Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion Divinity needs to learn from BG3 Romance Problems

It's far too easy in Baldur’s Gate 3 to end up going down a romance path with another character without ever knowing that’s what you are doing. and that is really problematic. It's a problem with a lot of dialogue, not just romantic, because you can't tell the tone of an option based on text. Was I making a joke, or is this supposed to be flirty, am I being nice to a friend, or will am I trying to get in their paints? All these characters are adults, there is nothing wrong with having someone go 'hay, are you interested in more than just friendship? because I'm cool either way.' and just giving the player a choice here.

There are several problems with how romance is approached in BG3, but the worst is that it makes people feel out of control. The central theme that makes games stand out from every other media type is control, and with this we don’t have it. This can throw people out of the moment, especially as in several of the ‘romance paths’ there are no easy ways to let the person down. Its like, you were building a friendship and looking for lore in their past, but suddenly you have to be a total asshole because the game thought you were trying to get in there pants. When you weren’t.

In some cases this is much worse. While its antidotal I’ve heard several people say how uncomfortable Wyll’s ‘romantic dance’ scene makes them sense it caught them totally off guard, and as they were playing themselves they didn’t feel comfortable being an asshole or going through with the scene. For women who’ve personally experienced men assuming that just because they’ve been nice they deserve sex, this is a nasty part of the real world they don’t want in their games. Or at least, many of them don’t.

For me, its been really bizarre, as I’m Ace. As an Asexual person I’m nearly always blindsided by the romance in this game. And while I’m not bothered by sex like some, I often had no intention of dealing pursuing a romantic relationship with anyone. While such aggressive behavior from a character like Lae’zel, having that happen from everyone is clearly far too much.

All this could be made much more appropriate by simply doing one thing, giving us clear dialogue choices clear. This way we don’t stumble onto an option we don’t want. More than that though, characters like Lae’zel could be made much more approachable by giving her a friendship/romance option that is clearly marked so that we can learn about the character without having to pursue a relationship we don’t want.

Personally I kind of like Lae’zel being the start of the relationship, but not only is it not for everyone, I’ve heard of multiple people who don’t want to play BG3 simply because all the romance options happen all the time. It makes people uncomfortable and turns them off. So it would be great for Divinity to give the player more control over the nature of their romance.

I've noticed the problem, but hadn't really thought of it as a big deal until I encountered a youtube video that talks about it, and directly calls out BG3, so I thought I'd post this here as a warning/letting people know what's going on. I don't know if I can post links, but the video is called 'How Romance Paths in Games Fail Asexual Players (And How to Fix It)' by Darkteatime. I'm a bit frustrated with myself that I didn't think to say anything until I saw someone else voicing a complaint I've heard thrown about, so I hope other people who've had the same complaint with the game speak up.

I'm also personally frustrated with games that gate content behind building a romantic relationship with certain characters, I think mass effect and dragons age largely did this right, as you don't have to have a romantic or sexual relationship with your companions to dig into their character or learn about them as a person and they clearly mark the dialogue options that go down that path.

I guess the point here is just to let people know what is going on and hopefully see Divinity be the best that it can be.

I completely disagree with this. Game and its characters do not need to sugar coat NPC/PC relationships and make you feel good about yourself all the time. Absolute control makes for a power fantasy rather than a lIving world. Characters should be disappointed, should be blunt, should argue AND they should also be cool about things and be kind and nice. They are called NPCs for a reason, they are non playable character and their reactions should not be managed based on how players feel about things. I am pro-personality when it comes to NPCs.

This also goes for their sexual preference, and in this regard, I agree. Having all characters like you regardless of sex and race as well as having all characters acting on their feelings makes them all bland.

There's 2 main issues at work here:

1) There is no nuance between "Friend" and "Romantic Partner".

It's incredibly hard to maintain a platonic friendship without any romantic advances because there's no tangible line of specifying you're interested in someone or not. By default just being nice to someone ends up with you on the romance path, unless you're specifically aware of which dialogue options trigger things (Even then it surmounts to you having to turn them down at some point)

2) Relationships are shallow.

This applies to both friendships and romance, but is more egregious for romance.

The act of developing a relationship is simply "Do things X character likes" and eventually you'll just be BFF's/lovers. Heck, you don't even need to talk to them ever or even have them in the party (Thanks to BG3's psychic companions, they can fall madly in lust with you with absolutely 0 interaction).

Which is really silly and leads to the situations in BG3 that irked a lot of people, which is companions coming onto their character from out of the blue. Since this act of pursual was triggered simply by doing enough general things they liked - Again, irregardless of if they were in the party or were being interacted with.

Now, as for solutions to such issues:

1) Provide more dialogue options and make it more evident when options are flirtatious or simply being friendly.

This doesn't necessarily have to be direct professions of love right out of the gate. But there should be obvious signs that differentiate "Getting to know a friend" and "Trying to woo a romantic partner". Really, there'd be different levels of "Forwardness" to which characters will react differently based on their personality (As well as overall relationship level)

2) Improve on the very basic and very outdated relationship model.

We need to do away with the simple "Like-o-meter" whereby characters just gain favour from doing basic things like "Do something they like" or "Give them a gift" and then instantly fall in love with you once it reaches 100%.

There needs to be systems that are more nuanced in how characters react. With more things that can influence how a character views you. Such as how often you talk to them, how much you converse with them, whether you bring them along in your party, the priority you put on interacting with them (I.e. They'll like it if they're the first person you talk to when you get to camp and start to resent you if they're the last person in your rounds of talking to everyone) etc.

Also, it should be made so that positive feelings don't necessarily equate to romance. Allowing you to become BFF's with someone without having to dance around constant romance requests. Of course, this would be very complex to do well without simply making it based on a "I want to romance you" dialogue option... Though even that basic implementation would be far better than current systems (That's how awful they are)

It should feel more organic and more like you're going out of your way to get closer to a character. Rather than just ticking checkboxes to fill a relationship bar (Of course, it will always boil down to essentially this. The key is to mask it with complexity so it's less obvious)

I wouldn't say that real-life romance is exactly free of these bugs, but I can remember a couple of instances in the game - not at all just romancing - where I misunderstood dialogue options, e.g. thought I was making a joke/being ironic or didn't get a reference. And then everybody disliked it and friendly NPCs turned hostile. Not to turn everybody into HK-47s from KotOR, but with some options a hint like [THREAT], [SARCASM], or in this case [ROMANCE] would surely be nice. The Wyll proposal in the Shadow-Cursed mountain camp did seem out of place, but to me this was Wyll being Wyll. At least in my game, he had this thing for acting on sketchy infos (Karlach, Ansur...), letting good intentions override common sense (Mizora,...) and having really bad timing - worst of all organising a big party to celebrate becoming the Blade of Avernus on the eve of the final battle.

I have little complaints about the romancing system in BG3. I never really felt pressured. One thing that annoyed me was that the PC can't play "hard to get" apparently. I think it's with Shadowheart at some point. You can immediately say yes, or choose something like "yes, but not now, but later", but that last remark finishes it. There is no later. So that was a response was misleading.