Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Criticism for Halsin's Drow Backstory

Now that I've made an account here, I just want to leave a reply saying I support the suggestions to give the scene and dialogue another look-over (which, going by data-mined content, they seem to be doing!) I've seen various people on other social media interpreting his dialogue as a trauma survivor downplaying what happened to him as coping mechanism, but to me I think that's a lot of headcanoning being taken too seriously. To me it just came across as a very jarring attempt at light-hearted sexual humor (because, yeah, sexual violence towards men is treated largely like a joke, or even a positive thing if the abuser is an attractive woman), which... is an unfortunate amount of Halsin's dialogue, in my opinion. Like after adding him as a long-term companion in response to fan feedback, the writer in charge of him couldn't think of anything else to write but jokes about how often he gets down.

I'm not against him having the backstory in any way (personally I am interested in the backstory and ways it could be explored if written with more tact and care), I just would like it to be treated as less of a joke, whatever that ends up entailing in terms of additional dialogue or rewriting dialogue. It seems like they're adding additional dialogue to give the joke more depth and examine it as an actual traumatic experience. I'm not gonna judge whether the writing for that dialogue is good or not, in my opinion at least, until a finalized version is live, though. And I do appreciate that writers at Larian DO see the feedback and player discomfort around this, and are re-examining how the joke came across. Not a lot of video game developers would bother or care enough to do that.