Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Intimate scenes x Body types

VERY happy to be able to choose a female tav that has muscles and looks physically powerful, so that’s the way I went, choosing body type 3 and smashing my way across Faerun. Tav looks GREAT, and I felt represented, which is awesome and important in all media. Thank you.

NOW, for all the diversity in the game, making certain intimate scenes’ ‘roles’ available and others not just because you chose a BODY TYPE was a low move. It’s also quite counter intuitive with the diverse vibe of the overall game.

Feels unfair that (for example), even if Tav is a vag-yielding-cis-female-identifying-character, if she’s tall and has muscles, the triggered animations will put her in the ‘male role’ (and yeah that’s a social construct but I use the expression for the sake of argument).

Sometimes this results in just quirky, funny animations, and on other times is just uncomfortable. As someone who felt represented by muscular gal tavs, I also felt… well, a bit mocked.

One example: The haarlep encounter. The dialogue even gives you an apparent option as to what you ‘want’ (male, female, or R), BUT if you’re playing a strong female tav, you’ll get a very awkward couple of minutes of a man rubbing his taint on your tav’s pelvis. (EDIT: I just was told that this animation plays the same regardless of whether the body is slim or muscular. Still weird, but at least… equally weird - for vulva choosing tavs, at least -? )

Like… why did I chose gender and genitals in the menu option, then?

At a certain point I must wonder, am I back in high school being called a man cause my shoulders are wide? Rude :0


Larian, please don’t bully us buff ladies. Haven’t we suffered enough? Please fix.


TL;DR: It would be nice if the triggered cinematics were connected to the options you are given in the character creation menu: gender, genitals - instead of merely the body type.

Outside of intimacy scenes, which can get wonky, another thing I find frustrating about the large body type is that they used a common animating convention of slowing down the movement of larger/smaller creatures to give an impression of scale. So basically in BG3 you can have two Human characters with the same DEX, one standard body phenotype the other larger body phenotype, and the standard bodied character will appear to move quickly and gracefully, whereas the larger body is sort of lumbering around. I don't mind this convention when it's applied to the monsters, you know Minotaurs or Ogres or whatever, which are extra large, but on the Tav it's annoying for me, and same goes for the companion PCs.

The animations when hasted feel about normal there, but I mean just your regular strut at say 10 DEX with no penalties, it looks like they're moving forward at 1/4 impulse ya know. Even when dashing, though that's better for sure. But it's sorta like if there were no such thing as very quick linebacker who might weigh 3 bills but could still tackle you to the ground before you even realized what was happening.

I think all the intimate scenes, particularly with Karlach (since she's a fav) should really play up the whole feats of strength but not at the expensive of acrobatics. That 13 Dex should count for something! For everything else, like sure, if you respec'd her to 8, ok, maybe you lose some initiative then. But with the gloves of Dex 18, she should be able to do full on breakdancing moves. Like where are the mocap windmills for that one?! You can't just stop with the toprock, we need full on infernal engine airflares! lol. There's gotta be someone they could hire for that right? hehe

I swear though, Karlach's first romantic interlude should involve the walking hot tub down by the river. Maybe when you're in water, everyone can throw each other around as if one size smaller? That could be fun. Flaming cannon ball?

Anyway, whether they're wide shouldered or whatever, I feel like that shouldn't need to effect the speed of the animations generally, which should be tied to DEX if anything, but not too extreme even there. Nobody likes to move super slow.

They did this with the shorties as well, slowing things down to give an impression of scale. I'd be interested to see mods that let us play with the animation speeds, cause some stuff I'm sure could be re-used, just with the tempo picked up a bit. Running hot!

I honestly did not notice that the running cycle animation speed also changed due to body type. That’s also kinda rude, beefcakes can run fast too!

To be honest, I tried starting one playthrough with the “standard” body type 1 but it felt the head was too big for the width of the shoulders. Might just be my environment where women are not that narrow or I just grew used to strong tav, who knows. So I just dropped it, and ended up playing body type 3, Karlach and now another body type 3. I might have a type.

And, honestly, some of Karlach’s scenes are great but I’ve seen those where she picks up a huge dude and throws him like a princess and, well, that CAN be fun, but I bet a lot of players were like “what the f*ck was that” by it all. That could be reviewed too.

yeah, I was shocked yesterday by the ACT3 scene with Karlach, who treated my male MC with a "normal" body type as a woman. That was gross, to say the least.

Gross is a bit too far, imo, but I’d say there should be other ways than immediately putting a strong female in a traditional male role just because she is big - that’s a bit on the nose.

Karlach’s scene has the “it’s the amazon position” argument, but I get it that it can be very off putting to many players. I hope they could make another cinematic, like I said, connected perhaps to the players choices in character creation.

Despite knowing full well that there’s no “rule” for these things, Karlach’s animations seem to expect most players to romance her with another female or feminine character. Could be better. There are plenty of ways to make things work both ways.

^Look, I don't care if she is bigger than my MC, I am playing as a strong male Paladin with no feminine features at all (and I am pretty sure he would win a fight 1vs1 against her). So yeah, this was exactly GROSS in regards to this character. And completely unexpected, caught me off guard. The first scene (in Act 2) was weird enough, but nowhere near this level.

Who would've thought they will base the entire scenes on the body types and not on gender/genitals choices. One could argue about the later, but for the former.. It's unacceptable and just plain stupid.

For the sake of "amazon position" lovers - there can be an option in the dialogue, but it would be harder to implement.

Try to please everyone, including the tiniest minorities, and you will please nobody in the end. That's how I see it.

As part of a minority I’m pretty happy that Larian embraced inclusion and diversity.

While I agree with you in the sense that some animation sequences could’ve been done better and triggered by different and less arbitrary reasons, I don’t see why you need to pass your personal judgement on intimacy preferences.

I want to see the same thing - intimate scenes being triggered by the choices you make in CC in relation to gender identity and/or genitals, not just how big your tav’s body is.

No need to offend anyone whose preferences are not the same as yours.

Except they didn't. Their diversity is fake at every corner, just try to scratch the surface and you'll see.

Why shouldn't I pass my personal judgement in the ROLE-PLAYING game, which should be a game about your PERSONAL choices? Weird.

See, their diversity is fake even on technical level. I now understand why there is no real choice regarding body types. Because something else in the game has hard-coded connection to the current types.


No need to be a snowflake and be offended over something that has nothing to do with you.

The Harleep scene is made for bodies with a penis clearly. It doesn't matter if the body is muscular or not, has a penis or not, Harleep does ride Tav in a weird way during that scene. I played a "slim" female drow with a vag and the scene played the same way you describe.

About the rest of the points you make, I completely agree. I did enjoy my muscular Tav picking up Astarion during one of those scenes, but there should be an option about that in the game.

As sailorgundam said, let’s avoid emotive terms like “gross” when talking about things that obviously could have implications for very personal parts of people’s real lives. It’s fine for everyone to have preferences, but not to be judgy or rude about the preferences or sexual behaviour of others. Even when they’re computer sprites, given that there are still likely to be analogues to real life relations.

Oh, I didn’t know that about Haarlep’s scene. Thanks for clarifying.

And, yes, the Astarion pick up was kinda quirky, but I also wish it wasn’t something connected to your body size. Comes across as a bit unfair, depending on the person.

What kind of differences are there that happens because of the bodytype? I haven't played different kinds, so I genuinely don't know. I played a type 2 (the smaller) male and he was always on the bottom, but I didn't mind. It felt natural enough that I had no idea that they could be positioned otherwise. The only moment when I was surprised by the positioning was when Tav hopped on Astarion's arms. Then I thought that positioning was probably made thinking that Tav is a woman, but I shrugged it off. I mean sure, why couldn't my manly paladin hop on Astarion.

I don't think that the position with Haarlep anatomically works for anyone, if he is in his male form. He sits on Tav's lap while the narrator tells that he enters Tav, which... you know, isn't possible on that angle. However, I didn't mind. I just had a moment of "Wait... that's not... yeah, he probably shouldn't be there, but let's continue".

If there are different positions in the sex scenes, I think it would be nice to be able to pick the option scene by scene. I mean, most of the things they are shown to do could be done regardless of Tav's bodytype.

some people like it some people dont its fine ignore it its r18 game anyways lol lol hahaha
if anything the sex parts the games not even seen lol
i think this cool age for people to enjoy jokes banter and adventure ..
some people just don't need romance if don't like the love sceens lol or skip lol
so easy meow

I was so happy when I saw that a lot of the early romance scenes offer the options to determine who initiates kisses, like:
- Lean in and go for the kiss to match their invitation
- Give an inviting glance so they initiate it instead

It got my hopes up, so I was disappointed to learn that the top/bottom role is just assigned based on body type.

Admittedly I am a fan of the imposed standard so I don't see this being an issue for my Tavs but like... this is an options game, I was hoping the intimate scenes would get the same care that so much of the rest of the game did.

Was also really weird seeing Haarlep grind on my twink. Great scene for anyone playing an amab top, but that's pretty limited.