I'm playing BG3 again. (Character dump thread)

Main Tav

https://i.imgur.com/ZzMMFvK.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/kzVAngU.jpeg

Bad Tav

https://i.imgur.com/sSrqtSq.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/27y4WdJ.jpeg

Bad Tav's Musclebound Compadre(Not Robert Downey Jr.)

https://i.imgur.com/Pcpfjh3.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/SekGP20.jpeg

Good Durge (Don't mind the blood)

https://i.imgur.com/OrNVx9J.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/U0D3GPV.jpeg

Bad Durge (supposed to be half-drow, but I wanted the Drow experience)

https://i.imgur.com/tBczEgA.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/a1kpVBW.jpeg

Feel free to post your own!

I should have some pics from my playthroughs on another computer. I'll see if I can dig those up. ...You'll notice something of a recurring theme among my main playthroughs.

I don't have any pictures, and I've only ever played through Act 1, though I have plans to play the whole thing soon.

My first character was a Half-Elf Archfey Warlock Urchin, with long cyan and purple streaked hair. I was mostly playing Chaotic Good.

At some point I'm probably going to play both good and evil Durges (Half-Drow Sword Bard and Drow Battlemaster Fighter), a Half-Elf Selunite Cleric Acolyte, a Human Storm Sorcerer Noble, Human Devotion Paladin Soldier, and maybe a Tiefling Lore Bard Charlatan.

If I haven't gotten sick of it by then, I might play around with some other combos.

I like the Durge origin a lot, but I hate when people insist that it's the canon playthrough and makes Tav obsolete. The problem is that when you know enough of Durge's story, it doesn't leave enough blanks for you to fill in yourself when making a character with their own inferred backstory and such.

For Half-Drow, it's up to you, but in my experience when I played as the half-elf subrace, I didn't get any of the Drow dialogue IIRC. That's why I ended up going full-drow and customized him to look Half-Drow-ish.

In any news, I took some more pictures and found ones of my first playthrough.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/8/7/AAUBnrAAE2M7.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/9/3/AAUBnrAAE2NB.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/9/4/AAUBnrAAE2NC.jpg

And some more pics of (one of) my current playthrough with a few better face profiles.

https://i.imgur.com/CeWcNNb.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/RK9o2rs.png

One of the pictures is being uncooperative with Imgur for some reason, so I'm working on that.

https://i.imgur.com/Z8fHSGC.png

Krow_Incarnate posted...

I like the Durge origin a lot, but I hate when people insist that it's the canon playthrough and makes Tav obsolete.

The problem is, that's technically true - it is canon.

If WotC references BG3 in future works, the main character is going to be Durge, not Tav. It's also going to be a male white Dragonborn. "Tav" doesn't exist "canonically".

Larian honestly doesn't like player backstory agency, even if the vast majority of players prefer it. It's why in Divinity: Original Sin 2 you're "supposed" to play as one of the Origin characters and not a custom - you miss out on a LOT of the story if you play custom, and you don't really get anything unique in exchange.

Same with Tav and Durge - Durge gets extra plot, Tav doesn't. Most of the story is clearly built around Durge, Tav is basically a nobody.

I wouldn't say Durge makes Tav obsolete (I personally prefer the freedom of Tav, because I'm a filthy RPer). But Durge is definitely canonical, and clearly who Larian want you to play.



Krow_Incarnate posted...

For Half-Drow, it's up to you, but in my experience when I played as the half-elf subrace, I didn't get any of the Drow dialogue IIRC. That's why I ended up going full-drow and customized him to look Half-Drow-ish.

From what I've heard, they get some Drow options, and some Half-Elf options - and at least a couple lines that are specifically for Half-Drow. So there is a difference between them and pure Drow or pure Half-Elf.

But like I said, I'm a filthy RPer. And I know a ton about Faerun. So I'm not as concerned about whether or not the game has a ton of reactivity for a specific race as opposed to whatever persona I'm
building in my head. I wouldn't necessarily pick the race or class options in a given conversation anyway if they don't fit who I think my character is .

(Incidentally, this is why I prefer Fallout: New Vegas over Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 - I'd rather have the total blank slate Obsidian gives me than the more defined backstory Bethesda clearly wants to integrate into the main story. I don't RP to have someone else tell me who I'm supposed to be.)

As an example, my impulsive and "whimsical" Half-Elf Warlock raised on the streets of Baldur's Gate would probably be picking very different options than my "Merciful" Half-Elf Selunite Cleric raised in a temple, and neither of them would be overly hung up on their heritage (ie, not picking the Half-Elf options). But a Half-Drow would be much more aware of being sort of trapped between two worlds.

I feel like the Background and Class options do more to shape personality than Race does (for me, anyway). Though I'll lean into it more for the full Drow and Tiefling runs, especially since those are so strongly tied into the Act 1 plot.

I was considering a Gnome at one point, but I heard some of the smaller races can have camera issues in some scenes. It was originally going to be my Warlock, and I may still play one eventually, but if I do I'll probably go Barbarian in memory of Nudo (RIP).

Durge and Tav are distinct characters in-game though.

I agree that it's likely WotC will treat Durge as the canon protagonist in any future media, but you can find him as a separate entity in any given playthrough as Tav.

Because of that, there's literally nothing stopping WotC from treating them separately if they really wanted to.

As far as missing out on the story of the companions, I tend to disagree a bit there, at least with this game moreso than Divinity. Maybe you get some extra flavor text by playing as one of the origin characters, but their stories and respective questlines are still largely intact even with a custom character. What's more is that you lose out on that character's personality by playing them directly.

I remember trying to play as Fane in D:OS2 because people insisted you had to play as him, at least once. I gave it a shot, but it largely turned me off of Origin characters entirely.

And with games like these, "lack of story" is never even remotely an issue at all with a custom character. These games are supposed to be packed with massive, sprawling worlds that encourage exploration and interaction on a level that other genres simply don't provide. There's plenty of story to go around through the various questlines, side quest and main quest alike. And by giving the player a robust character creator, you're then giving them the freedom to infer and implement part of their own handmade story into that same game world. Just because the devs didn't do your character's story for you, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I'm trying to see if I can find one of my older posts on the BG3 board about my experience with playing as origin Shadowheart.

But it largely came down to the fact that in her pivotal moment, it had a lot less meaning to me, because I can't possibly care about Shar and the related dilemma in the way that Shadowheart herself does. But when she was my companion and was an agent of her own thoughts and actions, it was more impactful because all I could do was influence her, with the choice ultimately being hers to make.

I equated playing as origin Shadowheart to Homer trying to decide whether or not to press a button.

I actually found it quoted in another one of my posts lol

I'll just post what I did on the Larian forums.
For me, the lack of variety is a symptom of the larger issue being lack of overall companions in general.

The ones we have are really good and more fleshed out(by nature of the game) than almost any of the companions in the previous two games.

But the trade-off is that there's like a maybe a third of what we're used to having available to choose from.

This is a reason I would've liked to not have origin characters. All their quests are still fully present in Tav/DU's playthrough and in the case of my recent Shadowheart playthrough, I felt hers fell a little flat playing from her perspective.

In my first run with Tav, I was on the edge of my seat wondering what Shadowheart was going to do with the Nightsong, because ultimately all I could do is influence her, but it ended up being her decision to make. Also, she was able to convey how she felt about her Shar worship and how it relates to a lot of the decisions I made throughout our journey.

Whereas when I'm playing Shadowheart, I can't honestly care about Shar or Selune from a personal standpoint, where as a character she's supposed to. When it came time to make the big decision, she just silently stood there in "generic player dialogue animation" and I felt like Homer Simpson looking at a button and going "Let's see what this does!"

Much less impactful than the guilt/curiosity I felt looking from the outside in.

Anyways, long-story short, if we had more companions, we would've had more variety. But the number of companions itself is criminally low for a BG game.