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)

This is where I will disagree, sexuality is a part of who a person is but not in my opinion a "big" part. Take any great person you know and then for imagine sake change their sexual preference. They, as a person do not massively change. Thier compassion, empathy, skill, work ethic, morality all stay the same. The essence of who they are does not change.

I do understand what your saying but I thing there is way to much emphasis put on sexuality in general. A romantic relationship is even more about other aspects that sexuality. Sure it plays a part but again other aspects that define who the person is often play a MUCH bigger role in determining if a deep, real connection is made.

However I am straying off topic

Those are great points and I agree totally. I would have preferred more developed friendship paths for the companions too. I do think, that making the companions all that easy accessible for romance is part of the problem with the limited variety of companions.

Part of the solution to a problem can be making it so comanions stop hitting on you if you go into a relationship with one.

With a higher difficulty option perhaps romances will also be harder to encounter?

Definitely agree. If they're going to make all companions playersexual, then they should make all companions available for polyamory. They give us player freedom on the one hand, then restrict that freedom with the other. It's especially restrictive for lesbians and straight men, considering we don't have any options at all currently.

What kind of an rpg is this, where half the player base is locked out of the choice to role-play a certain way? I don't care how many lesbian npcs the game has, this is incredibly disrespectful to essentially snub lesbians like this. We don't get very much content in games as it is, so purposely excluding us like this is just rude tbh.

There's no reason we shouldn't be able to romance SH and Karlach, or any other pairing. And if we choose to go to the brothel, we should be able to choose which 1 or 2 companions we bring in; there's no consequences in it, it's just meaningless porn anyway, but having the choice still matters. What's with all these restrictions Larian? I thought this game was about player choice? Let us have polyamory for all companions.

This. And why do people have to suffer the advances they don't want to as well?

Yeah exactly. Let the player initiate romance. It feels like player freedom just goes right out the window when it comes to romance and its annoying.

This may just be a "hot take" and this is solely my opinion but, I disagree with at least the last few comments on this thread (though there's no real problem with them at all, we all have our own preferences):

In my opinion, a lot of the immersion I get from a Role-playing game that includes romances is when they make the characters as close to a real person as they can. In real life, everyone has a sexuality, everyone has a preference and when a game gives certain characters certain preferences, I start to see them as believable characters.
The "player-sexuality" aspect of this game kind of breaks that immersion for me in the sense that no one seems to have a gender/sexuality preference and every player character is appealing regardless of who they are.
It makes it seem like the characters are just there for player consumption which, to be fair, this is still a video game so it's not far-fetched to say the whole game is technically that way.
But I enjoy when good writing lends itself to believable character-developement. Certain characters in this game definitely feel like they should have certain sexuality preferences and the fact that they don't breaks the believable nature of them when it comes to romances.
In addition, polyamory is a big step and big decision in most relationships and for a lot of people, it can be trying and emotional to tackle. Making everyone polyamorous with everyone just makes the character's sexuality even more unrealistic.

Now, this is just my personal opinion. If any of the suggestions for this were to be implemented, as long as there was a way for other people who don't want it to avoid that route, I have 0 issue with people having more options, more polyamory, more romances.

But when you get a line from Astarion when he's explaining a very personal aspect of his character and it includes taking sex slowly and that he'd prefer "no one think of him in a sexual way" for now, I have a hard time believing that character should be able to be polyamorous with anyone. It just feels like it goes against his character.

To each their own though! This is just my opinion and we all have our preferences

It breaks immersion even harder when you intentionlly create an ugly character and everyone still fawns over your green-definitely-not-a-goblin gnome durge.

Okay, this made me actually lol hahaha!

While amusing, it nicely summarizes the issue.

When Lae'zel speaks of the main characters ferocity and how that awakened her desire... I don't believe her. Because that's what she tells all the characters. If, on the other hand, it actually took some sort of achievement to get that reaction from her, it would feel more organic.

Same with Shadowheart and her wine. Clearly, she'll drink wine with anyone. There's nothing special about the moment. She has no standards. It's like the old doorknob joke and everyone getting a turn.

*

Having no preference hurts the immersion, yes. But it also devalues the relationship, in general.

I would have no problem if Larian had chosen to go this more realistic route, like ME and DA. Even including polyamory in the characterization of 4 of the companions, but being clear about it early on and making it believable through their dialogue and behavior. But they didn't.

Now that ship has sailed though and they can't change it because that would mean taking away some people's romance options. By making all of the companions open to polyamory, it gives the player freedom, like they have with sexuality. It doesn't take anything away, it actually adds more options, especially for lesbians and straight men who don't have any.

By making the companions playersexual, Larian decided player freedom was more important. All I'm asking is they follow through with this player freedom approach in regards to relationship preference. Keep characterization out of it, like they did with sexuality.

It's not like Astarion or SH are even remotely good choices for the orgy anyway, given their abusive history. Hell it's not even history, SH is a literal amnesiac, who is intermittently physically abused due to her hand wound. And then there's all the other different kinds abuse from her past, and same with Astarions. They're definitely being taken advantage of and its really creepy. Yet, if all companions are open to the orgy, and characterization is kept out of it, then it's fair game. It's just porn anyway and doesn't affect anything. I don't personally want the orgy in the game at all, as I find it very cringey, but others like that sort of thing I guess.

Though, as a poly person myself I feel it's important to represent polyamory respectfully. Larian just turned it into an orgy, which doesnt give a good impression tbh. I'm not even sure it can be called polyamory at all really. But they aren't going to get rid of the orgy though. So having an alternative option to have a romantic experience with 2 companions would go a long way to represent polyamory in different light.

I wouldn't expect them to change a whole lot. Like 3way sex scenes aren't required, nor is a whole lot of added dialogue. Mostly just the 2 companions recognizing the relationship and any appropriate ending scenes. Like if I'm romancing SH and Karlach, there could be an option to invite SH to come to Avernus for example. Whether the endings would mesh well is up to the choices made in game, as usual. Just little thinsg could make for a nice experience though.

My two cents.

I would fully support a "horndog begone" setting or mod.
Something that removed all sexual references from the game, not just the companion romance options.

The current romance options do not add anything to the game for me.
In fact, I consider them quite annoying.

I'm conflicted with this because on one hand, with games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age (using them as examples since they're pretty well known for their romances), your variables to what any of the companions find attractive are fairly limited. In Mass Effect it's just gender. In Dragon Age it's gender and, depending on which game you're playing, max. four races. In Baldur's Gate, the variables get up to three gender options and over a dozen races. I could see an npc preference implementation limited maybe to gender, but leaving race out of it. People would be mad even with this, of course, but it's the simplest way to implement romance limitations without locking, say, gnomes out of half of the romances. It does add immersion, like you said, though. I get both sides of the argument, and tend to lean towards preferring npc to have preferences, but not so much that the playersexuality gets on my nerves. At least not when I figure out what stops each romance in their tracks so that I don't get hit on by anyone but my romance pick of the day (I'm still trying to figure out how to stop Wyll from wanting to dance with me but that's it).


Okay so while I do have my own issues with Astarion and polyamory (namely him being too insecure in his relationship with Tav to be okay with sharing at this time), I do have to say that polyamory and sex are not the same thing, and saying someone shouldn't poly because they don't like sex is like saying someone shouldn't be in a relationship period because they don't like sex. You can be polyamorous and just hold someone's hand and maybe kiss them, no sex involved. Which is actually what you'd do in this relationship; you get hand holding and kisses and probably cuddles with Astarion, and sex with Halsin. You also get emotional comfort and closeness from both of them, which is what polyamory is really about -- emotion, not sex. I say this as someone who's poly, btw. It's just about loving more than one person at the same time, and a polycule can be so many things that assuming it's automatically a sexy threesome or something is... Well. It's a misconception. Astarion doesn't have to get involved with Halsin or sex if he doesn't want to.

That being said I do think Astarion shouldn't be in a polycule at the moment, but like I said, that's because he's painfully insecure about him and Tav, not because he's not polyamorous or because he's not into sex right now. I don't know why Larian thought he was a good option for this. Wyll would fit better because he's the only one who doesn't have any relationship/sex baggage hanging over his head (as far as I know correct me if I'm wrong), so he'd likely be most comfortable with a third party getting involved. Then again, Wyll just has such monogamy energy that that probably wouldn't work...

Yeah, they need friends, not an orgy (or Halsin).

By the way, regarding the Gale patch.
It's not that great now that I replayed that part.

There is still zero indication that practicing magic (AFTER he told you how much he loves Mystra the person the goddess) leads to a romantic scene of "Anticipation of a kiss" where your character just looks at Gale with deep loving gaze.
The new line about "friendship" if you don't sever the weave right there basically just loops you back to severing the Weave result - both your character and Gale are VERY sad that they didn't get to have sex, no platonic dialogue or outcome was added, which is needed strongly.

I just wanted to add 1 think.
I will continuously skip all romance poop until they will ad friendship as an option.
Because some good endings are related to romance option and I refuse to do this. Exactly that I am a straight person.
Why I have to go out of my comfort zone.
I can accept a lot of things that the game have some woke elements but it feels like I don't have really a choice.
The only choice I have is to ignore all of them.
But I can even imagine if a women play this game and she wants a good ending for Karlach.

I simply want a "no romances" option.

Larian offers me:
- A really ugly female
- A bodybuilder female
- A pretty female ... who is very promiscious and unlikeable
- A bunch of men who are bisexual and assume the same of me, for absolutely no reason

Meanwhile my main character, a Halfling, is not even interested in any tall woman, for obvious reasons. At most maaaaybe a Gnome lady. Certainly not Dwarf or even more tall.

And thats just one of the problems with BG3 romances.

Another is that everyone is horny as a teenager who just got a near overdose of testosterone. Every interaction is sexualized to the maximum.

I'm all for well done romances like in BG2, but BG3 just doesnt have any.




Well for that you'll have to suspend disbelief, since thats not something the devs can really fix ? Of course she hits on every protagonist.

The point is that it's not earned. If I stood in the back of the fight while the other three companions took out Dror Ragzlin, she'd still say it.

I'm trying to get across the point that the player character should have to accomplish some sort of achievement to unlock that scene from Lae'zel. Sort of like an inspiration. Maybe they have to personally take down five enemies at once or single-handedly defeat Ragzlin, or whatever. Something. Something to trigger Lae'zel's desire in a meaningful way.

If, on the other hand, the main character doesn't shine as mvp in the combat, then Lae'zel's scene should not trigger. Her desire should not be awakened.

The goal of a great game, imo, is to connect the story to the mechanic as much as possible.

I think patch 4 notes said something about Lae'zel not doing that anymore, but she still wants me immediately no matter what I do.

If only they all stopped propositioning me in the middle of the road.