Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Romance Interests are Awful!

Well, the good news is everyone here just has a normal conversation with it lol.

Those days are past now. The OP did (intentionally or not) use some words that are likely to trigger a sizeable portion of the current RPG-player population. Some have expressed doubt as to the gender of the OP. I could point them to places where they could find many actual females expressing such views. It is an 'age' (maybe a word too big) of division and mental bubbles. The ability of the those subscribed to one of the mutually exclusive worldviews to even understand the opposite position is fading.
It will not end well... but even the best of endings rarely satisfy.

On Topic: Why not have some 'manly' (the word alone causes debate these days), men showing attributes traditionally associated with manliness? I don't really care. Having a few characters without serious psychological issues would be nice. I feel that these days many people confuse interesting with insane characters. The kind of hero adored and praised by the ancients would be considered boring and 'one dimensional' today. It's all a mirror for societies. I am not here to judge whether or not that is a good thing, I am merely pointing out an observation. Maybe the traditional hero type of character should also be represented? As far as I am concerned fewer characters and more resources spent on their interactions beats more companion choices.

Okay dude, most women don't call themselves "females" and the ones who are on that side are suffering Stockholm syndrome and internalized crap and a half. It's not a good way to live, I've seen trying to live like that wreck people. Do some lean that way? Yeah, and they tend to get pushed forward as voices when they do because it's so damn rare.

Not sure about the hate towards Astarion, but I actually made him my romance character as he was the only one approving of my decisions haha. I like the fact they made him a bit cheeky, posh, sarcastic and charming but I guess for some, these characteristics might come across as 'gay'.


Never had any romance lines with Shadowheart but as someone stated before, she seems bugged or maybe she has a split personality cause she can be sweet and start opening up to me, then she just lashes out at me to say she's just with me to find the cure.

Bug wise, Gale seems to be glitched as well with his camp conversations about his condition. He gets the exclamation mark that he wants to speak to me, just to tell me the same thing that he had already said (even to the progression of finding and GIVING him the artifacts).

One of the best things you can do is have a normative NPC. Someone who will say "geez whats up with these guys am I right?" and share a beer with you. Later, when all of your things are gone and youre missing a pinky, and youre crawling out of the gutter not knowing what part of the city, HOPEfully its the same city, you are in you think back to all the things they said and wonder how you didn't put it all together. You probably did know it was coming, but by god, you wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world. The others are of course mildly disgusted that you could be taken in that easily by someone.

Basically they need a character that is Judy from Brooklyn 99

Well it is strange that all the character are bisexual. In previous Baldurs gate game, all the character leaned toward one or the other gender , not both. I v already said this, but making everyone pansexual, everyone ready to fuck you at the camp party is totally unrealistic and kill a part of their identity. Its makes all the character the same, and make dialogue irrelevant.

Lae'zel : see me as a monster, wants to kill me
Gayle : Likes me
Will : neutral
Shadowhearth : Hate me, tell me to stop talking to her whenever she can.
Astarion : Charming and secretive, still tried to kill me and bite me.


Guess what? They all want to have sex with you at the camp party. Doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl, doesn't matter if you got along with them or if they disapproved every single reaction beforehand. Everyone is open bar, free to get taken.

I enjoyed the long dialogues with Baldurs gate2 companions, and the fact that you had to give the good answers AND be the good gender AND do their quest right to have a chance to go with them. It made sense. You weren't the same person if you tried to date Viconia or if you wanted to be with Aerith.

Shadowheart does behave a bit like a bipolar girl who is friends with a friend of mine. Quite a lot of push pull to her personality. I guess it is just some sort of consequence of religious brainwashing. Maybe it will make sense once we know more about her. For roleplaying reasons my mage cannot tolerate someone like that in his camp. Too much potential danger. As a romance option? Lae'zel is not coming from a society where such relationships are important, Shadowheart is untrustworthy, Wyll is attached to a Cambion and Gale is heartbroken about Mysta.

He likes cooking and comfort, so he's clearly effeminate gay. /sarcasm

I in no way mean disrespect with what I am about to say but if you genuinely believe this then the best possible thing for you to have done was to ignore it so as to not detract from any potential discussion by burdening the thread with pursuing a witch hunt. If their motives are dishonest the worst possible thing to do is to reward it by giving it attention. Think of it in the same manner as if a child started to throw a fit because they don't want to wash their hands before dinner after playing in mud.
If you are concerned for their well being you could contact them much more directly via DM as if there is any chance of them opening up to you it would be in a private conversation rather than a public character execution.

Shadowheart shouls also absolutely deny any gith no matter what, considering her view on these "flat-noses"

While I do agree with almost everything you have said I would just like to add something on to it if you don't mind.

The most jarring thing for me is that this desire for you does not produce any of the prevalent side effects you would expect from a real person. Then I realized that this is because there is no actual romance development as of yet in the game. As you said, everyone wants to jump your bones regardless of any other conditions. I don't really care about their sexual orientation as it doesn't bother me in the slightest as I grew up with a gay older brother(I'm straight if that helps) but it does bother me that you don't need to interact with them almost at all. It shattered whatever illusion I was holding until this point that we where creating a special bond or truly getting to know each other and finding that we are similar souls. I can sort of understand this if there is no intention of implementing any kind of happy ever after but that is a red flag for me in and off itself. It's another choice I am not being afforded by the game and runs contrary to every precedent set in the series, the source material, and the nature of RPGs.

I doubt it. Achilles was a major asshole, so was Odysseus. I doubt either one would fit into polite society today.

I do agree it would be nice to have a few companion choices without psychological problems, and maybe we'll get that with the remaining companions we haven't seen yet.

Also, I wouldn't put Lae'zel in the category of psychological problems. She's a non-human warrior from a heavily martial culture who considers everyone not from that culture to be inferior. A Spartan, basically. She only has "psychological problems" from an outsider perspective.

Lae'zel is actually probably the closest to the more 'ancient' depiction of heroes. Which certainly makes for an interesting, if abrasive, romance option.

Wait, the discussion right now a camp saying everyone should be abrasive?

Aside from that: She is somehwat close to a Spartan, I agree.


So you want to add more statistically unlikely stuff by having the only 'normal' guy be the biggest traitor? Usually the people with issues and big secrets are the ones that are the most dangerous

I like Shadowheart she seems to me at least a little submissive to my main character and I also want to say that she seems to approve of the decisions he makes. Well from what I've seen so far she seems to approve, out of all of the characters Shadowheart is my favorite so far.

I would like to see more options for both males and females than what we got.

I think I am missing something...whats the statistics thing now?

I more or less like her as well, but as far as reasons to like her go, this has to be one of the creepiest one.

Then again you're at least being honest and that's probably the problem a lot of people here are having with these "terrible" companions.

The party composition is exceedingly unlikely to occur as a result of the random sampling the mindflayers are shown to practice in the intro. Characters who appear to be somewhat normal are somewhat normal in most cases while those who appear to be very strange and are known to hide big secrets tend to be untrustworthy.

Thats why its fun being a DM - you get to scar your players for life and make it so they never trust anything again.