Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Focused Feedback: Minthara's Intimacy [Heavy Spoilers][potentially NSFW screenshots and language]

This post was originally going to be part of my focus thread on halflings, but as I ran my examinations, I realised that a large percentage of the issues I was going to bring up are endemic to the scene in general, and noting them specifically in relation to halflings would serve no real purpose at the present time.

Instead, I want to examine the scene itself, what it does, or tries to do, what it achieves, and doesn't, and the issues facing it beyond simple model misalignment. I won't talk much about clipping issues here, as the main problems aren't to do with polish at all, but are more underlying to the scene itself.

Needless to say, this post will be very spoiler heavy. It will also contain screenshots and images from the game which may be considered not entirely work-safe. I will undoubtedly use sexual language and sexual terminology as I write.

I am not a fully qualified cinematographer, or a trained film studies student; I know a good deal about many elements of it, but I know there are a few other people on these forums with more training in this field than me; if I get things wrong or mis-speak, or if anyone who actually knows better sees something that should be corrected, please do.

Images here will be quite large, and I apologise for that; I wanted to make sure that the details I wanted to talk about were clear.

A brief synopsis first, before I break it down in more detail: There are two versions of Minthara's scene; the standard one, where Minthara is pitched as a Dom, and the scene heavily implies that it will be D/s in nature, and an alternate one which you can take if you attempt to engage in some sort of strange dom-test with her and 'win'. In reality, it would ultimately be a mistake to call these a 'Dom scene' and a 'sub scene', because in reality that is not what they come out as, even if that was the pitch.

The standard scene plays its first half the same, regardless of your character's race and sex; the second half plays differently for males and females. In this version of the scene, she talks the talk of wanting this to be a D/s intimacy session, but it turns out to be some extremely vanilla material that actually follows most of the traditional pornography tropes, in the worst made-for-males-by-males style, and contains no D/s elements at all.

The second half branches for males and females, but continues to follow extremely traditional pornography tropes, with vanilla content in shot-for-pornography style. There is no D/s element to any of this – especially not with Minthara as the supposed Dom; so why characterise it that way?

The alternate scene, when you (rather than having a sensible conversation about what you want your bedroom play to be) try to out-Dom her and 'win', follows the same pattern of being the same for males and females in the first half, and then branching into different endings. For males, it starts with some kissing, follows with a slew of extreme face close-ups that fail to communicate anything about the scene to us, and then some different shots of missionary sex, shot in somewhat conflicting styles. For females, there is some kissing, some more extreme face close-ups that leave the scene and pose unreadable, and then a couple of varieties of one-sided manual stimulation.

The scenes have a music overlay, but are otherwise silent; there are no sounds from either actor in the scene, and no further dialogue or communication of any sort during the intimacy.

So, at this point, I have to stop to ask: what is it that the design team are trying to do here? What is it that they want to create?

There are a few possibilities...

They could be trying to create a romantic moment. We basically have to strike this one from the outset. There's no romance here, and there never was. This is a battle-fuck, by which I mean, it's the kind of physical hook up spurred primarily by the mix of emotions, adrenaline and brain chemicals that come as a result of a high tension and a dangerous situation resolving in success or victory. People who nearly died, or fought for their lives, or are about to – the eve before battle, and the exhausted night after – see this kind of activity. They haven't set up any romance and it's not meant to be.

A romantic scene tends to involve long cuts, slow pans, emphasis on softness and form, and when it uses close-up shots, it's focused on the interactions between the lovers together (such as kissing), not individual face close-ups in isolation. Romantic scenes tend to upsell the musical overlay, with little to no audio from the actors, though communication can still be a regular occurrence. The scene tries to use a couple of these elements occasionally, but without really selling them as part of a scene – they exist in amongst other entirely jarring tropes. If it were meant to be a romantic event, it most certainly wouldn't be shot and choreographed like a porn film – and make no mistake, these scenes are.

Instead, they could be aiming for an erotic encounter. This is most likely what they were aiming for... though they certainly do not hit this mark. An erotic encounter would be shot so that we can get a good idea of what is happening, and the focus would be on the form and the motion and the emotion and the passion of the event, without being crude or bluntly overt in what it shows, or how it shows it. Pacing is most important in this kind of scene; the cuts and pans should complement a building sense of pace for the scene. Extreme close-ups should be few, but those that are in should exist to show the extremes of passion or emotion; any face close-up needs to be very clear about why it's there; it's a time for extreme expressions, used sparingly. These scenes sell themselves on the emotion of the actors; they move more eagerly and desperately, and any musical overlay is a background thing, behind the actual audio from the actors, which is necessary to really sell the passion of the scene. People communicate during passionate sex. Not everyone talks a lot, but people communicate; we say a lot with our gasps, groans or moans, even if we're not up to forming words. They're an important part of an intimate erotic moment.

This scene fails to achieve this in both directions; it spends a long time being very unclear about what is happening, focusing on extreme face close-ups that are more or less meaningless when they are delivered in silence with fairly flat facial expressions... and then it flip-flops to crude and tacky overt shots that belong in porn films instead. The cuts are often too rapid and jumpy to convey proper sensation as well, and the pacing of the scene is flat and uniform all the way through, with no sense of build. In short, there is no passion in this scene.

Finally, they could be straight up shooting adult content; an overtly pornographic scene intended to show, rather than tease. This is very close to what they've actually achieved here... but they haven't done it well. It probably wasn't what they were aiming for, but it's where they've landed. This type of scene tends to follow as series of golden rules established in the adult entertainment industry, full of poses and shots that aren't necessarily practical, but are designed to be filmed on camera and to give a good view of the action; made always with the knowledge in mind that they are being created for the consumption of a (presumed to be predominately heterosexual male) viewing audience. Shots and cuts tend to focus on one actor at time, rather than the interactions between them. Pacing is generally not considered to matter too much in such scenes, because the focus is always on drawing the attention to the individual thing that is going on in each part of the scene, one after another and more or less in isolation to each other. There is rarely any kind of communication between the actors in such scenes, as a result of them both being, well, actors – following pre-choreographed roles. If they talk, they are talking so the viewing audience can hear, not to each other. Music is either the overbearing presence that covers all other sound, or it is not present at all, no in-between, usually.

The scene hits many of these notes very pointedly, but it does so amongst all of the bits and pieces that do not belong in this kind of a scene and which detract from it as a result. We get occasional slow pans over partially obscured visuals, we have fast cuts that overtly show adult activity in an obvious way that should be giving a clear view of people's genitals (but they don't have them, which shatters any immersion or investment in the scene each time it happens; if you're shooting an adult content scene in this overt style, your models need to be physically complete; it's essential for this style), we have the adult content sections cut up with multiple extreme face close-ups that don't add anything to the scene at all, and only serve to break up our ability to engage; we have elements from each of these different types of scenes thrown together seemingly without any understanding of composition or flow.

In short, the scene designers don't seem to know quite what note they're aiming to hit with these scenes. The first thing that Larian needs to do, really firmly, is to decide once and for all exactly what sort of a scene they want to make; are they making this like an adult game? If so (That's fine! It's already going to pass that rating bar so there's no harm in going all the way with this), then they need to design and shoot this scene with that in mind; make the models complete, so that when we catch occasional glimpses of the groin regions, we aren't yanked out of our scene immersion by barbie-doll blanks.

If they aren't wanting to go that far, and they intend to shoot something erotic and appealing, but not pornographic, then they need to seriously consider revising the actual choreography of the scene itself. In particular... I feel like it's visibly obvious that these scene were written by males, for males. Especially for the female to female scene (both Minthara and any future ones), I would plead most heavily that Larian take some time to consult with some women who sleep with women; it seems clear that they haven't done so at this stage, and they need to. I'd hazard a guess, though I've not managed to check yet, that the same will be true for the male on male scenes. I was going to check those as well, but right now it seems as though Astarion's scene is not playing...

So, that's the overview. In the following posts I'll start breaking it down for honest critique.