Baldur's Gate 3's Companions Set a High Standard for The Elder Scrolls 6

Baldur’s Gate 3 is still regularly cited as the pinnacle of the CRPG genre, with a lot of credit due to its characters. Indeed, much like the BioWare and Black Isle Studios RPGs that inspired it, Baldur’s Gate 3 puts a great deal of stock in its cast, and its writing in general, which has helped it achieve the prestige it enjoys today.

It also makes for some unfavorable comparisons in the RPG space. Baldur’s Gate 3, in some ways, did to RPGs what Halo did to first-person shooters, what Breath of the Wild did to open-world games: it set a new gold standard. For better or worse, this means that just about every western RPG, particularly those rooted in traditional fantasy ideas, will be measured against BG3. Again, this comes right down to Baldur’s Gate 3‘s exceptional character writing, as other strengths like quest or combat design are easier for other studios to emulate and adapt. Character writing is BG3‘s secret sauce, if you will, and whenever The Elder Scrolls 6 rolls around, it would do well to get a bottle of its own.

Why Baldur’s Gate 4 is Already in a Tough Spot With Its NPCs

Baldur’s Gate 3 redefined RPG storytelling with its NPCs, raising the stakes for the next studio to take on the Baldur’s Gate mantle.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Drew a Line in the Sand With Its Companions

While I don’t want to minimize Baldur’s Gate 3‘s other strengths—it certainly has a lot going for it—it’s difficult to overstate just how pivotal its companions were in its success. Since most BG3 players opt to create their own character, Larian likely knew how crucial it was to make a well-defined and compelling cast, as these characters would effectively be the emotional core of the narrative. In many ways, they are the stars more than the custom player-character.

To properly explain why Baldur’s Gate 3‘s companions are so well-written would take many more pages and hours than I have available, but their quality can be roughly encapsulated in the term “defined.” Each character has clear, unassailable goals, values, delusions, dreams, fears, and so on, and none of these traits are ever compromised for the sake of the player or gaming experience. Ironically, this sort of confidence, this willingness to contradict or challenge the player, is what makes any gaming experience worthwhile at all.

Take Lae’zel, the fearless Githyanki warrior with an almost psychopathic view of life: the only thing that matters to her is victory, she values strength above all else, and she has little to no qualms about killing in general. Her opinions on death and violence are laissez-faire, bordering on amoral, which is decidedly uncommon for a member of a heroic fantasy troupe. She will not be much swayed by the player’s own ethical arguments or decisions, either: she is firm and extreme in her thinking, and this makes her interesting. The same can be said for the game’s other party members, all of whom have their own unique obsessions, neuroses, and flaws.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Companions Are Unforgettable in More Ways Than One

It’s important to point out that companions in Baldur’s Gate 3 are far from just narrative set-dressing or useful tools in combat. As previously mentioned, they are instrumental in making Baldur’s Gate 3 what it is, and that involves gameplay as much as storytelling. Because the player can control BG3‘s side characters independently, their unique quirks regularly assume new, powerful dimensions by way of interactivity.

I’m often reminded of one of BG3‘s Act 2 bosses (no spoilers) that I was certain I had missed—everyone was talking about him, but I couldn’t remember the encounter for the life of me. Then, it dawned on me that I had actually met the villain, but I happened to be controlling the fit and imposing Karlach at the time, which meant that I had the requisite stats to outdrink him instead of fighting him traditionally. This is just one example of a kind of thing that happens regularly during a Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough. The unpredictability of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s characters nurture unpredictability and spontaneity in gameplay.

When evaluating companions in the gameplay department, one could also point to the long-running quests built around each companion, which many consider among the best side quests in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Bringing this all back to The Elder Scrolls 6, it’s clear that Bethesda has some work to do if it wants Larian-level companion quality. I can’t help but think of Starfield, a game that, for all its innovations and cool ideas related to friendly NPCs, fell flat as a party-oriented RPG. It was outshined by previous Bethesda RPGs in this respect, which is unfortunate, since Starfield‘s companions are clearly meant to play a greater role this time around, with so many being unmissable members of the player-character’s adventuring company and all.

Comparing Starfield‘s companions to Baldur’s Gate 3‘s helps further illuminate certain shortcomings. For instance, whereas BG3‘s companions are often ethically complex, diverse, and ambiguous, virtually all the core Starfield companions fill the role of morally upright space-adventurer, never truly disagreeing with each other or the player on anything other than extreme subjects, like whether it’s okay to kill innocent people. In this way, they act like ethical guardrails for the player, keeping them on the straight and narrow instead of providing unique, fully fleshed-out narrative or lore insights.

The milquetoast personalities of Starfield are rather surprising, since Bethesda RPGs haven’t shied away from morally dubious companions in the past, like Jericho from Fallout 3.

And as far as gameplay is concerned, Starfield‘s friendly NPCs are mostly ineffectual, although this is something it has in common with its Fallout and Elder Scrolls cousins. In those games, friendly NPCs are really only there to act as automated combat assistants and pack mules that you can occasionally marry. Bethesda’s approach to companions is a generally frictionless one, which makes for smoother gameplay, but closes players off from many of the delightful surprises featured in games like Baldur’s Gate 3.

This doesn’t mean that The Elder Scrolls 6 should just ape BG3‘s approach to companions, though. It wouldn’t really make sense for the next Elder Scrolls to feature playable allies, for instance. But in the wake of Baldur’s Gate 3, the pedestrian, inoffensive, and unobtrusive design philosophy of Bethesda’s companion system appear as ever more glaring shortcomings, and the studio ought to be aware of that moving into The Elder Scrolls 6.