Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pillars of Eternity after Baldur's Gate3 [spoilers for both titles]

I think this mostly stems from how it's often depicted.

A lot of the time, romance in a game is some very underdeveloped aspect that feels like it was added in just for the sake of existing, with at best it being there to show off some risque scene for marketing (Albeit not particularly risque due to nudity being an instant 18+ rating and thus being avoided to generate more game sales at a lower 12+ or 15+ rating). Rather than it being an actually meaningful way to interact with NPC's.

It doesn't help when much of the industries "Romance" is very sex focused too. Again, lacking in meaningful interactions with NPC's.

This state of romance will get people jaded and prejudiced against their very notion. With largely, good reason given the lack of positive examples of romance...

So we get to a point where a game is derided because of its inclusion of romance, or praised for its lack of romance (I know some people were glad that Avowed isn't having any romance content).

Meanwhile, it's not as if a game is inherently better without (Even the current trend of poorly implemented) romances. I played The Outer Worlds which "Features" no romances and you know what my experience with the game was? Companions felt just as flat and lifeless as ever. Since it wasn't romances that made companions 2 dimensional and lame, it was that socialization as a whole was not well developed.

Romance is only part of a greater whole, which is the overal social interaction aspect. With better socialization, comes the opportunity for better romances. Without better socialization, romances are forever stuck being shallow means of indroducing "Sex scenes".

Ironically, the social aspects of games has been getting worse over time. With more and more Pokemon style "Collect them all" companions, who will awkwardly stand around in some sort of hub until you take them with you in a party or go and talk to them (Where they've telepathically learned every thing you've done and said since you last talked to them). At least DoS2 avoided this by simply murdering everyone not in your party at the end of Act 1...

But really, this would be the best place to start with socialization. Make companions more alive. Those that aren't in your party, go out into the world and do things (They all have their own agendas right? That's the basis of the whole "Party member questline" thing). These things could be discussed when you reconvene in camp, or you could even encounter them in the world and help them out. Companions could simply leave your retinue if you don't interact with them or take them with you (Since why would they stick around if you don't care about them?) or if you do things that they don't like (And you haven't gotten a good reputation with them first). Companions could even become villains (Or heroes...) and try to hinder you if they deem you a threat to their plans.

This need to make all companions so pliable and safe so that players never lose the opportunity to have them in their party (With very few exceptions, besides not recruiting them in the first place) limits the impact of social actions.

I don't have a problem with romance, but it shouldn't be the focus in an adventure game. There are dating simulations for that.
I do like a good romance in a game, but I'm not too invested, meaning, I don't care about kissing animation or so. I prefer good storytelling.
I think if you have some romanceable companions and some, you can have friendships or rivalry with, it would be great.
The trend with having everything romanceable is not new and Larian wasn't the first or only one to do that. BioWare started that trend and it has become a stable.
But lately I get the impression, that people only play the games for romance and sex and that is something, I don't like.
Have a healthy mixture and it would be great.

Thank you @Wormerine! Your summary of that video is much appreciated.

And also thank you @Thunderbolt. That PC Gamer article about what JES says about romances in contemporary RPGs was great reading, especially because I agree with his sentiments completely and have been lamenting the same myself for some years now.

For me all of this serves to bring back my very strong sentiments, which I have expressed here often in the past, that sex (which is not at all the same as romance or even relationship) is what BG3's attraction to many of its fans is hugely about, and that if all the sex were not there in BG3 it would not have been such a big hit. It still would've been a 'normal' hit, as true RPG fans would've flocked to it. But its many fans who are *not* traditional RPG fans would not be there, because those fans did not come to BG3 for BG3's RPG elements, and JES is correct that those fans are not going to flock to an RPG (even a big production-value AAA RPG) that does not have BG3-level sex.

I wouldn't say, it's BG 3 fault. BioWare is the real culprit here

I don't think you can really blame Bioware for this in the way I think you are. Their games were the first to really start the trend of romance in games yes, but firstly, the rest of their games were still good (I'm sure I'll get arguments here but I think all of the DA and ME games are good, even DA2 and Andromeda. Those weren't as great as they could have been, but they were still serviceable games with stories far better than BG3s). Secondly, before Veilguard they never had a game where all their companions were romanceable. Even the one game where they made all the romanceables open to either gender, there were still non-romanceable companions. So it's not Bioware's fault unless you're arguing that it's their fault for introducing romance into games asa whole.

I agree with you that good storytelling should be more of a priority than kissing animations, buthonestly if people are only playing a game for the romance, that's fine. Some people only play a game for the combat and don't care about the story, that's fine too. Some people, like myself, only play a game for the story (which includes the romances, in my opinion). And if those people are loudly yelling for more romance focus, they're no different to people asking for their specific pet theories to be made canon or who want the combat improved at the expense of the story, or who think one particular aspect of the story is more important than another aspect. It's not their fault if the story or even the industry goes wrong by listening to them, it's the developers who decided to blindly chase after what looked like easy money.

DA2 is my favourite BioWare game. Sarcastic female Hawke is my favourite character of all time. I blame them, but I still liked most of their games ( didn't like DAI like the others), but objectively, they started it with BG2.

I suppose that is true, but honestly that feels like blaming the inventor of the camera for the creation of revenge porn. Yes they are objectively the root cause, but it's not their fault other people misuse what they created.

Gray Ghost: BioWare knew exactly,what they did. That is not blaming them, but they did bunk on it. Just look at the trailers for Veilguard and the press releasesm

How much of Veilguard is because of BG3?
I doubt Bioware had made the Veilguard companions all playersexual/Bi and announced it prominently, if BG3 did not have so much success through thirsting.

They did that before. I only say Cullen, who probably only was a romanceable character because of fancrowd. So I would say : Nothing.

@fylimar, I was not at all blaming Larian for sex being something that sells in today's society. And I also wouldn't blame BioWare. The blame is entirely on society. It's perfectly legitimate for Larian to have done what they (correctly) identified as the thing that would bring in non-RPG gamers and help to massively sell their game.

And I also accept/agree with @Gray Ghost's point that people playing/liking a game just for its sex is okay, in the same way they may like a game for some other reason. Sex is not at all my reason for liking/wanting to play a game, but I am very much a 'live and let live' person. I have my reasons for why I like certain games, and am quite fine with others having their reasons. As I've said so many, many times before over the past six years, all of this discussion would be so very different if only this game had not been called BG3. It's just the moment Larian decided to title their game BG3 that so much of what they've chosen to do with their game has upset me or pissed me off. Had the game had any other title, I would've simply shrugged and let it go and not cared one bit (as I will do with whatever is their next game).

I don't think it is entirely fair. While player's interaction with the conversation system hasn't changed much (you pick a line you want to say, our of several available options), complexity of conversation trees, what the game is tracking, various reputation systems tied to conversations has. To say that conversations haven't been experimented with would be as reductive as saying that combat hasn't changed as you still click on enemies and they die.

In addition to stuff I mentioned, Arcanum experiemented with mixing more systemic, "generated" conversations with handcrafted content, which allowed for an impressive amount of reactivity. Mass Effect worked on integrating conversation trees into cinematics, and Alpha Protocol used timer in coversations to quite an interesting effect.

What makes them harder to iterate upon is that they are content, rather than systems - in the end it still comes down to a narrative designer writing the content and setting up reactivity and players navigating through this content. Similarly quests structre gets more or less complex depending on a game, but they all work more or less the same way. Because it is the handcrafted content that makes those elements work.



I do think it is a bit unfair - much more work has been put into romances than just sex scenes, but yeah vocal folks who care about this stuff do seem to mostly focus on... hmm... physical aspect of the relationship.

Sex and violence sells stuff - that much is well known both and games and beyond. And it seems that for many dating sim became core part of an RPG experience, and if one wants to reach as wide of an audience as possible including it seems like a good idea.



I think he feels like that, because quite clearly recent RPGs he worked on didn't connect with a such a wide audience as other titles (and Deadfire took its sweet time before becoming profitable). Not every RPG has to be the same, but it seems that is or was far less overall interest in JS kind of an RPG. though at the same time Pillars isn't exactly "Josh Sawyer the RPG". I do wonder if he was free to do what he thinks is best his audience would be even smaller, or he would create something that could stand better on its own.

There's still very little in terms of actual iteration upon the systems. And far too few games tying in both actions AND dialogues into reputation systems (That aren't absolutely barebones where you literally have options that do +/- X reputation - No thought has been put into combinations of things, like extra negative reputation for saying one thing but doing another. Or having other characters react to things you do like companions being concerned when you use too many deception options because they're concerned with how easily and often you lie etc)


No, they are systems. They're just heavily reliant upon writing. All the options and reactions have to be written and the writing has to enable the multiple options to adhere to the overall narrative. Unlike say, combat where its an entirely closed system where it doesn't matter to anything else other than the combat system what the combat system is doing.

The overall systems for socializing haven't been iterated upon much at all. Besides the curtailing of dialogue lines into the awful radial system that sucks completely (Even when using a controller, it's just worse to use than a simple list...). Things like the emote systems used for multiplayer games could also be used to provide NPC interactions (And there are some easter eggs in a few games where NPC's will react to you using certain emotes). To say nothing of multi-character dialogue systems (Something that would much improve BG3 for instance) where your entire party can be involved in a conversation rather than standing around like an idiot while the MC talks to everyone.


If there has, it hasn't shown.

There's very little in romances in any game. Maybe a few extra lines of dialogue. That's not "Much more work". It's not like characters behave differently when they're involved in a romance, being more protective of their LI or more prone to initiating conversations or doing anything particularly special (Besides maybe some scripted actions)

At best, you get the ability to command your LI to do something like kiss or interact with certain things (I.e. CP2077's update to romances letting you call your LI over to your apartment and then interact with things like a music player, sofa, shower etc. To do some generic animations and make some banal comments)

Where it all comes back to the initial social aspect. The lack of NPC's and especially companions acting like individuals where they go and do their own thing. Instead it's all just cardboard cutouts until you go and talk to them and force them to interact.

I don't think they are. Aren't dialogues closer to scripting than a system? Systems suggest to me rules and verbs on account of players. There are no "ask", "question" "flirt" options. Just manually connected nodes with no systemic meaning by themselves, used to deliver mostly uninteractive content (text or cutscenes), and in the best case scenario feeding back and forth to game proper systems (reputations/character build)

So what have changed is amount, quality and presentation of written text, complexity of scripting and systems the scripting connects to.

To really shake up conversations one would need to abstract conversations and adapt them into a gameplay system, but I am doubtful if it is an objective woth pursuing. Games struggle with far simpler concepts (like crime) and I doubt one can come up with consistant ruleset for "developing a relationship with a fellow sentient being".

They are systems.

You have the systems of dialogue selection interacting with responses and other associated effects (Reputation system interaction, event triggering, stat based interactions etc). Even when it comes to the selection of dialogue there are systems, such as having indications for different options having a certain tone to them (Such as indicating temperment like having an angry face denoting an aggressive option or a clown/jester face for a light hearted option)

Just because the default system isn't complex, doesn't mean it's not a system. The very base of it is the simple "You select a dialogue option > NPC reacts to dialogue option" which is still a system.

Being purely scripting would mean there wouldn't be dialogue options because there would be no system that incorporated them, no ui for dialogue options and no deterministic response to options (It'd all be just one predetermined script based on pre-existing parameters set before a conversation took place)

You can boil down combat into similar terms if you try hard enough. It's all just "Use Attack on Man" and then the opposing response of "Man uses attack on you" - The depth of the system comes in the form of the options presented, how the target reacts to those options, how options build off of statistics... Not unlike dialogues.


It's not really THAT hard. It's just a matter of refining the "Reputation" system to be less rigid, or at the very least less 1 dimensional.

Most things can be done via a complex reputation system that better tracks your actual actions and dialogue options (Rather than being limited to a handful of specially designated dialogue options and MAYBE a quest resolution decision). Some games already do things like having most dialogue options have some sort of designation (Pillars for one... Most dialogue options represent one of the personality types) it's simply a matter of translating this into more varied responses and also including non-dialogue options into the same system (Which some games also track, Dishonored tracks lethality and will ramp up the chaos the more you kill. While games like Cyberpunk 2077 will track how you complete certain missions, lethally, non-lethally, undetected or guns blazing)

You can even use a dual axis reputation slider with something like "Respect/Disrespect" and "Like/Hate" allowing for more overall dispositions as opposed to a binary "Love/Hate". Or even more complex reputation sliders for yet more dispositions and overall interactivity.

The most complex thing would be the lack of consistency required. In the sense that, you can't just blanket a system across all characters in the game. But rather tune their individual personalities, things they like, things they dislike, things they'll let slide if they like you etc. Since typically games simply paint swaths of characters with the same reputation normally based on what "Faction" they belong to. With only companions getting more unique personalities (For example, Karlach likes you being nice to people. While Astarion dislikes when you're nice to people)

The reputation system in many RPGs is an attempt to flag for the game world ways you've decided to roleplay your character. Having it be a grid or axis is going to both incentivise you to game the the numbers in one direction, or pigeonhole you down one area of morality. The ways RPGs sometime track the manner in which you complete missions is superior in the respect that you probably aren't artificially choosing the style in which you complete a mission, but its usually only used to distinguish between a player who kills without compunction and one on doesn't.

I was hoping in BG3 the narrator would be utilized to flesh out your characters motivations to avoid the whole min/maxing of reputation. But, in true Baldur's Gate tradition, there really isn't a natural incentive to play evil beyond knowing there is content there for you, the player, to see. So, enumerating on Tav's motivations might not be as necessary as in a game where your actions and motivations have more ramifications on the story.

Just to shout out Dragon Age II again, Hawke's personality would change depending on the number of times you chose to respond in a certain way, you might not even notice it happening if you only play the game through once, and I thought it was a neat way to actualize your roleplay decisions.

Have a link to another time we talked about this.

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Romance and adventure often go hand in hand, I think Bioware really tapped into something by adding serious character arcs with romances to their games, instead of what happened a lot before with it being tacked on towards the end because it's a trope of the genre.

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I was surprised in the video when he says the second Act was the most thematically succesful, I thought for most of the people here (People who were likely to have played the first act so many times) the transition to the second act, and its story are were the game started to show its hand with regard to the type of storytelling we'd be getting. The setting was jarring for me, and the story seemed to expect more buyin from me too quickly; though I think infiltrating Moonrise was actually some of the most fun I had during the game.

That is only the case if they make the entire system transparent.

Such a system works better if it's hidden. You don't get to see what dialogue options provide what results. You don't get to see anyone's reputation chart. You only get your intuition of what you think dialogue options represent and you only know a characters feelings about you through how they interact with you - Just like in real life (Where yes, you can "Game the numbers" by trying to act a certain way with someone, you just don't know exactly how everything will play out beforehand and things get very complicated when you interact with such a person amid OTHERS whom you don't act that way with)

Sure, even with a hidden system, on multiple playthroughs and with eventual compiling of data from other players, you'd eventually be able to metagame certain outcomes - Though how bad that is, given that roleplaying a particular character will tend to involve some level of metagaming (Since you'll already know how you'll respond to certain events and characters beforehand) is subject to debate. Certainly, it doesn't diminish the value of implementing a better system, especially given that the current systems are also very easy to metagame (Even more so given their lack of depth)

That's true to a point, except that most people recognize pretty quickly, a pattern of reaction among the choices given to you in any dialogue tree. Though in general I'm in favor of keeping this hidden from the player. That was part of what I liked about the Hawke comment.

Having interactions recognized by every member of the part is a good way to punish the sociopath behavior endemic to RPG rep maxers.

Really? Act 2 is my favourite. As a Lovecraft and general horror fan, I love the vibes in that act a lot, especially exploring the Shadowcursed Lands. I haven't seen the video yet, but I tend to agree, that the second act really does it for me. I like most of the game ( though I agree, that act 3 needs polish and the finale fight should be different if Omeluum is still alive), but that bleak, horrifying mood of act 2, especially outside of Moonrise, was great.

It's definitely a stylish dungeon. It just sticks out between our wilderness grove and our renaissance/steampunk metropolis. I was just a victim of my own expectations, I was expecting a less linear outing after the first act, with our party wending our way to BG. We essentially just got a much more extensive version of the shadow temple from BG2. I in no way hate Act II, I just didn't like how it told its story, I guess.

Oh, and the monastary map is probably the highlight of the whole game for me.