Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Community Update #7 - Romance & Companionship

So who is this character? Is that a PC or the NPC that was discussed in the hidden part of an earlier post?

New community update is about! Love is in the air!

Go read it now!

The update is not only about romance, there are a lot of interesting relationship dynamics there.

I just wish that it is not exclusively during Camp time.

Other thing is that Gale and Shadow Heart don't look too evil for me as far as we have seen.

Hi people,

I just watched the Romance community update. It seems that Larian do take a lot of care to implement romance as a narrative and cinematic feature.
They want players to care about the characters and impact that such relations have on the story.

But I want to suggest something that could take that impact to the next level - gameplay.
What if characters who are in love could gain a treat that would enable them to react to things that happen in the fight? Perhaps even automatically?
For example, Shadowheart could have a chance to cover the player with a shield from an attack, or the player character could immediately counterattack the monster who hurt their love interest. Rule-wise it could work based on the reaction rules similar to some spells to stay true to the DND source.

The closest I have seen to this was either the new unique skills in Tyranny, permanent buff to the stats in NWN:Mask of the Betrayer, or the friendship system in the XCOM series.
Of course, it may be seen as an imbalance, but imagine the impact such system could have on the player. We would spend 60 to 80% of our time in combat, and having romance change something about how characters behave in combat and not just in dialogue would be precious and previously unseen in RPGs.

What do you think?

So I received a Larian Gazette about how romance would work in Baldur's Gate III, and the gazette contains the following image:



Not sure how you guys think about that female character, but isn't her body animation a bit too masculine? Are you guys really fine with having romance with such a half-man?

I think female characters should not act like men and should have femininity.

Yeah, the update seemed great, not so keen on the explicit sexual content though, that chart of poses seemed rather awkward.

I was hoping this would be family friendly enough to introduce DND to my little brother :'D I guess not.

I agree. I would appreciate this too. Since we have a system of tags, it would surely be pretty straightforward to put a little check box somewhere in Character Creation that would give your character a no-romance tag, so that you would never need to be offended by this sort of nonsense.

There are a lot of interesting responses when it comes to romance in an rpg game. I personally do not mind having romance in an rpg game because you are role playing as the character and if you were living in this world, would you not be attracted to someone? Although Larian is creating Baldur's Gate 3, they did not create Baldur's Gate. This was originally a BioWare franchise. If anyone knows anything about BioWare is that they love doing romance. For Example, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, SWTOR and Baldur's Gate 2. As for the sex scenes in BG3 being explicit and some of you not liking that, all I can say is you don't have to romance them. That won't affect your gameplay, it never does. The only thing that does change with Romance is party banter and some of that is just hilarious, especially from BioWare. You realize how funny and nosey your companions are. I notice that BG3 has banter and I would love to see what my companions say when it comes to relationships. At the end of the day having romance in a video game is not a big deal. It always a choice, it's not forced.

+1

Everyone has different views on what constitutes 'acceptable'. Different cultures, social backgrounds and personal experiences leave us all with a different moral compass and outlook.

Whilst it is fine to put forward your views on what you find distasteful (within reason - we don't want hate speech here), please avoid dismissing or attacking the legitimate concerns of others.

So I received a Larian Gazette about how romance would work in Baldur's Gate III, and the gazette contains the following image:



Not sure how you guys think about that female character, but isn't her body animation a bit too masculine? Are you guys really fine with having romance with such a half-man?

I think female characters should not act like men and should have femininity.

Your views on women and femininity strike me as pretty misogynistic and immature ones but that is a whole other matter...

That said: She is a female warrior wearing a heavy chain armor and is swinging a mace, so I really don't get what your problem is with her. XD

I agree. I was never a bold, muscular man. And I can only play body styles in games I see in myself. So I'm very offen pissed off by the bulky, muscular body styles that do not represent me.
In these times, it should be possible to play roles with body styles other than just clichè.
Just take a look at the protagonist in the first movie of "How to train your dragon". He looks weak, he looks unmanly, he *IS* unmanly - yet he is the ONLY ONE who sees the truth !
Those weak in body are often those strongest in mind, Stephen Hawking should be the prime example for that.