Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Herosexual NPCs

When a woman tells you to kill you should always ask, "how high?"

But yes in stark contrast to every other companion right now, Wyl has something vaguely sexual built-in, an unhealthy relationship with his not so ex-girlfriend, I would expect this to come up but so far no go.

Gale has his past relationship with Mystra built in, but he's not as flamboyantly straight as Wyll, plus you get build-up in his pre-party scenes.

Ha, I'd forgotten about that.
There are enough questions about what it means to 'romance' a god that I'm willing to believe it can be something beyond the concepts involved here.
I'll also except the possibility he's full of it and just lying to us.

Sure, ideally for at least a few of the characters their sexuality should be part of their backstory (though in a setting with no orientation based discrimination or bias it probably wouldn’t be as significant a part of their personal history) and in this ideal scenario the game would adjust itself to accommodate this. For example, if I romance Gale as a man I get slightly different interactions than I do as a woman, and his background is slightly adjusted in the dialogue to reflect this. However, this is a fair amount of extra work for Larian with a minimal return, and they can still write compelling story content where the tension and internal conflict is independent of the protagonists gender. This allows them to use their finite resources for something else, and I much rather they do that.

The only thing I want them to do is adjust the way the game introduces potential relationships, which is to say, there should be some dialogue interactions before the party that allows the player to inconspicuously choose whom they are interested in so we don’t get bombarded with requests for sex from every party member all at once. Other than that, I think how they are handling it is fine so far.

No gender locked romances providing for maximal player choice is the way to go. There aren’t a ton of companions. Unless things change just 4 of either gender. For the ladies, one is a and the other is a bellicose frog lady. So assuming neither of these are appealing we are left with Shadowheart or Karlach. If Larian arbitrarily make one of these strictly gay and the other straight, then for lots of people there is only one viable option. No thanks. A bit of choice is better than none.

I personally prefer locked character preference. Making everyone bi only really supports bi. Not all heterosexual's like bi and not all homosexual's like bi. This wouldn't be a problem if we had say 12-20 plus companions. "Cough" Larian "cough". Seems like everyone is fighting for what seems like scraps. The real solution is to have more companions and stick the flirting behind a higher approval lock.

I've played all the Dragon Ages and read some of the books and I think it's a terrible example of romances. They aren't really good. To me it's more like they just isn't anything better.

Larian chose playersexual which is fine and safe, but you can't trailblaze and be safe. Temper expectations and all that. "Look at what is, rather than what can be" is what I recommend.

Don't settle for less on me Warlocke, it's only as minimal as you want it to be.
If they even did this little thing a lot of my criticism of the herosexual relationship would be stymied but so far not even the bare minimum seems to be apparent.

What am I even reading?

Years of DMing has taught me the intrinsic value of “good enough.” 😂

:D:D:D

Larian, take note of the proper, omnisexual way to play a bard and give us options accordingly, kthxbye.

lotta opinions on pixelfucking, and i guess pixelhandholding

You come back to the camp after a hard days adventuring to find wyll, gale and astarion making out. Which way rpg gamer man?

Let's keep the thread constructive.

Hints isn't correct, his father tried to use blood magic to mind-fuck him into heterosexuality (in the context of Jaal that becomes even more interesting).

It's difficult for me to know what kind of tone you're writing in, but I can agree that typically making someone's story about their sexuality isn't great fodder for characterization, BUT I'm not sure Dorian is the best example of this, Dragon Age is Fantasy sure, but a lot of my issues with the story in Inquisition I think stem from a general anachronistic take on many issues, The Chantry is the Western Church The Tevinter Chantry is the Eastern but with closer ties to its pagan roots, neither have any kind of prohibition or weird ideas about sexual relations, that's well and good, but there's another angle that doesn't get the same care and treatment; Dragon Age operates in a Low Fantasy Late Medieval (except Orlais) setting, the dictates of Feudalism are very much in play, Dorian's story isn't just about him not being the son his father wants him to be, he's making decisions for his entire lineage unilaterally, I wish the game had dealt with it more, instead of reducing it to an awkward after school special at some tavern, but I still wouldn't damn it by reducing it to a story about some fop being gay.
People are right to say that pre-Christian Europe was more sexually liberated (though only to a point) but even all those homosexual Greeks had wives, they just didn't see a contradiction between the types of love that could exist between men and between men and women, (and between women? who cares)

I keep hearing that but I can't reproduce it. I can get Wyll to say he's sorry that I didn't choose him but if I F8 and ask him he says something like he doesn't feel the connection and has a tankard to keep him company.

I can also get to the party where no one is interested in the main character without problem -- in fact I think that will become the bigger problem in future because once I got too efficient on a play-through -- imagining I was really worried that this bomb inside my head would go off -- I found that the I didn't have enough camp interactions for any the romances. Even the easiest to romance -- Astarian suddenly developed standards and Lae'zel told me I had displeased her too often. (even if she was impressed by skills in battle)

I'm receptive to the critique that playersexual allows devs to get away with fewer companions -- (BG had 18 we need 18. period. full stop) -- but I'm with those saying that there isn't a good reason to believe Faerun has these hangups and plenty of reasons to think it doesn't.

Poor Wyll is bugged even worse than Gale. I haven't been able to trigger his party scene and I've only heard of one person in the wide world of the internet who managed it - but they had no idea how.



I've had Astarion turn me down, but only if I asked instead of waiting for him to ask me (or if I said I'd think about it). Lae'zel always offers and I've no idea why. She hates pretty much everything I do. These triggers are very confusing - maybe it can all be blamed on Early Access, but I dunno.

I haven't seen the Wyl romance myself (not for lack of trying) and I've seen elsewhere that it (and a great many other triggers and flags) are borked, so keep that in mind, I've also noticed that depending on dialogue choice, Astarion will give you the line about having standards (rich), or be down for a nocturnal tussle, I'm not sure if that's a bug or an interesting facet of his character.
I think what I'm seeing is two issues, my problem with everyone being playersexual isn't necessarily about whatever cultural hang-ups there might be in the Forgotten Realms it's about a person's sexuality being present at all. As opposed to carefully "not applicable" for reasons that have nothing to do with the world and everything to do artificially making everyone 'available' to the player.

Right, reality. If anyone wanted reality they would exit the video game, log off of their computer and walk outside. Romance also doesn't equal sex. You're the one who added sex into the equation. I'm referring to the possibility of being able to date and romance who I wish. Sex in the game is entirely optional and perhaps, depending on how much Larian allows, you may even have a relationship with a character without having sex with them. Not once in my post did I mention having sex, but your entire post is fixated on it. Why?

Also, good for you in having your opinion. Mine isn't changing.

Yeah..... I thought about that "arrangement" but was worried it might be misinterpreted.

@Atlus I disagree. That leads to a digression though so I'll leave it at that. Things seem to be getting away from the game a bit much for my taste. I thought this was a character vs sex doll debate lol.