Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hotfix for Halsin's romance and consent flags

I've gotten the "you saw to my needs here in camp with the care of a lover, not a host" line in a save started after patch 6, where I didn't flirt (deliberately, anyway). I'm pretty sure it was caused by asking how he was finding camp, then telling him, "You'll find plenty of books before long. I keep coming across them everywhere" when he said he would miss his books. Apparently his response to that sets the "CAMP_Halsin2_Event_FlirtedWithHalsinInWLDMainA" flag. This doesn't seem flirty at all to me, so I think it's mis-flaged.

I've also experienced barely talking to him at the Tiefling party, only to be given the option to apologize for coming on too strong.

I was disappointed that I had accidentally triggered the "flirt" line, because I had wanted to see get platonic dialogue added in patch 6. It's a shame that to get that friendship dialogue, you currently have to avoid some friendly conversations. I could tell Halsin was on his romance path when he said his "Not what. Who" line, but I couldn't turn him down until the next act.

What? XD Then I probably didn't click the book line, but really? And people complain Gale is jumping to conclusions.

Does apologising for coming on too strongly also set the flirting flag by any chance?

It does. Better don't talk to him at all outside of his quests. You can also get his opinion on events in act 3,but nearly everything else basically starts his romance interactions.

He also always has a pretty creepy dialogue at the party in the epilogue. My bard never talked to him outside of quests, most of act 3 he was in Orins hospitality and my bard was happily married to his romance Gale and still Halsin made some creepy comment towards him ( I wanted to screenshot it, but it was late and I was tired).

I don't know if I misinterpreted one of the patch notes but they said quite late after release that they had introduced "a platonic option for his conversations" I have to believe that I misunderstood that. Because I cannot conceive that they made his conversations default to his romance as long as you saved Thaniel. It's nuts and a massive oversight.

Okay, I found it. This is from Patch 6. So February of 2024. Someone needs to tell me I misunderstood.

There is, it apparently is just extremely well hidden if even telling him that he might find books lying about counts as flirting. Which is a shame because I think it's nice dialogue. Let me see if the old imgur links I made back when still work:


I assume the first one is a last option to set the flirting stage, I went with the second one and he didn't proposition me in Act 3 but I think I dragged him to the brothel for science and he still wanted to wriggle his way in - though I am not 100% certain about that.

Yeah, sorry if I didn't explain myself well. I meant that I was surprised it took them months to introduce an option to just be his friend. Which I still want someone to tell me I misunderstood that because it's just somehow too bad faith but it looks like what's written on the logs. From what I can see, despite the friendship path being introduced, it's still kind of hard to land there. He needs his flags reworked, for sure. The good news is modders can do that, if Larian fails to do so.

Ah sorry, no you understood that correctly, lustfilled desire was the og bear standard, friendship is the upgrade. Some of those flags for sure need a touch up.

It's wild yeah haha

Apologizing sadly doesn't remove the flirting flag it seems, all it does is confirm that the game considers whatever you said at the party as flirting and you're stuck on that romance path until act 3 from that point on.


That's crazy, seeing that confirms to me that there was 100% only a romance path for Halsin up to patch 6, because to me "added" means that there simply wasn't a platonic path before. At the very least it shows that Larian is/was aware of the issue with Halsin's lack of a platonic path, but his dialogue flags still need a lot of clean-up before you can properly be platonic friends and not have him flirting with you because you mentioned abandoned buildings probably have books in them or something like that. So pre-patch 6 there was only romance Halsin, then they tried adding platonic Halsin in patch 6, but as of now a lot of stuff is still broken and desperately needing a hotfix.

And next to that act 3 either needs new flags that they forgot to add for patch 6's platonic Halsin or the existing flags definitely need fixing. An established platonic friend, or especially a person whose sexual advances were rejected, should not creep on you and your partner and try to invite himself to sex with you multiple times. So for a romanced Halsin things look fine, but a platonic or rejected Halsin the flags are really messed up still. And if Larian really does intend for Halsin to not take no for an answer and it's not dialogue flags, they should give something like a news update explaining that Halsin intentionally trying to have sex with you after you rejected him is part of his character.


As an aside, I'm pretty new to the forum so I was wondering to what extent the suggestions & feedback forum actually gets looked at and listened to? From what I've seen so far there's a pretty solid consensus on this needing a hotfix, but I've also seen similar arguments being made on this forum and other places without there ever being an acknowledgement of this needing fixing and it being on Larian's radar. A lot of the romance flags are a mess even after patch 6's (attempted) implementation of a platonic Halsin, but especially the creepy rejected Halsin advances should be fixable with a simple "RejectedHalsin" flag of sorts that's checked before triggering Astarion's and Shadowheart's specific romance party banters and then also having that flag checked for the encounter with the drow twins. I really do hope that these topics are being looked at rather than all of us screaming into the void as we agree on what needs a hotfix.

The brothel is intentional, it's fun, that's what Larian said. And I know a few mods who wrote to me, Larian knows the threads and that's it.

Do take into account (and perhaps this is me thinking in way-too-good faith) that maybe it's just written weird and instead means something like "you could be friendly with Halsin before but it would just result in less content and weird silence from him" or something like that. It's really so unbelievable to me I kind of think I've gotten it wrong, somehow. Weirder misunderstandings have happened before.

As for whether the boards are looked at or not, in theory they are. However they've stated they're only going to be working on bugfixes rather than story stuff now, past crossplay and camera mode- unsure if they'd count this as a bug or story-related.

Most of the fandom doesn't think it's fun so we're gonna keep seeing threads like this until Larian stops updating the game entirely. At the very least Halsin should be flagged not to come onto you at the brothel if you already told him he's not your type

Last year the mod wrote this, so people can continue to post threads like this, after a year nothing has happened and the brothel is just fun, nothing more and it doesn't only affect "their" SH.

I mean it's a common complaint so yea there's gonna be a lot of threads for it. This section is for feedback after all. Tbh Halsin's bad romantic flagging and questionable implementation have catapulted him into being the most disliked companion. A lot of it was easily avoidable and fixable by Larian but here we are

It's to the point I think fans will be apprehensive to ask for more npcs added as companions in future games

Anyway, “most” people should continue to create threads like this for many years to come. If they enjoy it. We don't have to love or like all companions, and Larian is already making a new game.

What intrigues me, It's been over a year now on various topics on this subject and Larian hasn't done anything about it all. Whether this was intentional or not, it managed to destroy the Shadowheart romance for me.

Well, if this was intentional, all that's left is disappointment.

The player dialogue for Gale in the brothel was changed, for which I am very grateful, which was another point of contention about the situation, so I guess they changed what they agreed needed changing. In Halsin's case you can still just leave him at the door, which I know doesn't help if you are not aware of the situation beforehand.

The flags should still get some attention because some of them seem to be either not working properly or are not especially intuitive.

@Seho, please stop spamming this thread with similar posts which seem to amount to no more than “tough luck” which is not constructive.

The OP has already clearly stated that they want this thread to focus on things that seem inconsistent or counterintuitive and therefore could conceivably be bugs, which is not unreasonable given how complex the dialogue trees are and there have been and still are multiple other bugs with dialogues.

As the OP has requested, let’s not have this thread derailed by discussions of other elements of Halsin’s romance or how he interacts with other romance partners, or by importing drama and debates that are only tangentially relevant here.

At this point I do think Seho's right that it's intentional. The lack of poly flags on the banter in question, the disapproval if you turn away Halsin at the brothel, the other questionable lines with no poly flags, everything. Comes across as them trolling for the giggles. Tbh the whole brothel seems like troll content. The player pressures Gale into something he doesn't want to do and Astarion disassociates at the end of his scene. Very very "fun" guys

Even if it's likely on purpose I'm still gonna keep complaining though. Love this game but damn this sucks

Edit: Oops didn't see the mod's comment before mine. My bad

Sorry, I'll just refer to my answers here if someone writes to me about it again.
My post was primarily about the brothel, which according to Larian was intended, the other possible problems were not my topic.

We can hope it's a misunderstanding, but we only have the sentence they've written in patch 6 and there's only one way I can interpret that unfortunately. And misplaced romance and consent flags in dialogue for Halsin would fall under the bugs category I think. Very longstanding bugs at this point, but bugs nonetheless. So for now I'll stay hopeful that if Larian does pay attention to the forums, they will see this request for a targeted, small-scale hotfix that could fix a lot of issues people have with Halsin's romance behavior.


I find that really surprising as well. The only thing I can think of is that Larian might only see the drama surrounding it and the unpleasant debates that come from it, rather than the simple core issue that's starting these debates possibly being actual bugs and wrong flags for Halsin's romance interactions with both the player and the player and their romantic partner.

Having read/skimmed through quite a few of these debates, I really feel that many people do not have a problem with how Halsin or other companions' interaction with him is written, but how the romance/sexual content surrounding Halsin is always active regardless of the player's rejection of his advances. If I personally sift through the romance related stuff to be able to talk to Halsin about quest related stuff and his views, I actually find quite interesting to have around as a character. But the fact that I have to sift through so much, that I have to ignore continuous flirtations before I am able to reject him, and then that I have to endure him trying to have sex with me (or me and the companion I'm romancing) multiple times after I had already rejected him, is so very very off-putting. Because of what I see as wrongly placed flags, we lose quite some insightful character content from Halsin and are just left with someone who doesn't understand no means no and I find that very sad.

If these are bugs that have been here over a year, wrongly placed or missing romance/consent flags for Halsin (which are really only needed for two companion banters and an encounter with the drow twins), then not recognizing and addressing that specific complaint and request for a fix has led to over a year of unnecessary toxic debates over many many tangentially related things when the problem would be easily explainable and fixable. And if Halsin's current romance/sexual behavior towards the player isn't bugged but by design, they could have addressed this in a news update over a year ago to stop those unnecessary debates when they were beginning to pop up.


Thank you, that's exactly what I'd like the focus to be on. I've seen in other threads that you and others put a lot of work into keeping things on topic and I'm really hoping that possible bugs can stay the focus and we can leave that kind of drama out of it. As you're a moderator here, do you maybe have an idea to what extent Larian looks at this forum and uses the suggestions and feedback forum for things like hotfixes?