Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Dial back the romance.

Woah! Wait what? I thought incels never get to have sex at all? Hence the name: involuntary celibate.
What do you mean by incel? Obviously we don't mean the same thing.
Also what is wrong with christian puritanical christian attitudes towards sex?
I much prefer their ethics to that of the polyamory crowd.

I much rather have the game not be a fantasy harem simulator. It shouldn't be every companions natural inclination to want to get in the players pants. Someone said this earlier, but all the want for "romantic entitlement" is really weird to fight for. Its literally "yes, everyone should love me." I don't see wanting the game to friend zone you with characters that only want to be your friend as alt right. It just seems like a natural character's mentality for a specific character's lore.

Dragon Age Origins did this and I think it was great. Alistair was hetero and it fit his narrative, he was a match for Anora and for Morrigan to save the world. Same thing for Morrigan, if you were a male, you could fit in here hetero narrative to reach the ending with her storyline ending. While their was the bi characters of Leliana and Zevran. It fit there narrative and lore to be bi if the player choose to pursue them. Not everyone was just bi to just be bi.

This thread seems to be reaching its end of life and I am probably going to regret getting involved in it again but...



Its not about wanting restrictions, its about wanting more realistic relationship dynamics simulated within the game. Part of realistic relationship, is having someone reject you. So yes, I do want a companion saying, "sorry, I am not interested in you for reasons x, y and z," because that is something in line with what a real person would do. In the real world, people will reject you flat out based on your appearance or gender, so I see no reason why these are not valid reasons within a game. Appearance is probably too complicated a parameter, but there are actually 3 good "rejection criteria" you can use within a game - race, class and gender. Say a character is very anti magic and suspicious of spellcasters, they could rationally reject someone based off of class. A gay male character would reject women off of gender and a racially prejudiced character could reject based off of race. These are all valid tools which can be used to make more believable characters.

The fantasy world does not owe it to us to provide us with a romance, I am perfectly fine with going through the entire game and being rejected by everyone due to those criteria, it just means that on another playthrough, I could have a different experience.

Well, technically, he's not real a vampire, but a spawn. And yes, all vampires are hot as hell, but I just don't think poledancer are hot in this... noble way. Just my opinion, of course. ^ ^

On that note, Astarion's rejection is absolutely amazing AND funny. Astarion is like Zevran, but done right and more classy.

Here it is, and I love it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVlXlvgdYU&t=82s

Why do I love Astarion so much? WHY???

I mean, in real world, you might get rejected for being unattractive. So you're not going to get that "dynamic" where it looks realistic enough anyway. Something will still be "wrong".

Just because you cannot create a "perfect" simulation, should not get in the way of creating a better one. Perfect is the enemy of good. There is a whole spectrum between, "the npc exists solely to please the player," and, "the npc is a perfectly simulated personality," and there is no reason to default at the one end simply because the other end is not attainable.

Are you trying to do a gotcha here cause you're coming across like a weirdo dude

Before playing and knowing that the companions have an approval rating (whatever you call it) I suspected that would have an effect on romance and I wish it did!

I must have done almost everything that would get shadowheart to hate me by just approving astarion and Lazeal, and yet she still invites me for a lovely evening?????

I like the idea of companions having no restrictions regarding race or gender because at the end of the day it's a fantasy game, if you dont want to romance a certain companion because you dont see them liking x race or x gender then that's up to you on how you play your game! But dont ruin it for other players who have a completely different view from you! Its DnD we all play differently my good G!

The only restrictions I do want is the approval and disapproval system set in place on romance because it just makes sense!

I don't know exactly how the approval and the romance work together... There are some decisions that affect the possibility of triggering romance (for example, siding with the goblins block any chance of romancing shadowheart) but I'm not sure how approval factors in

I think it's a bug.

I don't have romance with Gale even at a high level of approval, as if that's not enough, he always says "we're just friends". Shadow is always on a neutral level and she always tells me to go away and look for fun somewhere else.

Only Astarion and Lae on a neutral level are really willing to offer themselves to you, because they don't care about this night.

Idk about Wyll

Ahhh I see I must have had a buggy game, I know wylls romance was bugged and I never even tried to do anything with gale! But I know you have to have a specific cutscene to occur for his romance to trigger!

How so?

Frankly, with sex being something not talked about enough IRL (which harms relationships), I consider it a good thing to be more open and upfront about it.

Also, there's a difference between sleeping with you and "romance". Lae'zal makes this VERY clear. You're her pleasure toy, not her lover. She's one of those people that will use you BEFORE getting close to you. It's not too different then drow. You see a bit of that in BG2. Just not with the companions themselves.

If anything they need to dial the romance up in places. Have REAL talks about knowing each other. We get a good bit of that with Shadowheart. But you don't always need someones life story. Depends on selfish/selfless someone is from the start. If it leans more towards selfish, more talks. If it leans more towards selfless, then the talks involved would consist more of things like "Giving people what they want makes it easier".

And then you got to squeeze it all inbetween the fighting and bloodshed. It aren't easy.

I have a good number of such talks with people daily. Get passed closed minds. People changing minds. etc. I could rake my brain and see if I could come up with anything to add. There's "patterns". But I'd also have to tailor to each character while doing that. It's a mtter of adaptability. Adaptation factors in a lot actually. Think of it this way. Remain sheltered only in what you know and you limit yourself. Branch out and explore in areas you're not yet comfortable with and you'll find there's nothing to fear/worry about. Provided the right context is established in those situations. Regardless of what dynamic you're going with, the same logic of "If you assume and didn't actually find out" can be used. What we really need is challenging people. with logic like that. This way you'd give the companions a reason to explore more with the player.

The "If you don't know then how can you know what you like or not or what you're interested in or not" can be very effective. Combined with other elements. Which could be all the more efficient on someone like Shadowheart. Due to her memory loss. Things will pick up once at Baldur's gate itself, so it will be interesting to see how far they push such things. For all characters involved.

Personally I think I'm essentially neutral in the 'defined sexuality' vs 'playersexuality' of characters, since I think it essentially comes down to a trade-off of realism vs player freedom. I might lean more on the side of player freedom, but it's not as if I don't love plenty of games with gated romances (and let's face it, if they did gate some romances, someone's just going to mod the gate away within a month anyway...).

What I would like to see, though, are some actual flirtation options in pre-party dialogue, so my character can perhaps intentionally trigger romance options with the character(s) they might be interested in, instead of having the entire camp suddenly be horny/jealous over them when you get to that scene. Because really, while that's funny for my warlock who would if given the chance flirt with everything that moves, it's going to look a tiny bit nonsensical when I'm playing my socially awkward wizard who definitely wouldn't have given the entire party that impression. It would also rescue the people who felt uncomfortable with certain characters coming on to their PC by making it the player's decision to initiate rather than the companion's decision.