Baldur's Gate 3 - Does The Dark Urge Solve Larian's Origin Character Problem?

greetings everyone hope all of you are having an absolutely fantastic day early in Baldur's Gate 3's development larion Studios announced the game would have origin characters or rather characters with a pre-packaged history and personality as opposed to a blank slate this was met with a mixed response partially because many people found the characters dislikable but just as importantly many RPG fans do not like using origin characters and believe larion's focus on them harms the experience of players who prefer their characters to have a blank slate we have had this very discussion on the channel Discord and it seems my community is split right down the middle on whether or not origin characters are a good thing yesterday during the panel from Hell laryn announced a new origin option called the dark urge and it seems like it's been specifically constructed to answer many of the criticisms they have received about origin characters but does it succeed in doing that I want to unpack this conversation because I am curious about the perspective other people have if Baldur's Gate 3 has the massive launch and staying power most of us are expecting then it could potentially become very influential and result in more RPGs adopting this style of Storytelling especially considering the success of divinity original sin 2 larion Studio's previous game which also lets you use pre-packaged characters we'll start this discussion by laying out how the manner in which laryn Studios approaches origin characters differs from other RPGs then we'll walk through what I see as the pros and cons of this storytelling method after that we'll comb through the details there and has announced regarding the dark urge and determine what issues this option successfully addresses finally I'll leave you with my own personal thoughts as always I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below and there are chapters for this video if you want to skip around alright so let's kick this off by explaining why laryn's approach is so unique by comparing it to a couple of other games in Dragon Age Origins you are able to choose from a list of different Origins which decide your race and how your game will begin this origin story helps explain some of your motivations and where you fit in the lore of the game World all other aspects of the character are completely blank you have no voice you are given a name but almost nobody uses it and outside of changing your race you can freely customize your character's features the origin character you choose becomes the one that is Central to the main story all other origin characters die off or essentially become irrelevant another type of origin character is geralt from The Witcher series you don't get to select a background history because he only has one and it's filled with details that are widely known and referenced by The Game's characters you have a voice you have a name that you hear constantly and you must play a human or in his case a mutant your only facial customization options are changing his haircut you have some flexibility regarding his dialogue options but no matter what that dry wet and I don't really want to be bothered personality is going to shine through larion Studios took what those previous games have done and cranked it up several notches by providing multiple origin characters so like Witcher you choose a character that has a name a voice and consistent features however like Dragon Age Origins you could choose from multiple origin options so in the case of divinity original sin 2 there were six different Origins to choose from unlike Dragon Age choosing one origin doesn't cause the characters in The Other Origins to die instead they are available as party members and all of them continue to be active in the story it's also very possible for origin characters to turn against you causing you to fight someone that you were playing as in another playthrough all right now that you have an idea of what laryn's origin character system is and why it's so unique let's talk about the pros and cons of this approach the main advantage comes down to one word you are going to hear a lot in this video reactivity when developers put their focus on Origin characters it is significantly easier for them to craft the world that reacts to who you are in The Witcher series everywhere you go people greet you by your name and bring up things that your character has done in the past sometimes the player doesn't already know geralt has done these things and they are learning about it in real time so part of the joy of playing An Origin character is that the game reveals details about their history and who these people were before you gain control of them that information helps you figure out what kind of person you want them to be now speaking of which another thing that really makes playing An Origin character entertaining is that you can decide to make them act completely differently than they did before you gain control my favorite origin option in Divinity original sin 2 is the red Prince he's known as a tyrant a slave or a despot someone who cavorts with demons just about any other negative horrible thing you can say about a person other characters in the world know this about him and know the violent history of his race I have the freedom to role play him as someone who is kind giving and wants peace for all some other NPCs in the world react to this and remark upon how much he appears to have changed or how different he is from other lizards they have met that kind of reactivity is deeply satisfying for the player the last positive I want to note is because you have an entire history that has been laid out it frees the developers to determine what relationships you already have my first baldus Gate 3 playthrough will be his will for this exact reason he is part of a noble family from Baldur's Gate so I'm really excited to see how that Dynamic plays out and how much of a celebrity he is within the city he's also on a mission to kill one of the other origin characters and I want to see how that changes my dialogue with her both of these aspects of this character make up a potential playthrough exciting but it would be much more difficult to accomplish if Will was a completely blank slate of course there are also some strong disadvantages to using origin characters as well first and foremost it forces the player to use the character they have not designed I find this limitation is especially egregious to Gamers who regularly play tabletop games they compare it to sitting down at a DND table and having the dungeon master tell them who their character is and how they should role play it instantly damages their ability to enjoy the game on a similar note the player might strongly disagree with the design choices the developer has made for the origin character I experienced this while playing pentiment a game that gives you control over the dialogue options of the character you play but also has long time jumps where your character makes decisions without you I learned about things my character had done during those time jumps and the decisions were so strongly contrary to my vision of the character that it basically ruined my ability to enjoy the game both of those are disadvantages that any game using an origin character has to consider there are also potential pitfalls that apply specifically to how larian Studios handles this feature the first problem is having multiple origin characters who all live within the story can make your main character feel unimportant in bald is gay three there are multiple origin characters you can choose from all of them have tadpoles in their heads and all of them can potentially survive the prologue that means at least on some level they are all heroes of Their Own Story and even if your character died the rest of them will continue on and figure out how to set things right so the question becomes if your character is technically not critical to the story does that damage your ability to enjoy it remember in Dragon Age Origins once you pick An Origin character all the other possible origin characters either die or become irrelevant none of them gain significant Renown and certainly none of them are party members in games like mass effect of The Witcher there's only one origin character option so they don't have this issue either the other unique major issue relates to a consistent criticism of divinity original sin 2 if you decided to create a custom character instead of using one of the origin options you basically got screwed there's a ton of reactivity throughout the game if you choose to play as the red Prince fame or any of the other origin selections if you create your own character from scratch there is very little reactivity in the game that rewards this decision so essentially it feels like a shell of what you experience with an origin character this has come up as a point of discussion repeatedly regarding Baldur's Gate 3 circling back to will he's a warlock who was on a quest to find his Patron larion confirmed early in the game's development that will can interact directly with his Patron at some point during the story many people were concerned that if you play as the custom warlock you won't be able to interact with your Patron in the same way and instead you'll just get access to the base story content during the panel yesterday Larry and confirmed this will not be the case and custom-made warlocks can in fact call upon their Patron for guidance but you get the idea players are concerned that their Blank Slate characters won't experience a game world that's nearly as reactive to who they are compared to origin options alright now that you are armed with proper contacts let's talk about what laryn has done toward dress player concern yesterday they introduced the final origin character the dark urge picking this origin allows you to play as any gender race or class and it doesn't provide you with any type of backstory so essentially it lets you have an origin while at the same time retaining almost complete control over your character the difference between this character and the other origin options is that you feel a near constant urge to commit violent acts during the panel an example of this was shown where upon your initial meeting with Gail he reaches a hand out from a portal and asks you to help him the dark urge has an option to fall into a murderous Haze and bite Gail's hand off in front of your other party members larion specifically mentioned that all characters have the option to be consistently violent but the dark urge kicks things up several levels and this origin will give you options that the other characters do not have if you give in to these Temptations then you will gain more power but it's also possible you will end the game completely alone also as time passes it will become more and more difficult to resist your murderous Temptations speaking of which like all other Origins you have the ability to resist these urges or give in to them so you can absolutely play the dark urge as someone who is Holy benevolent and peaceful okay so with all that being said let's get into my thoughts those of you who have been following the channel know I absolutely love playing evil characters and appreciate it when developers put effort into making an evil playthrough enjoyable the footage they showed of some of the evil acts you can do look bananas honestly looking at what they did with the dark urge has convinced me to do another let's play on the channel we used to do them regularly but I stopped because they were time intensive for little gain but the idea of spending hours voice acting a murderous Dragonborn who was potentially a ball spawn appeals to me a great deal the dark urge is also a really impressive way for learning Studios to satisfy a wider variety of players you would be shocked at the amount of people who played dolls too and never picked An Origin option there's a ton of them out there and I think this ability to create a blank slate while still gaining reactivity from the world is super cool but let's Circle back to the original question does the dark urge solve laryn's origin character problem my answer is it does but only halfway you get a character whose class raised in backstory is all decided by you while at the same time getting the level of reactivity to typically reserved for An Origin character so from that standpoint this is a much better option than what was available in DOS 2. on the other hand the narrative issue with how laryn handles origin characters isn't addressed by the dark urge at the end of the day your character isn't special compared to the other Origins and technically isn't necessary to the story personally that doesn't bother me but I find it weird that Laren is so comfortable with this issue why do all the origin characters in baldness Gate 3 get a tadpole in their head why not just have only the character you select get a tadpole while the rest of them have different reasons for being on the ship without having played the game this seems like a simple fix that would make the narrative much stronger for many players regardless I am absolutely looking forward to this game and I think the dark urge is a brilliant feature which adds even more depth to a game that was already stacked that's all I had to say on the topic but once again if you have any thoughts please leave them in the comments below hope all of you enjoyed this video take care

Channel: Slandered Gaming

Views: 45,094

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Id: cPgUWqNSPic

Length: 13min 1sec (781 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023