I'm sure it's been talked about before and have seen similar topics dating back to over a year ago, but there still hasn't been a proper hotfix to address Halsin's romance and consent dialogue flags that are, from what I understand, wrongly set from act 1 all the way through to act 3. I want to make clear from the start to avoid any derailment of the discussion that this is not about companion relationship preference. This is about Halsin specific romance flags being set for non-romantic dialogue and Halsin trying to romantically involve themselves with the player, and possibly the player's romantic partner, despite having turned him down after the camp conversation in act 3. Please don't bring discussion on monogamy, poly relationships and all that into it, this is purely about finally fixing Halsin's dialogue flags after people have been complaining about these issues for over a year.
Romance flagsSome mods like
OIO - Overexplained Interaction Options have already shown in the past that you can very easily unintentionally flirt with Halsin, sometimes to the point where you start talking about a non-romance topic like his age and have all the follow-up dialogue choices count as flirting even when some options don't look they're supposed to be flagged as flirtatious with the way they are written. Another example is the tiefling party where almost every dialogue option with him will lead to the player having the option to apologise for being too forward the next day, making it look like simply initiating the conversation with him has both Halsin and the player interpret it as flirting. Because it's been in the game for this long without a fix, I've seen some head canon being made here and there that Halsin might just be clueless and misinterpreting simple interactions. However, from what I've seen from the OIO mod screenshots here and there, it appears that many of the romance flags are just incorrectly placed. From what I've seen at a glance in some threads, Larian has addressed incorrect romance flags for other companions before as you could get stuck in three-way romances you didn't even know you had (I believe Gale had a lot of these issues?), leading to awkward and unexpected "break-up" conversations with platonic friends. So after more than a year of complaints I feel Halsin's romance flags should really be looked at and fixed finally.
I'm not very tech-savvy and haven't dug into the game files to see exactly what is flagged as romance and what is not for Halsin, but I did do a quick rush from saving Halsin in the goblin camp all the way to the start of act 3 and only did the strictly necessary conversations. If you stick solely to only required dialogue in act 1 and 2 to progress the quests he is needed for, never invite him to camp and/or make him a companion (when checking camp storage in act 3 there is no tab for his inventory for him and I have never levelled him up), then he will still say in act 3 that you treated him as a lover and not a host in act 3 when you reject him. So even when you avoid talking to him at every turn aside from needing him to go into the portal to fetch Thaniel, he will be in your camp in act 3 with the game assuming you have flirted with him. From what I understand Halsin can also become very forward himself romantically in act 2 dialogue the closer you get to curing the shadow curse (or post shadow curse onwards?), but there is no actual way to turn him down then and there and you have to wait for his full confession in act 3 to stop him and be able to have conversations without being hit on.
Consent flagsThis is an act 3 specific issue I have also seen discussed many many times and it leads to unfortunate heated debates when the very core issue is simply romance consent flags not properly being set from what I can tell. Expected behavior for Halsin, as with all the other companions, is that when you turn them down when they make a romantic confession, they are completely shut off from making advances towards you from then on. They acknowledge your rejection, the flags seem correctly set and they will never try to get romantically involved with you again. This unfortunately seems broken for Halsin, because he will always invite himself in the encounter with the drow twins, trying to make a foursome with your established romantic partner and the drow twins into a fivesome. Additionally, if your romantic partner is Shadowheart, after the act 3 romance scene with her, he will try to invite himself to some "swimming" with you and Shadowheart during party banter even when you rejected him earlier. In the rejection conversation with Halsin at camp he can even mentions the importance of consent, so there must be conversation flags being wrongly set for him to still try and have sex with you two times after you have already rejected him.
If you're open to Halsin's advances and want to pursue his romance/sexual content with your established romantic partner, the experience appears very bug free and his own conversation surrounding consent looks like a healthy approach. If you reject Halsin's advances and these romance/consent flags aren't properly set, it will appear that he's repeatedly trying to force himself upon you and your romantic partner even after rejection. I imagine this was never the intent for Halsin to seemingly ignore rejection and I imagine it's just wrong dialogue flags, but these issues have been in the game for over a year now and I've seen many people interpreting this to be an intentional writing decision rather than a bug in dialogue that should get a hotfix. And that interpretation of intentional writing then seems to lead to a lot of heated debate and negative opinions on the writing of Halsin's character in act 3 specifically.
Proposed solution for a hotfixDo a thorough once-over on Halsin's dialogue trees/lines with romance flags. A lot of dialogue that seem innocuous will count towards flirting and that makes it difficult to try and talk with him when you're not interested in his romantic/sexual content. And if he starts flirting with you in act 2 post shadow curse, provide an immediate cut-off point rather than having to wait until his full confession in act 3 to reject him. And once you have rejected Halsin, stop all his romantic content from triggering, including the party banter with a romantically partnered Shadowheart (and Astarion too I think?), as well as him trying to include himself in the encounter with the drow twins. If this had been properly addressed a year ago when the first complaints popped up, I think the opinion on Halsin would be a lot less divisive and overall more positive than it is today. However, if it's fixed and addressed in a hotfix now, at least that will lead to a more clear intent on the vision surrounding Halsin's romantic/sexual content.
And if the conclusion turns out to be that Halsin's current romance and consent flags are intentional, then address that as well in a news update of sorts so that people stop assuming it's bugs in his dialogue flags. I mean, it could be possible that Halsin was intentionally written to not take no for an answer, but I'm hoping that isn't the case.
Thanks for reading! And again, please don't turn this into a debate on companion relationship preference, character consistency, etc. etc. etc., I just want Halsin's romance and consent flags to be properly addressed because they appear to be very broken still after over a year of updates and hotfixes.
