Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Romance trigger and reactivity problems (formerly "Add a 'no horny' option PLEASE)

I've been trying to long rest only at points where it makes sense in the story, so didn't do much resting in the early game. I've been creating a save before each long rest, so I know that for me the party was night eight. Some of the scenes previously locked to camp do now just happen (a bit weirdly in some cases) out in the world if you have the companion with you. But iirc this wasn't the case for Gale as I swapped him when I met Wyll, and I got his dialogue in camp.

I did talk to everyone every night, though.

To try to make this thread a bit easier to find for new users and so hopefully cut down on duplicates, as well as to reflect the way the discussion has developed, I've updated its title to something more generic.

Okay, Halsin has now made a move on my character in Act 3. What did feel off was Halsin saying that he thought my character had seen to his needs in camp "like a lover", when she'd encouraged him to have a drink at a party once and then shown some friendly interest in getting to know him, but never intentionally in a flirtatious way. It made him sound delusional in a slightly creepy way. (I actually found the rest of the proposition, despite it being out of the blue and including rather TMI, brought him to life as an embarrassingly honest and open character in a way I would have possibly found endearing without the implication my character had been leading him on. Though perhaps some way of heading things off at the pass would have been better, or perhaps she simply shouldn't have asked about those previous lovers.)

Anyway, I've reported this one to Larian as a bug as it didn't feel right. I've put the conversation as it played out for me in spoiler tags below for reference:


On the other hand, based on the screenshot in tags below, after she was asked by an old friend if we were together, it doesn't look as though Karlach is going to be hitting on my character any time soon :

I just know that I wasn't even paying attention to romance, not engaging, not horribly fending off either.. I was eyeing Shadowheart for maybe have a romance later... until:


I guess my point is: this was very well done if the intuit is to really have horny stuff in the game. I can see people who are not interested in that getting bugged by it.

I think, you should never ever ask Halsin to get to know him better - he basically translates that into 'S/he is into me' - sad, but true. I only talk business to him, about the curse or other story related stuff, that comes up.

I talked to Gale and thought it was perfectly friendship-oriented and found myself in a romance with him.

Thank you Yahtzee.

That's probably how it's supposed to work, but it's not how it actually is working.

Baldurs Gate 3 "romance" in a nutshell

Some thoughts on this - a lot of the time there is a way to let people down gently.

But there a lot of other places where the ball did get dropped: Halsin taking pretty much every friendly option at the party as an invitation is the first one. And then getting the "sorry if I came on too strongly" line was really annoying. Gale has too many romance triggers, most of them obvious, but not all. Not sure about the Wyll dance thing, did not check that out myself.

The game is also bad at showing when your status with one NPC blocks the romance with another one. For example, the casual fling with Lae'zel blocks the Shadowheart line about truly connecting and initiating the romance until you select the 'I am ending our fling' line with Lae'zel. It's fine that Shadowheart doesn't want to romance you for this reason, but since it is a player initiated the dialogue line should be there, she should just turn you down and telling you why.

Well, I see in the Patch 1 notes it says:


I guess we'll see if/how much that helps as people work their way through the game a second time.

No mention of Halsin romance triggers that I can see in these patch notes, so perhaps they were a bit harder to address. Fingers crossed for patch 2!

Hopefully we'll also get some opportunity to respond to incredibly creepy solicitation.

As always, just brilliant nails it.

Yes, interesting and I agree with a lot of it. But definitely not that having a dialogue option available to us means that the thought has crossed our character's mind, if that's what he's saying. By that token, every time there's a chance to intimidate, kill or insult an NPC on the list, that would mean my PC had considered it and that's just not how I see those options. Sure, they're there because potentially some characters might want to respond that way, but that doesn't mean that the specific character I'm roleplaying has any temptation in that direction. If all he means is that seeing a dialogue option on the list makes us as players consider the possibility when we might not actually want to, I'd agree, but that seems to me a necessary limitation of the multiple choice approach. Without giving a variety of options some of which might fit our characters on certain playthroughs and some which won't, I really don't see how players could have the flexibility to shape their characters and stories in a way that an RPG should offer.

I just don't want them making it harder to initiate. I'd agree with an option to just say no, but apparently you need to be a dick to them.

That said, I'm working on Gale atm and it's cute.

This might warrant its own topic on the feedback, but I’m wondering if anyone else felt this way:

The romances are actually best when they’re not trying to be horny. For example, when the romances are sweet, introspective, funny, or even sad, they are more provocative than during the sex scenes or the lead up to sex scenes.

I'm dying lol

So on point too with the Mass Effect: Andromeda reference. It's like sex has become equivalent to getting close to companions. BG3 just couldn't have moments where party members enjoyed each other's company, and had a good time without it being horny. I've said it before, but Mass Effect has such better companion relationships and it's not simply because it's over three games. That example from ME:A shows it perfectly. Mass Effect wasn't afraid to have party building moments that weren't just titillation.

Yup. This is basically what Yahtzee says.

If the reward for getting close to companions is a sex scene...I could just google "porn" and find something better.
If the reward for getting close is the getting close itself, then that can actually be impactful. Connecting with and learning more about companions is like half the point of party-based RPGs.

I think what more recent BioWare games have done well (maybe from DA2 onwards?) that BG3 hasn't pulled off is help build a feeling that the whole team is coming together, rather than just companions building a relationship of whatever kind with our PC. It's not that Larian haven't tried at all: there's the banter though somehow that's not really working for me, and I do like that all the party members will have something to say about the progression of each others' companion quests. I just finished Astarion's today, and found it genuinely moving: from what he actually did and how he responded, to how he talked to my PC about it afterward, to what some of the other party members said about his choice.

But while the latter was probably the most strongly yet I've felt that the companions are coming to have relationships with each other, it's still not the same as actually seeing that properly in action. I think we need more and better banter, more conversations about what to do out in the world, and more companion interjections in dialogue with NPCs. But I'd also love it if, on ending the day, I'd sometimes get to see companions chatting to one another, even if it's not full cutscenes but just conversations we can eavesdrop on like between missions on the Normandy in ME3.

I also do agree BioWare can do great individual friendships. However, while for me BG3 hasn’t yet managed anything like, for example the friendships my “canon” Shepard has with Liara and Wrex, I also don’t think that’s anything to do with sex in BG3. In fact, somehow my BG3 PC has ended up with relationships with a number of her party that feel to me more real and stronger than the relationship she has with Wyll, with whom she has an active romance. But I’d agree they’re still not at the level of BioWare at their best, though for me that’s a very high bar. BioWare are just good at writing companions, particularly characters they and their VAs have had the opportunity to develop over a number of years. I also wonder if it’s partly to do with the challenges of writing fulfilling emotional relationships of any kind when one half of the relationship could be anyone. I do feel that some of the strongest companion relationships in BioWare games come in games where our protagonist is fairly narrowly defined, such as DA2 and the Mass Effect games.

Anyway, apologies. A lot of this is probably venturing off topic. But I suspect that’s at least partly because the topic of what it would take to have fulfilling friendships in the game is only tangentially related to romance and sexual content, and could probably do with its own thread anyway.

To add my 2 cents, it's quite bizarre, when you choose a companion at Tielfings party and yet I still had both Gale and Wyll hit on me. It gets worse, as you pretty much agree to make your chosen relationship work.

The simplest fix? MAKE THE PLAYER BE THE INITIATOR + Make it obvious, when a comment is considered a flirt. If I show no interest in my companions, then either they shouldn’t do anything at all or be MORE SUBTLE:

Something like:

"Hey, if you don’t mind me asking, what are your feelings about love?"

Or

"Would you like to spend some time alone together?"

Seriously, I try to get high approval with everyone to help them with their problems, not to sleep with them. If I wanted to see sex, I would have browser the internet.