Baldur's Gate 3 is one of the biggest successes for Larian Studios in recent history, praised by fans and critics alike, receiving all the awards a game could get - a masterpiece if you want to call it that.

However when looking at the contents of the game and the studio's continuous work on it, there is one glaring issue that hasn't been addressed and as a matter of fact only gotten worse over time.

As a company that gets praise for listening to their community, winning in the category “Players' Voice” at the Game Awards 2023 no less, I think it’s just fair for them to step up and show us that this applies to the whole playerbase and not just the loudest of them.

The issue I’m talking about is their treatment of Wyll.

Wyll Ravengard, one of the game's main characters and the only black companion in the game, has continuously been forgotten and mistreated by fans but especially and more glaringly by the developers of the game themselves.

He is the one Origin character who by far has the least amount of content in the game. One reddit user has compiled all of the dialogue and scenes for each character of the game, back when BG3 had just been released, and the results couldn’t be more obvious.

(Link to the reddit post)

Just looking at the amount of audio content, Wyll has 2 hours less than Karlach, who was added last to the game. 4 hours(!) less than fandom’s and Larian’s favorite character Astarion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at the amount of scenes, Wyll has 5 non-standard dialogue scenes, 2 of which can be romantic. For comparison, Astarion has 9 non-standard dialogue scenes, 6 of which can be romantic. Almost double the amount of 
scenes and triple the amount of romance scenes! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reiterating that this was back when the game released and doesn’t factor in all the new content added for companions in the months since then. The disparity is very likely even worse at this point, it certainly hasn’t gotten better.

At no point did Larian put the work in to bring Wyll to at least the same amount of content as other Origin characters like Karlach or Gale.

Wyll’s dialogue with his father remains woefully underdeveloped, him being a famous folk hero and the son of a Duke of Baldur's Gate has barely any impact on the story, he doesn't get the satisfaction of confronting and killing his abuser - like Astarion, Shadowheart or Karlach do - instead at best he gets a one off narrator line about it in the later added epilogue. 

He rarely reacts to world events (if you've played the game multiple times like I have it becomes very obvious how little Wyll has to say compared to the other companions), he doesn't have specific romance greetings like other companions.

He still cannot be given the choice to decide for himself if he wants to sell his soul for his father's life or not, while every other companion (they added such a choice for Lae’zel in patch 6) can.

His personal quest of Act 3, a quest which turned out to be about the Emperor and not him in the first place, has now with patch 6 been demoted to a sidequest. (edit: Larian apparently changed his quest into a sub quest not a sidequest, so it might just be a Journal formatting thing. That aside the point remains that the quest is still not about him)

He remains the only companion who can't be kissed by a romanced player in the epilogue, nor can he be hugged by one he’s friends with. He's also the only romanceable companion without a fully nude sex scene, one of the things the game was clearly marketed for. His torturer, the sexy devil lady Mizora, gets a full-frontal sex scene, however.

Speaking of Mizora, Larian’s treatment of her and Wyll’s relationship is another can of worms. Larian doesn’t seem to realize that they have written a character who was manipulated into a devil deal as a child, lost his home and only family for it, and has been physically and mentally tortured by this devil ever since (and lets not forget she keeps Wyll, a black man, on an invisible leash and generally treats him like a dog). 

Instead of the abuser she is, Mizora gets treated like some hot lady the player gets to gawk at (and have sex with, without much consequence) and even Wyll has to be sexually attracted to the fiend who irreversibly changes his body and holds his father’s life in her hands, judging from the Christmas animation Larian released in december and other comments made by writers at Larian.

It’s not a good look to say the least.

Closing this off my goal for this petition is: 

1. For Larian to admit that there is a problem in their treatment of Wyll, one that needs to be addressed.

2. For Larian to prioritize getting Wyll to at least equal amount of content as the other companions. Fixes for bugs and gameplay aside there shouldn’t be any new content added to the game until they have fixed this issue.