Larian Studios, the team behind Baldur’s Gate 3 and the upcoming Divinity, is holding a Reddit AMA right now in which it talks about everything from its highly publicized use of genAI to the likely-dead dream of a Switch 2 port for Baldur’s Gate 3. It is also talking about lessons it’s learned in its 30 years, and one thing it took away from BG3 is clear: Companions should ease into being horny rather than professing their love for you very quickly.
In the AMA, senior writer Kevin VanOrd responded to a question about what Larian would like to improve on, and he gave two encouraging answers: companions having deeper, more complex relationships with each other, and a much slower lead-in to romantic relationships than in previous games.
“Companion relationships,” he wrote. “Firstly, to have more interaction between companions – not just with more and better banter, but to have them develop deeper relationships with each other, just as they do with players. Secondly, to ramp up player friendship and romance more subtly, so relationship building feels natural.”
Putting aside the horny ramp for a second, the distinction VanOrd makes between deeper companion relationships and more banter is an important one. I’ve been replaying Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and one thing BioWare really cooked with in that game is that your party is very clearly establishing their own relationships and dynamics with each other, regardless of your input and presence. Some of those result in romantic relationships, others solidify platonic ones with shared interests that go beyond the ambient dialogue you’ll hear running through the world.
I just stumbled upon an early cutscene of the detective Neve and the elven archeologist Bellara bonding over their shared love of detective stories, and Baldur’s Gate 3 could have definitely used more moments like that to help dispel the feeling that party members are living on islands and largely separate from each other. Shadowheart and Lae’zel were better about this than most pairings in Baldur’s Gate 3, as their violent rivalry became mutual respect, so Larian’s definitely got it in them.
That horny ramp-up, though; I’m sure anyone who felt like Gale or Halsin were too forward in Baldur’s Gate 3 will be glad to know Larian wants to rectify this in Divinity. The studio has since said that characters’ quick confessions of love were initially a glitch in the game’s approval system, but even after a patch, it hasn’t stopped folks from associating Baldur’s Gate 3 with its horned-up camp crew. The RPG’s high-production sex scenes have solidified it as one of the more mainstream “horny” games on the market, so it’s good to know Larian is cognizant of the criticism and wants to address it in future games.