I have defended many of Larian's controversial decisions regarding Baldur's Gate 3 over the years. No, Karlach doesn't need a happy ending. No, the existence of cut content does not mean that the game was 'incomplete' at release. And perhaps most controversially, it's good that Larian wanted to release a bunch of post-launch updates to perfect his vision. This is understood when the game was apparently more successful than it was supposed to be.
However, as these updates dropped, it became increasingly difficult to justify their contents. Ultimately, each new patch shed light on just what was not Addressing: Wyll.
Even after all these updates, Wyll still has some glaring issues in Baldur's Gate 3
At this point, it is widely known that Wyll has the least amount of content of all the Genesis companions. He has about nine hours of voice dialogue, which sounds like a lot until you consider that Astarion has more than half of his 13. While I don't believe Larian should have equalized everything across the board, it's a huge discrepancy and can easily be seen in the game. He has less to say about story events, more, a lot A short personal quest (which isn't really even about him, though Larian offered some clarification on this in a recent AMA), and only six greetings for the player. Astarion has 28 – or 32 if you're playing as Dark Urge.
That last point means Wyll has the same greeting to a player he just met, and a player is actively romancing him. While other friends have many greetings just for romance.
And that's when Wyll actually uses the right vocal lines. As it happens, a total of 840 lines in Baldur's Gate 3 are completely unused, as many of his battle scenes are from his older, Early Access actor, Lanre Malaolu. Yes, after more than two years of major patches, Larian doesn't seem to notice that Wyll doesn't even have the right actor when we're controlling him in-game. Perfect Lines, voiced by Theo Solomon, are in the files, and it's up to the fan to add them back.
It's hard to imagine any other character not being noticed. Karlach also had another actor in early access, but all of these lines were correctly removed. Likewise, when cut content for Minthara was accidentally re-added to the game in an update, Larian was quick to remove it again. No such luck for Wyll, who started with these issues again – and is reportedly one of the main characters. As many fans have pointed out before me, it's especially upsetting to see this happen to the game's only black friend from a studio that champions diversity.
Wyll isn't 'boring', he's underused
All this to say, despite the critics, Wyll has no A boring character. On paper, he's incredibly compelling. At only 17, he chose to sign a pact with Satan to save the titular city of Baldur's Gate. He did this because he knew he could be kicked out and did not allow his father to reveal the reason for his actions. Because of Wyll there is also a city to save when you arrive.
He then lives with the stigma that comes with being a warrior, once again, unable to tell anyone why he did it, and assuming he was motivated by a lust for power. Still, he turns it into something good, desperately trying to be a borderline blade; Practically a hero from a cheesy romance story – which he admits to enjoying.
In many ways, his story is similar to Astarion's, especially through Mizora. Wile was effectively groomed and abused by Mizora for years, and in the game, we see her constantly humiliate and manipulate him. Unfortunately, the game and surrounding media are more likely to joke about it than take it seriously, unlike Astarion's relationship with Cazador which is consistently portrayed as a tragedy.
Wyll's backstory gave him a lot of potential
Larian had a lot to work with here, and I resent the notion that Wyll's character was wasted due to rewrites during Early Access. There was a lot to explore with identity (how he was forced to give up his old identity and create a new one) and morality (how he stuck to his own even though the world saw him as a monster).
His confrontation with his father deserved the same weight as Shadowheart's reunion with his parents, or Karlach's coming face to face with his own mortality. Instead, it was a half-baked conversation at camp where Wile asks the player to tell him what he wants to do in the future. And there's no hard feelings about the father who threw him out as a child, and nothing to work with either. It's not because Wyll is boring; This is because nothing about her character is explored as it was with the rest of the cast.
Despite numerous tweaks to other characters' stories it's apparently too late to fix those issues now. They are ripe in writing, and we can only hope that the same mistake is not repeated in Divinity. Is this can At the very least, fix the wrong dialogue being used. It's not too much to ask that we get one more update that restores all of Theo Solomon's lines.
Oh, and I'm no game god, but I think you should pay Solomon a lot of money to come back and record a few more lines while we're at it. If nothing else, it would have kept his 840 lines of dialogue hidden in the game files.
- issued
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August 3, 2023
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and gore, partial nudity, sexual content, strong language, violence
- Engine
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Divinity 4.0
- Multiplayer
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Online co-op, local co-op
- Cross-platform play
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Full cross-platform play.
