Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Unwanted Gale romance

I'm on my 4th playthrought and somehow (and it is beyond me) I'm romancing Gale??? I literally only talked to the guy a couple of times and was as nice as with everyone else... Then comes act 2 and Gale is declaring that I have to chose between him and Astarion... How did this happen? I had no intentions whatsoever to romance him, didn't sleep with him, barely talk to him. And yet the game flags it as we're romanced? Should I just avoid talking to him in act 1? Is it a bug or was intended? This happened in each playthrough.

I'm on patch 2, had to roll back patch 3 due to graphical glitches in cutscenes.

Just say no and move on. This isn't as big a deal as people make it out to be. There's an obvious answer when they are starting to get too close. I've played through numerous times as well and never had trouble setting boundaries with any of the characters so I can choose the relationship choice for my current playthrough that I wanted.

Clearly that's what I did in all my playthrough, but it is annoying that there's no clear indication as to what actually starts the romance. Same for Halsin who comes out of nowhere with his advances with no prior indication from the player about their willingness to start a romance.

Larian needs to fix the triggers and flags for romance. Some of the dialog options are not clear as to whether they are just friendly or a romance starting flirting. DAI had a clear option marked start romance, would be nice to have that sort of marker in BG3 as well.

Every character will eventually try to initiate the romance. I think it's tied to approval rating. You just have to set the boundary and say no. To every character.

While I agree that not all dialogues are clear, the ones that actually start the romances couldn't be clearer without putting an actual "ROMANCE" tag on it.

I just wish there was some way to clearly indicate you're not interested in a romance that doesn't involve being a dick about it. Is it that hard to have options like "Gale, you're a good friend, but I'm not into men that way" or "Wyll, stop trying to dance your way into my pants, you know I'm already involved with someone else" instead of the blatantly rude options that actually exist?

Agreed. It seems like for the male NPCs the choices are:
1) Flirt
2) Flirt differently
3) F**k off and die.

But it's worse. I found that the no relationship choice isn't clear at all for Shadowheart. If I agree that we should get together for a night alone in act one, but maybe do it later rather than now, she responds like I've crushed all her hopes and killed her pet. The other alternative is to come on too strong, for which SHE then says maybe later. Okay, I could just say "women?", but I'd rather we could just agree.

The real problem with this sort of thing is that it takes you out of immersion, and thus devalues the imaginary friendship.