Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The Inevitable Romance Poll

Afro Minsc go!

Actually ...
If you watched Fextralife videos from Gent, you allready know about at least one (other than Shadowheart) companion that get quite differnt "hairstyle" after story moment.

Is saying someone gets a haircut a spoiler? I haven't said anything else.

As a side not shadowhearts mysterious magic is mentioned on the offical page too, so it's not even a spoiler now.

I guess you mean Wyll. And yes, I was thinking of him actually.

I never got warm with Shadowheart’s personality during the Early Access nor do I fancy her looks. Actually there isn’t a single attractive female origin companion. If you’re not particularly into freaks, you’ll give Lae’zel or Karlach a hard pass. (No problem with fantasy races, after all this is D&D, but that doesn’t mean you have to find them attractive.) I really wished for a romanceable pretty human or half-elven female in BG3, but as it seems I got disappointed. The original BG series got way better options for romances as a straight male.

In general heterosexual female players in BG3 have better (in the sense of more attractive) choices than hetero males in my opinion. So far the only options are Shadowheart and Minthara. But if you don’t want to kill the druids, that only leaves Shadowheart, which is a pity.

I’ve taken a look at the hirelings. If possible, I’d rather romance the bard Brinna Brightsong, but I very much doubt that hirelings will have enough story or scripted dialogues to really romance them. All in all I’m rather disappointed about the lack of lovely and romanceable female companions/npcs for the time being.

Imagine if you romance Lae'zel and later in the story she hands you an egg. "Take care of this."

Now you have to keep a baby egg in your inventory until it hatches. A little baeby'zel.

Keeping in the tradition of the older games. I think if you romanced Aerie, in ToB you had a baby occupying one of her quick slots lol.

I agree that Shadowheart and Lae'zel are unpleasant, and that Lae'zel is ugly. But I don't think Gale and Wyll are any better, in terms of either personality or looks. I have no idea what the canon on Astarion is, but to me he seems like he's gay so maybe he's the best choice for a male Tav to romance (although he's a big, dumb jerk, like they all are). Any of them, it's not just scraping the bottom of the barrel, it's flipping the barrel over and scraping off what's underneath.

In terms of Lae'zel's looks, there's a mod that makes her look more or less human. I imagine it's almost a certainty the mod maker will update it to be compatible with release, unless for some reason the release version of BG3 changes something about how easy (or hard) it is to mod.

Since you are so much into looks, I just want to point out, that Brinna is a halfling, don't know how your stance is with small races since you seem pretty harsh about horns or green skin.

Where's the option of just being friends? I imagine my character as someone who would not just be laying with anybody, and none of the companions is a good match for him. Also, while I am not in principle against romance in the game it is not really why I bought the game in the first place, or my reason for keep playing it. I wouldn't rule out Jaheira if that becomes an option but she is getting old so idk. Will probably remain a single for the whole campaign, enjoying good company and friendship on the way.

I had a good friendship route with Gale in EA. I think, if the companions agree enough with you, they open up and talk more.

Really? Gale and Wyll are boring as hell from a visual standpoint and both can't stop talking about their ex girlfriends.
Astarion is super edgy and annoying, the only good thing he has going on is a very talented voice actor that can sell ANY stupid line, lol. And just like Minthara he will likely force you to pick a specific path (maybe not as strictly evil as hers, but pretty close considering the amount of disapproval you get from him for being slightly decent).
That basically only leaves Halsin which is a big meme at this point.

I don't dislike Gale's personality and story so far but he isn't exactly a character I'd fall head over heels for and it took me 300 hours of EA to warm up to him and I only began to like him after the bard was added because most of the bard dialogue options allow you to take him down a peg or two.
"I made love with a goddess!"
Bard: "so does literally any stupid wizard in those cautionary tales about hubris, Gale. They always end in tragedy."

As for the ladies, Lae'zel and Shadow are my homies and I honestly am really looking forward to romance them while I play as the hot man of my dreams 😆. You should do the same. Play as the cute girl and romance the lads, lol.

I really liked it when the dev said you can advance or back out of romances. Don't know if you can rekindle with the same companion though?

I'm going to play a devotion paladin and I know I'm going to have to watch carefully what I say because of the oath. Really don't want to break it often. I'll see how romancing SH goes, but I suspect it'll be bumpy because of her Shar nihilism and my Tav's straight talking. That said, I'll try to not play charmless.

I reckon most of the models are good looking enough or at least visually interesting. There's a lot of care gone into all the peoples and creatures. I used to paint miniatures so I really appreciate the work done.

Romance-wise, imo all the companions are good-looking enough to deserve their fans.

I think you don't want to break it all, since it apparently costs 2000 to reinstate it.

That's fine. So long as the cause and effect is clear to me, paying 2k is significant and immersive.

I might even use that fall from grace period to have Astarion do a thief-run. In one play-through he accumulated 25k without save-scumming. By level 5 he's crazy good at stealing if you fully buff him.

There's this thread talking about how easy it is to break your Oath, with no warning. Never had it happen myself, but I've played a paladin only once in EA.

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=873289#Post873289

"I don't normally do this on a first date, smoosh smoosh oh this is *so* wrong"

You absolutely cannot waste all that precious CHA.

My gay ass is going to boink the druid, thing is that if poly-love is cool to him do I need another boyfriend? that is the question🤔🤔🤔

Well, I'm not female, so I can't be sure of course, but even as a straight male I can see, if another male is attractive or not to some degree for women (like being tall, having broad shoulders, a deep voice, being trained/muscular to some degree, having a good looking symmetric face, having some wits and charm and not to forget a steady income).

According to this poll also, Gale and Halsin are popular options for straight females during the early access version of Act 1. Gale might still suffer from his past relationship, but he'll overcome it eventually.
Astarion is a very cool character, I like him and his dialogues, but he definitively got gay vibes. He might be bisexual, but in my opinion he's more gay than anything else.
As I wrote before, for straight males there aren't equally attractive options in Act 1 (EA version).

Concerning your statement about Shadowheart being unpleasant and Lae'zel being ugly, no discussion from my side, I agree.

Quite disappointing that Larian pushes us so hard to play and even romance less common races, which are unpleasant to the eye. They did not include a single beautiful human or half-elven romanceable female in the early access.
Mods might be an option later on, but I wont play a modded game in my very first full play through. So I can only hope that the full version of the game might include a positive surprise concerning a romanceable female later on.

It's hard to believe, that no Larian employee during the development stood up and said: "guys, so far we have a good freak show, but we also need to include someone, who will please the vast majority of those with a more common taste in women!"
But since Larian also complained publically during the early access, that most players create mother-in-law dream characters and according to their opinion didn't make enough good use of the options to go wild during character creation, I begin to doubt that there was a common sense employee, who addressed the issue of non-existing hot romanceable females for the majority of those with a more common taste.


Everyone who's honest about it, is into looks. The looks, appearance, physiognomy of someone is something like the entrance ticket in the first place, but the personality decides if someone wants to stay or not. I couldn't be together with a woman, I don't find attractive in the first place. There needs to be mutual attraction optically. It might sound harsh, but foremost it's totally normal.

How do you know that Brinna is a Halfling? I didn't find any info on her? We even don't know if hirelings will be romanceable. But if she was a Halfling, then I'd pass on her, too.