Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Astarion and Shadowheart Poly interactions

That's a very good point, and I see a huge difference too, having watched the videos of Astarion and Shadowheart in Acts 1 and 2 (regarding the “third” in the romance) and comparing that to the video of their agreement to it in Act 3. If you watch those videos in a row, it seems that our companions have Tav digging into their brains with the help of a tadpole to switch some “button” there. Moreover, the somewhat intrusive suggestion of polyamory occurs precisely when Tav and Astarion or Shadowheart already have a serious relationship, the player has had time to become attached and form an opinion about the relationship. This is especially acute in the Shadowheart romance. At least Astarion himself doesn't want any polyamorous relationship with Halsin, the player himself has to push him to do it, if you refuse Halsin right away, there will be no ambiguous banter between him and Astarion. And while it's certainly frustrating to see my favorite character being used for a bear video, it's still okay to say “No, that will never happen in my game, and it doesn't exist in my world”. In Shadowheart's case, unfortunately not all players can do that, and I completely understand their frustration and outrage over it. By the way, Zevran in DAO has the opportunity for polyamory, and he flirts with others, but only until your relationship has become serious, then, unless you yourself have used the opportunity for polyamory, there will be no hints of it, the relationship will be monogamous. Same with Daeran in Pathfinder, the opportunity is there, the opportunity is easily ignored, there is no sense of imposition.

I think BG3 should have also approached this topic more carefully and gently. Halsin should have first asked the couple he wants to join how they feel about polyamorous relationships in general, that would have been polite and reasonable. And only if they are willing to offer them. Also, just as it's unclear why Astarion and Shadowheart specifically? Both are traumatized characters, in Astarion's case it generally looks like he's only agreeing to this because of his affection for Tav. It doesn't seem like a positive representation of a polyamorous relationship. Wyll, for example, would be a much better fit for the role (Gale hardly, the character doesn't really fit), if Wyll happily agreed to a polyamorous relationship with Halsin while giving a speech about how good, free and generally “good” it is, it would look much better than in Astarion's case. Lae'zel, who offers sex to the player before any other companion, takes it very lightly at first (consistent with her upbringing and githyanki culture, but without any hint of trauma or being “taught anything”), is monogamous, and Shadowheart is poly. The only explanation I can see for why Larian decided to make poly specifically with Astarion and Shadowheart - they are the two most popular characters for romance among players, it's hard to find any other explanation for this choice. And this decision most likely came later, so polyamory was crammed into Act 3 without caring about the tactfulness of the execution or the consistency of character development.

They aren't assumptions about her though, she is forced into that situation with out consent. She was kidnapped and then tortured, brainwashed, pressured and applied a curse mark she was abused in all manners of ways and it would fall under a form of SA.

Thank you for making this topic. It's been hotly debated before and a lot of things can boil down to preferences, interpretation and visions on character consistency. One thing I personally find a glaring issue is that in some situations it ignores your Tav's consent, or even worse, pressures you and coerces Tav to consent to something after you've said no before already.

A little over a year ago, @Michieltjuhh already put the sequence of events down that can happen chronologically, so I'll link his original post and put a rewrite of that below (original post on ignoring player character's consent):

As it is now, this is what currently happens chronologically in act 3 between Tav, a romanced Selune Shadowheart and Halsin:

1. Tav goes skinny dipping with Shadowheart and then they "make sand castles", talk about it the next day and cement the relationship between them. From here on, following through with her personal quest and finishing the game, you'll either end up together adventuring, or you'll live together in a cottage. A happily ever after together.


2. Halsin confesses his love/attraction towards your Tav in camp. You can tell Halsin you are not attracted to him. As another option you can say you are already in a relationship and then follow up that you don't want to change anything about your relationship. He says he understands your choice and when you mention your established relationship he emphasizes the importance of consent.
Here are the dialogue choices written out:

So here you have explicitly stated you do not want to be involved with Halsin romantically/sexually or that you do not want him or someone else involved in your relationship with Shadowheart. So you either decline his advances specifically or you explicitally state you see your relationship with Shadowheart as monogamous (or at least not involving him).


3. The next time you have both Halsin and Shadowheart in your party, they will have a banter where he tries to invite himself to the next time you and Shadowheart go skinny dipping and "make sand castles". Halsin ignores that your Tav did not give consent to this just before and even explicitly stated you do not want him to involve himself. For whatever weird reason, instead of shutting Halsin down, Shadowheart says "maybe". With Shadowheart's "maybe", she is also disregarding your Tav's opinion on wanting nothing to do with Halsin romantically/sexually. As it's party banter while exploring, there is no way to interject or to speak with either of them about it afterwards to give your consent or decline this offer.
Here's the dialogue written out:


4. When you visit the Drow Twins and they suggest a foursome with Shadowheart and your Tav, she says she's interested if you are, then you can agree to do it or not. Genuinely great way to approach the subject in my opinion, she gives her opinion and leaves consent entirely with Tav at this point. However, if Halsin is in the party, after you agree to a foursome with the Drow twins, he will then try to invite himself and make it a fivesome and Shadowheart agrees to it. If your Tav then declines, both Halsin and Shadowheart both disapprove of you not agreeing to this fivesome. Halsin has now for the second time ignored your Tav's explicit statement of not wanting to be involved with him sexually/romantically, or your explicit statement of not wanting him involved in your relationship with Shadowheart. Shadowheart left it at "maybe" during the party banter, now she agreed before you could give your consent and disapproves of you not wanting sex with Halsin after declining him twice already.
Here's the dialogue written out:


And as I said, that conversation ends with both Halsin and Shadowheart disapproving of your Tav not consenting to sex with someone you have already declined twice. After declining Halsin's advances at 2., both 3. and 4. completely ignore your lack of consent. Despite declining Halsin at 2., he tries to have sex with you and your established romantic partner Shadowheart not once, but twice. And instead of Shadowheart declining if she knows about your Tav's choice at 2. (what I imagine is something you would discuss with your partner after declining someone else's advances), or asking on your consent if she is not aware of your choice at 2., she wlll say "maybe" at 3. Then she will say yes at 4. before asking your consent to a fivesome including Halsin, despite asking for explicit consent for a foursome, and then disapprove of you not giving your consent to a fivesome including Halsin.

Regardless of anyone's opinion on polyamory, monogamy, etc., open communication and consent are pillars of any type of romantic and/or sexual relationship. As these events are chronologically now within the game, and have been for the past year at least judging by the original post I am referring to, there is a complete lack of respect for your Tav's consent concerning involving Halsin in your relationship. After him highlighting the importance of consent and you declining his advances towards you personally and towards your relationship with your romantic partner, he then proceeds to disrespect that your Tav declines consent and tries to convince you and your romantic partner to have sex with him. Not once, but twice. And while Shadowheart handles the offer for a foursome with the Drow twins fantastically, communicates openly and sees if you consent or decline, she will completely disregard open communication and consent when Halsin tries to have a fivesome and will disapprove of you not giving consent. To me, it's absurd that so many of your Tav's boundaries on open communication and consent are disregarded and you're even punished with hits to approval for standing your ground to say no to Halsin rather than saying no and him pressuring you until you say yes.

I propose a very simple hotfix to this disregard of player consent towards sexual propositions. If your Tav turns down Halsin's advances at 2., then stop 3. from happening all together and stop Halsin from including himself in 4. He says he respects your choice and emphasizes the importance of consent, so have his character be consistent. A hotfix like that will also solve the problem of Shadowheart approving of Halsin's advances without communicating with your Tav on consent and the possible inclusion of other romantic/sexual partners into the relationship. If you fix the issue like this, there will be no need for rewrites or anything complex, just a simple flag set after your decision at 2. so that 3. and 4. can never occur the way they are doing right now.

I don't see it that way, the author or the game doesn't convey it that way, SH likes it and she likes Halsin, understandable, Tav is rnd and not really an MC, hope they get together.

Act 2




Versus Act 3



Decided to get screenshots of this 180. In act 3 she's suddenly fine with being the spare lover as long as she can get a threesome. Literally told her I want Halsin more than her and she's just okay with it because... they needed to force a poly romance in the game I guess?

With the late addition of Halsin as a companion and poly romances becoming a thing, they didn't have proper time to implement it consistently throughout the story unfortunately. If your Tav/Durge is attracted to him and like the idea of a poly romance with your other established romance partner, it's a nice addition to experience that. Personally I feel in this particular case poly romances aren't implemented well unfortunately, precisely for the reason you are showing with the sudden shift in character without inbetween on-screen character development portraying this change and also a severe lack of communication with the established romance partner on how you view things together.

To be able to add in Halsin's romance and particularly poly options so late into development, to me it seems that too much surrounding Halsin's romance and other companions behavior towards poly romances had to be turned on its head at too short notice. I think it would have been a lot healthier of an approach to have the start of a potential poly romance and/or open relationship beginning with discussing the option with the established romance partner. Not just a few lines, but a full dialogue on how both sides look at things, what they are or are not okay with, why they view things a certain way... these kinds of things. If you could start the conversation with them first and come to a healthy balance with enthusiastic consent, boundaries, trust and openness first, only then you can begin with outside influences as potentially adding other people into the mix. Starting the path towards a poly and/or open relationship with "hey that person that's been travelling with us wants to be involved with me romantically/sexually" to me is a very awkward and unhealthy way to begin a conversation on potentially changing the established relationship.

And this being a video game, player agency in these things is extremely important because for a lot of people these roleplaying experiences are a way to escape all the messy and confusing real life interpersonal connections and take control over your own fictional story so you can really get immersed into it and attached. To have that feeling for two full acts, to experience a carefully crafted story and development of characters individually and relations with each other, only for them to then get a whiplash of sorts because of a late addition of something (in this case poly romance options for Halsin) that isn't as thoroughly written and developed as what came before, is understandably disappointing and frustrating for people.

If you're already acquainted with poly romances and/or open relationships, it's easier to look past the sudden jank of a tacked-on new companion romance with poly options and head canon how an established romance partner might off-screen work their way towards a shift that's now written for Shadowheart's views between act 2 and act 3 for example. For it to be a healthy development and portrayal of a poly romance, it should still definitely start with a conversation with the romanced partner first and working everything out together before even entertaining the idea of introducing someone else into the relationship, but with the way that's it's written now, it's clear to me they rushed past that to get to the "juicy bits" of characters banging each other.

If you're not acquainted with poly romances and/or open relationships though, or if you're personally against your Tav/Durge being involved in anything other than a monogamous relationship, to me the current way these romance/sex options are hastily written are very damaging for the established view on the romance path you've built up to that point. Because to me this late addition and option feels so tacked-on, it's a horrible introduction to something beyond monogamous relationships. Bluntly put, it's a dude barreling into your established relationship and inviting himself where he is not (yet) welcome. If you then tentatively broach the subject with your established romantic partner, not even because it's something you want to do but because you're confused by what the third party just suggested, your partner's first response is to enthusiastically go for it without them even considering what your own views actually are. To me, with the way it's currently written, a lot of player agency and consent is out of the picture and all parties are super excited before you've even had a chance to process what was even really suggested and that adds a lot of pressure in what is supposed to be a safe enviroment within your Tav/Durge's relationship.

Then of course things unfortunately go wrong even further because of dialogue flags not properly setting and Halsin seemingly not taking no for an answer if you reject him and him propositioning for sex a few times after desipite your lack of consent, either specifically with you or with you and your romantic partner. Logically you can see this sequences of interactions as (what I hope are) dialogue bugs not flagging the rejection properly, but in the moment in-game your Tav/Durge now has a creep trying to force himself on them and their partner is seemingly okay with that.

In my opinion, there needs to be a lot more care when it comes to approaching a subject of relationships other than "standard" monogamous ones. It's a subject that needs to be approachable and discussable within the game from the outset and at the start of relationships, not tacked-on at the end when you're practically married with the person already. The subject should also be introduced to the player through dialogue options with the romantic partner, rather than a third party suggesting the option. And there should be player agency in a video game in how to approach it and what their decision is, rather than the established romance partner taking that agency away and telling their views before you've had the chance share yours. And only once a baseline and balance of enthusiastic consent, boundaries and trust is reached within your established romantic relationship, only then should other parties be thrown into the mix. Because the writing regarding poly romances and open relationship did not get the necessary attention and care it should have for such a complex subject, it currently strongly pushes people away that are new to these topics. And therefore I find it very unsurprising that it alienates people from these concepts, that it sours their platonic relationship with Halsin in current and future playthroughs, and to some extent also damages their established romantic relationship in that playthrough because in some aspects the established partner suddenly seems like a stranger to them compared to how their on-screen character development was going in the first two acts.

Tbh there's no real way to show this change naturally. Her acceptance of being a third wheel in a relationship in Act 3 is just so wildly out of character compared to her Act 2 self it's simply not possible

With the current writing it's absolutely impossible in my opinion, I agree. If the writers would have had this idea from the start and would have written this development from act 1 on, it would have been feasible to have several of the current companions feeling this way in act 3. Because they only added Halsin's romance late in development and added the poly romance option specifically for Halsin so late in development, there's no way to organically write Shadowheart's change in views on relationships between act 2 and act 3 and make it make sense.

A popular opinion is that, with different writing in act 1 and 2, both Karlach and Shadowheart could have been written to be okay with such a relationship for example. Karlach's current dialogue in act 1 even contains "I know you and hairdo girl have something happening, but keep a piece left over for me, hmm? I won't always be too hot to touch.". That's still by far not enough within the current writing to make a poly romance between them and your Tav/Durge believable, especially considering the ultimatum in act 2 that pushes for exclusivity, but they had a little bit of groundwork there if they really wanted to rewrite companions to be accepting of poly romances. But the fact is that they didn't rewrite anything concerning that in act 1 and act 2, they only added things in act 3 and only specifically for other companions together with Halsin. And as there is no groundwork for any companion in act 1 and 2 for this to become a thing in act 3, to me it completely misses the mark and makes every companion involved in this seem out of character.