Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback "Children in games / Sexuality in games"

"As great as Baldur's Gate 3 is, these two points bother me a lot.


Children!

Games that include children always feel a bit strange. Either the children walk around in god mode or cannot be selected as targets. I understand why this is the case, but in Baldur's Gate 3, it bothered me that I couldn't properly deal with the cheeky thing that was trying to steal from me. Especially when playing as an evil character, this greatly disrupts immersion.
Moreover, in this case, it's not even about human children.

Sex!

Baldur's Gate 3 makes the same mistake in this regard as Cyberpunk 2077.

In both games, I can choose my genitalia and even have several versions to choose from, but you actually don't see anything. Neither my character's nor that of others. Larian at least incorporated appropriate moments correctly, so that they can occur more frequently if desired, unlike Cyberpunk, but the fundamental problem still remains.

Why include something if you're not going to show it anyway? If you allow us to choose such things and include corresponding moments, why not take the step all the way instead of stopping halfway? For streamers, you would have to include a corresponding mode anyway.

The only thing I can do is undress my character and run naked through the world, which brings us back to immersion and, above all, raises the question of how desperate someone is."

In regards to children...

Yeah, it's annoying. But until a company gets the balls to actually do something about it, people will remain overprotective of digital representations of children.

Ironically, BG3 does let you murder Goblin children. For example, Two and Three who are tormenting Halsin in the Goblin Camp are children.

But any other child is no-go for some reason.

As far as sex goes...

It's taken this long to even get this far. With actual nudity being shown instead of always being in underwear and having sex scenes be a matter of fade to black insinuations or awkward clothed grinding on each other.

Eventually, maybe, developers will actually show sex... But there's a lot to get through with "Porn Game" stigmas applied by people and resultant ESRB rating increases (Which does significantly impact sales. The higher the age rating of a game, the fewer overall sales it makes. Hence why most titles try to stick to PG13 or 15 by avoiding nudity and curses because those things are bad and naughty unlike mass violent murder...)

There's also certain countries that are so prudish they'll outright ban games that would show sex in them, further limiting sales (And making people from those countries upset that they can't play the game)

nope it's different between Cyberpunk 2077 and BG3 I literally played both games, BG3 has actual nudity, while Cyberpunk will magically give you underwear the moment you get on a motorcycle or the moment you exit your inventory, Cyberpunk gives you the illusion of streaking without going thru with it, look down in game after taking everything off and you can see that your cyberpunk character is actually in their undies.

Do you need to have sex and porn for a RPG game to be good?
I couldn't care less. So for me it feels like a cheesy addon and just looks bad and is comical, every single time.
Would of rather have ALL THAT EFFORT GO INTO FRIENDSHIPS, LORE, AND MORE INTERESTING STORY LINES in BG3.

But hey, people need their porn I guess. It sells. Especially in puritan America.

Yeah, pisses me off that I can't kill the criminal filth. At least I can let Arbella die - she was too dumb to live anyway, suicide by cop ...
You can kil off Gawblin children, though. Molesting animals cannot go unpunished!

Regarding children...

Right, I even forgot that you can kill them there.

Regarding sex...

My concern is more about the fact that if you're already incorporating explicit gender lines, why not take the step to actually show it in the game? Especially since we can easily disable clothing and run around in the game. But showing a corresponding cutscene is considered too much?

That's what surprises me, especially because both games I mentioned are already rated 18, and for streamers, there's usually an option to disable such content. So, it's not even a matter of additional work, and it wouldn't negatively impact sales since mature content can be disabled for streaming.

I brought up Cyberpunk precisely because it's like that there. You see yourself naked in the menu, but in the game, there's no use for it. So, why go through the effort during development to include that?

BG3 goes one step further here, but personally, I find it unnecessary if you don't also utilize corresponding cutscenes. Then, I don't need the option during character creation either.

I don't know how much effort it takes to program the genitalia, but if it's not needed, it's unnecessary. Every second spent on it is then wasted time that could have been used elsewhere!

You haven't understood what I'm trying to say...

It's about either integrating it competently or leaving it out entirely.

Take The Witcher 3, for example. It doesn't bother me there because you can't adjust anything in that regard. There are corresponding cutscenes that emphasize the character and their development.

But if you include the option to be completely naked, you should either make use of it or invest the energy you would spend on it elsewhere.

The games are already rated 18. But including graphic depictions of sex can cause them to instead be rated AO, which is a higher classification and is outright banned in certain countries and digital storefronts.

As far as not "Negatively impacting sales" that's just flat out incorrect. Sales are impacted by anything that can cause a game to receive a higher classification or restriction in availablility. Some countries heavily restrict certain types of content (If you spend enough time on the internet you'll probably come across Japan's overly zealous censorship of sex leading to the whole "Pixelated genitalia" phenomena in pornographic material)

So just because a streamer can activate streaming mode and then stream the game on a streaming website, doesn't mean that the game won't be restricted in its distribution or that parents would be less likely to buy the game for their teenaged children.


To be fair, it doesn't take much resources to actually implement. Especially since you're going to code/model a baseline "Naked" model anyway, there's little difference between the textures including some form of underwear or genitalia.

What would take effort, would be making scenes to utilize genitalia. Since you'd have to choreograph the scene for each race due to size differences (Not to mention the differences that would occur in regards to male and female PC's) as well as additional animation for the actual interaction with the genitalia (Unless you wanna go low effort and just have the penis clip through the model)