Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Community Update #7 - Romance & Companionship

I'm a big fan of romance in stories and games.

I also watch porn.

But I don't mix the two. If I'm playing a game, I want my hands on the controller (not a euphemism). I didn't flee from the Mass Effect 1 sex scene, but it also didn't do anything for me. If the scene in BG 3 is more than 30 seconds long, I'll be more likely to get bored and thinking "get on with it so I can get back to the game I'm here to play".

I don't think Larian should cut that content... but I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to add an option in the settings for a fade-to-black.

Alot of prudes in this thread. I'll get the smelling salts.

I mean as someone who was just fine with what The Witcher 3 did in this regard, I will say that those storyboards seemed a tad excessive. I'm personally just fine with the fade to black, I don't think you lose anything by not having sex scenes in RPGs and the fade to black is more reliable. My feeling on explicit sex is that it's way easier to get wrong than right and what it brings to the table for a game is generally not gonna be that much in the grand scheme of things. So if Larian wants to go down that road then I hope it works out, but I don't think the cost-benefit analysis would be such that I'd go for it in their shoes.

Sex scenes aren't something I shy away from, but in a video game they are exceptionally cheesy.

I think those are mostly figuring out what they need for various NPC... ekhm... configurations. Actual direction (shots etc.) will probably be more cinematic then just shot of them humping.

Still, I actually quite liked verbose romances in D:OS2. Especially spying on Red Prince was straight up hilarious. Whatever Larian does I hope they won’t loose creativity on the way.

Sometimes I feel like you can do so much more with words than you can with a cinematic, and the romances were one of those things. It's why I didn't really mind them so much in that game, it still had a certain kind of charm to it. And yeah that Red Prince part was hilarious, I experienced that in MP where my friend was RP.

I'm worried this game is going to become like metro exodus, one long cutscene movie. With that being said, I would love to buy a BG 3 movie, hell yea. I just don't want to play a bg3 movie.

I’m not sure what leads you to think that. We have already seen that there is plenty of combat and exploration.

Fade to black is the cheesiest of all. Anything but that.

You've just described The Witcher 3 to me. I don't think that despite the more cinematic presentation, it will be anything like that though, as is obvious from the ridiculously many possible branches in dialogue choices they are targetting -- as well as the far more open quest design and general world interactivity.


As for romances, BG2 was the beginning of the end, really.

So I received a Larian Gazette about how romance would work in Baldur's Gate III, and the gazette contains the following image:



Not sure how you guys think about that female character, but isn't her body animation a bit too masculine? Are you guys really fine with having romance with such a half-man?

I think female characters should not act like men and should have femininity.

If you mean the way she's moving, that doesn't strike me at all as masculine, or rather, not exclusively masculine. that two second physical motion seems like a perfectly normal way someone would move when they're talking. As someone with a lot of women in their family, nothing about this strikes me as inherently masculine. Is it inherently feminine? No, but that doesn't really matter. I'm willing to bet the majority of people in this forum also have no issue with it.

As for your blanket statement about how female characters should act, there's a lot to unpack in that simple statement and I have no interest of going to that trouble. What I will say is that more kinds of characters is a good thing. If you're restrictive, then you'll just end up with the same kinds of characters being reproduced over and over again until they become boring.

There is nothing gendered about her movement in that fraction of a second clip. She is being assertive, so if your point was that woman shouldn’t be as such, oh boy...

Wait, since when does human standards of masculinity/femininity apply to githyanki warriors?

There is nothing "intrinsically" masculine there. Plus, she is a cleric not a noble princess.

I don't see it either, but a sweetheart she is not.

When Lae'zel gets in the mood, she will supposedly spin 3 times to the right then jump in the nearest sleeping bag...whatever. They have so far missed the mark completely in the female preference camp.

Yes I know...there will be more, but this is surely not putting their best foot forward.

"Romance" for me, has never been a huge deal. I have enjoyed some stories where I have connect to the characters for sure...more like a seance of "I will miss this group" at the end.


The characters overall seem very interesting (including NPCs). I can't wait for early access myself, just not planning on "personal connection", so I know I won't be disappointed.

Gray Ghost, I appreciate what you said above. Women are not a monolith and Shadowheart is supposed to be a badass cleric of Shar, not a dainty noblewoman--but that wasn't even masculine, it was just normal movement. She looked like a person.

As for the topic at hand, I hold as always to the standard of "it's better not to do anything than to do something stupid." We've seen some very janky animations in-game so far for the most part--but on the other hand, we're still early in development. The best is yet to come.

As of the 6th we'll get to give feedback on what we see firsthand, in any case. I'm quite sure that anything which looks bad now will attract outcry and be altered in the following years. I like the rest of the update--it's just the sex scenes I'm tepid about for the time being, but I'm sure the final versions would be better than what we saw. I'm just not convinced we need to see them at all; implied sex and visualized intimacy (read: intimate moments of conversation while naked but not necessarily showing anyone's bits, just shoulders) are always better than a dorky, janky sex scene with fingers clipping unnaturally through hair. That wouldn't be good enough if it was the final product.

I'm far from a prude, but I do want any sex scenes that happen to feel not awkward. That's very important to me. It's better to focus on depicting passion than thinking from a perspective of "one must make digital porn." No, above all else, one must make the scene believable, and sometimes that means making sure you DON'T show anything that would break the immersion. I'd rather pick text options on a black screen and hear some good sexy-sounding voice acting than cringe as my dwarf gets a hand stuck through her breast and into her rib cage.

Yeah. I'm no expert on The Scheduling Of Things, as my own general state of disorganisation will attest, but I would imagine that, as with voice acting, stuff like animations would be mostly done quite late in development so they have a (reasonably) final idea of what is actually required. I think I would tend to categorise it as part of the "polishing" stage than the more core development that'll have been happening.

As far as sex scenes go, one thing at a time; will there be snogging?

Yeah, exactly! I never thought for a moment that the animations for Astarion in that first camp cutscene we saw were going to be endgame level. I do want better for the romance scenes, but I'm sure they will either give that to us or figure out another way.

I sort of hope for snogging, but well... I guess it's difficult to find a balance for that, especially with so many permutations of body shapes. And honestly, that kind of thing is only worth watching if it's really well done, which is hard because lips are so squishy.

I also want to add that after watching the update again, I feel like I should emphasize that some of what I saw, I really liked. The idea that you can just sort of talk and make flirty eyes at someone while having a sip or two of wine and banter is really nice. I've seen people talk like the whole thing was porn, but it really wasn't. I've got some strong hopes for the in-game interpersonal connections.

Dear Larian,

I'm a long term RPG player (a little bit more than 25 years, both digital and pen&paper, DMing and playing), I'm going to buy the early access to BG3 and I'm planning to play it on PC. Speaking about romance & companionship, I'd love to play it on couch co-op with my wife: is this option going to be available on early access? That would be lovely! ;-)

Warmest regards,
Nicola Testoni

p.s.
I'm loving the Divinity Original Sins series, and currently playing DOS2 in co-op with a friend in Paris. With other friends of ours we used to play D&D since 1994: we run weakly a campaign that lasted 14 years swapping our roles as DM and player. We are both thankful to you for letting us renew our friendship over the net through sharing high quality times through DOS2 and we are both eager to play BG3. I'm sure you won't disappoint us, so please extend our gratefulness to all the Larian team!