Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Companions and Romantic Dynamics in Relation to M/M Pairings

This is probably something of an odd question, but I know it's something that some people care about. Myself included, obviously. As far as cutscenes or even general dynamics, do we know in the case of male/male pairings which companions force a top or bottom role, or even a dom or sub dynamic? It's something that's unfortunately fairly frequent in the case of LGBTQ+ pairings, that it's often sort of stereotyped based on body type. eg Zevran from Dragon Age: Origins, or Iron Bull from Inquisition. Being forced into a pairing or dynamic that's the complete antithesis of what you're comfortable with often results in being jarred out of the game, or just dropping it entirely. While I'm not expecting Larian to write/design cutscenes for both directions across each companion, it would be good to know ahead of time to avoid dissatisfaction sort of... which corresponds to which? And the answer might be 'wait until the game is out', as that's what I expect to need to do when it comes out to finding out who is okay with a poly relationship and such. Still, figured it couldn't hurt to ask!

I don't think we've actually seen how the m/m sexual pairings play out as the sex scenes during EA have mainly been "Under Construction". Though I believe that in an earlier patch there might have been an early sneak preview of the Astarion scene, I've not seen it myself. And we saw a version of Halsin and Astarion in the recent PFH, but of course it cut away before anything "interesting" happened.

There was mention in the latest Community Update of romance as The Dark Urge which referred to liking bondage, which I'm guessing might mean that if you play as that character (you can't recruit them as a party member) you might be able to shape a D/S relationship of some sort, but that's pure speculation at this stage.

In general if its a hero sexual male npc they are probably going to be the top as the devs only have to do the scene once with the player being the bottom that works for both m/m and m/f versions.

Just like with f/f scenes the female pc usually takes the top role the male pc does.

Not necessarily. I think the Minthara scenes that we do have access to in EA might have some different animations for male and female characters. They may not be good animations but it possibly indicates that Larian are willing to spend the effort to make them distinctive.

Plus I hope Larian won’t be as sexually unadventurous for hetero pairings as to equate male to top and female to bottom

Preeeeetty sure Lae'zel is not going to be a bottom no matter the MC gender... (at least at first)

I'm really, really not talented at finding old posts, but if someone's able to dig up Niara's focused feedback on the Minthara scene, I believe she points out either specifically what the M/F PC differences are, or if there are no differences.

Of course, that was years ago, and it may well have changed in EA since then, and all bets are off re 1.0 anyway.

OP, if this is something that could be unpleasantly jarring, once the game's released it could be worthwhile to ask if someone could get that information for you. Unless there are huge changes from EA, one can play to the first place (as far as we know) sex scenes are available in just 3 or 4 hours, and I'm sure >0 people would be happy to.

With the Minthara scene you very specifically have the option to take charge (with a fairly tough persuasion check) . I may have a save in the camp celebration to test it out later. If so I'll let you know.

Here ya go:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=799245&page=1

Pro-tip: use the Advanced Forum Search as it allows you to be more specific. I put "Minthara" in the Keyword search box and "niara" in the Display Name search box and it was on the first page of results.

Thanks, mrfuji!


So I think what it boils down to for M/M scenes is we'll find out after release, and it would be a fool's errand to make any predictions at all.

meanwhile me: "wtf is D/s...?

dom/sub

Lae'zel: Githyanki are not subs! I will not go beneath you!
Tav: Yeah, well I don't want to either.
Lae'zel: Then we shall FIGHT for domination.

Realizing BG3 will be a first awakening for many gamers of all ages...

I suspect the "bondage" comment about the romantic partner of the Durge might have had something to do with chaining the slayer up from time to time. Sort of like the trope of the werewolf having to be locked up during a night of the full moon.

So who in the party takes the most delight in chaining up Durge at night? Astarion, SH, or Lae'zel?

I’ll put in a nomination for Wyll, given his monster-conquering backstory

This is something I'm keen to find out myself, OP. We know from EA that Minthara has something like that in regards to her partners (Male or female) but as indicated in the thread Niara wrote for that scene, the dynamics were a bit.....messy and didn't quite capture relationship dynamic it was aiming for.

Considering the playersexual design so far, it will probably be up to us. Or, it should be up to us if they're doing that. You might have to fight a couple female NPCs for dominance, but the men so far seem not written to be strictly anything.

Thanks for linking the thread!

To answer the OP, What we have seen so far, of Larian's work with intimate scenes, is that, until now, you haven't really had much input in guiding your intimacy. In most cases, they've been a couple of dialogues that amount to you confirming that you want to do intimate things, or backing out. In a couple of cases, you have a single opportunity to alter how the scene plays, but no say beyond that (and it's gated by an extremely difficult check, so you can 'fail' to direct the consensual intimacy scene the way you want and have something you aren't interested in occur instead)

Of M/M situations, what we have seen so far is that you do not get to choose in any way whether you are top or bottom in the pairing; the game decides, and what it has been seen to decide in each case we've seen so far is that you are the bottom to the participating Origin character or major NPC.

This may be different in the final release, but so far this is what we've seen - you may get to have a conversation before the intimacy , but you don't get to define much, and one of the things you don't get to pick is your top/bottom roles in M/M pairings. You are the receiving character - because this lets them use the same scene animations as for female PCs (This in itself is a mistake of laziness, as the actual dynamics of m/m coulpings change things, as far as I understand - not my specific wheelhouse, unfortunately; it's the one coupling set I cannot actually speak to with true experience).

This seems unlikely for the practical reason that that means two scenes per companion, and if they're doing gender-differential scenes, that's doubled again. Then there's all the permutations of scenes playing as origins, they need a scene of Astarion/Gale, Astarion/Lae'zel, etc. So that's already 6! scenes (if Durge can romance everyone), which is if I'm doing the math right, it's been ages, 240 just for the companions. Then the scenes for the PC. If there's always a choice, that's double everything. I suppose given the scope of things, it's not impossible, but that just seems unlikely to me.

There is no doubling. The animation already exists. Larian just needs to swap two models.