I heard Larian is working on 2 new projects! AFAIK nothing is known except that it's not BG4. But assuming either of them is a party based RPG like the likes of DOS2 or BG3, please consider focusing your narrative around the party instead of a single protagonist this time around.
The tagline of BG3 in the marketing material was "Gather your party". But the structure of the storytelling and mechanics always felt like it was the journey of the main character acting as the captain, and the party merely tagged along. The follower characters had deep stories often impacting the main story, but the way the cinematics were laid out, it was obvious the focus was on the one character who initiated the conversation. You could initiate a cinematic with a follower, but in that instance,
they were the protagonist. You couldn't switch characters or use their skills for skill checks, they were just background elements. Apart from storytelling this also had gameplay implications where if you didn't know what situation was going to follow and started the interaction with a character not suited for the task lacking the necessary skills, you were often forced into an impossible situation. This resulted in surreal situations like your bard being "forced" to bash down a door while your barbarian was twiddling their thumbs somewhere off in the distance watching you fail without a word, trying to pick a lock while your rogue was daydreaming, or having to open a cursed book with a barbarian while your wizard was pulling their hair out behind you. The game offered a wide range of diverse actions that it was rare you were really hopeless, but wouldn't it be easier if we could either change characters or have their skill show up in the dialogue options? Most other RPGs I played offered this as default, but for whatever reason, Larian seems to have this fixation on being protagonist focused and forgetting about the party outside of combat.
Concerning dialogue structure, there shouldn't be a captain in charge. Other characters can disapprove of your decisions and have consequences like them leaving, but it's not the most elegant way to do this. They should have a right to be a part of the decision making and while this isn't easy to implement in single player - although you could have a "debate" type feature similar to DOS1 - it's a no brainer in multiplayer. I always play with friends, and we debate the decisions, but if you play with randoms, one can feel left out, because even if they vote on a choice, the choice is usually ignored. (The lack of text chat in BG3 doesn't help either btw)
I like to bring up SWTOR as an example to highlight the contrast. Every cinematic was set up in a way to include everybody. The party was standing besides each other, and every player had the option to chime in by making a choice of their own, and the game chose one character to
voice the chosen line(random). It's such a small thing, and it's hard to convey the impact it has in words, but it made you feel like a part of the group, and even tho the outcome usually led to the same conclusion, it was a wonderful system. Not many videos out there highlighting the feature,
maybe this ancient Angry Joe vid. (When I play with friends, we actually try to emulate this by rolling dice on controversial decisions. Whoever wins, we go with it. It's great roleplay when the barbarian goes "ENOUGH TALK" as the cleric is trying to diffuse a situation.)
Contrary to SWTOR, Larian's games are a tad more deep with branching dialogue trees with varying outcomes, so it's understandable if someone doesn't want random trolls to cause chaos, but the solution is simple really. Just give the option for hosts to enable or disable "democracy mode", duh. As to what system it could utilize to choose who wins, there's a variety of options with varying to degrees of impact on story "consistency", and player chances. It could be simple majority based, but that would almost completely strip the player in the minority from speaking. It could be fully random, leading to the most chaos, but equal chances. The best one IMO would be a mixture of majority based and random where each player rolls at random, but same answers are pooled together giving higher weight to the majority, while giving a chance for the minority to speak up every once in a while. Of course, the best solution is always options, let us choose which system to use.
This would work best if player characters had voiced lines to signify who is the speaker at a given moment, however, I know this is a controversial topic. Personally I hate the lack of voiced protagonist, it gives this uncanny feeling to cinematics in BG3 when the NPC finishes talking, the camera turns to your character grimacing, and after you choose the camera goes right back to the NPC to voice their reaction. Many games choose to not have voiced protagonists, but most of them don't switch camera perspectives back and forth, so it's less jarring. I would say just give us the option to turn off protagonist voice lines if someone doesn't want them, but I realise this would have a huge impact on development and budget, so I'll leave this up to the developers discretion. I do want to say that those who voice their opinion against voiced protagonists are acting selfishly, since if there were voiced lines, you could always have the option to turn them off, worst case by a mod. Those who do want them don't have this luxury.
TL;DR:
- Option to switch characters, or add party special dialogue options and have the appropriate character do the skill check automatically
-
Option for multiplayer to enable a "democracy mode" system to choose and
enforce dialogue choice made by others
(-
Option for voiced player characters for those who prefer that)
