Honestly, what the title says. I’d like a game LIKE Baldurs gate, but I can customize my Backstory for my character. I wanted to be able to customize my character more, and be able to have more control over making pre-existing characters with existing backstories in games.
Just trying to understand what you mean here… you mean the most recent Baldur’s Gate 3, right, not the earlier games? Because BG3 is already pretty customizable, isn’t it, in terms of being able to select one of several origins or playing The Dark Urge? You can also respec your companions to whatever class you want. The game has an absurd amount of customization and narrative branching already, but I guess most of it plays out through the course of the game, not at the very beginning when you decide your backstory. Larian’s other games (Divinity: Original Sin and especially Original Sin 2) are similar. There are loads of other RPGs along those lines, basically all the “Obsidian-likes” where you have a bit of customization upfront, and a lot more happens through the course of the game.
If you mean you want a more extensive background selection before you even start the game proper… that usually takes one of these forms:
1. Sequels that let you “fake” a previous playthrough. You’re playing the second or third game in a series without importing an actual save, so it asks you to fill in the blanks of what your character did — customizing your starting background as though you played the previous game that way.
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Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire — the best version of this. A full step-by-step questionnaire walks you through every major decision from the first game, or you can grab a prebuilt history.
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The Witcher 3 — with no Witcher 2 save, a NPC talks to you early on and your answers set the world state.
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Mass Effect Legendary Edition — an interactive comic lets you choose your fake ME1/ME2 decisions that happened before ME2/ME3.
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KOTOR 2 — early dialogue lets you define who a major character did in the first game.
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But why not just play them in series, then?
2. Games where you build your backstory upfront, through screens of choices before (or as) the game starts. This sounds closest to what you’re asking for:
- Tyranny (same universe as Pillars of Eternity). “Conquest mode” is a choose-your-own-adventure covering the three-year war you already helped win before the game begins. Factions, world state, and even map details are built from your answers.
- Dragon Age: Origins — six fully playable origin prologues (city elf, dwarf noble, mage, etc.) that NPCs reference for the rest of the game.
- Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader — Owlcat’s origin builder: homeworld, occupation, triumph, darkest hour. Each piece adds dialogue options and mechanics. Wrath of the Righteous has a lighter version with its backgrounds.
- Cyberpunk 2077 — three lifepaths with unique prologues and dialogue options throughout.
- Mass Effect 1 (in the Legendary Edition) — pre-service history and psychological profile (Spacer/Colonist/Earthborn crossed with War Hero/Ruthless/Sole Survivor), each with its own sidequest and dialogue.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic — you pick from eight fixed origin stories rather than building one, but each is a full single-player narrative.
3. Narrative story-based RPGs — not much action or tactical complexity, more like point-and-click adventures with strong branching:
- Planescape: Torment is IMHO the best-written video game of all time. It’s way more “adult” / thoughtful / less campy than BG3, and driven entirely by your narrative choices.
- Torment: Tides of Numenera — its sequel, which I haven’t played
- Disco Elysium — point and click adventure with a lot of story and writing. It reviewed exceptionally well and spawned a whole bunch of copycats. I personally found it quite boring and couldn’t get past the first thirty min or so, but it’s narratively quite deep, supposedly.
- Esoteric Ebb — new Disco-like where you play a D&D-style cleric; released this year and reviewing well too. I haven’t played this either, having gotten turned off by Disco.
I think the TLDR is that any “Obsidian-like” game will have similar mechanics, especially the ones that have more than one in a series. If you play from the first game, you can import your save into the sequels and form your character’s arc over hundreds of hours. If you start from the second game onwards, you just get a prompt asking what you did.
Pillars of Eternity (the first one) allows you to pick a reason (through dialog) why you’re going to the starter town (along with your race, profession, class, etc.).
I’m not sure I understood what you are looking for 100%, but look up Pathfinder: Wrath of Righteous. It’s a BG3 style deep rpg, with a much smaller budget of course, but quite good even if it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of BG3. It is not fully voice acted for starters. It does have 100s of classes to build the character you want though.
The Mount & Blade series has that as well; options for which can be expanded via workshop mods.