Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Gayming awards 2024

Thats how I think they want to do it in Veilguard? or however its called now. Everyone is officially bi.
If they really do it remains to be seen. Its after all from EA and design by marketing.

I do not find "lgbtq" characters in BG3 cringe in general, but Aylin and Isobel specifically. Mainly because you have this big and important moment of Shadowheart breaking with Shar and instead of a followup you get a "Wait! I first need to have lesbian sex with my lesbian girlfriend because we are lesbians!!!!" moment which to me feels very forced and unnatural as the way its presented looked to me that Larian absolutely wanted to make sure that everyone knows that they are a lesbian couple and thus resorted to a very over the top dialogue.

Anevia and Irabeth (WotR) were handled much better imo and should have gotten the award instead, although I am sure some people will criticise the way Anevia realized she was transgender.

To be honest, I'm fine with player sexuality, imo it is handled well in BG3. As a lesbian myself, games in the past more often than not catered to a hetero and mainly male audience - look at BG2: 3 romances for males - very different character wise- , 1 very problematic and toxic male character to romance for females.
I'm not playing those games for romance, but when they are in, then give me a nice girl to romance and not stupid and toxic Anomen.

As for representation - since someone said, they were not good representations: Dame Aylin and Isobel are really well done and not cringe, same with Alfira and Lakrissa, the other canonical lesbian couple imo. As a lesbian, I like them and I think, most people agree, judging by the overwhelming positive posts everywhere.

I would say, Halsin is not very well done for the poly representation imo, which probably is because he was a late addition. But a lot of people seem to like him and I don't care much about that character anyway, so I just ignore him mostly nowadays.

I mean, they haven't seen each other for a hundred years, give them their moment. I was pretty ok with that scene in that context. It would have been cringe in most other contexts for sure.

Well, that game was released a couple years ago. I'm not sure if they won if the awards existed back then (probably not since WOTR isn't as well known).
EDIT: I saw you mention Anevia's trans identity in an edit and I do at least think it's cool it's handled with magic in this universe, because how could it not? I mean, I think both approaches are cool (transitioning like in our world or transitioning perfectly with magic) but a magic transition I think serves as a power fantasy of sorts, the only drawback is that it's going to be a bit lacking in representing the struggles of being trans after transitioning. Either way: I think it's cool.

I think Veilguard is just doing DA2 playersexuality again? We'll have to see. I think Lucanis' writer said she wrote him to be a "bisexual mess" or something like that.


I agree with fylimar that I think Aylin and Isobel aren't acting in a particularly outrageous way IMO. What matters to me is that they don't draw a lot of attention to it being a "same sex relationship", though I suppose there's a bit of a metaphor in their forbidden love and Ketheric's disapproval because Aylin's the daughter of Selune.



I've seen divided opinions on him from the poly community. I'm not poly myself and particularly dislike him so can't comment on it without being biased. I will say it was refreshing that he makes clear he's bisexual in a single sentence. You ask him about his past experiences or something and he clearly mentions both a woman and some "pirate guy who screamed his name" or some such. That's what that article I shared a post ago is asking for, I think.

The best LGBTQ character award is chosen by public vote. So the success of Baldur's Gate and popularity of Shadowheart as a romance option probably played a big part. She probably wouldn't have gotten the award if she was a lesser known character from an indie studio. There is an Authentic Representation category, awarded by a panel, which focuses more on the authentic LGBTQ experience.

In a setting like Forgotten Realms it's also more challenging to write a character arc that represents the LGBTQ experience of our own world, since homophobia, biphobia and transphobia is not institutional and structural in the way it is in our world. But the personal struggles of characters such as Shadowheart, Astarion, Lae'zel and Wyll does serve as an allegory of the journey of discovering yourself as something different than what your surroundings expected and breaking free from those expectations.

I think they did far more than simply insert playersexuality into the characters. With the stories, the notes, the voice acting, they became fully realised in an entirely different way than Housecarl Lydia.

Ah, my bad then. I still think she shouldn't have been nominated (maybe that was also a public vote?) but if she won by public vote that makes sense. She is a very popular character.

hard disagree.
I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of "playersexuality" in general and I definitely prefer when the members of the cast have a set orientation, but that's beating a dead horse at this point.

I definitely think BG3 handled it extremely poorly, though.
It's a game where every single conversation with every main member of the main cast is almost assumed to be flirtatious by default and you have to tiptoe your way around not ending in the sack with each one of them.
Which admittedly could be exactly what a part of the user base wants, but that's definitely not me.

I was incredibly annoyed about the way I had put active effort in avoiding picking lines with Halsin, Karlach or situationally Wyll and Astarion. Wait, Gale too... You know what? it was poretty much every freaaking one of them.
It's also not made better by the fact that often "gentle rejection" was barely an option and the range was something dangeroudly close to going from "Let's cuddle right now" to "Fuck off, you nauseating freak".

I fully agree, that you can trigger romances too easily. I haven't found out, how to not trigger Wylls dance scene yet and I don't talk to Halsin about anything but Thaniel and the Shadowcurse nowadays. At least, Lae'zel and Karlach handle it gracefully, if you say no.
But when you do romance them, the ones I did, were good. I think, they should go over the dialogues again and make triggering a romance by accident harder.
And yes, gentle rejection should be there. They did better with Gale, who has a really good friendship part now, but Wyll will always be miffled, when you try to let him down easily in the dance scene.The others, I'm mostly ok with, but Halsin is a nightmare, he just won't stop. Luckily, there is a daggerloving lady in act 3, who needs some abduction victim ...

I don't want to entirely derail this thread so I'll keep things short, but I already said months ago what I think the solution to the problem should be (realistically speaking in their future games rather than in updates for this one):

The default path toward any other character should be a relationship built on friendship, with the player being the one that can eventually activate the "flags" leading to flirtatious behavior and (over time) straight up romance.

Right now? The feeling is that most of your traveling companions are people that you are either supposed to ignore entirely or to fuck enthusiastically.

That would be my preferrence too tbh.

Nomination was also a public vote, then the panel made a shortlist and the public voted from the candidates in the shortlist.

I am assuming the panel made some consideration on the amount of nominations from the public vote as well when selecting their shortlist. Surely Astarion was also among the nominations, but if I was on the panel I would choose Shadowheart over Astarion, because Astarion has already gotten so much attention and is also a more stereotypical sexualized LGBTQ character.

Oh, that makes sense then. Like, I still don't think it's a good nomination for what the award is. But I understand if that's how they decided it. She also placed #9 in the "Most Iconic Videogame Characters of All Time" thing even though that's a crazy placement for a character from such a recent game.

I will agree that Shadowheart's actress definitely deserves her roses at awards too because she's great. That one moment with DJ SH where she goes "I still remember..." is extremely good. I'm glad she's gotten an award recognising that work, at least.

Buuuut... if they also had Astarion, that was undoubtedly a better pick (other than you know, Aylin) for a nomination. Even if you say he's playersexual in his inclination towards women (which I disagree with) he's still undoubtedly LGBT in the game (unlike SH, imo), in a way that doesn't draw attention to that fact in the less subtle ways someone might imagine. He just happened to have seduced two men, and that's that (plus whatever other flirty comments he makes throughout the game). And the two main scenes where that's remarked are pretty good. I don't think him being sexualized by the fanbase should be a factor, tbh. How he feels about being sexualized is fleshed out p well throughout the game. But it is known I am an Astarion shill, and I don't want to derail this thread to promote him as always, so I'll move on from that opinion on here :P

EDIT: @Tuco @fylimar I believe the intent for why the characters initiate romances is that they wanted to make them feel like they had an agency. I do get what they mean by that, I remember the DA games and it felt artificial that that's how it worked (except for Anders, for some reason...). But I also guess everyone has their preferences but I honestly didn't have issues other than with Gale (before they fixed him) and Halsin.

Well it's nice that an Astarion shill and Shadowheart fan can have a productive and respectful discussion without it turning ugly.

I think Astarion is awesomely portrayed and well written, but he has hogged the spotlight a lot so it's nice for someone else to be acknowledged (and I feel Lae'zel and Karlach and Gale are equally deserving of attention, and Wyll deserves a more developed story so he could be appreciated on equal terms with the others.)

You know I honestly celebrate all this inclusion, it's been a long time coming and I am happy to see Larian getting awards for going above and beyond in regards to this sort of thing.

Having said that I still think dating in the workplace is a disaster waiting to happen. No matter how thirsty Halsin, Astarion, Lae'zel or Gale got I really just wanted to have a way to tell them that I wasn't interested and if they kept it up a *Report to HR* option.

But I guess that's not very adventurey.