A question about the creation of new party NPCs for the Baldur's Gate saga

Hello,

I wanted to gauge opinions on this matter here, particularly from those who actually have made NPC mods in the past.

I have some degree of interest in making a mod NPC myself, and I obtained permission from the artist of the portrait I'd like to use. Of course I'd be learning how to do it from scratch so whether I'll manage to amount to anything with it, I don't know, but I do have certain feelings about the content of the enhanced edition games, and the expansion Siege of Dragonspear.

What I'd like to ask about is, should a mod NPC be designed and written for a particular interpretation of the series over the objective state of them. The issue is, I don't like much of Beamdog's additional content or their expansion. For a couple of reasons, believe me nothing to do with politics. It's all in presentation and immersion for me. I think for example, many mods do a great job feeling like they fit in the game. The BG1NPC project is excellent. The Sirene NPC mod I really like and I think she is a great fit in the games.

It's unfortunate but I don't think Beamdog's professionally made content does a great job of fitting in. Like the original content it has its bad points, and its good points, but tonally and technically it's just dissonant to me. Dragonspear greatly disappointed me, for example, in cutting little chunks of Baldur's Gate (meaning the city) and cutting you off from the awesome city you previously had the pleasure to fully explore.

Basically it's stuff like that, that makes me not want to use the Beamdog content, in my playthroughs. It's entirely a personal preference.

But if I want to make a new NPC for these games, the question arises if it would be the right thing to do to not create SoD content for that character, or write interactions with Neera, Dorn etc.

I think if I get to a point where I'm serious about this character, I might very well consider perhaps doing entirely vanilla run of those games (which is probably how most people experience them) and design the character to fit in best there. From a practical standpoint, it seems like it would reach the biggest audience there.

However, there is the artistic end of it; would it be better to go with my heart on this and write the character entirely within the framework I like the most (Which is pretty much the original games plus the BG1npc project and G3 and iepbanters for BG2) and just ensure any prospective downloaders understand what they're getting.

Since being indecisive is a speciality of mine, some insight from the games audience would really be helpful, and even if I don't get to make it, because this post is not a promise I will, I do find the question itself interesting.