Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Panel From Hell/Creator Day Impressions

Okay, finally that bear scene and an answer for those of you who asked for my impressions from the room and from talking to people there.

I feel this has now had too much of a build up as it's taken me longer to get round to than I thought it would, so I hope noone is disappointed! But here goes ...

First, I should make extra clear that this is just my subjective impression and I can in no way speak for everyone in the room. I was there as it was happening, and I spoke to a few people about it afterwards, but there's of course no guarantee that their and my views were representative.

But as I said last night, I felt that the reaction was a mix of shock, admiration and amusement.

Shock, because clearly there are taboos against sex with animals so seeing the build up to something that looks a bit like that can be rather startling even for those of us who like to think of ourselves as open-minded. And I think that some of the people there didn't expect the game to go that far in depicting a sexual encounter that involved a wildshaped character, and even some of those who weren't surprised it was in the game were nevertheless expecting that we would be permitted to see less than we did in a global livestream. But while people were surprised and even somewhat shocked (as seems pretty clear from some of the audience shots!), this seemed to be because of how they thought it was likely to go down on the internet and in media more generally and weren't expecting Larian to risk the level of furore that it was likely to generate, and nobody I spoke to was at all personally offended by what they saw. And certainly nobody I spoke to had interpreted what they had seen as a depiction of bestiality. Insofar as people saw any real world parallels at all, the discussion was about furries, and hoping that they'd be stoked by the content and that some sections of that community might feel decently represented by elements of the Halsin romance.

Admiration, because while Halsin certainly seems to be a character who has a complicated relationship with his bear shape (I've spotted some interesting speculation about that pop up elsewhere on these forums about that!) it probably would have been easier to brush the question of how that might impact on his sexuality under the carpet, especially as he is such a fan favourite and that could be potentially alienating for some people. It felt quite brave of Larian in that context to let players explore this potentially difficult side of him if they wanted. It also seemed to reflect respect on Larian's part for player agency, giving those players who really do want to go there the option to do so, and not preventing them as a result of not wanting to deal with potential fallout.

And, taking it less seriously, amusement because folk thought it reflected the kind of absurd flights of fancy that happened in their table-top games and found it great fun that they could be just as surreal and silly in a cRPG. And because there's something inherently awkward and ridiculous about sitting in a room full of virtual strangers watching animated characters prepare to have sex, even if one of them isn't shaped like a bear. And because however a person in elf shape would prepare to have sex with a person in bear shape (and I'm not planning on speculating on how it would actually work any more than I've already involuntarily done ), it doesn't seem as though it would go like that: the very fact that the setup wasn't realistic and the animation and expression (that smirk!) weren't particularly bearlike made it funny, but I also suspect was very much intended. And finally, because it was hard not to immediately jump to the thought that some poor sod had the job of trying to animate a scene with a bear-shaped person having sex (complete with bear penis).

I hope that answers the question, and that others who were there would feel that was a fair summary.