With Baldur’s Gate 3 now days away from its PC debut, we’ve interviewed Larian to discuss some of the very last outstanding topics.
I can’t remember what interview it was from, but IIRC, it’s not that it’s an unsolvable problem, it’s in the standard they wished to hold dialogue to. A swap is easy, a swap that feels natural is not. The exponential explosion of little tweaks and permutations was outside the scope they were willing/able to add before release. (Presumably they are under some pressure to release, not just from fans, but from WotC, and the logistics of keeping the company afloat.) Which I can respect, although I both anticipate and fully understand the need for mods to do the swap.
I respect their option, but disagree with it completely. I think accidentally triggering a cutscene with the wrong character, stumbling through it quickly only to reload a save and trigger it with your player character instead feels a lot worse than just always triggering the cutscene with your player character, even if it “breaks immersion” by teleporting them slightly (unless they are really far away/this is an Origin specific interaction). I’m not asking for the complex task of being able to switch characters mid dialogue, I understand how that can prove nightmarish to implement, just let me pick the default character to always initiate all interactions and I’ll be happy.