Larian is "sorry" that Baldur's Gate 3's most underrated companion didn't get a "fulfilling arc," with romance on its improvement list

We all have our favorite Baldur’s Gate 3 companion. It normally follows a similar pattern: Shadowheart and Astarion lead the pack, with Karlach also lurking near the top. Minthara has etched herself into history as yet another one of gaming’s ‘gothic baddies,’ Gale is the cutesy UwU romantic, and we’ll never forget that Halsin trailer. The one person we do often forget about, however, is Theo Solomon’s Wyll, the infinitely good Blade of Frontiers. But I’m not innocent here, either: as much as I wanted to find a spot for Wyll in my party, between Astarion’s deft hands (minds out of the gutter), Shadowheart’s healing, and my consistent lack of tankiness, I never quite found a spot for the troubled yet heroic Warlock.

Wyll’s character arc is, perhaps, the only one that feels slightly half-baked. Karlach’s initial endings weren’t exactly great, either, but at least she eventually got, to quote Larian, “the ending she deserves.” Wyll, by contrast, remains in the shadows, playing sidekick to everyone else in my Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough.

In short, I wanted more for Wyll: I wanted more depth; I wanted him to not just be a lawful good hero with a set of horns. Now that development on the RPG has largely concluded, however, the Blade of Frontiers’ chapter in the Baldur’s Gate story has closed with more of a whisper than a roar. For now, at least.

Lamenting this in a Friday January 9 Reddit AMA (you can read Ken’s recap of all things Divinity, AI included, here), one player asks Larian why Wyll didn’t seem to get the same attention as his cohorts – the aforementioned Karlach changes happened post-release, and Larian also eventually added the option to recruit both Minthara and Halsin a few months after launch. “His story always felt on the verge of being great and interesting but in the end he had and continues to have no real agency in the story, as all his quests are subverted for other characters,” they write.

Senior writer Kevin VanOrd responds, stating that he “wishes Wyll had gotten more content and a more fulfilling arc too. As you probably know, we weren’t connecting with Wyll’s Early Access recruitment and initial questing, so we started over at a point when most of the other companion stories were fairly solid. A lot of decisions came later in development than was ideal – and there was a key situation near Baldur’s Gate that I intended to heavily involve Wyll in (the Red War College) that got cut.

“That meant [going] back to the drawing board again,” he recalls. “We eventually tied him to Duke Ravengard and started to work on that element of his arc just in time for me to get unexpectedly ill. I was out of the office for quite a while, and again after the epilogue’s release.”

“I think that Ansur’s lair was Swen’s idea – we did have the resources for a standalone dungeon, so we got to work on tying Wyll to the Wyrmway, but I couldn’t get more than a dungeon boss out of it. Once the situations were in place, that was that – I had to start writing them.

“Wyll’s content is sparser than I’d have liked as a result,” he says. “He’s also split into two stories, really – the Mizora story and the Ravengard story, and that might have been a mistake in hindsight. I also wish I could given him a stronger endpoint – it always bugged me that he can end up just as he started, as the Blade of Frontiers, without any meaningful difference. All that said, I love the Blade and I am really proud of him, his sincerity, his good nature, and his eager heroism. I’m truly sorry I didn’t give you more quality time with him.”

The only time I really spent with Wyll was during the early stages of Act 1, largely as I got to grips with what I needed my party to do. As someone who played Ranger (yes, I know, RIP) and then Monk, I found myself struggling without a traditional healer and tank, realistically leaving one spot for either a mage or, well, Astarion.

Yet, I always found that Wyll developed affections for my character, even after the, ahem, horny bug was squashed. Perhaps I really am just that sexy, but either way, Wyll consistently wound up as one of my romance options.

Interpersonal banter (and flanter) is, of course, a core part of Larian’s games, but when asked what he’d like to improve about Divinity’s writing compared to previous titles, VanOrd responds “companion relationships,” perhaps to many players’ surprise.

“Firstly, to have more interaction between companions – not just with more and better banter, but to have them develop deeper relationships with each other, just as they do with players. Secondly, to ramp up player friendship and romance more subtly, so relationship building feels natural.” I definitely think Wyll could have benefitted from more romantic depth, too, so it’ll be interesting to see how Larian has innovated on the system when Divinity rolls around.

While I haven’t really enjoyed my time with Divinity: Original Sin 2 so far, I also wasn’t the biggest Baldur’s Gate 3 fan to start with, either. Now, however, I’ve put over 200 hours into it. I’m intrigued to see what Larian changes with Divinity, especially in the character department (I’m a sucker for story-driven RPGs) – if it can nail that again, Divinity may just top BG3. Let’s hope no one gets the Wyll treatment, though.