Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Current companions/romance options

Gale and Wyll only (so far) flirt with female NPCs and will only (so far) sleep with Lae'zel at the party, not with each other or Astarion. They're very straight-coded outside of interactions with the PC. I'm not sure if Larian realized they were doing that.

Wyll doesn't even show interest in the PC until the party. And getting Gale to show interest - i.e. triggering his pre-party cutscenes - is stupidly difficult at the moment.

I've always been on the fence in regards to companion sexuality. Dragon Age had characters that had specific sexual orientations, or even racial preferences, and I know that the community were mixed about it. Other games have companions being "playersexual" where they will always flirt or romance the PC regardless of their various attributes.

I'd like to include the the idea of evil/good/law/chaos attributes amongst things like appearance, race, and gender too. I know your actions have a lot of influence in your companion approval level, but in other games (and, to a certain extent, this one too) its entirely possible to game the system and get max approval with companions despite your actions. I think it's a little odd for your good companion to try and romance the evil PC unless you're trying for some kind of redemption through love story, or you're taking the stance that your evil PC is fooling them into believing that you're a good person.

On the one hand, if done well it can create variation and add to overall feel of a character. But on the other hand, having playersexual companions give players more choice and agency to make their own story without the player having to cater too hard to the needs of the romance plot.

My main contention is that if you don't make companions player-sexual, then you end up with a situation like Kingmaker presented, where the game designers created:
1 heterosexual boy,
1 heterosexual girl,
1 bisexual male-female couple
1 bisexual pair of twin sisters

A whole bunch of other very nice companions that would have been excellent for romance but were not options (Ekun, Linzi, even Jubi if that's your thing... I'll probably pass on Nok-nok though).

But, the result was actually that, if you were playing a homosexual male, you had one single romance option available to you, and that one only if you were comfortable breaking him up with his current (female) partner. Heterosexual female characters had 2 possible options only (again, one of which involves breaking up the male from his current partner), while heterosexual male PCs had 5 options, and homosexual females had 4 (one involving required relationship breaking). It ended up being deeply dissatisfying, *despite* the game designers going to great lengths to try to include NPC characters of varied and different tastes and preferences. You simply can't cater to a fair spread of experience and options for everyone if you hard lock the romance options to pre-fixed sexualities.

Just a gentle advance reminder to avoid straying into discussions and opinions on real-world sexuality. Keep it BG3, please.

You don't have to play evil for Shadowheart approval. Despite her being a priestess of an evil goddess, she approves, if you do good things and be kind to animals. So I don't see the problem there. I'm not even sure, if you get a lot of approval with her, if you play evil.

As of noe it seems everyone is bisexual towards the player char. While this may be good to leave all options open for players it indeed clashes with the individual npc characters.

Cyberpunk2077 did it good. Some NPC were open to homosexual relationships, some not.

I would like it if larian decides the sexuality of the NPC while writing them and let them act accordingly.

I am actually going to disagree with you, personally I found CP2077 relationships very limited. I am still pissed my male V couldn't date Judy, and was basically just offered one woman to date.

Yeah I was going to point to Cyberpunk as an example of player-sexuality misfiring. Unless your character was bisexual you only ever had a single potential romantic partner, take it or leave it.

As I stated in my feedback, personally I found npc sexuality too fluid. So long as there are some options for people that are interested in romance arcs of whatever persuasion, that should be sufficient and I would think it should kinda be written into the character in question (eg npc X likes guys, npc Y likes girls, npc z will go either way in the right circumstances etc). I feel that's more true to life.

An alternative way of running it would be for the npcs to be flexible but there are certain steps you have to take/signs you have to give/dialogue options that have to be chosen in order to unlock either homosexual or heterosexual romance with them.

At the moment it's a free for all even where you've shown absolutely no romantic inclination of any sort.

Anyway, I'm not into romance in a big way and don't think it's anywhere near the top of the list of issues to be addressed.

I agree with this. I personally feel that until we get a diverse mix of writers writing diverse characters, writers always tend to miss something in their portrayal of non-heterosexual characters. The characters often times can be summarized by a trope (bisexual rogues), have wayyyy too much of their personal story hinge on their sexuality as if it was their only personality trait, or straight up have less content than the heterosexual characters (limited as side characters). I just want normal characters who happen to be gay or bi. I feel that writers are able to write believable non-heterosexual characters when they write them NORMAL first. Instead of applying tropes, tokenizing them for representation, or fixating on niche focus groups that are only a small representation of an already minority community.

It's why playersexuality works - because the player gets to interpret the companions' sexualities and the writers get to just write characters.

I've watched Bioware wrestle with this for years and also have a personal bone to pick with them in this regard. Time and time again, they will have a strong female character and make her straight only (not that making strong female characters straight is bad, but that it's the only way Bioware knows how to write them). I could name you the character in each of their games, but the straw that broke the camels back for me is Cora from Andromeda. While I'd only feel comfortable arguing that characters like Handmaiden, Aveline, Cassandra could at least be bi - Cora on the other hand seemed to lend itself better to being written as a lesbian. But again, this strong female character only likes men and her whole plot line involves her deferring to said male main character, despite her being overqualified and better equipped at the job. They basically neutered her, and in the context of a straight romance it almost summarized how the company seems to approach characters like these.

When writers write non-heterosexual characters its almost as if they think there's only one way to write them. While even in BG3 there are some tropes, at least I get to choose how I want to interpret it. If you prefer to think of Gale and Wyll as straight and their propositions are just drunken compliments of your good deeds, you are actually able to play that way. If you think Gale took "married to science" too literally or think Wyll's attraction to women is probably tainted at this point, you can also choose to interpret it that way. You are supposed to play with what is and isn't stated to craft the game how you want. You are not limited, and that enhances the game.

And that is fine. BG3 is not a dating simulator.
Not getting your preffered romance is much better than making every NPC bisexual/playersexual for romance while the rest of the character is written completely different (or having to write each NPC as bisexual in the first place).

I like how BG3 handles it with all romances being bisexual/playersexual. It is fair to all, and I like having choices in an rpg.

Lol, same here. I played a male character for my first run through CP2077. Not being able to romance Judy, the most adorable NPC in the game, had me doing a complete second run through CP2077 as a female PC. And I don't even care that much about romance in games, but Judy was just so well-written as a character.

In BG3 I don't really care about romance because none of the companions are as well-written as Judy in CP2077. They're basically cardboard cutouts with issues. Fine as adventuring companions, but they're the kind of people that would have me keeping some distance in real life with all their problems.

Maybe the remaining 2 or 3 companion choices will be more likeable, but the Larian devs have this tendency to create NPCs with highly dramatic problems in their lives. That's not the only way to make an NPC interesting, but it seems to be Larian's main approach.

I don't get your argument. How is establishing a character's sexuality and then throwing it away 'cause reasons any better than not establishing anything and running with whatever?

I guess an argument could be made about Gale being pansexual, but Wyll isn't in any way, shape or form a bisexual Alistair, aka a character who could realistically run with whatever because he's written in such a way to leave his sexuality moderately open, he's a full on Dorian from Inquisition.

Wyll's whole backstory is all about a woman and in the game itself he flirts in his very banter with the female companions (both points are also true for Gale), but then it's all just thrown aside for convenience's sake. There's just a clash in writing and mechanics, just like in other elements of this game's plot.

That's a fair take but there are still people who do want this stuff. Whichever way you go you'll make someone unhappy.

As far as BG3 goes I think it would probably go better by leaning towards characters having a set sexuality. Given how appealing the character's aren't it's going to feel like a conga line rejecting 8 companions in a row when that first party happens.

I don't like the way sexuality is being implemented in any single game. Bioware itself is also one of the companies that disappointed me more than anyone. DAO, they have the typical set up you expect from set sexuality, everyone is straight but 1 bi option for the "gay", interestingly enough, not denying the straight audience of anyone. These kinds of set up you see in almost every single game with set sexuality like Fire Emblem, Greedfall, Star Wars, Mass Effect, etc. The one bi option tends to be the flirtatious sleep with anything that move. Yeah, that's why people are bisexual; it must be because they have no standard, bravo for progressive. Straight options are always a lot more numerous, but then people would say "of course that would be the case, cause it reflects the real population". Yeah, I'm sorry for being part of the minority and has to accept the lesser number, thanks for reminding me of that, games. In these kind of situations, the gays are always being shorted, and they tend to either accept the option they were given, being full of stereotypes, or nothing. We get to DAI, we get into cases where they cut out the "gay" from bi Cullen and Solas from time constraint and things like that. Solas was an interesting situation because they said they removed it because of the depraved bisexuals. You can see that writers are being afraid of offending people, and write stuffs around eggshells because of stereotyping. It really limits the writing protentional when the writers see the characters as sexuality instead of person. Who they are attracted to have no bearing on who they are. Cullen's files for males were in the game and they didn't have time to add, essentially, gay audience wasn't important enough to add them in. With characters like Dorian, his story turns into a gay conversion therapy. His story is about him being gay, same as characters like Gil from Mass Effect Andromeda, a story about gay adoption, or Steve from Mass Effect 3, a story about gay dead husband. Their sexuality defined their story instead of just being a part of them. Bioware was one of the pioneers for gay romance in video games but they haven't done a single game where they represent the set sexuality right. I haven't seen any single game as the matter of fact.

The dating aspect has always been there, and it's not strange for all the opposite sex to just be attracted to you but when the same sex get added into the equation, it is when it becomes an issue. At the end of the day, it adds nothing to the story or characters outside of some people who could say, "oh, this character is gender gated, interesting". Meanwhile, it ruins the game for the people who are stuck with the 1 option they don't like just to satisfy some others who don't even use the features. Let people keep their set sexuality, I'm satisfied with my gay fiction and be able to romance the one I want instead of the one option the developers decide to either pull out of the hat at random or picked because they fit into certain gay stereotype.

Let's say this game has set sexuality, I already see people see the depraved bisexual Astarion as the bisexual and making Gale and Wyll as straight because they have history with females. It's funny when God of Wars developers said that Kratos could be bi or his son could be gay and it would fit their character. Meanwhile, people are angry because they couldn't see these characters as anything but straight.

Just for the record, bisexual and playersexual are not the same things. And when it comes to my games, I am okay with playersexual, but not to having all romance options be bisexual.

Which one is it for BG3? I wasn't sure. Either is fine with me.

The term 'playersexual' has come to mean that the NPC will be attracted to the PC, no matter what their sex or gender. It is a way of allowing the player to develop relationships with the NPC that they choose, rather than the ones that the developers have chosen for their PC design choices.

I'm more in favour of romances being playersexual rather than having a set sexuality. Both options have pros and cons but I'm more in favour of player freedom and players having options when it comes to who they want their character to romance if that's what they choose to do.

I used to be on the side of preferring set sexualities because I felt that it added to characterisation, which is one of the pros. My priorities regarding that changed after playing CP2077 due to how limited the choices were and due to the disparity when it came to content between the available romanceable characters.

What I will say in the case of BG3 is that I don't feel like some of the characters should come on so strongly at the party or they shouldn't all proposition you at that particular story beat. That gets really weird. At this point, I just have my character approach whoever I want them to romance first before talking to the other companions. You don't seem to get blatantly propositioned after that. Well, except for Lae'zel but I'm not surprised in her case.