire kill because of hubris. Humbled, he re-swore the oath to take better care. Events in play defined his character, which was close enough to how I envisioned him.

When I say side plots, it's not at all in a negative sense. But in-character that's how my Tav regarded them (at least until forced to truly reckon with them).
- A noble knows they need to spend gold for power, so gifting magic items to placate Gale was highly unusual, but a cost was expected. (Baldur's Gate Patriar houses pay well for a personal wizard.)
- As a fellow warrior, my paladin recognized Lae'zel's undeniable combat prowess, so he entertained her lead, etc...

We're using 'side-quest' a bit loosely here too. We're kind of talking about story threads or different facets of main plots. With a different Tav, I pick and omit side quests.

tav is the only character, which does not exist if you play him / her. the story itself does not position tav in the centre as it is done in other games like me, da, kotor. where main character is in the centre of the story. here it is different, and story is around group of characters and not your character. well at least in EA, however they used the same formula in dos games. So i doubt they will change it. People tend to use or do what they doing well and it is always tough to change

I really like that fact. First, I do not know any player who has spent time to make his own character to not hurry up to resurrect him. Second, I absolutely HATED how in the original Bg1 and Bg2 if your protagonist dies, you can not resurrect him like the others. No, you have to reload. And play your character like a total coward to avoid reloading. What's worse is that many games of the genre followed that example. I am really thankful to Larian for changing that in BG3.

The problem here is that the script for a video game is even more complex than the script for a movie, or an outline for a novel. The reason being that in a novel or a movie, the consumer of the media isn't making any choices at "flashpoints" in the story, but instead, those choices are made by the author. If Player 1 always chooses Path A for any "flashpoints", points in the story where a choice must be made, then they're going to get one story, while Player 2, that always chooses Path B will get another one. The main story will always progress to the "Ultimate Goal", but the way it's arrived at can vary, according to choices made along the way.

These outcomes can have significant weight, who survives to get to the "Ultimate Goal", or be largely insignificant, [Baldurian] dialog choice or not. But in a novel, or a movie, it's always going to come out the same way, regardless of what the consumer may want, because the outcomes are predetermined by the author. Each branch of the story, Path A, Path B and any other Paths that may exist, have to have their outcomes determined, along with what happens if Player 3 is all over the place, and Player 4 is also all over the place, but is choosing the exact opposite of Player 3. This is the complexity of having just 2 choices at the Flashpoint, what if there are 4? It also ignores Player 5, who is also all over the place, but in a different way from all the other players, and you can carry that out for a long way, depending on how many choices are available at each flashpoint.

What choice can I make at the beginning of the Witcher games that makes Geralt other than Geralt of Rivia? Meanwhile, Shepard can be Earthborn, a Spacer, or a colonist. All three change the game. They change dialog at the very beginning, and add unique quests to the game, that you won't get on the other Origins. Where are these "origin" options for Geralt? Then, there are 3 separate service records you can choose from. Where are these for Geralt? Is there an option to remove the Butcher thing? No. Geralt is predefined and will always have the exact same past when you load in to play. So when I say "I don't want Tav to be Geralt of the Forgotten Realms", it's what I mean. I don't want Larian telling me who Tav is, I want to decide that for myself. If I want to play a predefined character, I can choose one of the Origin characters.

What's the problem? Having different outcomes for different input is related to the point I'm making, but with regards to a origin and non-origin characters, we're talking about how these characters interact with those choices. The [Baldurian] dialogues are an example of the illusion of choice that becomes worse in a game where you can have a character who isn't written to the story and one who is.
Let's take your example of Geralt. Now if The Witcher were BG3, you'd have Geralt, Triss, and Dandelion on a quest to find a cure for the tadpole...and Jan Kowalski he's the leader of the group, he doesn't have any connection to the Absolute (who's Jennifer in this scenario) but he will be taking the lead in any dialogue between her and Geralt.

As for Shepard, so these three backgrounds for Shepard makes him totally different from Geralt? The three childhoods Shepard can have are a fun, they come in a few times in the story, but they hardly constitute a dramatic difference from a character like Geralt. Most people didn't even play the first two Witcher games, so you might as well treat them as the three backgrounds for Geralt (not that 3 didn't do fuck all with them)

The point that was being made about Geralt and Shepard is that they were predefined characters, with personalities and points of view, as opposed to Tav, The Dragonborn, etc.

That said no one expects a tighteness of a good movie script in a video game. Is it really too much to expect for written text in games to support and be supported by gameplay?

...and that was my point. You claim there's some confusion about how this works, so I demonstrated that there's no confusion, on my end, by laying out exactly how it works. The confusion comes in with your comparison of Geralt and Shepard, which tells me everything I need to know. Thanks?

If you really wanted to clear things up then maybe contribute to the discussion.

I checked out the Magic Mirror of the necromancer for Tav. It gave 3 possible entries:

1) I see my loved ones safe and sound.
2) I get the tadpole out of my head.
3) I see my enemies suffering.

Yeah, that's pretty generic all right. Covers all bases though.

Actually, now that I think about it, the origin characters don't even mention the tadpole? That says that Tav above all other characters is defined by getting it removed.

I must admit I didn't read all six pages, so take my two cents on the weight they have:

This game will always have a problem in justifying the leadership of the MC for the simple reason that this is not a Single Player game: this is a co-op game that CAN be played as a single-player, not dissimilar to a game such as Wasteland 3.

Like it or not, Larian is trying to recreate the experience of a DnD table, in which the "leadership" is typically shared among all the players or, following the Wasteland 3 example, among the two rangers.


Since, potentially, all 4 members of the party may be played by 4 players, I think there are only two available choices:

1) At some point in the plot, there is a reason why one particular character is elevated as the leader of the group leaving the others at his commands (knight-squires relationship), de facto making one character more important than the others;

2) A leader is never elected, allowing each player to feel equally important.

I don't really know, for this kind of game, which solution is better.


In my headcanon, my Tav is the leader of the group because the other characters would constantly be bickering together without a "third party" taking the decisions amid all the contradictory inputs and strategies on how to move forward. Btw, this is the reason why I will always play as Tav, because if I would play as any other OC and put myself to roleplay as they would, there would be no reason for me to follow anyone or any reason for them to follow me.

At the end of the day, I try not to put too much attention on this narrative inconsistency (we can find it in almost every single game out there) for the sake of playing the game. Imho there are many more immersion-breaking features in the game right now (I still cannot cope with the always available fast-travel, even in the middle of an enemy fortress).

It'd be great if there was some sort of group companion dialogue that showed this type of thing. SH and Lae'zel arguing, with Astarion adding snarky unhelpful comments and Gale getting exasperated at the lack of progress being made. Gale, SH, or Lae'zel (depending on who you have the most approval with) then turn to Tav and ask for their opinion...a bit more arguing...ending with a compromise that they'll follow Tav because otherwise the party is deadlocked.

Something like that. It would be a bit more complicated to do this for multiplayer, but eh I'm sure there's a reasonable way that isn't to complicated to implement.

You say like it or not, and I don't like it. Again, it just reinforces the fact that this is a multiplayer first game, and all design decisions have been made for multiplayer to work.