Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Karlach vs Shadowheart who do you simp for :)

I honestly can't think of any "romance" in any game I played across the years that stuck with me over time.
I always try to chase at least one when the option is available (i.e. Viconia in BG2, Morrigan in DA, etc) but there isn't one that I can think back to with particular fondness.

I remember when in Bioware's Jade Empire by the end of the game if you picked the "flirty options" with both the female leads (and companions) across the entire game you suddenly had the option just before the final battle where both confronted you with a "We decided that choosing is not fun, so let's have a threesome" (and then it's basically a fade-to-black, so don't go in expecting much after reading this post).
If nothing else that was an amusing development and something different from the usual attempt to moralize because you didn't "stick with one", but that aside I remember very little of the two characters.

I also never liked the game very much in general and I think its entire cast was dramatically under-utilized, so there's that.

The "dwarves are a fetish" mindset is really weird. I'm sure they are to people, but so are elves, giant races and anything with too much fur. The True Weirdos will go for mindflayer hentai. Not sure if Larian will pull a BioWare here, if it's true there's a gnome companion.

Yes. I’m all for designing companions as interesting characters with good stories first, and potential love interests second, and can understand why writers wouldn’t want to shoehorn in a character specifically created in order to be a romance option for dwarves (or other shorter races).

But at the same time, for me a satisfying epic story in an RPG usually (though not always) includes a dash of sex and romance, as it does in other media too. And once writers realise that there’s a pattern over a number of games of not giving a whole category of characters the opportunity for a satisfying romance sub-plot, you’d hope they’d question whether they were writing enough diverse characters of different races if there aren’t any that could reasonably develop a romantic and/or sexual relationship with the player character.

They don’t even need to be a companion, and in fact I’m all for being able to build interesting relationships with recurring NPCs. And despite the fact there was hardly anything to it, I really liked the romance between a dwarf noble female in DA:O and Gorim, as it had an interesting structure being a relationship that predated the start of the game and was brought to an end by events in it. It alone certainly doesn’t get BioWare off the hook for not giving dwarf romance options, but I think shows how they could offer much more variety in potential relationships without having to create a plethora of companions specifically for that purpose.

Hopefully Larian are thinking along the same lines too, as things aren’t looking particularly promising otherwise for having romances with characters from the shorter races.

(By the way, while personally my main problem with lack of shorter race love interests is the lack of suitable romantic partners for my shorter race protagonists who happen to be attracted to folk closer to their own size, I’m not for a moment saying that only relationships between races with similar average heights are valid, or that dwarves should have relationships with other dwarves and so on! Only that any protagonist should have a variety of relationships available with different genders and races, but that personally I feel the lack of romance options with shorter races most as a gap when playing as one myself.)

Hits the nail on the head for me. Some people are into height difference. A lot of people, actually. I see it in fan art way too often that someone suddenly gains 10cm of height.

I feel about this the same way I do about pugs. Not for me.

Creating a short character unfortunately forces my hand here. So I don't play any. I think I'll pick a dwarf if Karlach isn't a barbarian, but only with at least one more custom character to use for romances. If the gnome is romanceable and good/neutral, I may go for them with a dwarf in the same run.

If there's no gnome, maybe Shadowheart to see her full story line or Astarion. Though, I'm more likely to romance Astarion with a paladin just to see him suffer.

Is it Astarion or the paladin you’d want to see suffer? Though I suspect there would be angst and doubt on both sides!

Both. Both is good. Excellent, even

It could have been but my phone tends to spazz out when i tap on in, maybe in time i could probably during the official release.

Daddy

Yeah, I’m also a sucker for a tragic, turbulent love affair (in media, not so much IRL!) so really enjoyed the Solasmance too. The only reason it doesn’t get to the top tier for me in DA:I is because, as BioWare confirmed, it was something of an afterthought and is rather underdeveloped as a result. There’s a massive swathe of the game where there’s no specific interactions with Solas that are any different depending on whether you romance him or not. But it still almost gets up there for me despite that, especially given the extra content in Trespasser.

Yes, I’m with you on that. The Shadowheart romance so far seems to me to be the one that develops most naturally (depending on player choices of course) and I particularly like that you can feasibly elect to spend the party night chewing the fat with her purely platonically and the scene still works, even if she’s a bit disappointed if you choose not to take it in a more romantic direction at the end. In fact, if my characters aren’t romancing anyone else and get on with Shadowheart I’ll usually have them do just that, even if they just want to be friends.

Astarion’s “romance” is a close second for me, purely because it feels honest and it’s not cheesy, whereas Gale and Wyll both get marked down for cringeworthy chat up lines. Though if the pace of the Gale romance was slowed a bit (as I suspect is intended given the issues cramming it in before the party) I’d probably like it more, and Wyll may become a more attractive prospect once there’s been some progress on his Mizora situation. Lae’zel I’ve never got round to trying, though I do enjoy her speech telling me I have no chance with her. The Minthara option is one I’m glad is there and I can see me choosing to pursue for some of my characters (I do like that it can be played either as a power game in which both parties are trying to use one another or an honest sex-for-pleasure encounter), but a hell of a lot more would need to be done down the line in the full release for it to have any chance of becoming my favourite.

Absolutely.

I dont, to be honest.

You mentioned "shorter races", that may be good point ...
But still, shouldnt it be easier to model Dwarf-Dwarf romance, than Dwarf-Iron Bull?
And yet, while the first they strictly refuse to give us, second we have.
I mean, if there is some technical problem, moral problem, or it just seems disgusting to them ... you can allways just fade screen to black.

Personaly, i LOVE Dwarves, especialy in Dragon Age, Orzammar is my most favourite place in whole Origins ... and i never forgive them that they give so little Dwarf-themed locations to Inquisition.
And i admit it, im mostly not thrilled from cross-species relationships in Fantasy ... i see nothing wrong if that option is there, but still it feels like every character deserves some love from their own.

When you take Inquisition ...
Even Qunari have that option and that is quite uncommon race, compared to Dwarves, so there it would kinda make sense ...
You have, how many 5 humans if i count right? Cullen, Josephine, Cassandra, Blackwall, and Dorian ...
And two Elves ...
If amount of companions is supposed to be a problem, just make one of them a Dwarf. :-/

Blackwall would be excelent Dwarf.

//Edit:
Really? o_O
Well, i didnt even noticed, bcs i never finished replay ... that game have too many ugly, boring and tedious mechanics, to repeat it properly. :-/

Speaking about ...
I wonder how different would be romancing Iron Bull, who will be still loayal to the Qun ... can you even romance him under those circumstances?

You mentioned

Yep, according to this post from Mike Laidlaw in the BioWare forums, the Solas romance was added only when development was extended for a year, but here he says so was the Cullen one which I hadn’t realised and I don’t think suffers the same issue of feeling like it’s missing something. I couldn’t find the actual quote I’d initially half remembered, which I think was from Patrick Weekes saying that they’d added the Solas romance later in development mainly because of its tragic potential.


You can, but . I’ll not spoil here, but yes it is different. And in my view not really done justice.

Oh fun.

Persona5 - being set in highschool and very anime the artificial "choose our wifu" works pretty well. It's really hard to choose one (that is why it's so good!) but you can pick all, and than get trashed for it! (in general, I prefer romances in jRPG and jRPG likes (Witcher3, Mass Effect [I recently realized that those game have more in common with jRPGs than cRPG - vertical progression with little customisation? Rigit storylines? Few choices to makes? Pre-written characters?) as due to limited reactivity and I am more of a passive watcher).

Mass Effect1-2 - Liara. She is sweet and has a decent arc throughout the trilogy and is a consistant option throughout the three games (thanks, Shadow Broker, you fix my main issue with ME2). I don't like Liara in ME3, because it is ME3 and somehow everything but combat got worse.

Witcher3 - As a fan of books I have to nominate Yeneffer - it was a really sweet resolution of their lengthy, troubled romance. If I weren't a book reader, I would probably nominate Shani - the wedding was a great sequence.

Planescape Torment: Annah. I must admit, my recollection of Torment romances was pretty fuzzy, but I remember playing it after BG2 and thinking: "huh, this is actually pretty decent".

Dragon Age: Origins - Morigan - I feel her arrogant, self serving nature makes her actually quite believable as a romance option for such a short adventure, and that she uses you at the end for her own, likely nefarious needs makes it even better. Now, that's a deal with a devil. Learn some lessons Rafael.


Most other romances in RPGs, I don't have strong feeling towards. A one negative mention I would give is:
Pillars of Eternity2 - all of them. There was something terribly tragic to see bickering, horny teenagers trope come back in force in PoE2, after strong, diverse and throughtful line-up of PoE1 cast.

I honestly never tried that with any of my characters.

So far Karlach looks dull and her story is also dull. But if she turned out to be a cambion-ish who casted a Disguise spell on herself while her real identity was actually a demon looking badass, then I will farm her Approval more than what I did with the rest of the team. Otherwise, even Kagha was more interesting than she, don't mention that telescope tiefling.

Wait, is there any new content relates to Karlach been released?

You betrayed Liara, how dare you! Bad simp, baaaad simp.

In my defense ... it was different characters!

You have been found in violation of:

"The one standing in infinite glory is you; the one fallen from grace is also you. What matters is 'you' and not the state of you.”

Simp card revoked!

Which romance option intrigues me the most? Maybe Karlach or Minthara since the latter isn't implemented yet and thus we know the least about, the former because it has the least content in the game out of the available options and because it's seemingly exclusive to evil characters.

On the other end of the spectrum, Gale and Wyll, because of their Mizora/Mystra problems make it a 'complicated' relationship I don't care for.

Lae'zel and Asterion are near the middle. Lae'zel doesn't have much atm and is pretty casual, not really a romance. Asterion is a hammy vampire which has its appeal, even if he has 'bad idea' written all over him. Easiest to qualify too, since AFAIK it's only tied to how much he likes you, not triggering certain camp scenes or taking certain dialogue options etc. Shadowheart feels the most like an actual romance, which makes hers the best of the ones implemented so far IMO.

There's another option that's been datamined, but we don't know if it'll be in the full version and IMHO it would be better off if it didn't. I'll leave it at that.

Somehow, after reading this, my head keeps echoing the "it was his caravan" line again and again xD And "blood excites me" xD That's an interesting character.