The emotional rock of Baldur’s Gate 3 is its diverse cast of likeable and tragic companions, whose arcs and dialog largely revolve around their relationship with you, the player. They’ll say hello or something to each other every now and then, and some have more bespoke interactions in key scenes, but it feels like the chemistry of the cast is firmly anchored in the player’s actions. This isn’t necessarily a bad or surprising thing, but I did find myself, at camp or in caves, greedily hoping to see the likes of Shadowheart and Karlach bounce off each other, or maybe see people like Astarion and Wyll commiserate.
It’s not that there’s none of that, I just wanted more so I could gush over my favs colliding. So I’m delighted to hear that, as it plugs away at its new RPG Divinity, Larian is seemingly doing so with an eye for deeper cross-companion interactions.
Several members of Larian participated in a big community Reddit AMA earlier today, notably reversing course on some gen AI use and joining Wyll fans in dreaming about the resolution that might have been. A response from senior writer Kevin VanOrd, who answered a question about what the team would like to improve on in terms of writing and narrative for Divinity, caught my eye.
“Companion relationships,” VanOrd says. “Firstly, to have more interaction between companions – not just with more and better banter, but to have them develop deeper relationships with each other, just as they do with players. Secondly, to ramp up player friendship and romance more subtly, so relationship building feels natural.”
I would have been happy with the first point alone. But the second, slowly bringing NPC love to a simmer rather than instantly cranking it to a hard boil, is also music to my ears.
The speed with which Baldur’s Gate 3 companions jumped your bones was partially caused by a bug at launch, but even once it was fixed, the transition from “Hello, fellow mind prisoner” to scorching romance always seemed a little quick to me. I wooed Shadowheart – no regrets, in hindsight – and scorned Lae’zel without even meaning to. I just wanted to be nice! More subtlety in this space, which might deepen the payoff and furnish the journey with tender moments, sounds excellent.
Writing director Adam Smith also touched on the companions in Divinity. “We’ll give you space to build your relationships with the companions. I won’t go into too much detail here,” he told a user who asked about an equivalent to the camp system in Baldur’s Gate 3 and the way it fostered organic companion interactions. “And, yes, you won’t have to refill any spell slots,” he added, further highlighting the divide between Larian’s plans and the D&D rules used especially for BG3.
Baldur’s Gate 3 director says Larian had “all the freedom we needed” to make the D&D RPG but adapting the tabletop format provided its own “limitations”.
