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 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.
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.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.
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.
