#I'm deciding to be a problem about EA Wyll

[roguishwretches]

I just discovered Early Access Wyll and his character has way more flavor than what we got?? I mean, don't get me wrong I love release Wyll but he's definitely pushed to the side. Making him such an obviously flawed character and beefing with the goblins in Act I would've been so interesting but aaaaaahhhh........

He would've been a second Astarion to me if the core elements of EA Wyll were kept but nooo people complained too much about it :/

[eeldritchblast]

Any recommendations who to romance for my first playtrough? I really like all of them so it's hard to decide! I'm playing as a tiefling bard that likes helping people so Astarion isn't really an option with all the disapproval

Can relate to this problem!

As a really good Tav, it's easiest to romance Wyll, Karlach, or Gale. Their approval will skyrocket very quickly. (Actually, with Gale it was a challenge in EA that it rose so quickly that it was easy to miss the romance-triggering dialogue completely if you didn't do enough strategically timed rests!)

I will also say though, that you can absolutely romance Astarion or Lae'zel if you're a good person, so long as you're strategic about your approval/disapproval. I've done it before.

[drizztdonturden]

#added the scene tally for context bc this isn't even *just* a durge problem let me know if you want it off the post op#tbh i wasn't even surprised anymore by just how much more content ast*rion had compared to everyone else#larian - for whatever reason - had decided to make him their poster child and writers' pet for the entirety of ea already#so to have it be the same at release was#not surprising#what was surprising though is that they didn't even *try* to even out the content the others had#the difference in quantity and quality and just overall care is so stark#to have it confirmed by one of the main writers and apparently NARRATIVE LEAD DESIGNERS whose job it is to oversee EVERYONE'S development#is... Disappointing to say the very least#to have a writer say sorry#we didn't time and resources for any of the others#but we miraculously have the time to plan storyboard write record and animate them all for ast*rion is Truly Amazing

Hello! I hope OP doesn't mind me commenting on this, but I'm actually the person that wrote the post on Reddit analyzing Wyll's level of content in comparison to other companions. A friend told me that discussion of the data was circulating on Tumblr, so I took a look at some of the things being said on here, and made an account so I could clarify a few things. @galedekarios, you pretty aptly described what the biggest issue is, so I hope you're okay with me including your tags!

The first thing I want to state, is that Baudelaire Welch, the dev in question, uses they/them pronouns. I've seen a lot of people on Tumblr use the wrong pronouns, and I want to make sure that if this dialogue is happening, we all respect their identity properly.

I know a lot of people seem to be under the impression that this is the case, but Baudelaire Welch is not Astarion's writer. That is Stephen Rooney. However, Baudelaire is the senior narrative designer on the game, and according to their own blog, they are the "feature lead for companion characters and romances," and they wrote the Durge storyline. This is important to note because this isn't about Astarion's/the Durge's writer receiving more resources than their peers, this is about one of the narrative leads prioritizing one character over another. According to their Discord posts, they took the opportunity to work on Astarion over other companions, and didn't put aside the time to do this work on any other companion.

I've also seen people talking about the Durge being the intended main character. This is not accurate--what is correct is that there were early implications that Tav was meant to be a Bhaalspawn. But in this iteration, Tav did not have amnesia, nor were they implied to secretly be the super sexy and totally Bhaaling Jesus Christ of All Bhaalspawn. It appears that when Larian made the decision to make Tav just some guy and add the Dark Urge as an origin, they chose to make Durge more explicitly evil. It's a misconception to claim that Durge was always meant to be the main protagonist--rather, the Durge was added so this fandom could have more freedom to build their character however they wanted.

People also have been claiming that Astarion was the most popular companion in Early Access--that's not true. That's not even true in the full release of the game.

Contrary to popular belief, the finalized Wyll was not the last implemented companion. That was Karlach, who still has about 2 hours more dialogue than Wyll has. Theo Solomon stated in his interview with Dan Allen that he was brought in to play Wyll in November, whereas Samantha Beart was brought in to play Karlach six months prior to release (Apologies for not having a time stamp! I lost my notes that included it).

When I made the post, I was subjected to racism, bullying, and harassment. I bring it up because I think it's important to note that the reason Wyll was changed so much was because Larian made a mistake, and listened to a group of people that tend to criticize characters of color--especially fictional black people--far more heavily than their white counterparts. And while I believe Larian is well-intentioned, I don't think it's entirely possible to discuss the disparity of content without acknowledging that Wyll is a black man in an IP that has a lot of vocal racists in its fan base.

Anywho, apologies for the rant. But I think that this is something that needs to be addressed, and that we as a fandom need to discuss it factually. I hope this helps clear up some things!

i had not seen the "durge/astarion is canon!" post until earlier today with that discord screenshot and honestly ... a writer being like "i managed to shove in all this extra content for astarion/dark urge, but then we simply ran out of time for the other characters" is not good, actually. that doesn't mean your ship is the most canon. it means that astarion kept getting extra attention and other companions kept getting neglected. that other companions simply do not have the amount of content astarion has is not a good thing, it is a bad thing.

and like i'm saying this as someone who really loves astarion/durge. it's unplatable to me and that larian writers are sitting in fan discords going "yeah we just didn't do that for other characters but somehow i found the time for this!" is kind of gross to me