Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback At least add, set romance/sexualism slider to realistic option

Seems like people are scared of having this conversation so I am just going to do it.

I do not hate gay people. I have no problem with gay people (or other people). Everyone should be able to live their life how they want. But some sense of realism would be nice. Do even gay people like this portrayal of gay? Let me just make clear that I will use gay as an example here. But it is all of it. Gnomes dating orcs. Gay ratio. Mindflayer romance? I mean come on. I have seen people on this forum saying they slept with half the party members in a single playthrough and had foursomes and so on. It is ridiculous.

This random all polyamoury all sexual stuff kills all challenge and realism in romance. It is literally almost impossible to not succeed in romancing someone. They have no type. They just bend to whatever you decide. It kills immersion and makes everything feel fake and unrewarding. In an actual romance you have to actually seduce someone or flirt in the right way that speaks to the actual person. In this game everyone jumps at you and accept you(even chase you) even if you just
start murdering everyone around randomly.

They should add more companions, and actually let each companion have a type. It is ridiculous in the current state. That or a setting slider/checkbox where I can set romance to REALISTIC or something.

Cannot help but feel that this is the woke agenda once again. The gay spam is ridiculous. The amount of gay relationships from NPCs(or advances from NPCs/companions) outnumber heterosexual ones 8/3 and I am not even kidding. And every time I run into a character that is gay it is always "HEY LOOK AT ME I AM GAY, THIS IS THE MAN I CHOSE". How does any living being exist in this game when not even half of the relationships are heterosexual? Does Larian thinks every gay person in the world has the urge to say that they are gay loudly in the first sentence when they speak to people?


I don't think I should succeed in romancing someone unless I look like, and act like their type. THIS SHOULD BE REWORKED COMPLETELY, but at least please add an option for making this realistic. ONLY THEN can you actually do justice to people of all orientations and races.

I don't think its influence based, if so it has to be small. I had Lar'zel do her dialog and I've only had her in my party for her personal side stories.

But yeah, I shut down everyone and hadn't had a problem since. Mid act 2 atm where I stalled.

I did have a bug where Withers said something about kissing Wyll but that never happened.

I'm very much against the playersexual approach, which is what folks were initially calling it. It comes across poorly and strips NPCs of character and identity. It's actually ruined some of the characters for me.

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Regarding the amount of NPC gay relationships in the game, whether that be discovered via dialogue or in books and letters, yes, I tend to think it's oddly and overwhelmingly abundant. But that's a difficult conversation to actually have because it feels like the discussion will inevitably be shut down.

Is your issue playersexuality and its consequent lack of agency for both the player and the companion, or are you more concerned with the appearance of gay characters in the game?

Discussions of a lack of agency or characterization due to playersexuality and the horny behavior of our companions are fair game, in my view. The harder discussion is the appearance of gay characters in the game. Yes, this game portrays more LGBT relationships than other mainstream RPGs in recent memory. However, I think it is a harsh value judgment to call this phenomenon a bad thing. Gay people are real. I fail to see how the appearance of LGBT people necessarily breaks immersion or violates a principle of realism. Saying LGBT relationships violate immersion just by existing does not make sense to me. I was walking through Soho in London the other day and saw dozens of queer couples. I didn't feel like my immersion in real life was ruined.

As to the other point, I think the benefits of player choice that emerge through playersexuality outweigh the costs, but I would like there to be more friendship options, and for the game to tone down the horny behavior of companions you are not actively romancing. The libido in this game is a bit too strong for my tastes, but that could also be my more puritan upbringing talking.

Main point is about immersion and realism.

No idea how you got: " Appearance of gay characters" from what I wrote. I clearly stated it is the amount, and how they are so over-eager to share that they are gay(does anyone you know in real life act this way? Gay/Hetero/Other, No). Gay relationships in this game vastly outnumber heterosexual realtionships, which makes no sense if you want people to actually.. exist..

And yes, playersexuality, breaks immersion. I feel like this is another one of those situations where they removed all consequence from the game. It is impossible to fail a romance quest line in this game..(which brings us back to immersion)

Outside of the main companions, can you tell me which characters directly inform the player that they are gay? Off the top of my head, I can only think of the deep gnomes in the Grymforge, Aylin and Isobel, and Barcus and Wulbren. There are others who are alluded to being gay, but they are not "over-eager to share that they are gay". Would you mind giving me some examples outside of the three I have mentioned?

YEs you have quite a few already.

And it is not always directly to the player. It is more like Larian flashed a beacon saying "HEY THERE IS A GAY COUPLE OVER HERE" A situtation where this happens is for example in Rivington where you walk by a dragonborn-human gay couple and one of them says "you are the man I chose" randomly.

One of the Gondian gnomes states they have a same sex partner when in the middle of a conversation with the Bane extortionist. As if that is important in that particular moment.

Gale/Astarion randomly hitting on me the same night. Within 2-1 long rests of meeting them.

The vampire you meet in Wyrms Crossing leaves nothing to the imagination to put it mildly. And so on. Tbh I do not even think about this and I remember all of this off the top of my head.

In contrast the only Heterosexual couples I have seen/met in this game are: one tiefling couple, one couple having a picknick in Rivington, Arabellas parents.. That's it.

Tbh I am writing too much. What it comes down to mostly is what one guy above said, playersexuality.

I agree that our companions come on too strong, and that too many dialogue options lead to romantic interactions without viable options for friendships. This game can be aggressively horny at times when it comes to dynamics with our companions, and this problem has indeed been noted elsewhere on the forum. I think this could be solved by a [Lover], [Romance], and [Friendship] tag, but some might find that immersion breaking.

Yes or a romance realism checkbox/slider. Many solutions to this.

And just to be clear, I do want lesbians and gays in the game. I just want it to be realistic.

Hmm. Okay, there are various different topics all thrown together here, and I’m afraid that bundling them like this makes this look like an objection to LGBT content in the game, despite the disclaimer.

In fact, I’ve not seen a discussion of these topics yet which hasn’t attracted offensive comments, either intentional or just out of ignorance, and because of that they’re not subjects I’m keen to see debated here. Our priority is to be a friendly, safe space for everyone to discuss the game, regardless of sexuality, and if that means steering clear of a small minority of topics that disproportionately attract argument and offensive comments and derail constructive debate, then so be it.

I have also said numerous times on these forums that bringing in wider political debates is not appropriate, which is what referring to a “woke agenda” is doing. That is language that is very specific to a particular political stance, being derogatory about an opposing political stance, so is not something that someone should be casually chucking into a post on an open, diverse, global community about computer games. And I’m afraid “gay spam” is the final straw that is getting this thread locked.

As these topics have already been discussed elsewhere on these forums, I’d encourage anyone interested in the topic to search and read what has been said before.

Specifically on the romance triggers/reactivity, I’d suggest https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=893733.

There was also a recent discussion of playersexuality at https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=880883. That is now locked as it got to the point where the ratio of constructive discussion to circular argument/moderator effort wasn’t justifiable, but it still demonstrates the range of views folk have on the topic.