Greetings everyone! I’ve posted before with portraits in the style of Ryoko Kui. Here’s another set of portraits! Wilson (I totally forgot him earlier, I’m sorry), Bristlelick, Isra, Tamoko (based off her PPE Portrait, I think), Sir Arkanis, Mother Lost, Irenicus, and Bodhi.

All credit to SheriffTwisted, who can be found here.

The Bristlelick companion mod can be found here, Isra can be found here, while Sir Arkanis and Mother Lost can both be found here.

A theoretical. I often use the Sword Coast Keeper (pre-EE BG1-compatible Keeper variant) to cover the portrait and paperdoll parts (though sadly not voiceover or dialogue), so I kinda have something like this going rather than treating the Belt as one-off inconvenience.

Some of my more serious picks would be Kivan, right after finishing his revenge — by way of symbolically and bodily turning a new leaf as a person no longer bound by her past as a married man, ready to move on and reinvent herself; or Safana, for a reverse Edwina character growth scenario — from a capable woman playing up her weakness to charm and hoodwink men into serving her needs, to a self-sufficient swashbuckler-pirate-looter hero she almost is if not for her reliance on others (a form of self-perceived weakness).

A less serious nominee is Yeslick, so she can start working on the most vital task of her life — repopulating her lost clan.

I know this has probably been discussed before, but replaying some older CRPGs recently made me think about character portraits again.

In Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, portraits had a very distinct artistic style. They were painted, stylized, and often a bit exaggerated, but that gave the characters a lot of personality. Sometimes a portrait alone made a companion memorable.

With BG3, the 3D character models are incredible and the world is obviously much more immersive, but the portraits feel more like cropped renders of the character rather than their own piece of art.

I think Rogue Trader handled this pretty well by keeping illustrated portraits that still fit the tone of the game.

It made me wonder what people actually prefer now.

If a new CRPG came out — whether it’s another Divinity, Pathfinder, or something completely new — what kind of portrait style would you want?

Old-school painted portraits?
3D rendered portraits like BG3?
Or something in between?

And more generally, are there other small things from older CRPGs you’d like to see come back?

I like drawing with charcoal and decided to do a portrait of my fav bg character. I only learned red wizards are supposed to be bald after drawing this. But apparently in bg2 ee Edwin grows his hair cause he doesn't have a servant to shave his head.

I don't know why. Maybe it's just the change to a lighter more washed out style is jarring to me (I don't like change lol) but there's something about the BG1 style portraits that seem darker and more mystical of that makes sense? What are you guys opinions on the portrait style? Don't get me wrong. I don't think the BG2 style is bad. I probably just need to get used to it

So I'm sure everyone here knows how Ryoko Kui (mangaka of Dungeon Meshi) did several fantastic portraits for the BGEE 1 and 2 companions. For those of us who used them in portrait packs, I'm sure you also soon realized several companions were left out, primarily from BG1 (and of course SoD, which I believe came out after she drew the portraits).

For my complete trilogy run of Baldur's Gate, I decided to commission an artist friend of mine (the very talented #sherifftwisted--no public accounts, unfortunately) to draw up some portraits in a similar style. Eventually I hope to have all missing companions and major figures (such as Irenicus, Bodhi, the Five, etc) in the same style.

Im apparently terrible with spotting AI generated stuff and the Pintrest generative AI filter is not as accurate as i thought. Please share custom portraits. I'm tired of using the scary NWN ones.

So roughly a month ago, I made a post with art of Caelar and Faldorn in the style of Ryoko Kui's portraits of several companions.

As promised, here are the missing SoD and BG1 companions! Caelar and Faldorn are available from the first link.

And once again, big thank you to u/SheriffTwisted for the art!

I've been working on a major update to EET Mod Forge, the web-based install order builder for Enhanced Edition Trilogy. v2.0.

What's new:

NPC Portrait Viewer - See which portrait each NPC will have based on your mod selection. 228 NPCs across Companions, Other NPCs, and Player Portraits tabs. Shows phase-by-phase progression (BG1→SoD→BG2→ToB) with conflict detection when multiple mods compete for the same portrait. Click any NPC for a detail modal. 700+ portrait entries from 40+ mods.

Mod Forge Ultimate preset - Every single install category was reviewed mod-by-mod with component-level conflict resolution. 2,027 components across 400+ mods, verified against extracted tp2 files.

Kit Cap & SPLSTATE tracking - The EE engine has hard caps (320 kits, 256 SPLSTATE slots). The Diagnostics tab now tracks both in real-time with progress bars and contributor breakdowns so you know before you install if you've exceeded a limit.

25+ mods rebuilt from tp2

476 conflicts - 80+ new component-level conflicts added from tp2 research. 20+ bogus conflicts removed. 60+ whole-mod conflicts scoped to specific components so they don't bleed onto unrelated components.

1-OF badges - Mutually exclusive component groups now show blue 1-OF badges with CHOOSE ONE separators. Unselected options fade when a sibling is selected. Clear visual grouping with bottom borders.

Conditional suggestions — The suggestion strip no longer recommends mods that would create hard conflicts with your current selection.

Try it →

629 mods, 4,612 components, 476 conflicts, 117 dependencies. Feedback welcome!

Maybe it's not cool to compare games, but I think Larian needs to bring more personality to their protraits.

(Left ones are from current BG3, right ones from PoE)

considering shaking my game up a little and wondering if you guys have come across any particularly interesting alternatives for our companion pics. I'm usually a purist but idk