Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Checkboxes/Options to filter and choose sexual content you want to encounter in game.

As title suggests. With every character being playersexual come immersion-breaking moments.
There are many people voicing their dissatisfaction with certain companions and characters hitting on them or being focused on proclaiming their sexual attraction to other characters.
Examples:

The most common complaint is Gale, as he's the easiest one to get high reputation with by just having him in your party and making good choices in dialogues.
He spends an entire evening talking to you about Mystra and magic, and many people, following the logic of "I like magic and attractive women too", agree to practice magic with him. Nothing in the 3 checks that follow suggest flirting.
And suddenly - bam. Your straight male character gets possessed by a motion capture actor, gets uncomfortably close to Gale, they both look at each other with lust while narrator makes it very clear this is a moment of sexual tension, and it's only now you can say "no" to him, which makes both Gale and your straight male character act very sad and disappointed.
This situation is what most people who play straight characters don't want to end up in. It's extremely immersion-breaking. He continues to hit on your straight male character after you repeatedly say no to him as well (triggers broken, perhaps?).

Other complaints include Lae'zel suddenly acting extremely horny out of the blue towards people who play gay characters.
Sharing a drink with Shadowheart somehow means you're in a relationship now.
Wyll is also doing this out of the blue with the dance after you just killed some goblins with him.
I'm not even mentioning Astarion, he does this constantly.
The first 3 options you have when speaking to Halsin in a peaceful setting for the first time is flirting, and even if you don't flirt with him, the next time you have an option to apologize as if you did. Why?

All this is just act one. People voice their dissatisfaction with this further into the game as well, more characters included.

So, the request of many people on all sides: please add an option to customize the specific sexual content we encounter in game, akin to a nudity checkmark.
Straight people would be able to never encounter LGBT-related content if they want to.
LGBT people would be able to select to only ever see LGBT-related content if they desire so.
Anyone would be able to turn off all sexual content in game if they just feel tired of it or for any other reason.

Everyone would benefit from that and enjoy the game free from moments that break their immersion.

Adding to this.
Act 2 "good" ending is focused entirely on a lesbian realationship of two side characters.
Shadowheart just went trough a lifechanging experience and is extremely shaken. This angel lady promised to tell her everything about her past. "BUT FIRST I HAVE SEX WITH MY GF". What?
Later in camp she is "BEGONE. I AM TO SHARE MY BODY WITH MY GF, COME LATER".
It's so incredibly off-putting. THIS is what you were working towards this whole time? THIS is your cinematic reward for cleansing the land? THIS is what you get for going for a good playtrough?
An obnoxcious pair of ugly female characters that do nothing but radiate '"LESBIAN SEX" the whole ending of the act?
It breaks immersion even harder than Gale, because him you can avoid talking to and this is a railed plot.

And the salt in the wound is that the effect of your efforts, the result of the work you were doing for the whole act - doing all the side quests, cleansing the land of corruption, saving the spirit of the land, so on and so forth - it's just a 15 second cutscene of a tree growing. When you're leaving the act.

In my opinion, this calls for a drastic re-writing. Shifting the focus from a lesbian relationship of a 40yo trying to be an 16yo emo and a masculine angel woman who won't stop talking about how righcheous she is to an actual effect of your efforts - land healing, and more content in that healed land.

And yes, a toggle to seeing the lesbian relationship taking place at all would still be appreciated. I would rather skip it to get to Shadowheart plot than sit trough it.

Bigotry particle radiate from this here thread.

Mods, sent this person back to whence he came (Steam forum).

(some of his idea has merits, but it's straight to garbage bin when he demands a filter for people existing in the world (LGBTQ+), because what? He's afraid his God will angry at him for seeing Gay people existing and kissing?

Dungeon and Dragons is not the place for religious zealotry, we left that back in the 80 when their parents freak out about satanic ritual, satanic summoning etc, not here, not today.)

Not wanting to see or having to deal with LGBT content isn't unreasonable. I'm all for a toggle to disable such content for people who don't want to see it, it has nothing to do with religious zealotry.
Your mileage may vary of course...

I will have you know I am an atheist. Nothing in my words is fueled by religion.
It is a genuine opinion that certain type of content does ruin immersion. So the ability to pick and choose this type of content is a good thing - simply beacause it's polarising and volatile by itself. To some people seeing LGBT is off-putting. To some seeing straight ("breeder" as they put it) content is off-putting. To some any sexually charged content is exhausting to sit trough. So options are nothing but a positive change for everyone involved.

By the way "Representation just because they exist" is not a good argument.

At least, it should be allowed to disable most sexual content (regardless of lgbt or not), to allow the game to be playable by teenagers.

When I was 14, i loved Baldur's gate 3. What a pity to tell my girl to wait a few years before playing Baldur's gate 3. But sorry, I don't want to have her watching goblour fucking an ogresse while playing a video game.

"Don't want to see it"

"Ruin the immersion"

"People seeing LGBT is off-putting"

Welcome to the new Satanic Panic.

This time, Blood sacrifice and Demon summoning is okay, but Gay is bad.

^This is reasonable.

You're not even listening. The Aylin/Isobel scene is so on the nose it's not funny. At least choose a hill worth dying for, that scene is immersion breaking and eye-rolling all at once. I went from cheering at having earnt a deuz ex machina moment to slumping in disbelief.

Just imagine if Aylin was Aiden, it'd be chauvinistic and demeaning in the extreme.

And they're side characters! What other side characters get this treatment, what makes their personal life relevant to MC's story?? It comes across heavily as agenda driven.

Meanwhile, , but challenges in Baldur's Gate await.

****

I don't mind each origin characters sparking romance, but one 'no' ought to be enough (Gale!). Oh, and in Act3 Halsin was shocked I wasn't interested and referred back to a non-existent moment in Act 2.

Funny this is the only thing you focus on.
So you have no objections to "people don't want to see straight stuff" and "people don't want to see sexual stuff at all", but the moment an option to not see lgbt stuff is suggested it's a no-no?
Why is that? I'm not even suggesting to remove that content from the game, only to add more options to allow individual players pick and choose what kinds of sexual content they want to encounter if at all.

We already have a long thread about issues with romance triggers and reactivity over at https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=888769 so I'm going to lock this one to cut down on duplicate discussion.

Folk are welcome to add their thoughts over at the linked thread, as long as they do not make this about sexuality. We already have more than enough evidence on these forums that there are folk who have a problem with their characters being hit on by companions of the "wrong" gender, and there's no question that everyone, Larian included, will be aware of that. There is absolutely no need to repeat this point, especially as that seems inevitably to both derail discussions and lead to people either intentionally or unintentionally making uncomfortable or offensive comments that impact on other forum members' real lives.

And it is perfectly possible to discuss the issue with romance reactivity without talking about sexuality at all, given it is just one reason amongst many why why we might not want a companion to hitting on us.

Any questions or comments about this policy, please PM me. And for newcomers to this discussion, be aware that these forums welcome everyone interested in Larian's games regardless of sexuality, and any posts in the linked thread that are likely to make people feel unwelcome or upset on the basis of their sexuality are liable to be removed and, if people are broaching clearly personal, sensitive subjects without attempting to be civil, respectful and mindful of real world implications then further action may be taken.

(I'd also appreciate it if people don't paste a bunch of links to other forums into threads, as now I'm going to have to go through them all to check whether there's any content there unsuitable for these forums. Please make your posts here self-contained. EDIT: And on review of the first few, a number included content not in line with forum rules here. It is not reasonable to expect moderators here to review 13 Steam threads to check for compliance with rules here, so I'm afraid I've decided to save myself some time and effort and remove them all.)