Romance scenes might not be the intended primary goal of Baldur’s Gate 3, but considering the way many players discuss the feature, one might think the game is just as much a dating simulator as it is one of action and adventure.
Discussions about romance scenes got especially steamy on Sept. 24 with fans questioning some of the logistical and anatomical issues that are posed by the game’s graphics. Before going any further, we’d like to give a quick spoiler warning and also advise that readers be mindful of the company they’re keeping while reading this article. It might have some NSFW content, depending on your employer.
In a post to the game’s subreddit, one player pointed out a couple of romance scenes that are especially perplexing. One in particular that seems to be confusing fans comes in the House of Hope, where we find Haarlep, a shapeshifter that serves as Raphael’s servant for intimate purposes.
In the scene, Haarlep discloses that Raphael gets pleasure out of being intimate with someone that looks identical to him, which is spot on considering the cambion’s nature. But Haarlep offers to romance you in either the form of a male or a female. Regardless what gender and sex your character is and regardless which one you request Haarlep to be, the same scene takes place.
And if you’re a female character that requested Haarlep to remain a male, the lustful scene doesn’t make much sense anatomically. It’s almost as if the scene was designed for players to be male and request that the Haarlep be a female.
That’s not the only scene that players seem to take issue with, either. The same poster to social media mentioned that a scene with Halsin suggests that he isn’t quite as experienced with the ladies. Or perhaps, the scene was only designed for him to be intimate with a man. Regardless of what the design choice was, it seems as though Larian didn’t necessarily make adjustments to scenes to account for certain intimate situations to take place. Fans in the thread have their own, uh, suggestions on how to make those adjustments to romance scenes, but we’ll leave that reading to you.
While Larian certainly put a lot of work into accounting for nearly every possibility in the game, it seems to fans that the devs didn’t think a woman would want to get busy with a devil or a hunkish druid like Halsin.
