Minsc in BG III?
Lemernis
Member, Moderator Posts: 4,318
What's this I'm seeing about Minsc and Boo somehow being featured BG III?
Larian developer Swen Vicke: “If you look at what the Fifth Edition has done, characters like Boo and Minsc are still alive. Bhaal and maybe a couple of other guys are still around. What’s gonna happen with that? You’re gonna discover when you play BG3.”
https://www.pcgamer.com/larian-teases-a-return-of-minsc-and-boo-in-baldurs-gate-3/
Thoughts, feelings, reactions, speculations on this?
Larian developer Swen Vicke: “If you look at what the Fifth Edition has done, characters like Boo and Minsc are still alive. Bhaal and maybe a couple of other guys are still around. What’s gonna happen with that? You’re gonna discover when you play BG3.”
https://www.pcgamer.com/larian-teases-a-return-of-minsc-and-boo-in-baldurs-gate-3/
Thoughts, feelings, reactions, speculations on this?
1
Comments
For the record: I still very much think this character was the worst cameo choice WotC could have pulled. Then again, I didn't liked Minsc ever since I encountered him in BG1. So there...
A full party NPC or a Leliana-type from DA3, anything will do for me.
I'm assuming that given that they're bringing Minsc back, Jim Cummings will voice act him. That's a must! (Imho)
So they better include some form of world state import rather than force me to meet him because they think he is "funny".
If you invoke the "but he is alive in BG2" clause, I'll just have Edwin disintegrate him beyond resurrection again.
We already know that Volvo was protected by an Imprisonment spell to thus survive the Spellplague and Sundering. I'm gonna assume that is the 5E version of the spell. With the Weave getting ripped apart and so much severe disruption of the planes it's apparently very lucky indeed that whichever form of imprisonment was used kept him securely imprisoned did not unravel. It certainly sounds like some forms of being Imprisoned would require the Weave to maintain the spell...
They can't go to the well too often with that particular spell. So I'll be curious to see how the game's story accounts for Minsc and Boo surviving one hundred years into the future.
Maybe Boo is indeed a miniaturized giant "space hamster" from a spelljammer that got shipwrecked on Toril. Although if so, one would think that Jaheira (or Faldorn--or Kivan for that matter) would have been able to sense that. And in that case then they should have commenedt on it to CHARNAME. But anyway, if Boo actually is who Minsc says he is, then perhaps he has some arcane abilities that might have helped protect the two of them in some way during the Spellplague. Or maybe through dumb luck they stumbled onto a portal that took them to a location that eventually got the return portal restored once Toril began to heal after the Spellplague. And they experienced a relatively short amount of time there on the other side whereas 100 years passed on Toril, etc.
But for me here is the main thing about Minsc and Boo in this game:
One implication of Minsc and Boo being featured... as I see it, anyway... is that it offers encouragement and hope that there probably IS a significant tie-in to the Bhaalspawn saga to the central plot of this new game. Obviously we can only speculate about it, but...
As I commented in another thread, I can imagine a scenario such as the following being pretty darned satisfying for this game. And please understand, this just serves as but one possible example of such a tie-in:
Reference materials: Bhaal, Spellplague, Second Sundering
Imo this offers a potentially pretty rich roleplaying situation, particularly for good aligned characters.
That is just one possible way that the Bhaalspawn saga might continue. The hero is not a Bhaalspawn. But he or she must ally with Bhaal to save Toril.
I guess they could also write it that the BG III PC ends up being an offspring of a Bhaalspawn, and therefore has some of Bhaal's essence as well. But I'd expect that WotC wants to avoid depending on that particular device too many times in a row.
* This is a sticky wicket because with all the Bhaalspawn having ostensibly died, Bhaal was finally able to reclaim his portfolio. But could it be that this Bhaalspawn was able to magially transmute, transfer, and secure his or her Bhaal essence into some sort of object or device that becomes the McGuffin of the BG3 game? Maybe it even got secreted away in Abeir, and when the Second Sundering took place it made it's way back to Toril.
Or perhaps this cunning Bhaalspawn was able to figure out a way to transfer his or her Bhaal essence into Viekang (the Bhaalspawn that bushwhacked Abdel Adrian in Murder in Baldur's Gate) and somehow keep that portion of the essence secretly partitioned, so as to be reactivated with the entire essence later wrenched from Bhaal. So it's sort of a ticking time bomb within Bhaal.
Huh? Dynaheir died (unresurrectably) at the hands of Irenicus...
What source is that from, i.e., Minsc dying while protecting her from an ogre berserker prior to BG2?
The following seems to be the canon on Minsc currently. He's not dead. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Minsc
@Lemernis , You seem to have taken something literally that was posted ironically. I thought he was saying he always deliberately kills Minsc in his BG games so he can separate Dynaheir. And he really seems to hate Minsc. He would prefer to be able to export/import a world state from his BG saves than to have to see Minsc again.
Ah!
Thanks, lol
Canon does not override player choice in 2019. Characters who died in prequels stay dead.
Who wants to play a sequel if the devs are holding up a huge "choice doesn't matter" banner?
We live in a shared world. I suppose in a sense that's why there are so many problems and disagreements between human beings. Same as in politics, any solution to a problem (of allocating scarce resources, i.e., spending our tax dollars, devoting resources to solve it) some demographic will be aggrieved with. If you get what you want the folks that prefer TB don't get their way, and then they're hurt, etc.
In all honesty though, I'm undecided about bringing Minsc back. I love the big guy, but I don't want Larian to cater TOO hard to nostalgia. A game has to stand on its own merits with regards to story, dialogue and character development. Trying to shoehorn in old favourites in a misguided attempt to appeal to nostalgia has a tendency to backfire. (This is a big part of what was wrong with the Ghostbusters remake, for example. With the exception of Bill Murray's cameo because it served as a character building moment for Kristen's character, you could have cut the appearance of every single other original Ghostbusters actor and it would not have affected the story one bit. It felt too much like the director was nudging you in the side and going, "Remember this guy? Eh? EH?!") I worry that having Minsc around (especially if he was yanked out of a Faerun from 100 years ago) would cause a great deal of cognitive dissonance, especially if his character is always going "Oh yeah, I forgot about that Spellplague!" or something similar because the Faerun of today is so different from what he's used to.
And I hope the guy being transformed in the trailer is Abdel finally truly destroyed. I don't think either of us is that lucky though
Didn't he die in Murder at Baldur's Gate? IIRC, he was either killed by VIekang (hah!), or he won that fight, promptly turned into the slayer, and then was killed by the player characters.
He is alive (and the comics are not that bad oô) and active and could really help tying BG1+2 with BG3.
But I think that he should be too strong to join a low-level adventuring group.
On the this topic, there is another human I would like to meet in BG3: Skie.
Maybe have a quest (side quest or so ^^) where we can finally save her from her SoD fate!
Once is enough for him?
Regarding Minsc maybe a cameo or rumor of a crazy barbarian somewhere. As a party member I think he fulfilled his duty
I always thought that Abdel is the one of the TotsC savefile/ the preset and NOT the book.
I somewhere read that even WotC is trying to ignore the books..
If I would master that adventure (not that I have a group =( ) I would probably switch "Abdel" for either a CHARNAME of one of my players (if one had such a character he liked enough) or would insert my own.
Which I think I also read somewhere as an advice. oô
To me he seems one of the biggest joke characters in the saga. I am not looking forward to seeing him yet again.
In BG2 I actually use him quite a bit more - especially together with Aerie.
They befriend each other quickly and he becomes her protector and since I quite like her he can come with us. ^^
Anyway, I'm cool with some bard singing a saga about Minsc in memorial, but he's human. 100+ years exceeds most human life spans, and resurrection doesn't work on a character who has died of old age. If he is still alive, he'd better have a beard to his knees, a hunched over back, and a taxidermied hamster hanging from a string.
If the comic is canon than he is alive and has spent the time as a statue in Baldurs Gate.
Well either that or the Minsc who runs around *is* a statue that became him through Wild Magic..
Then he'd be a pockmarked (from erosion) man with a permanent pattern of pigeon poop for tattoos?
I didn't realize in DnD that being a statue prevents aging. A wizard could effectively travel forward into time by crafting a contingency Stone to Flesh to go off 1000 years after gazing lovingly in his pet bassalisk's eyes.
being turned to stone tends to stop you from ageing in fantasy. it happens in dragon quest 5 for example.