Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Yet another "issue" with romance in the game

While there is already 17-pages thread about all kind of problems with horny and over-persistent-borderline-harassment companions, I haven't seen anything about another kind of "problem" with all that romancing stuff.

Maybe it's not a problem in some cultures or countries, but i am surprised nobody at all talks about it.

The problem is, all the companions are not only unrealistically horny and polysexual-polyamourly,

At some point Larian sadly decided to make sex one of the core components for BG3 and its marketing and horny shippers the main target group.

That certainly helped sales but resulted in a much worse game.

Sorry that the game doesn't have cootie patootie Tali who is so innocent for your pleasure.

It's funny, as despite all those horny companions hitting on you the sex scenes themselves are mediocre at best.



Don't be sorry, I don't know who you are. Let me hep you a bit with comprehension: it's about diversity, not about innocence. Now we have a bunch of the SAME disturbed companions with sex-trauma or other sex-related issues. There should be something ELSE, you know, for an RPG game that celebrates diversity.

Honestly I find some of the complaints about the romance system ridiculous. Harassment? You tell a companion 'no' and they move on, as far as I can remember, with the exception of

1. Lae'zel, who gives you a YOU WILL REGRET NOT SLEEPING WITH ME, which yeah is kind of a jerk thing to say...which in case you have not noticed, Githyankis in general are kind of an entire *race* of jerks, which makes sense given that in lore they're kind of rampaging space pirates when they aren't hunting down illithids.
2. Gale, who is the only person I had to explicitly reject the flirtatious option in dialogue twice. Maybe that was a bug, but quite frankly he comes across as so gentle in his flirting that to call it harassment seems absurd.

I guess some take your rejection better than others. Wyll actually seems so sad after you brutally shut down his "dance with me" flirting that I honestly laughed out loud.

As for innocent, well, I think that depends on what you mean by 'innocent'. Karlach actually seems pretty 'innocent' in many ways, to me. If what you mean by 'innocent' is 'sexually naive', well, these are all grown adults, it's unrealistic to expect them to be *totally* inexperienced. But still, I guess some of them could be more on that side?

1. Lae'zel comes from a culture where clearly the standards of flirting and relationships are different (the Gith'yanki seem to think that outright inter-partner violence is romantic.) Of all the characters though, I don't think I ever heard a line from her about previous partners, and I went pretty deep in the relationship with her. It could be that she's a totally lovestruck Gith falling head over heels for you. It would be hard to tell though.
2. Gale starts out blabbing about his ex-gf (yes yes, Gale, we get it, Oooooh Mystra was so great) but other than that strikes me as fairly innocent. He doesn't seem very "forward" with his flirting t all. But to be fair I have used him the least out of all the characters so maybe I am missing something.
3. Shadowheart is the servant of an evil goddess who outright encouraged her followers to treat intimacy as something fleeting so that they would not form lasting bonds with each other. But outside of that she does seem inexperienced on how normal relationships are supposed to work.
4. Astarion is, well, Astarion. He's clearly not meant to be 'innocent'
5. Karlach.....well, she's a big raging barbarian and definitely plays into the stereotype a bit. Barbarians like to fight and f[HAVE INTIMATE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS].
6. Wyll...actually I don't know how innocent he is. I thought Wyll was super boring so he's the only character who I have always shut down completely right away, without bothering to play along with his flirting for at least a little bit.

I do think the romance writing has some weirdness (SO many people seem to be okay with polyamory and like, without ONCE bringing it up, seem to expect you to be okay with it too). Plus just...well to be harsh, just low quality writing when it comes to romance in general. I maintain that while Larian has improved in their writing to the point where they can do good character writing and make charming companions, they are actually still pretty bad at writing in general, and it shows in the romance.

1. Maybe you've missed some lines with Lae'zel. She doesn't mention any names, but she's bragging about her experience in bad and how good she is etc etc
2. While Gale may not be the one that had many partners before, his persistence is well known, even acknowledged by Larian themselves and they even tried to patch it already. You must be blind to don't see what even developers saw.
3. Exactly, she is completely inexperienced about normal relationships, yet totally sexually traumatized. Have you missed some lines again? Her memories were wiped again and again so she would willingly have sex with yet another partner.
4. Yes.
5. Yes.
6. This one is the only one I am not sure about. Still from what Mizora tells us and from his reaction to our romance with her we can be almost sure he was forced into sex with her.

So, all in all, the only diversity we have there is a diversity of sex trauma and/or perverseness. Weird writing to say the least.

Maybe I did miss those Lae'zel lines. I remember her bragging about how skilled she was, but maybe I wrote that off as her usual braggadacio about everything, not necessarily that she was actually experienced or anything.

However, I dispute your claim about Gale. What the devs patched was not his persistence, what they patched was giving you another option in the initial flirting encounter that was somewhere between "reciprocate his flirting" and "reject him as harshly as possible." It could be that Gale seems persistent because a lot of people who wanted to reject him didn't choose the harshest rejection lines.

But like, your broader claim that all there is is perversion and sex trauma just doesn't seem true. Lae'zel, well she's a weird one, by her culture's standards she's likely not perverse at all. Gale seems neither perverse (even with his perhaps somewhat unintended persistence) or sexually traumatized. Shadowheart is traumatized in general, though it seems that the 'casual' attitude towards sex is really just the teachings of Shar in general. Like, without the messed up specifics of her situation, if she had just been a normal follower of Shar, it seems like she might have ended up with the same attitude toward sex. Astarion is, well, Astarion. Karlach....I guess it depends on your definition of "perverse." To me it means a bit more than simply "enjoys sex". Again, she's a weird one, because she's in a situation in the game (having not been able to touch people for years) where it is understandable that she's a little 'pent up' and eager to get back into business. It's arguable, but I guess she never came across to me as "perverse". Wyll, I just don't know, he's just so boring to me I ignore him all the time.

I think maybe this is the problem of having a limited number of companions and having a policy that you could romance any of them. Within a game that is, actually, relatively narratively short, that means that (especially towards the beginning of the game, where it's going to be trying to trigger the romances) it's going to seem like ALL your companions are flirting with you all the time. BG2, on the other hand, had multiple companions you COULD romance, but the overwhelming majority of them were actually not interested in romance at all. I don't mind the romances that exist in BG3...but I do think that compared to the previous games there's a real shortage of companions to choose from in general, and if they were going to add more they could make them all non-romantic options.

Gale is perverted mostly because he just tells you how much he loved and still adores Mystra, but in THE NEXT SCENE of the SAME dialogue he hits on you. This doesn't look normal at all

You can make theories about Shadowheart situation and what could be IF... But the thing is, her life is what it is, she was sexually abused, multiple times, regardless of her own position on this in some other theoretical circumstances.

Now I am properly romancing Karlach, so yeah, I agree, despite those lines, she doesn't seem perverted or traumatized. Her past life is a bit ambiguous, but yeah, you can compare her with other romances in other games. And in this play-through Wyll is actually more persistent than Gale - in a very weird way

All in all, I agree that game-design itself has a major impact on how a player perceives romance options in this game.

This game is not a three part very long trilogy taking place over many years (ME) where getting past dealing with a young inexperienced innocent person to the point where a relationship can be one of equals is going to work, theres simply not enough time for that.

So what we have is a group of adults with past lives, loves and traumas and definite ideas of their own. You can agree with them or not, influence them or not, even completely turn their lives upside down - player choice. Not all the companions have previous sexual trauma, Halsin doesn't, Gale doesn't, Wyll doesn't, I don't get the impression that Minthara does and certainly not Lae'zel or Karlach. That they aren't innocent young adults doesn't mean they have sexual hangups. One comes from a completely different culture where family units don't even exist.

This game takes place over a matter of a few weeks and effectively you are in a war zone (not literally but you all know what I mean)for much of it, people in such situations do form strong bonds very very quickly but its not a natural thing to happen.
I wouldn't expect a long term fulfilling relationship with any companion to establish itself over such a short time.

The possibility of one developing afterwards depending on which character you have romanced yes but it won't be fully in place at game end nor should it be, you can love someone without immediately assuming you're going to be together forever and have a cottage with roses round the door, that would be very shallow. What you end with are possibilities....

I think thats why a lot of players feel the abrupt end robbed them a bit.

To be fair, Halsin was kept as a sex slave for 3 years when he was young, I'd say that qualifies as sexual trauma. And Gale's relationship with Mystra may not fall under trauma, but it clearly wasn't a healthy relationship where both parts were equal.

Banging Mystra would be like your local grocery store worker banging Taylor Swift. Except even worse.

On launch Gale was a filthy degenerate. Shot him down as soon as I caught wind of what he was after - when he tried ambushing me after an innocent line about learning a magic trick. I shot him down and he was still coming at me with sex talk entire acts later - My char even got a romance flag with him for some reason.

Ruined my immersion with that loser talking sexually explicit to me right after a big battle.

I murdered him. New playthrough. Now I slap him 5 and dies in the rock, or occasionally bite his hand off.

I gave him a chance after the patch and he still tried twice. No more.

The fact that the disgusting pervert gets the best ending of any companion is criminal.

Taking Mystra away from Gale is the main task of the player if he is an alpha male.
Look, it looks like I'm the only player who doesn't get his team sexually aroused. Perhaps because I just didn't ask some of the characters (Astarion) about it. But I have a purely business relationship with the others. I'm not handsome in real life, but Larian could make the game not so realistic

Appreciate the feelings, but as no one is forcing you to play, don't play. There will be a fix, and this should be a moot issue now. Unless folks are looking for validation, there's really no need to keep posting.