Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Halsin Romance, Expectations and Obligatory Poly

And all they have to do to make him likeable is to change his race to halfling, change his gender to female, change their class to bard, change their entire personality around sex and consent and make them a werewolf. The solution is just staring them right in the face

And everything else you just said is spot on, couldn't agree more.

Now I am going to hide and change my identity before Halsin fans start sending me severed wolf heads.

I mean, yeah, with unique I basically meant Helia , but this is a Halsin thread and I really was open to work with him as a character , even thought about a tree hugging group with three druids and Minsk as a beastmaster ranger, but not in Halsins current state.

I very much hope the context and tone was obvious enough to not be misinterpreted as serious.

Halsin fans, I do not think you are prone to cruelty towards animals or harassment!

I agree with most of you and have disagreements with some of you, just like everyone else.

It's too late I've already read this.
I still like this beautiful druid. But In my current game, I will not have romance with any of the companions.
In the form in which they are now, it is better not to spoil your mood.

This!!! Severed werewolf head sent!

Like I said, you're assuming a particular relationship exists between your character and SH and the game is assuming another one. In your headcanon, SH should be over there rejecting Halsin, refusing to consider his advances at all, even if she's attracted to him, because she knows your character wouldn't be up for an open/poly arrangement. But she doesn't. The game is assuming something else. I'm not saying it shouldn't be changed, I'm just speculating about the "What were they thinking?!" question above.

Shadowheart's reaction has nothing to do with this once you've rejected Halsin that should be the end of it. He's the one that initiated the banter with SH that people don't like, not her.

It feels like in this case there should be some extra triggers added into code of the game and some extra dialogues which make those triggers work.
- Would you like to have poly relationships with SH and Halsin? Yes/No
- Would you like SH to have relationships with Halsin? (extra dialogue is needed) Yes/No
We have a term in Russian for some game mechanics - "a crutch", which means something like "not the best option to solve a problem (or an option which doesn't solve it at all), but it works", so my offers would work as such crutch, but, well, nothing stops us from thinking about solutions.

Guess its time for me to also dip my feet into the cold water of this thread.

First of all: possible trigger warning.

Just to clarify that: I have never romanced Halsin, I liked him as a buddy in EA and I really hoped for a nice adult friendship with the release (or lets call it bromance). My fiancee and I are playing BG3 together (sitting next to each other) so I was totally able to see all he has to offer in terms of romance.
While it started out pretty fine and I felt like he became what I was hoping for (and with that also what a lot of people were wishing for), listening to his voicelines after we liberated the Shadowlands was a huge disappointment.

I don't know how else to phrase it beside: It felt like my Tav lost a potential really good friend. We seemed to be sharing so many values (he is well-spoken, caring, friendly, grown-up) just to lose all of that. Suddenly, he lost so many personality traits I liked him for. Its not about him being open for just lot of sex or anything, its more that he showed a side of himself that he hid well before. It almost felt like a betrayal.

As you know, things got even worse with all the additional creepy sex offers (that he never was invited to). His whole Drow "misadventures" got me to a point where I really started to hate what had become of him. I started to hate Larian (or Halsins writer to be precise) to show such a lack of empathy. Fortunately, I never experienced any kind of SA, but I know people who went through different phases and stages of being exposed to toxic and abusive behaviour - be it being beaten by alcoholics, being forced to move to another city every few months or years because a parent had a new relationship or being beaten a lot just so the victim could be blamed for his sisters' faults.

While some of them had a really hard time making it through life and/or therapy, I only once experienced someone claiming it had it positive sides ("If they beat me, at least they dont beat my sisters") and that was pretty much while the abuse was still happening.

Sadly, I know that there are lots of victims out there, who either blame themselves for being the guilty one (like "If someone abused me, maybe I did something wrong and deserved it") or trying to find the positive things in it (I just read a story about a woman who never found joy in the toxic relationship she had, but even tho it was more SA than mutual sex, she was at least thankful for his attention - and that made me feel so bad and lead to even more hate for the way Larian handles this topic). It feels like Halsin is still in this stage of defense, of sheltering his mind and heart from what he went through and trying to convince himself (more than anyone else) that what he had to go through wasn't "that bad".

If we try to apply Erikson's stages of psychosocial development on Halsin (using a formula x = 0.2987y² and transposing it - x = elf-age and y = human years, so that he had been around 29 years old 100 years ago), we could even go further deeper down the rabbit hole.
Erikson calls the phase between 20 - 44 years the "Early adulthood", "Intimacy vs. Isolation". The main value in this phase is love, being present in the form of friends, family and love interests. It is within this stage, that we seek to find someone special for us to settle down for the rest of our life.
The main question in this phase is "Can I unite myself with another person?"
Now let us transfer this knowledge over to Halsin, who most likely spend the 3 years as a slave within the "Intimacy vs. Isolation" phase. It was within this time, that he learned that trusting others leads to being hurt, being abused and living a life with constant fear. This lead to his isolation within his own heart. He had to cut the connection between his heart and his body, isolating himself. All of that led to Halsin still being stuck within this phase or even somewhat developing backwards, more towards the phase before, where sex has a way more important role.
Erikson says about the "Intimacy vs. Isolation" phase: "[...]there is more to intimacy than sexual gratification." and this is exactly what Halsin never learned.


Sorry for the wall of text, I used my work break to write this quickly, hence the lack of formatting and maybe some typos or bad syntax.
Also, I am by no means a psychologist or something like that, just interested in that kind of stuff and I know people working in some fields where knowledge like that is needed.

The thing is she never acts or does anything. Its almost if she treats Halsin no more than a casual sex thing for a player(or both).
The fact that Halsin hits on SH is annoying, yes. But the main issue that he also hits on your character and that is what makes him "creepy"(Assuming you've declined his offer before).
Extra flag should be to play this banter is if your character is actually in romance with Halsin and SH and thats it, this way it makes sense.

My point is that the player has rejected Halsin's advances and that should automatically trigger a "not interested in intimacy with this person", and then stopping any future advances towards player again. And since it doesn't I'm hoping that's a bug, because if it's not, I have some serious issues with what they've done here. No is no. It's all that should be needed. And that no also includes not trying to get a current partner do invite you to an orgy (since that would ultimately result in Halsin having an intimate moment with player character despite them saying no).

And I mean, Halsin isn't going after Shadowheart per se, he's trying to inject himself into the player's relationship after player has told him to back off. He wants to be intimate with player character and when they say no, he tried to get in by turning to the partner instead, which is creepy as hell.

If Halsin wants Shadowheart, well, then he could approach her when player character isn't there, and then SH can in turn talk to player if she want to go poly and sleep with Halsin on the side. But the thing here is that player has told Halsin they are not interested, and that should stop Halsin from inserting himself into a "sexual conversation" between player and their love interest. But like I said, it all feels like a bug to me, because I can't imagine it being anything else.

Jesus that's some real monkey paw shit for the Shadowheart fans that are asking for changes for a more monogamous relationship with her. If they added something like that it would absolutely ruin this game for me.

It's one of the fetishes of the author, along with bestalility and incest. Seriously, they did'nt have to make the drows twins but they did. Even in game the characters in the brothel say that the twin thing is for the degenerates of Baldurs Gate. I'm warning anyone that in the DE of the game there's a 90% chance that John will have added in dialogue with SH in regards to Halsin. These two characters are his. I'll just stay away from any character he writes to be a romance option in the future, had I known he wrote red prince (I was under the impression he wrote Ifan, rip to me) I would've steered clear since this infidelity thing is a main point in Red prince's romance. Now seeing how he writes Halsin, and in relation SH, I now see this is another one of his fetishes.

Yep. Right now, it's just bad writing because in neither of their cases does it makes sense to want anything more than mono based on their writing prior to the 'turning point' (and, in Shadowheart's case, after the 'turning point' as well, because it has no consequences). But at least it's optional for Shadowheart right now - just leave Halsin rotting in camp and ignore the knowledge that you shouldn't have. Her initiating this dialogue would turn it into unavoidable. Halsin wouldn't survive a single game anymore where the player romances Shadowheart.

That's the thing. In the case of the Red Prince, if it was a main plot point, it was at least consistent with how he wrote the character. It's not right now for Halsin and Shadowheart. But there is indeed the possibility that he will write the inconsistency away in the completely wrong direction (after all, look what he did with the Halsin EA feedback). Though I don't think that'll be good for their (Larian's) reputation.

Clearly not saying they should add it. Just saying that it would be only way Halsin's advances wouldn't be as toxic. As of now, Halsin is disregarding a clear rejection from the player. So, I just meant that if his intention for doing so is because he has a thing for SH, then he should ask her about it, and not indirectly try and "get it on" with Tav despite a no.

But to clarify. I DON'T want or mean that they should add the option for him to approach SH.

Guys, I think team Halsin and team Shadowheart need to join forces, so to speak (maybe team Astarion too, since I'm sure there are many people who also don't like poly romance with him).

I see no reason why we can't all get what we want.

Thats what we are doing though? General view is about the same. Some opinions may vary, but majority of "team Shadowheart" want Halsin/SH thing to not be the way it is(writer's input or oversight or bug, doesnt matter). We support your wishes of Halsin being changed himself too, he is the catalyst for team SH/Astarion afterall.

Ive been mulling over how exactly all of this can be fixed practically speaking. I want to post what I think Larian can do just incase any of the team may be reading this thread.

There seems to be no getting around it: rewriting has to happen, mainly in act 3. This is going to be time consuming and expensive for Larian to do. But I think it is possible. With some tweaking of what we already have they can minimize the amount of new content theyd have to produce. I wanna share what I think they could do as as far as narrative structure and flow and his character based on his dialogue and actions in acts 1 and 2.

Now for clarity, Im a little unsure as to where exactly act 1 ends and act 2 begins, so for convenience Im just going to talk about both acts either as a whole or based on their regions when necessary: crash region, mountain pass, underdark, grymforge, and shadowlands. Act 3 will just be act 3.

The only thing that needs to be cut entirely is the whole drow thing. The dialogue you get only seems to trigger if you bang the twins, which not everyone is gonna do anyway. It doesn't add anything to Halsin's character and wont be missed, Astarion trauma is more than enough for us to handle I think.

The whole poly thing is both an issue and not an issue. Halsin could still have the poly option, it really just shouldn't be a defining personality trait for him; it may be lore accurate for his race, but most of us agree its not very lore accurate for Halsin himself as an individual. And its even worse when you couple it with the predatory and promiscuity behaviors. The poly relationships really should center around Tav, not him. As I said before, when he offered it felt like he wanted to be mono with Tav but wanted Tav to keep the relationship they already had if that was Tavs wish. Him being "experienced" also conflicts with how he is portrayed in the first two acts, so this really needs to be pruned down significantly. Honestly the whole thing is so messed up though Id rather they just cut the poly thing all together along with his stupid bear form in the sex scene.

That being said, there does need to be a little bit added to acts 1 and 2. But it doesn't have to be a huge amount. I really liked the longing and anticipation Halsin starts up in the shadow cursed lands, promising interest but needing to wait until business is done and Larian can use this to monopolize on the lack of content in the beginning, but we do need more in some places and can easily do with less in others. Halsin is with us on too much of our journey for him to only open up AFTER we rescue Thaniel, romance or no romance. We need to be able to get to know him at least a little bit long before that. Maybe they can record new dialogue, maybe they can move some of his shadowlands dialogue over to before that and/or record some new dialogue where hes commenting on events that are happening along the journey. For example he didn't have ANYTHING to say after we talked to Gales Grandad when everyone else did.

We also need to have some sort of one on one cutscene with him after the party, just one at the bare minimum, that for narrative flow should take place in the underdark or grymforge, at some point. If they can do more than one Id like one in the Mountain Pass because the environment is begging for some Tav/Halsin admiring the scenery together. The only thing Tav and Halsin have to bond over is that Tav saved the grove, and is gonna help Halsin lift the curse, and in return Halsin helps with the tadpole. That's it. Its enough I think to spark an interest, and mutual physical attraction is established at the party, but they need some sort of small moment together, similar to the mirror scene with Astarion to add some meat to the narrative.

After this scene or even in it, then Halsin can start hinting at his romantic interest and his need to wait. If we cut some stuff from the shadow lands and simply move it to before this will make much more sense narratively. An interest is sparked at the party by asking him to drink with you (this is innocent enough so we can open the romance without throwing ourselves at him) develops through until the shadow lands, then in the shadow lands it can die down a bit because its time to focus on the task at hand. Then it can build further and peak in act 3 with more rewriting.

That is exactly the game I ditched when I discovered this thread. I thought Halsin would be a perfect romance for this Tav, and I am eternally grateful that I was spared the current trainwreck.