As the the gameplay video for Baldur's Gate 3 showed, you are offered the choice of fully configuring a character, with gender, race, class, story and more, when starting a game. You can also choose one of the five original characters, and this is the option we're going to focus on in this guide.
Baldur's Gate 3: What is an original character?
These colorful characters have very special and complex stories and circumstances. They have their own dialogues and special events, as well as quests linked to their personal story. It's as if you could choose to play Jaheira, Imoen, Edwin or Minsk in the first Baldur's Gate, for example.
After the creation or the choice of your character (original or not), the remaining original characters can be encountered in game and recruited. They'll act as NPCs and companions for your group. When recruiting, you will normally be able to choose their class and specialization to a certain extent, in order to have a functional group.
On one hand, the original characters strongly restrict your creative freedom, but on the other they allow you to launch into the game directly and quickly. In Divinity 2, developers have been criticized for seriously penalizing non-original characters, since they were deprived of a quest line linked to their story. According to Larian Studios, this should no longer be a problem.
