Originally Posted by 7TeenWriters
The way romance is handled right now feels kind of awkward, and as much as the game seems dedicated to giving everyone choices about romance despite their identity, the way it's implemented now seems to actually be counter to player choice. I want to be able to have a character that's best buds with Wyll or Lae'zel without them suddenly awkwardly asking to sleep with me with no lead up. The conversation with Wyll is handled a lot better than the others (he's really sweet about being turned down and it actually doesn't feel like it would make the friendship too awkward), but I still think it'd be more in character for him to try for an awkward handhold or kiss rather than immediately move to asking you to sleep with him. At the moment the characters feel like they all lose their personality when it comes to the romance section, because they all immediately decide they want to sleep with you if you're beyond a certain friendship threshold. To help this, I have some suggestions:

Make the player make the first move: A simple fix for a lot of characters would be for them to only start coming onto you after you shoot them some flirty dialogue, express care for them that goes beyond friendship, something more than just having a high enough approval rating. You could even use the "who are you drawn to" section at the beginning to maybe get a feel for which characters a player is interested in.

Make the characters varied: The fact that every companion has some variation on "wanna fuck" on the same night is awkward as hell and makes them not really feel like independent characters. The way things are right now it just feels forced. Wyll in particular is smooth and I could see him pulling that, but not right after the "I really care about you" convo. I think he'd take it slower if he were actually trying to be romantic. The weird meld of the two just feels awkward and out of place.

Let us turn romance/sex off: Some people have trauma, some people really don't want to be come onto in certain ways out of nowhere. In older RPGs this style could be fine because it was mostly text based, but now that we have beautiful cutscenes a lot of this stuff can be kind of triggering, especially in the state things are now where characters (looking at you, Lae'zel and Astarion) can be really pushy in an uninvited way. Personally I'm cool with that as party interactions so long as I can deck Astarion (see below), but there should be something in the options menu just to turn these advances off regardless of approval. Or to turn off the more passionate romance scenes. Giving players of any identity their choice of how they want to experience romance should also involve the choice to have fun in a fantasy world without being sexually pressured out of nowhere.

Leave Astarion mostly unchanged: So I know I was complaining about the immediate "wanna fuck" for other characters, but I think it makes sense that Astarion is a hoe. I just want to be able to hit him. I could see playing a character that's into it, but my first character was killed by his drain and would have wanted to deck him the moment he made an advance. That would've been a good party interaction though. Please let us punch Astarion after he kills us (or kill him, I could see playing a character that dumps him in a ditch after being revivified), and after he comes on to us, and after he blows past a "no". There are a lot of moments where he deserves to be punched (well beyond the moments we're allowed to hit him), but I quite like his character and that's all fine for his personality. On a similar note, if you do sleep with Astarion, I want to be able to punch Gale. His "nice guy" jealous lines are kinda controlling and creepy and I want similar options to put him in his place. More options for punching my companions when they're being dicks would be really nice, generally.

I don't know if this was the intent but it does kind of feel like if you're into men you have two different controlling men and Wyll, who is obviously the best in every way. I kind of like that, since both Astarion and Gale are both likeable and kind of toxic in ways that are very believable, and the actual good man is has a rapey demon patron which makes things kinda... awkward. There's a good core here but I'm a little worried the final game will miss out on what was good about this in favor of apologizing for characters who kinda deserved to be decked a few times.

So yeah, curious what other people think can be done about this, but I really think the romance needs to be drastically changed because as it's implemented now it makes your relationships with all your companions (or at least the companions you're closest to) really weird.
I LAUGHED WAY TOO HARD AT THIS
I don't actually want to have BDSM with Astarion but if that's your thing...... go ahead. I wouldn't mind being able to punch him xD

Besides that, I agree 100% with everything that you said. Romance needs to be polished in this game. Sometimes I just truly want to stay friends with a character.

Last edited by A_va; 08/01/21 05:10 PM.