Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Was BG3 overly sexualized?

Maybe there are no armor bikinis, though the robes, you can get from Viconia or the Umberlee priestress are pretty revealing and clearly made for females. And my biggest pet peeves: the camp clothing: the girls al sit there with basically lingerie, while the guys all have comfortable camp clothes. First thing I do, is giving the girls normal camp clothes. I installed a mod for that, because otherwise, you wouldn't have the chance to change that throughout most of act 1. So there is still the 'girls have to look sexy' mentality. Only Jaheira has normal camp clothes, the rest is ridiculous.

Have you tried putting Shadowheart's shirt on a dude?

Our multiplayer group made everyone ditch camp clothing and just be in underwear

And that is absolutely ok, if you wanna do that, but that person was saying, that basically there are no skimpy clothes in the game, so I gave some examples.

Ding ding ding, talk about hitting the nail on the coffin. It really just points towards our usual acceptance of violence in media while exploration of sex is considered taboo.

Now don't get me wrong, Mortal Kombat 1 got called out by numerous organizations and countries for being considered too violent, to the point to where it was banned in a few countries. Now we have God of War where Kratos pushes the eyeballs out of a God and everyone talks about how cool that was.

Even in BG3, You noticed how we're having this long conversation about sexuality, and yet no one brings up the horribly grotesque scene of the gnoll ripping out of the body of a hyena, which just goes back to my original point about how graphic display of violence and gore are acceptable, but exploration of sexuality has been held back in mainstream gaming for a long time.

BG3 is that renaissance, it's that necessary push to display sexuality fully and unbashfully. And like Mortal Kombat, there's bound to be resistance to exploring those areas. But 10 years from now, we'll be looking at BG3 as one of the games that help normalize sexuality in games, and Larian deserves a round of applause for that.

Well, D&D has entire books focused on scary monsters, rules for brutal combat, graphic descriptions of burning your enemies and so forth. Not once did I read a D&D book titled '50 shades of vampire' .

If we're talking about maturity, then stuff like the Emperor's 'Achievement unlocked: Tentacle Pr0n' and Halsin's Bear stuff can go straight down the toilet. I was merely exploring some place, certainly - a brothel - when my party members suddenly suggest a threesome. Come on, man. You can't argue that that's because we're adults and exploring our relationship and all that. This is just immature fanfiction that made it ingame.

Now, I'm not against ses or nudity in the slightest. ALso. This game doesn't show us anything more explicit than say Dragon Age or Mass Effect, but I *will* argue that these titles had a more mature approach to them. I mean, Mass Effect was largely regarded as the Dating-in-Space game, but here at least, one could progress a friendship without sex. In BG3, it's sex or nothing.

Coward. In my multiplayer campaign we all sleep in the buff.

I am now (somewhat to my surprise) in favor of full frontal male nudity in all my games. It’s just a naked body. What’s the big deal? Why can’t I see Cloud’s other buster sword? What are they trying to hide?

The issue is society at large.

With the whole "Won't somebody think of the children?" aspect.

You can have a game heavily feature gamblling and it gets a rating of 3+.

You can have a game about killing people and it gets a rating of 12+.

You show a single nipple and bam, 18+.

This increase in age rating will negatively impact sales (Because some people actually care about age ratings) so companies tend away from it.

1 - Are you talking about DnD novels or DnD sourcebooks? DnD sourcebooks definitely do NOT go into graphic descriptions of violence as it's owned by Hasbro, and a large part of that was to have kids play DnD. That's why if you go to an adventures league in America, many of the tables have children in them. As a comic book creator, I know quite well you cannot sell your products to children under the age of 18 if it contains a certain degree of violence (in America specifically.)

2 - You also just double down on my point, which is that our society (which includes DnD) has an acceptance and interest in violence while rebuking open displays of sexuality. Now DnD is a combat based game, for certain. But that's just because our society finds violence acceptable. We also know different displays sexuality are viewed differently within different societies. For example you can find nude billboards in certain countries, while Sin City had to had it's advertisement taken down in America due to an outline of a breast being shown. But her holding a gun, of course that's not a problem.

3 - You certainly can have friendships in BG3, as it largely just depends upon the choices you make. Especially with Karlach. In fact, I was surprised because one playthrough I started down the road of just friendship with Karlach, and suddenly tried a romance line just to see what would happen, and she entirely turned me down. It was interesting and refreshing. From there, I continue with just a friendship with Karlach.

4 -BG3 definitely took things farther than ME and DA for sure. Bioware were certainly among the pioneers, but the most displayed were female breasts (and possibly a butt.) But there was never genital and there wasn't full body shots.

100%. I forgot which social media platform this happened on, but I remember there being a large pushback on that platform that men could be topless but women couldn't. So instead of allowing women to be topless like they should, they banned men from being topless. Talk about three steps back lol.

If you want to run around naked and compare magic wands, I don't give a flying kitten. I'm not opposed to nudity in the slightest.

That's speaking for the US. I'm a Dutchman, and we don't have this issue. In our culture, we more or less say; 'It's better to expose them to things than to make it mysterious", and that largely works. I am rather numb to things like nudity and sex onscreen and I don't give a tressym. To me, YouTube and such feel weird, with all the censorship.


I am, however in favor of good storytelling. I consider the raunchy jokes and so on, just utterly immature and obnoxiously out of place. Finishing a chapter's main quest resulting in 'Now you get to bang someone' just as much. I'd have much rather they scrapped all that nonsense and instead a cohesive story with characters that make sense, or make it avoidable.

If one argues that 'it's about characters and their relations and sex is part of that' - Sure, I'll agree. But NOT having sex is typically a greater part of that.

Oh, I hadn't seen Eclipse's post yet.

Perhaps not *as* graphic, but attacking someone with an Axe, for example is, in my mind graphic regardless of description.

Yeah, my issue isn;t so much that nudity or sex *is* depicted, but more the manner wherein they do it and the emphasis they place on it in this game. As per my previous post, again, I'm a Dutchman and we have different [fewer] sensibilities here.

Ah, perhaps she's different in that regard. My experiences with camp companions is that every interaction is romantic in nature, or the talks end.

I honestly avoid most romances, but so far I don't think I've seen genitals outside the character creator. I mean, you can take off your character's underwear, I suppose - but in the cutscenes it's more or less the same as in the Bioware games. The taking off clothes thing... Eh. I don't mind it. I don;t care for it, either.

I mean, I didn’t ask you but okay. Thanks?

Yes, it's over sexualized and it's due to political reasons - same reason there is no banter/racism/allusions between races.

I want it sexualized and even manipulation for power, sex, etc. I also want conflict between groups and races which would be racism. I want a living breathing world that you enter which includes all the great things but also all the bad that make up humanity. If I play a Drow, I want to be hated for what I am and work to overcome that hate or let said hate turn me into the monster they see.

Please stop trying to minimize the darker, lustful, corrupt aspects of humanity in these fantasy worlds. It touches on aspects of our own world and makes it more real and appealing. You have a group of attractive over archivers stuck together in a life-or-death journey. I'm more surprised that they all aren’t going at it every night around the fire. Do you have any idea how sexually active the athletes at the Olympics are? If not look it up as I’d expect roughly the same in this situation for many in this group.

You mean fantasy races or human race? There's a fair amount of distrust towards Tieflings in the Druid Grove, Laezel is rather racist towards Istiks of all varieties, Shadowheart distrusts Gith, Gnomes are enslaved by Duergar, there is a fair amount of reactivity for some [sub]races, especially Drow.

As for the other option.... Frankly, I am rather surprised that there's no outcry over how the only black party member loses his skin tone by being the good character.
But, yeah, the game is quite woke and I suppose that's why.


IN that regard, I *would* agree, just not for this game. This is a D&D adventure, and it doesn't need to go that deep. But, at the same time, I don't need daily virtual sex in my games at all.

1 - Oh no doubt, but there's a reason in America, PG-13 can't show things like decapitation and other more gruesome acts of violence. But a kid can watch spider man beat up a villain to a pulp and it's still viewed as socially acceptable, and that's because some societies accept violence while condemns aspect of sexuality.

2 - Oh no doubt, but again, that's no different than how GoW and Mortal Kombat embraces the violence side of the spectrum. The only difference is that violence had a 30+ year head start with Mortal Kombat 1, we're just now getting to unbashful displays of sexuality with BG3.

3 - That's the thing about BG3 (and why it's so high on replayability), the amount of directions each character can take is absolutely staggering, and it's why I try many different avenues in my playthrough.

4 - Well of course if you're going to avoid most romances, you won't see genitals lol. You actually have to commit the romances to see how it's explored. But I do know that both Karlach and Lazel's sex scene have full blown nudity including genital. As stated, they take the bioware displeys of romance to the next level, and is the most committed mainstream video game with this type of display to date.

I see what you're getting at, and you're right. The violence over sexuality thing doesn't make sense to me, either. Truth be told, I don't care for any kind of censoring in things made for mature audiences.

I tend to notice that censoring more than the actual thing they censor. Say, in movies how people are always exactly covered in the right spot in bed and so on.
I remember the PFH's Bear scene where one of the Magic Wands was literally covered up by a fortuitous leaf in the way. At the same time, I have romanced Lae'Zel and clearly don't remember seeing her junk, where as you say, they were clearly visible.

But again, I have no qualms with this at *all*. It's supposed to be for mature audiences, mature audiences ought to be able to handle some nudity without being shocked.

But I don't like it when its handled immaturely, and I'll argue that that's what happening in BG3.

Take Basic Instinct. Very famous for that particular shot, and sure, it received backlash, yet I'll defend that movie to the death. Because that fits the theme of the movie and the femme-fatale character *so* well. In contrast, BG3 is a D&D Adventure game. I'll not say romance can't be a part of it, but in my mind they put far too much emphasis on it, and it's made for/by an immature audience; 'Hee hee, look at us being edgy! Have gay bear sex, whoooo, bang a mindflayer, wheeee'

I think we are going in a different direction right now. When I look at BG3 it is not so much the acts of sex that seem over the top to me. Rather it is the way it is pushed in your face. There is no romance, there is no real plot movement, there is no option for deep friendships. There is hey I like you, lets screw or not. As I have said I feel like sex is added for teenagers to say, look I had sex in the game.

This is my feeling, too. I love that — and most of the scenes are very modestly cut.


There *is* the Book of Erotic Fantasy. Which is basically photos of cosplayers in various stages of undress with custom classes focused on intimacy and supporting materials how to run campaigns with an erotic theme.

But that said: the Lae’zel romance starts with sex and goes deeply into appreciating life and your significant other — with the only recurrent intimate part being kisses.

Shadowheart is laid back about sex — but doesn’t just lie down with you. When you’re sitting near the waterfall, sipping wine and watching the sky, there may be sex after the fade out, or there may be not.

This is presented expertly, so maybe focus on that and not on the sex scenes found when intentionally following the edgy path?