We have all been giving our feedback for 6 months, the threads are over 50 pages long, there have been a lot of different suggestions and feedbacks in Larian's Discord channel as well and there have been open polls among players that have shown what the majority (ca. 90%) want or don't want to see. As much as I wish everyone to be happy, Larian has decided to mildly change the scenes and probably won't keep the old facial expressions due to a reason, you may or may not read below. If there isn't already a mod, I would suggest to ask a modder to keep the facial expressons. A lot of people, who liked the romantic patch 5 or release kiss also have to rely on a mod, though a lot of people have asked for keeping it in along side with the new kisses.
The kisses were intended as a gift for Valentine's Day ("love is in the air", at least, the majority thought Larian wanted to show love and happiness and not hatred/violence and sadness), so there is also the opinion as to whether Larian intended the kisses to be a kink scene, as the previous scenes were always consensual before, which unfortunately failed and accidentally took the scene in a completely different direction that may not have been intended. At least that was also the opinion of a game site that reported on it at the time. Larian is changing the facial expressions now, also of others, and didn't make a statement on this, therefore, nobody knows, if it was just a poorly done kink kiss for Valentine's day to make the majority of players happy (survey) - and they are correcting and improving them now - or a depiction of SA.

*** WARNING: sensitive content (may contain a discussion of violence, abuse, SA related to a BG3 scene) this content might not be suitable for all audiences. Trigger warning***


The scenes, Larian introduced with patch 6 for "Could I kiss you?", are depictions of sexual violence and sexual assaults due to the signs of the non-consensual reaction of the player's character (a gaming site reported on this), therefore it should need a warning and description in their rating for this game for "sexual violence", also in this Forum we have to warn now when talking about sensitive content as (sexual) abuse. The sudden introduction of a non-consensual, sexual violence scene into a consensual romance (All kisses were consensual before) already lead to several people, getting a PTSD episode, Depressions and anxiety by seeing a sexual violence scene. The sexual violence scene is repeatable, so it is meant to rewatch over and over again (it's not a [storywise] one-time assault), the sexual aussault could therefore fall under violent pornography, especially since the scene is used as such in a particular scene. I doubt, that Larian's intention was to show sexual violence or violent pornography (non-con), and they just got it wrong, because kink (and consensual play) is often misunderstood and the depiction of that often poorly done.
I don't judge people who want to see or play a fictional story of sexual violence / abuse, and I don't want others to judge them, but in general there is a reason why sexual violence is rarely be found in mainstream media due to the sensitive content, and if there are depictions of abuse, it is mostly done in a non-sexualized way (that means, that it doesn't fall under the category for violent pornography, which, as far as I know, may also not be allowed in some of the european countries.)

Thank you Silver and illeaillas-san for the description of the scenes. Also others have stated, that the impovements are done carefully, so I think it's a very good compromise and I think Larian did a great job on this. And yes, the others are right, the other thread about this topic was already locked.

"I would, thank God, watch the universe perish without shedding a tear."