Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Halsin Romance, Expectations and Obligatory Poly

Same for me, I decided to wait until I feel like the game is worth playing again and the patch cycle is done. I've seen the epiloque in YouTube and felt it was really cute and such a nice addition just to see it being removed now. Why did they even spend ressources on it?

I went cruising through the dialogue files today and I can find a lot of Halsin tags regarding the ritual completed, or all the druids dead. Granted I've never started a war in the Grove but I tried pretty hard to find a path on completing the ritual with Halsin alive and couldn't find it.

I haven’t done these myself, but I have seen people post that it can happen if you trigger the druid-tiefling conflict and then run away, or if you kill the tieflings.

The datamined dialogue where Halsin forces you to pick between him and her is very harsh, considering she was controlled by the absolute and will be again if she leaves! He is usually very forgiving, for example with Kagha and also he approves if you try to redeem Ketheric. I think they would need to introduce his backstory much earlier and in a more general context for that to make sense because the brothel scene probably wouldn’t have happened yet, and some would never get the brothel scene regardless of when it took place.

Yes, the ultimatum, assuming it's implemented, has a VERY specific trigger (and this, btw, is how you let the Rite of Thorns complete without harming any Druids or Tieflings). The trigger is: "Visit the Grove in Act 1. Then visit the Goblin Camp and tell Minthara you will help her raid the Grove.Without long resting, go to the Grove and move the idol of Sylvanas, setting off the Druid/Teifling conflict. Flee from the fight. Then go back to the goblin cmap and free Halsin, tell him the grove has been sealed so he joins your camp. Go to Act 2 and visit Moonrise Towers. Save Minthara and tell her to join your camp. Go to long rest and get the CRD." (Typos and misspellings not mine, this is literally copy/pasted from the datamined files.)

This is such an extreme edge case that you would have to be TRYING to trigger the ultimatum. Especially with the "without long resting" condition. 99% of players will never encounter this, and the remaining 1% are going to be those of us who want to see how it plays out.

RE: the ending between the brain and the epilogue- I noticed the animations were the same for all the characters (lying on their side in bed with the player, then standing, even doing the same motion with their shoulders), which would be why it looks so strange and un-Halsin like. I appreciated the change to make the staging more intimate, but honestly, I think just letting them lie in bed might have worked better.

I am now curious about Halsin's new Speak With Dead dialogue in act 3 if he dies to Orin, because whoo boy are there some heartbreaking responses he gives.

I would never do that sequence of events; it's pretty crazy. Someone in EA must have tried it. The details are new in the files; I'm not sure if it's the parser being updated or added notes.

As for the SWD on Halsin, here it is for those who want it, but it's marked IMPOSSIBLE. I'm not sure why; the other companions have SWD responses.
https://imgur.com/a/yvluUR6

P.S. FWIW, the Illithid Tav Halsin romance, where you go with him is still triggering the wrong dialogue in the epilogue.

It does make sense though. If you save the grove (good path) he trusts your judgement, so he will not question that you asked Minthara to join you. If you let the grove be sealed/destroyed (evil path) he has no reason to trust you overly much. And letting the grove be destroyed/sealed is the only way to have Halsin join you on the evil path.

Funnily enough I tried this outcome in my latest playthrough out of sheer curiosity. But this is like my tenth playthrough and I'm in "testing everything" mode now. This is not a way I'd have gone in my first few playthroughs. So, yeah, I agree that this is an edge case. Pretty neat though, that they accounted for it and gave this path something extra. Can't keep Halsin and Minthara on your evil path, but can keep Minthara on the good one.

So if we have both paths, the good one would seem more consistent to me, in the way that he seems to interact kinda the same with every Drow. To me, it made no sense that he is against Minthara (who has been under control from our enemy) but he is fine with accepting help from a Drow Tav as well as having sex with two Drows. As stated above, he is very forgiving and it felt off to me.

The evil path is, like it has been pointed out, such an edge case that most of the players will never see it. The only question I have now, do they still share the same tent with patch 6? If so, why did they add so much stuff yet they decided not to fix that? And do we get any more interactions and party banter between them?
Party slots are limited, so I don't really see myself filling the spots with two characters who never interact with each other.

It really seems to me like making Halsin and Minthara companionos was a mistake on Larian's part. Most people seem unhappy, they have to spend so much time and money constantly fixing and adding things to make the inclusion work, and it just makes other stuff confusing and complicated in turn. I think Larian would have been better off not listening to fans on this one. Clearly taking characters who aren't meant to be companions and making them companions is just a bad idea. Hopefully they've learned their lesson and don't repeat this mistake with any of the other characters people are asking for.

Nope, you won't and all of us won't. And it sucks, this particular kiss scene was, imo, the most beautiful! So bright, and the way Tav and Halsin look into each others eyes smiling...

I'm starting to think the same way. I still have this big and important question (as, I think, many of us also have) - why in the first place the story of Halsin was cut and changed? The story he had when he was an NPC, the story with Thorms, which made his character deeper and more interting. Almost all his lines were recorded. I mean, yeah, there might've been complications with other actors involved plus if we talk about J.K. Simmons I think he is kind of an expensive actor for Larian (but, imo, I don't thing they would've needed too many extra lines with Ketheric if they decided to use the original Halsin story).
I have a strong feeling Halsin was originally written by somebody else, hence all these drastic changes, but I have no proves, it's just a speculation.

This made me wanna cry ;-;


Ok now Im really upset.

I agree, most problems players have are somewhat connected to Halsin or partly, Minthara. They clearly intended to have them as story characters who may return for the final battle (at least in Halsin's case) and that leads to continuity problems. Imo Larian should have taken their time to work on that matter, so they can come up with well written way how to have them as companions and potential LI, instead of adding them with haste while being in the last stages of finishing the game.
I can only imagine how much better it could've been if they had waited for a possible Definitive Edition to add them and maybe even someone else like Alfira or the halfling bard (iirc) that got cut out.


I also checked that with a friend of mine, it seems like the trigger you mentioned is more like a step-by-step guide on how to get the flags needed.
"HowToTrigger" is a code note for programmers and testers, not the code itself. Here they describe the most accessible and working method at the time of writing. This is an assembly for colleagues, not the player who will dig it up.

Now the code itself. This is a flag checking if Mintara and Halsina are both in the camp. If yes, queue up the scene with the ultimatum.

And this is the flag of the scene itself:
Which means the prerequisite is that they both be in the camp.

The (possibly only) legitimate way to get both into the camp is by triggering the rite of thorns (which is included in the step-by-step guide you posted).

I disagree with this! For me the issue isn’t that they added him, but how they did it. They could easily have added him in a way that I would have loved!

One issue I had in EA was that I couldn’t find any male love interests I liked because the male love interests were either evil (Astarion) or involved with other women (Gale and Wyll). Adding Halsin as a love interest would have been perfect because he is good and wasn’t involved with anyone in EA! But then they made it required that your character agree to be involved with other people to date him! If they had written a sweet romance with only him, I would have been very happy! I still hope they will add a path like this for him!

This is personal taste, but one of the biggest issues I had from EA is that I had a hard time connecting with the companions, but I loved Halsin! To me the game is lacking in companions who are good. I hope in their next game they will make a larger variety of companions from the start and not just focus on the evil or neutral companions (even if they can change later). Having Halsin available earlier as a companion would help with this for me, although it would take more work recording voice lines.

I agree with Icelyn. Im not sure about Minthara but Halsin could have been added in much more smoothly, especially had they kept in some the cut content for him and treated his romance a little more like the rest. Which is what people were asking for in the first place.

His lack of banter and dialogue may or may not be a hinderance if he becomes playable after the tiefling party as he should be. I kind of like the idea of there being a slow burn, a lomging slowly building up that cant be acted upon until the problem at hand is taken care of, like what was being hinted at in act 2. If they has spread that out a little inbetween the party and the end of act 2 it would have been a decent progression in the relationship and his character. The issue is it all comes to a head at once in act 2 after the portal quest. And much of his act 2 dialogue can easily be switched around to act 1 and would still make sense. Ive said in other posts, why do we only learn about things like his whittling and love for honey AFTER getting Thaniel? Those are very simple things he has no reason to keep to himself for so long. He has been traveling with us for so long at that point its wierd. It was like I was being dumped with info, getting to know him all at once when it could easily have been sprinkled in. But he has at least one banter flag for the eagle fight in the mountain pass. So that was either added, or they had originally planned to make him playable that early at some point but decided not to for some reason.

This - so much. Halsin especially makes zero sense as a companion. The amount of work, that was put into making him work and he still is not really a chaarcter compared to the other companions and even side characters like Barcus, Rolan, Raphael, Ethel etc. have more going on for them than Halsin.
I wouldrather see Halsin and Minthara removed and put the energy for their bugfixes into the story and maybe the other companions.

Im gonna disagree here. Halsin can and does make sense as a companion, Larian just did it badly and sloppy.

There is an uptick in goblin activity near the grove due to the cult. He goes to investigate and gets captured. When you rescue Halsin he senses youre infected. Hes been held captive by the cult and learns there is traffic to and from moonrise, therefore moonrise is a hub of cult activity. Moonrise is also in his homeland, which is affected by a shadow curse. He concludes the two are related somehow and decides to join you. He helps you with the cult and your tadpole, you try to help him with the curse. After fighting ketheric he realizes whats going on has become much bigger than expected, as it did for everyone. Theres a bjgger threat now and it threatens the world as a whole, and he stays with you because youve become lovers/allies and he is also a good alligned hero character.

Its a decent and simple enough story and it makes sense as to why he would become a companion.

I agree with this, I felt the same struggle. While Astarion is charming, I never felt a real connection to him. I tried romancing him until the evening after I saved the grove but it never clicked. I also never felt a real connection to Wyll or Gale and being a woman I was never interested in dating a female companion, althought SH made it difficult to say no lol.
Halsin literally was what I like about men, he was grown-up, somewhat older and wiser, he is a big guy with muscles and I like that he isn't smooth but more like someone who's scars tell their own story. He looks more 'realistic' in a way, if that makes any sense (well, not the ears lol). The way he talked was really nice and the more you get to listen to him, you look forward to finally be able to start dating him. I remember when I finished act 2, it felt like now we are going into the right direction until he shocked me when we talked about how he sees a relationship.

To get to the point: I agree with you, it is more than annoying that dating him also means the need to allow other people to be involved and I would love to see Larian adding a path with a sweet romance just between him and Tav. That way, we could have a path for those who like roaming free and for those who want just him.

On a sidenote: There might be people who say his relationship is perfect as it is and that he represents polygamy, but the more I think about it, the less I can understand that. He clearly states he wants to be with Tav only while encouraging the Tav to also seek the joy with others, means he lives monogamous with the Tav being his focus while encouraging the Tav to live a more polygamous lifestyle. Every sexual scene that involves not only the Tav and Halsin but additional characters is more of less initiated by the Tav. Correct me if I'm wrong but Halsin never really approaches you and tells you he had sex with another NPC.
So what I'm really wondering is, if said fans who love the status quo would experience Halsin telling the Tav how good his sex with, let's say, Lae'zel was, would they still consider it being perfect? To be honest, not sure about that.

While Halsin's romance was added as a last minute feature, I don't think this is why he is lacking content, and neither it is because of his writer. Halsin's original story was connected to the original main story, he was responsible for Isobel's death and felt guilty for it. But the main story was rewritten to make room for the emperor as the guardian, and a lot of content was cut with no replacement. If they kept the original story, they'd have to make room for a confrontation with Ketheric, since I doubt he'd forgotten his daughter's killer. In general act two is where cracks start showing. Larian changed too much too late in the game development, and cut corners with both origin and secondary characters like Halsin or Minthara. It's just that with origin characters they had more content to begin with, so it is less visible. But still noticeable if you have played EA.

Exactly!

Ageee with all of this, and just wanted to chime in that I also have a stronger connection with Halsin than the other characters. He and I seem share commom interests and values, which makes the whole romance that much more intense.

I think that in terms of story and logic, making Halsin fit as a companion isn't a crazy ask (minthara is more of a problem there in my opinion). The reason I say including him was a mistake is that Larian has proved that they weren't capable of doing it. They either didn't have the time or the skill to odo it in a way that worked and was satisfying. Which we can see by the fact that they did not manage to do that. In theory including Halsin is totaly fine, he's got stuff goingi for him that plenty of folks seemed to resonate with. It was a mistake because Larian themselves overreached in trying to include him, so they shouldn't have tried in the first place. Maybe another studio could have done it and it would have worked perfectly, but not Larian. They couldn't get it right the first time and now they're constantly trying to fix everything that the inclusion broke, including the chararcters themselves. Assuming they even agree that the characters are broken, which I'm not convinced of.

Ultimately I'm of the opinion that Larian do individual things pretty well, but they make bad decisions when it comes to tying it all together and when it comes to knowing what to include or what to cut. The whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.