Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Was BG3 overly sexualized?

Well I might be starting a shitestorm but I want to bring this discussion up and see what comes out. I am going to use a specific point and not get into ALL of this so you can understand where I am coming from.

The other day I was bored and started another play through, decided it was time I put an effort into being dark, so I created a Drow Wizard. BTW if you do not know, even without CHR, a Drow anything is EASY mode for the early game. Goblins bow to me without any dialog effort. I went straight to Minthara to recruit her and we set off to kill the Tieflings.

After the Tiefling and Druids are all dead she tells me we will celebrate at camp by banging. (Wow barely in the game and already heading for a sex scene, arguably the easiest one in the game)

So we get to camp and away we go... What followed made me almost fall out of my chair laughing. In the "sex" scene you watch Minthara (male PC), direct your hand for her gratification, give obvious head, mount reverse cowgirl and then mount regular cowgirl, all with efforts to show movement. I am laughing because this looks like it was designed for 13 year olds to masturbate to. This is when I started thinking, why so much effort to create sex scenes in the game?

I mean we have major plot holes "no pun intended", bugs in play, parts of game removed for changes not really well thought out and so much more. Was there not more for the team to do than to script out graphics sex scenes for the rendering department?

This was made even more glaring to me when a buddy had me finally set down and play some Kingmaker. I get for companions, a fallen paladin want to be, a barbarian with an inferiority complex, a bard that acts like my little sister and a cleric for the God of the pessimists. Not a single sexual come-on, innuendo, or suggestion in site. Let me be clear I am not saying Kingmaker is better, BG obviously has way more polish. Yet I feel like at least in concept, Kingmaker tried harder for creating interesting NPCs.

So I ask the question here, did BG3 over do sexuality in the game? This is NOT about the type of sex or orientations, this is about sexualization of the game period.

Is BG3 over sexualized? single choice

Yes (47%, 31 Votes)

No (53%, 35 Votes)

Total Votes: 66 Voting on this poll ends: 01/12/23 11:00 AM

I'm all over this forum with my negative feeling about the pixel porn that is half this game. It serves no purpose other than as a sales mechanism for the unfortunate parts of society drawn to this type of thing. In other words, it's cheap, which makes it shameful

I think this debate gets lost as it devolves into sexuality and "social justice warrior" positions. I am hoping we can keep the discussion on point and focus on the overarching sexualization.

We had a big thread specifically about how badly choreographed the Minthara sequence is, and a lot of people agreed that it wasn't great, but while some things were polished (lighting and positioning, so characters weren't halfway into the altar), nothing else got changed for release (heh). Maybe it's because i'm an adult woman, and not an 18 year old man, but I found the sequence very awkward and not erotic.

I said this before, and I'll say it again. Larian should have either committed to going full ero-game, or they should have tv-sex-scene-ed it (where everything is covered or cut away and we never actually see anything).

It's only over-sexed if you compare it to other dnd crpgs, some of which have suffered from publisher-enforced censorship, even when the developers wanted to create romance plots, because they didn't want the rating of the game raised beyond the marketable range, which was T, or M15 here.

Yes it is. As a form of marketing to make people who otherwise don't play RPGs take notice and hook them. Hence also the prominently advertised bear sex scene.

Larian used sex both to hook in new customers segments and to distract from BG3 just offering average industry standard fare and often even below that.
Sex sells, a good or at least functioning story sadly does not as the success and hype of BG3 proves. Idiocracy here we come.

And yes, you also rightly noticed that BG3s companions suffer a lot because all of them have to be (very) sexual which limits the type of possible (origin) companions and that companions in other RPGs, for example Kingmaker and Wrath, are much better.
And not only does BG3 oversexualisation limit the type of companions, the companions that exist are also modeled primarily to fulfil sexual fantasies. Just play a romantic/sexual visual novel and you will see a huge overlap between the character types in it and BG3. The tsundere, the shy girl, the bully with a soft core, ect.

I wonder if this sexualization is why we have no Dwarven, Halfling or Gnome companions since they would not "normally" be seen as sexual.

I don't understand your position perhaps. Mine is that Larian uses excessive amounts of overwrought, poorly illustrated, poorly written and "cheap" sex scenes to sell extra copies of their game. Does that make me a warrior for social justice? Maybe just someone who would like to see a little integrity in gaming.

Voted yes.

I love romance in video games and am fine with tasteful sex scenes and companions hitting on the pc.

I didn’t do the Minthara romance (or even recruit her), so I can’t talk about her romance. However, the romance I picked, Halsin, was too over the top. Too many strange sex jokes (sex as animal, joke about being a sex slave). Most things in Act 3 for him were about sex only. They didn’t give him a romantic main romance path for just him and Tav or even a small nonromance side quest, such as saving the tree. The lack of these things and his focus on sex without relationships made him feel immature and one-dimensional to me in Act 3. It took over his character. This is why I voted yes. I don’t mind them including a sex scene, but sex shouldn’t take over a character and be all there is to him.

No I am referring to people that get in fights about sexual preferences for partners or orientation. These topics tend to pull the sexualization discussion off topic and take it into the weeds.

Imo yes. They are not sexy enough for the masses according to market research.

Look at what companions we have.
Elf, elf, dark elf, half elf, human, human and two exotics, red human and green human.
As I said in my other response, in my eyes Larian made the companions primarily to fulfil sexual fantasies, which worked when you see all the simping about them and the constant demands for more kisses, hugs and other scenes.
And that included their race.

That elves are seen as overly attractive is even a plot point in some media like Bright or Shadowrun. Larian just applied it to the real world.

There are two nonorigin companions without romances. It is also possible Helia’s story evolved into or was too close to the Dark Urge’s story and that is why she wasn’t included. Only Larian could say for sure!

This is the most horny RPG I have ever played. Yet I don't think it is over-sexualized. The way characters are dressed is generally tasteful. We all know the stereotype of female "armour" in RPG's. BG3 doesn't do that. The exception to that is maybe Karlach, but she is literally on fire when you meet her. So I'll give her a pass on that one.


In my opinion the only companion that fits this descriptions is Halsin, which turns into a sex pest in act 3. But the others? I think it adds more than it takes away. Drow matriarchs are known to use sex to control their underlings, which is why she tries to murder you if you refuse. The Gith reproduce asexually, so sex is "no strings attached for" for them. Which is why lae'zel will bang you early on and only catches feelings later. And Astarion is well, Astarion. None of these fit the mould of what I would consider a normal/healthy relationship. But they do fit their lore, which is what makes it believable.

Horny, yes. Over-sexualized, no.

Is it overly sexualized? Maybe. It's hard to say.

I mean, all the sex is optional. You can play through the game and never see a sex scene pretty easily (Maybe you'll walk in on Bugbear x Ogress fun times by accident...). So it's not like it's being shoved down your throat unlike say Witcher 1 where you got nudie cards for doing certain things.

Maybe one could argue that relationships devolve into sex too quickly... But realistically given the premise of the setting, with characters being infected by an illithid tadpole so literally any second they could succumb to ceremorphosis, many people would be having sex even without a relationship just to make the most of the limited time they have (So perhaps Minthara is a bit quick, I'm not certain I haven't done a Minthara run to see if she knows about the tadpole by that point)

So the only overtly sexual thing that BG3 does is actually depict sex scenes, instead of merely alluding to them or having characters roll around in their undies. Which in of itself isn't overly sexual besides the fact that society is prudish and doesn't like showing sex (While at the same time being completely desensitized to violence), it's only overly sexual for some poorly directed scenes and/or things like marketing the bear-sex stuff.

Perhaps this depiction could be considered too much, while relationships in RPG's are still pretty shallow. Thus perhaps it would feel more appropriate for more people after the genre has evolved so that relationships were much deeper and more intricate of a feature and less about raising an attitude bar with gifts/a handful of positive dialogue options like a cheap Dating Sim.


I think that's more due to general playerbase trends. Statistically, smaller races are the least popular in any RPG. With preference erring towards Human, Elf and Half-Elf.

So they made companions that would appeal to the largest number of players. With of course token Gith and Tiefling given their prominence in the story.

That said, I like making my Dream Visitor a hot goth dwarf

While I do agree things lean a bit into Human and Elves, Dwarves have always been prominent in any DnD based RPG I have played.

The point still stands that BG3s sex focus limits the type of companions.
To keep using Kingmaker as example many of its companions would be impossible in BG3 simply because they are not interested in sex (Amiri, Jubilost, Ekundayo, Nok-Nok, Harrim, Jaehtal, Linzi).
And while it would work for some, making them sexable as per BG3 requirement would break their character.

Yes it is. And this was intentionally done this way by Larian specifically to make the game more attractive to today's over-sexualized younger audiences. It was a marketing ploy, and it has worked wonders for Larian in making an otherwise average, so-so game into a sales blockbuster for them, as they hoped for.

Voted yes because of Mizora, Haarlep, and everything around Halsin. If the same things were actually done well and easier to avoid, would have voted no.

Other companions' romance scenes are nothing compared to Minthara's.

You're right that the focus on romances limits their options in possible companions. But this does not make the game over-sexualized. Over-sexualization has very little to do with how sexually active a character is. It is possible to not sexualize an absolute slut of a character, while at the same time sexualizing a prudish character. And I will argue that none of the characters (apart from Halsin) are over-sexualized. If you were to remove all the romances/scenes from the game very little about these characters would change.

This actually makes the point for me. Once you remove the sex and romance nothing actually changes. The relationships beyond getting a sex scene do nothing to drive any meaningful plot lives. ALL of the plotlines could be achieved without any need for romance or sexual content so this makes it gratuitous at BEST and sex hype for prepubescent teens at worst.

I don't think it's oversexualized.

This is hardly a porn game. You have to play for several hours before seeing anything and often times, the sex scenes add to the character and are quite tame (Minthara's is the most explicit, everyone else's though could be considered PG-13 if it didn't have nudity).

Sex is used to enhance the intimacy of relationships or to show the callousness in characters and I believe BG3 did that pretty well.

Its just like with Game of Thrones. That show has sex all over the place. But what it doesn't do is devolve into straight up erotica. Sex for those characters is used as a weapon, as an intimate moment, to push the story forward, to connect with characters which is exactly what I think BG3 does with it too.

Now, I do believe Halsin was just there for gratification, that is pretty obvious. But Astarion's sex scenes make clear aspects of his character and are somewhat crucial to get to know him on a deeper level since sex and control are such poignant parts of his character, SH's is a big step for her character and being vulnerable with you which is something she's never let herself feel, Karlach's also gives her a softer-ish side and it helps me relate to her, Gale's is just...fascinating to me and makes him fascinating in turn, Minthara's is all about control and dominance and it sets the stage for her if you fully romance her and breaks down her vulnerabilities to the point that she admits her regrets at treating you this way once real feelings set in. I could go on.

The fact is, in real life, sex happens all the time. On the first date, the first sentence, a fling at a party etc. And this game tried to be sure the sex scenes served a purpose for their characters (except Halsin) and I believe they've done that successfully.