Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback So you can have Bear sex but....

Lakrissa is the tiefling by the watchtower...

As far as I know, the only romance options that have been confirmed are Astarion, Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Gale, Wyll, Halsin, Karlach and Minthara. As for Jaheira and Minsc, these are also companions we can have but I don't think they will romanceable because of their well known history. We still don't know if we will be able to have lustful encounters in the city of Baldur's Gate with other npcs.

That's because your companions are not the ones making those decisions instead its you. Keep in mind that you are the main character of the story. Therefore the story is going to change depending on what you do. It's the same thing that will happen with the newspaper in the city of Baldur's Gate.

I'm not interested in Larian's awkward sex scenes, but it's a fair criticism of early access that their romance isn't very... romantic in style.

As far as I can gauge, this is historically a trend. There's relationships and then there's *situationships*. Maybe SH and Halsin have potential for more. I could be disappointed in Karlach and Astarion. I don't trust Wyll and Gale at all to be genuinely interested. You're evidently just there and an option. Wyll, at least, is honest about that.

Wyll and Gale may be good to neutral alligned, but they're bottom of the barrel choices. The only redemption for Larian here is Halsin. There's one good female option and one good male option, so as far as I'm concerned, everyone gets equal quality. In the B tier, we also have Karlach and Astarion. One male, one female. I'm putting Karlach in B tier only because of the voice acting, though. Astarion, because although he's an amusing squirrel, there's not that many simps.

I'm not genuinely interested in any of them. If you don't like SH or Halsin, you're... kind of screwed in Bg3. Luckily enough for Larian, they're both likely to be popular if nothing else.

(I still hope there's some non party members to pick up the slack left behind by 5 more or less unromanceable or D tier picks. If not and Larian at least does 4 romances well, that's... possibly better than average for them? 4 isn't vast, but it's not bad, either.)

4 romances fir each gender is fine. The issue is there's not enough variety. There is no hetero or gay romance. It's all bi. Lol Thete is no dwarf romance, no orc romance, but there is a bear romance... so that's kewl fir those into animals. Lol

I'm not sure about that. I'll admit that though I enjoy there being romance options in games I tend to find watching them play out a bit cringeworthy in practice, but I wouldn't say that at least some of the EA scenes aren't romantic at least in intent. There's stargazing with Gale (once you get past the sex book talk), the Wyll scene can end up quite romantic especially if you decide not to push it with Mizora (I don't much like the scene, but not because it's not romantic), and I think the Shadowheart scene is lovely. Astarion's admittedly isn't romantic, but then that's kind of what you expect, and I've only tried Minthara's scene once and Lae'zel's not at all, but while I don't expect they could be described as romantic I think three out of six isn't all that bad.

(And then I'd say the Karlach scene we saw in PFH was definitely romantic, but that's not relevant if we're talking about EA.)


Personally, I don't see playersexual characters as necessarily bi. They could be, of course, but they could also be straight in some playthroughs and gay in others. We're free to interpret them however we wish, based on the information we get in game. We don't know exactly what info we're going to get about the BG3 characters yet, but to take a different game as an example, in DA2 I'd always see Isabella as bi, whereas Anders I'd tend to think of straight if my female Hawke was romancing him and gay if my male Hawke is (though of course it would be totally valid to interpret him as bi too). For me, just as my own player characters can be different in different possible worlds, so can NPCs.

And, while I know it's a joke, I feel that when we're actually debating the topic of variety in romance, we should be more precise in our terms Halsin is an elf, and a person no matter what form he's in, so there is no need to be "into animals" to enjoy romancing him.

Is there any in-game 'benefit' to building a relationship in the game? I remember in Dragon Age (can't remember which) you were awarded special player synergies, so that was useful. Of course, you need to keep your other party members happy enough to remain (if you want them), that is a given - but the relationship stuff is more often than not something I find a chore...unless there's some reason to pursue it, like a perk that increases your effectiveness....

That'd be cool. Like if your allies could get a +1 bonus on Mental STs while within 30 feet of you, a +1 to-hit while flanking, and/or something else smallish but non-negligible like that.

Afaik there isn't such a bonus, and I'm skeptical there will be based on what I've seen so far. Namely, there are no small perks for cooking different meals, which seems an obvious thing to include if you're going to not only require food for long resting, but also include different types of food in the game and require players to choose which food is used for each rest.

Sure there is, the effect that the relationship has on the story. I plan on romancing every companion eventually, because I want to see how the story twists.

I plan to play origin characters and see what weird romances are possible (SH & Lae'zel?). I suspect there are a lot easter eggs to be found

I believe there are some romantic scenes. I just don't find them outstanding. The way the romances are currently set up gives me varying expectations.

For Gale and Wyll, I also rate them low because of the the central conflict to the relationship. Those stories are fairly common and filled with, what I like to call, "fake tension". You're supposed to go "oh, no. I'm so conflicted and tense". What you get falls completely flat, and is usually equiped with severe pacing issues.

Larian will not necessarily fall prey to any of that. But, the emotional allergens persist. If they want to fix it, they'll need to abandon these forced "The other man/woman" type of conflicts and pursue something more relevant to the characters. Having one in the game is one thing. Two? Plain laziness. Character concepts shouldn't overlap this much.

That should be Dragon Age Origins. If I find no companions in any way interesting, I usually consider that a central failure. E.g. Andromeda, Inquisition to an extent

If a character will sleep with male or female characters they are bi. This is undisputable. That's literally the definition.

If I sleep wuth a woman who also sleeps with women she's bi. I'd be hetero still, but she'd by bi. That's literally how sexuality works. Lmao

Playersexual is nonsensical cope.

In DA, Morrigan is hetero. Lelianna is bi. Zevran is bi. Everyone in DA2 is bisexual except that noble dlc character.

All the characters in bg3 are bi sexual because they'll sleep with either gender. That's the literal definition. That's not diversity. Lol

That's not how Larian develops their games, which are predicated upon each permutation essentially being a different world. Imagine each playthrough as a parallel universe to each other if you will. They've been somewhat clear that playersexuality/herosexuality is more of a mechanism for all PCs being able to romance any companion, rather than a defining story characteristic. It's not really a cope if it's the basis of the design.

Nope. If they are willing to have sex with both genders thst is bisexual. That's the definition. Not even The All Powerful Larian and All Powerful Bioware can change the definition of bisexual. It's a cope they came up with a lame attempt to please everyone when in reality it doesnt please. Gay characters should be gay, hetero characters should be hetero, an gay characters are bi.

All romances in this game are bi sexual. This is factz. Your spin doesnt change this.

Bio knew they screwed up hence why DA3 (a game I dislike otherwise), npcs actually had legit preferences almost like they were 'real' people.

Bottom line, all romanceable npcs in the game are bi sexual. That isn't diversity.

There is representative in game diversity and then there's you, the player, being the diversity accommodated. That is what people call playersexual design. You can also call it universal bisexuality, but it makes no difference. People will know what you mean either way

I'm not going to argue with the main point that characters might be better characterized if given their own sexualities because I was arguing for the same thing on this forum several months ago (or maybe years... EA has been going on for a long time).

However, I think the design philosophy underlying playsexuality is different from the design philosophy underlying a bisexual character. If every character had their own sexuality and there was one character willing to have sex with either men or women, that character would be bisexual. If every character in the universe will respond to your advances, but you can only advance on a select number, then it is playersexuality. In other words, when everyone is bisexual, no one is. But it's quite pointless arguing this because we are just arguing the word that should be applied to the same phenomenon. Regardless of whether we choose to call it universal bisexuality, universal pansexuality, or playersexuality, we are talking about the same thing.

I do think being dogmatic about definitions in this matter, especially where worldbuilding is concerned, is quite reductive.

I'm not quite sure what the problem with bi/playersexual/whatever you want to call it characters is. It just means people won't have to make mods to enable romances with otherwise locked characters (I mean, look at how popular Morrigan's lesbian romance mod is). I suppose there's something to be said for romances that integrate the NPC's sexuality into the plot---such as Morrigan and the baby, or Dorian's family issues---but overall, it simplifies things to make all characters romantically available.

As for the complaint about there being no good-aligned women to romance: (1) that isn't true because Karlach exists; (2) Shadowheart probably isn't evil either, and even if she was, Viconia was an enormously popular love interest for good PC's; and (3) it's interesting how certain gamers feel so neglected when they still have way more choices than women and LGBT gamers had back in the day. As someone who was so disappointed when my only option in unmodded BG2 was Anomen, I find it difficult to feel a lot of empathy with dudes who think Shadowheart, Minthara, and Karlach aren't enough choices.

I don't think it's a problem per se, but there is something to be said for each character having their own sexuality to make them feel more like real characters rather than romance cutouts waiting for you to approach (which, ultimately, they are, but it's nice to hope for greater suspension of disbelief).
HOWEVER, I think inclusivity and breadth of choice for everyone may far outweigh one's desire of realism in characterization, so this is fine by me if handled well.

I think romance character options being player sexual is the best way to go. That way no one feels limited to who they can romance because the one they find attractive happens to be gay or straight. This is an issue that happened with BioWare regarding Dragon Age: Inquisition where a lot of female players wished they could romance Dorian as a female because Dorian is that cool but were unable to as he happens to be a gay character. As for the romance in BG3, it's not limited to sex, you can go on a date.

Oh boy, is it time for the playersexual conversation again? It has been a few months by now...
So, for Dorian, iirc a fairly big part of his backstory was that This is intrinsically tied to him being gay, and without it this specific aspect of his backstory (and resulting effects on his personality, relationships, etc) wouldn't exist. Following that logic, characters having a preferred sexual orientation can add to their characterization and potentials for storytelling. In this specific example, people who went through similar experiences might identify more with Dorian, which is good, no?

With playersexual companions, you gain the flexibility that everyone can romance anyone. However, you lose the possibility of the above characterization, since companions are presented as effectively bi/pan. Alternatively, they're presented as a specific sexual orientation but (unexplainedly) make an exception for the PC, which some would argue breaks immersion.

Are your (and are others') thoughts that the gain in romance options from the companions being playersexual *outweighs* the possible loss in additional characterization/stories?

(basically what @Zerubbabel says)