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

Oh Gale is surprising but good for him. Still, elves do have a kinda fetish thing about them. And I'm not going to deny that I too have fell victim to this lol Shadowheart's ears so cute hehe

I assume it's because Gale's approval is so easy to get if you're playing a character even remotely good-aligned (as most folks do), he's quite friendly/funny, and he's conventionally attractive. Casual gamers looking to romance a man will probably find themselves on his route without effort.

That's totally fair. He got thay geeky, yet mystical thing going on. If I were heterosexual I might find myself down with that wizard lol

Fun fact. You can persuade Gale into foursome with drow twins and Halsin will still insert himself in there and you cant poly romance Gale and Halsin(Gale rejects it). Not sure about approval/disapproval thing in that situation, but, correct me if im wrong, Gale will actually disapprove if you reject Halsin in foursome xd.

Gale had some interesting romance flag bugs too. Always was convinced we were dating. It's funny how something is always broken with him.

Astarion on the other hand is a nightmare to get approval with if you don't want to be a prick to everyone, so people had to really go out of their way to romance him. Meanwhile Wyll just doesn't have enough content. You don't even really know anything's going on until he suddenly wants to dance with you in act 2.

For the ladies, Shadowheart is really easy to get approval with with the right dialogue choices but also easy to piss off. Karlach is the most straight forward on a good run and Lae'zel approval kicks off hard in the Creche if you just let her do her thing.

Far as I know, you can convince him to tag along anyway and he'll just watch or something? Poor Gale. It's disgusting, really, but at least it's the player pushing for it.

Those stats were right after full release. Gale's romance was triggering for people who didn't want it. It was the first noticeable glitch in the romance system. The only reason so many folks "romanced" Gale was because they didn't know they were romancing Gale and subsequently got annoyed by it.

It appears there isn't a lot of love for Halsin in this subreddit lol


https://reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/rbjzWKXuC4

I actually saw a reddit thread about it the other day. Lotta discussion but it didn't make it to the front page.
https://reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/16z3ooy/question_about_shadowheart_romance_and_monogomy/

I see a lot of excuses in the comments of that subreddit. A lot of "Its just a game, the characters aren't real, it's your tav making these choices not you", and just generally not grasping the issue.

I find people engage with content differently. Some are just there for the simple entertainment and don't look too deep into things; others seek to find a deeper meaning and are more analytical.

There's nothing wrong with either. It's just tough to agree when you simply view things from a completely different perspective.

Personally, I'm not into the gimmicks. Others are apparently.

Issues that were pointed in this topic are quite big though. It directly interferes with immersion in the game.
Also, as we can see, it can cause ptsd.

It seems some don't really care. Kinda comes across as an "F you I got mine" vibe in the comments and they could careless how it affects others.

This subreddit is a couple weeks old. Over 7000 upvotes for ppl who think Halsin should never have become a companion.

https://reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/wZFxw2n4tT


While I do agree with the post, I do feel bad for those Halsin fans who didn't get what they wanted.

And here I thought we were a minority. And I was one of the people requesting him as a companion and romance.

Yeah i dunno it has quite a few upvotes but then I know Halsin was very popular during EA. Not sure how much that popularity has changed mind you.

This is just on reddit though. The wider community could be much more favorable toward Halsin. I'm really not sure, but its interesting.

From what I have seen on here, steam and Discord - no. There there are fewer voices, but most complain about this.

How interesting that he went from fan favorite, to this, relatively quickly. You said you requested him in EA... I'm so sorry they mucked him up like this. Hopefully they'll fix him in an upcoming patch.

I doubt they'll ever remove him as a companion though, considering the effort it took to make him one.

Is there much feedback on this topic in Larian's discord?

There's about 25 posts spread out over a week or so.

I think the way it is often raised it tends to get dismissed as fragile people being upset that their little sweetheart can even think about someone else and it coming off as being a bit possessive (not saying that it is, keep reading).

I understand the more nuanced dimensions to this now, but I started off in this thread as the big opposing voice (sorry if I pissed some people off), but came to change my perspective entirely when it was presented to me in a factual way that could not be argued.

My personal perspective to this is that I still don't have much of a problem that Shadowheart can think of other people. I do find Halsin repulsive, due to his creepy personality, and would question Shadowheart's personal taste on this. But lots of people, including people that I have the highest respect for, find him very attractive so I guess I will accept that we can have different tastes and she can like both Tav and Halsin (though this is really inconsistent, see below). Since I dislike him so much on a personal level, I just keep him out of the party or implement one of the other many proposed solutions here to be rid off him permanently. I understand and think it is badly implemented how you can unintentionally end up in this uncomfortable situation that some have experienced because they didn't know that you had to keep him away.

I agree with all that is said about the inconsistency in writing. I think it's abundandly clear and obvious that it was shoehorned in as an afterthought. I don't even feel the need to discuss it, because to me it's basically an axiom at this point. But I can ignore the inconsistency by sticking to the decisions that keeps my consistency and immersiveness intact.

I just want the unwanted intrusion of rape-culture that you can't even challenge entirely removed or re-written, because it is so inconsiderate and hurtful towards real people. I think this would also fix most of the other problems that people have here too (since if Halsin respects boundaries and consent he wouldn't be injecting himself in this uninvited), so I am on your side here.