Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Shadowheart Romance and the Hidden Fetish - (Spoilers inside)

You're right, that makes perfect sense. It's just so sad though to think about this scenario. Shadowbae deserves so much love and happiness

I agree but again you can also interpret it as her not wanting to lose Tav so instead of freaking out and burning bridges she'd rather leave the door open to continuing the relationship.

Which makes sense considering apparently your character is the only one she ever trusted and "Shadowheart believes in you"(Act2 durge/sh romance).

I think there's a lot of hangup on the choices you don't want to make anyway.

Like people don't want to cheat on her, but they are upset about how she reacts if they do. Well, you didn't want to cheat on her in the first place, the problem only exists because you have meta-knowledge about the code and writing outside of your roleplaying choices. Non-cheating Tav never learns or knows about Shadowheart's reaction to cheating, so non-cheating Tav wouldn't really have any thoughts or concerns about it. In terms of immersiveness I don't see a problem (with the caveat about the messy Halsin situation that can happen even if you aren't looking to make those choices).

Character inconsistency and writing is a different story, it's a meta-discussion and can of course include everything you know about the character in every scenario.

And propagation of rape-culture from a character that is supposed to represent good and healthy values is a real world problem and a very important discussion, because real people matter, unlike pixels and code.

So you want her to scream at you? Break up with you? As I said Tav is probably the most important figure in her life, think about this.

I 100% agree on Halsin. Halsin situation is just stupid and not only for SH, but Astarion/Gale romancers aswell as far as Im aware.

I phrased that completely wrong. I meant the exact opposite.

Like people (not me) don't want to cheat on her, but they are upset about how she reacts if they do? That to me isn't an immersiveness problem, possibly an inconsistency problem and not a real world problem.

I agree. I had saved before doing the Mizora scene and SH raaction just to see what would happen. But then reloaded after I found out. But if I hadn't reloaded, that would make me a cheater and I feel like most people would find cheating to be on the morally "evil" side.

And by initiating casual sex encounters with her, I feel like that would be leaning into her sharran teachings. Shar rejects love and relationships, so it would make sense for her to focus on this new relationship and experience.

But she definitely makes it easy to take advantage of her and twist her into whatever the player wants.

The whole Halsin situation just makes me nauseous tbh. It is affecting real people and it needs to change.

At minimum, more upset. Otherwise, more akin to other companions (except Astarion, who's also retconned). Wyll being most upset makes sense, but I'd expect Karlach and Shadowheart to react similarly.

She bloody well screamed at me when finding out about something my Dark Urge Tav didn't even remember and therefore couldn't tell her, and while that was obviously a wrong trigger, it means she's capable of it.

They also didnt separate shar SH and selune SH. I would've liked selune path for full mono(which makes sense) and shar path for opposite obviously. It just fits better I think?

Even this is hard to argue for. She's still on the Sharran path in act 1 and act 2, yet she's not open to do anything at that point, either. Lets also not forget that a certain path as Sharran Shadowheart doesn't even have a romance scene past act 1, while the complete 'unfix her' path gets it very late. How can one be open to sharing for casual sex if you never actually have it yourself.

I disagree with; Selune Mono, Shar Poly...
Even if you think it "makes sense", I just disagree.
I think it's fine either way Selune or Shar, but I'm just vehemently against her having an attraction towards Halsin. For several reasons of course...

I think SH and Astarion unfortunately are the only characters for which the writers could somewhat explain them being "fine" (pretending to be fine) with poly when they needed one female and one male character for Halsin. Which automatically makes them candidates for being "fine" with the drow orgy and Mizora.

Karlach's the only one that wouldn't require a lot of rewriting to be okay with it. You could argue that because she's gone soon, she might just be fine with whatever, if it's more hinted at earlier.

However, they threw the idea out of the window in act 2 for all 6 companions. To add it back in again in act 3 makes no sense, least of all for the two that need the PC the most.

I find that reasoning by Larian to be faulty. Iirc didn't they say the NPC companions weren't romancable with each other? So again rules or whatever are being bent/broken for Halsin.
Every and all problems stem from Halsin, the root of all issues.

Well SH obviously gets punished for ever rejecting any of shars teachings growing up. As far as I'm aware, she prohibited love. But it's not so much that it's a shar vs selunite thing. For all we know some Selunites are also open to casual sex. But they aren't going to be punished for choosing either way.

But it makes sense that SH would want to explore this new kind of relationship (a monogamous one) that has been kept from her, due to how she was raised.

I disagree, SH and Astarion are IMO worst choices for this (maybe in her Shar route, if she doesn't find about brainwashing, torture and other stuff), this is what i wrote previously:


Somebody pointed that poly can be healthy too, but whatever is happening with Halsin is not poly, it's just casual sex, sharing, sprinkled with Halsins predatory behaviour.

That would be me. Halsin is an awful representation of what it means to be poly. And even more so with the RA.

People that are poly go so far as to have relationship contracts to make sure everyones needs are met and accepted.

Halsin cares only about his own wants, setting ultimatums and automatically assumes that because you're poly you must also be into orgys. That's not how that works.

Shadowheart looks more human than Karlach. Shitty reasoning, but not surprising.

And yeah, choosing the ones who are the most vulnerable being in a relationship is in really bad taste, especially when they say they try to handle the subject matter of their backstories with care.

I can't help but notice that SH, Astarion and Halsin are all half/elves.. a lot of people are really into elves. And vampires for that matter.

I believe they're most romanced companions too. Astarion in particular is very popular.

The last stats I saw had Shadowheart and Gale at #1 and #2. Astarion does seem to get more attention in the online spaces.