Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Gayming awards 2024

I will say that I like Dame Aylin's story and her connection with Isobel is interweaved well with the story, and it serves as the best allegory for the LGBTQ experience, so in terms of representation it has more to say than the origin character's romances. But she is also the fourth female martial character that has that blunt and upfront approach to sex. Following after Lae'zel, Minthara and Karlach who all kind of do the same thing. Now it's fun that the game flips some tropes on its' head with female characters with an aggressive and positive sexual agency, but it's almost becoming a cliché of its' own that female martial characters now all sound like hockey players.

It doesn't bother me in the least, it just didn't feel very surprising or new, but rather something I'd come to expect from such a character.

To be fair, one of them is a Githyanki, one is a (raised) Lolth-sworn drow, one is a Sharran, and one is not human, nor raised with human (ish) social values. It's not out of character for any of them to feel so. It could be an accident that SH is the only one with a not "we'll bang, okay?" outlook. But, if you make the profound mistake of raising approval beyond a limit, you're certainly a piece of meat surrounded by lions in this game lol

I was just explaining why I thought shadowheart was intended to be straight but was changed to player sexual and why I was confused as to why shadowheart won Gayest character but not dame.

A lot of people interpreted the banter between halsin and shadowheart is flirty.

Every play thru and every first encounter I have had with Kalrach with Shadowheart in my party she never talked about karlach carrying her to safety.

For some reason it’s always Astraion or Gale that mention her so I never had her show interest in the same sex other than with the PC character.

I must have a weird copy of the game or my game is just not updating correctly.



I agree that The brothel is easily available so you won’t get the lustful exchanges but that with the banter combined with twins was what made me think developers and writers had the intention to make her straight but later chose to make everyone player sexual.

As I said earlier, this topic risks treading on sensitive issues and we should all be careful and considerate. The award was in no way for the “gayest” character, whatever that might mean, and that seems a really problematic way of expressing it.

Any discussion of whether someone “seems” gay or straight clearly risks blundering into offensive stereotyping, so I would strongly advise against entering into that territory. Whether Larian’s writers intended that Shadowheart could be experienced as straight if romanced by a male PC (or lesbian if romanced by a female) or whether the game has evidence conflicting with that, are perhaps more factual questions but are of questionable relevance to this thread and in any case everyone’s free to ignore elements that conflict with their own headcanon, especially if those elements appear in other folks’ playthroughs and not their own.

I would suggest we’ve had as much digression into the topic of Shadowheart’s sexuality as this thread can bear, so let’s draw a line and stick more closely to the topic.

Who needs public people awards when you get this from the few people inside this industry with a clue about what makes for a decent game?

https://x.com/rafcolantonio/status/1693636661580533952

I apologise I didn’t mean to offend and will be more careful in future.

I had multiple dumb dumb moments and posted shadowheart won gayest character when there is no such award.

All head cannons are valid everyone that played the game their play thrus are cannon in the baldurs gate universe.