With Baldur's Gate 3's release, a lot of people are going to be jumping into the Forgotten Realms for the very first time. The character creator in Baldur's Gate 3 is deep and extremely detailed, meaning you could spend actual hours in it, but there's also something the game refers to as Origin Characters that will speed up the process to an extreme degree.
What exactly is an Origin Character?
An Origin Character is a character with their own goal, their own story, and their own beliefs. The world around you is affected by the way you perceive it, and choosing an Origin Character drops you into the world as a fully built person. You can also recruit all of these Origin Characters as companions in the game, meaning you can do everything that you'd normally be able to with a companion (yes, you can romance them). You can't customize the appearance of any of these characters other than The Dark Urge, but you can respec classes later in the game.
There are seven different Origin characters in the game:
- Astarion
- Gale
- Karlach
- Lae'zel
- Shadowheart
- Wyll
- The Dark Urge
You'll meet a lot of these characters early in the game if you don't choose to play as them, so don't worry about missing out on them. If anything, the number of Origin characters actually allows you to replay the game multiple times over and over again, and experience new things every single time.
Interestingly, the Origin Characters also all have unique places that they start in the world, and changes made to the story. For example, the Githyaki Fighter Lae'Zel is supposed to meet you just outside an entrance on the tutorial ship, but if you choose to play as her then obviously you can't do that, so it's a different Githyaki, this time a Githyaki male who meets you there.
While we've not had time to test out other characters (it's a pretty huge game, okay), we can only imagine that the Shadowheart origin would also be extremely different, since she's usually locked in a Mind Flayer Pod when you first meet her.
