Should a game ask for your sexual preferences during character creation?

[Zed Clampet]

It seems to me that clicking on male/female/other/all/none at the start of a game should be a thing.

In Baldur's Gate 3, Guido and I have been under constant harassment from male characters since very early in the game. We've both been approached by every male character in our camp, and Guido also has been approached by the Emperor. Neither of us has had an opportunity to romance any of the females.

I am to the point where I will not talk to male characters in camp anymore unless I have to for their personal quest. Not only am I not interested in a gay relationship, but I'm also not interested in having to turn everyone down when they hit on me. It makes me uncomfortable. I'd like to consider my character and party members to be platonic friends with no unrequited desires simmering just below the surface, but this is very hard to do right now.

Withers, at the end of Act 2, asked me why I hadn't been with anyone. "Because I'm not gay" was not a dialogue option. I had to say, instead, that no one liked me. Thanks, game.

If I weren't a reasonable person, I'd start ranting about wokeness right now. But while I don't agree with the woke crowd's attitude or behavior, I'm starting to understand where they are coming from. Why have none of the females hit on me immediately like all of the males did?

It's even worse elsewhere. Some games go so far as having the person you rejected behave poorly towards you from that point onward.

Why can't we just choose who we wish to romance at the beginning of the game? For my new solo playthrough, I've downloaded a mod that lets me do just that, but I don't feel like we should have to rely on modders to do this. It should be an obvious thing to include in any game with romance.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Admit it, youre holding a candle for Withers.

I guess it might make sense in some games. Generally in western RPGs I think its pretty normal for the game to be OK with you romancing anyone, preetty sure Bioware has done that for a long time, Cyberpunk was like that and probably others. I'm not big on romancing in RPGs so I dont remember very well what approach other companies have. I quite often play a female character and almost always romance females if I have the option.

Not sure what happened in your game, but In BG3 I think they all hit on you depending on your choices and you can turn them all down and just be friends depending on what dialogue you pick. I'm pretty sure Karlach hits on you immediately even if you cant touch her because shes on fire all the time, and Laezel as well although again it might depend for her. Shadowheart takes a little more work I think, although she seems pretty receptive after not too long at all. As I said it might depend on your actions in the campaign, but everyones really horny in BG3, no doubt.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Admit it, youre holding a candle for Withers.

I guess it might make sense in some games. Generally in western RPGs I think its pretty normal for the game to be OK with you romancing anyone, preetty sure Bioware has done that for a long time, Cyberpunk was like that and probably others. I'm not big on romancing in RPGs so I dont remember very well what approach other companies have. I quite often play a female character and almost always romance females if I have the option.

Not sure what happened in your game, but In BG3 I think they all hit on you depending on your choices and you can turn them all down and just be friends depending on what dialogue you pick. I'm pretty sure Karlach hits on you immediately even if you cant touch her because shes on fire all the time, and Laezel as well although again it might depend for her. Shadowheart takes a little more work I think, although she seems pretty receptive after not too long at all. As I said it might depend on your actions in the campaign, but everyones really horny in BG3, no doubt.

I think maybe the reason the females didn't hit on me was perhaps because I avoided talking to them, except for Karlach, most of the time. Then there were a couple of times I accidentally clicked on Shadowheart out in the world, and actually didn't want to talk to her, so I just cycled through as fast as possible until I could get the "Leave" option. But I specifically tried to flirt with Karlach, who we didn't get until later, and I didn't see any dialogue boxes that would move the relationship forward. Closest I got was telling her she was "hot", and she told me to be careful because she was already near exploding. I even gave her a hug after Dammon fixed her up. It was a touching moment, but didn't advance anything.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I think maybe the reason the females didn't hit on me was perhaps because I avoided talking to them, except for Karlach, most of the time. Then there were a couple of times I accidentally clicked on Shadowheart out in the world, and actually didn't want to talk to her, so I just cycled through as fast as possible until I could get the "Leave" option. But I specifically tried to flirt with Karlach, who we didn't get until later, and I didn't see any dialogue boxes that would move the relationship forward. Closest I got was telling her she was "hot", and she told me to be careful because she was already near exploding. I even gave her a hug after Dammon fixed her up. It was a touching moment, but didn't advance anything.

Could be. Like I said I bet it depends on decisions you make and their alignment. I dont think Karlach is going to like you if youre slapping around tiefling kids or siding with the Absolute, but Laezel might not mind that and I think Shadowheart can turn out either good or evil depending on how you deal with her.

I know that if you free the grove from the goblins Karlach can flirt with you at the party and arrange to hook up later. She wont go all the way because shes on fire. Laezel also flirted in her way but then said she'd noticed I was already meeting with Karlach that night so she would wait, and Shadowheart did the same.

I had a magical moment with Gayle pretty early on but then I told him it was platonic somehow and he was good with that far as I remember, and I also let Astarion have a little drink to see what happens, but told him if he did it again I'd kill him.

 

[Colif]

In Baldur's Gate 3, Guido and I have been under constant harassment from male characters since very early in the game. We've both been approached by every male character in our camp, and Guido also has been approached by the Emperor. Neither of us has had an opportunity to romance any of the females.

So I assume you played male characters... you didn't specify it so I just thought I ask.

Lucky for me, action rpg generally don't ask this sort of detail, or at least, the ones I have played don't. I generally avoid games with too much talking so games like BG3 just don't interest me - BG3 being party based also is a barrier for it.

I don't think they should ask them at start of game but you should perhaps be able to block some in options. That would be fairest approach. Let player choose.

it seems a bit much to me that every friendship has to lead to more... in games. Thats not how real life works.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Could be. Like I said I bet it depends on decisions you make and their alignment. I dont think Karlach is going to like you if youre slapping around tiefling kids or siding with the Absolute, but Laezel might not mind that and I think Shadowheart can turn out either good or evil depending on how you deal with her.

I know that if you free the grove from the goblins Karlach can flirt with you at the party and arrange to hook up later. She wont go all the way because shes on fire. Laezel also flirted in her way but then said she'd noticed I was already meeting with Karlach that night so she would wait, and Shadowheart did the same.

I had a magical moment with Gayle pretty early on but then I told him it was platonic somehow and he was good with that far as I remember, and I also let Astarion have a little drink to see what happens, but told him if he did it again I'd kill him.

I need to take the advice of John Riggins (American football player) who at a black tie charity event told Sandra Day O'Conner (first woman on the US Supreme Court), "Come on Sandy, baby, loosen up," which were his last words before he passed out drunk under the table.

I need to loosen up when I play.

In other news, proving it's all about confidence, "Sandy baby" presented Riggins with a bouquet of roses at the end of a game. At least I think that's what happened. The 80s were awhile ago.

 

[Zed Clampet]

So I assume you played male characters... you didn't specify it so I just thought I ask.

Lucky for me, action rpg generally don't ask this sort of detail, or at least, the ones I have played don't. I generally avoid games with too much talking so games like BG3 just don't interest me - BG3 being party based also is a barrier for it.

I don't think they should ask them at start of game but you should perhaps be able to block some in options. That would be fairest approach. Let player choose.

it seems a bit much to me that every friendship has to lead to more... in games. Thats not how real life works.

I usually play as a male because I always do a very creative roleplay of being myself.

 

[Zloth]

Yeah, I had that trouble in Original Sin 2. I was well into the game, and suddenly found out that the character I was playing (Lohse) and the elf girl were madly in love about halfway through the game. Errrr, wut??

It tried to happen in BG3, too. Gale wanted to show me 'something magical later' - uhhh, OK. I walk over to talk to Karlach and she's going on about how Gale and I are a hot item!? I had a save from right before talking to Gale, so it was easy to correct this time. I've still got no clue what happened in D:OS2.

However, I've never had that issue with anything other than Larian games. I'm guessing it's a company problem or maybe some cultural difference.

P.S. Kudos to the original Final Fantasy 7, which figures out who you would date based on who you most often kept in your party of three, dialog choices, who you tended to talk to first, and other such things.

 

[Pifanjr]

For some reason Shadowheart is the only one who came on to me without me feeling like I really did anything to warrant it. Halsin seemed open to it, but there were clear dialogue options to keep it platonic. I don't remember Wyll ever even hinting at being interested and I think I got an option to initiate something with Karlach but it would've come entirely from my side.

Funny thing is that at some point the game decided that I cared the most about Wyll, which was very strange considering we hadn't had any kind of romantic moment up until that point.

I don't have any of the other characters in my camp, so I don't have any experience with how horny they are, but my experience with the game is that I didn't feel unnecessarily accosted by my party members. If all character interactions would be like that I don't think there needs to be an option to choose a specific sexual preference, though options are always good and it doesn't seem like it would be very hard to just hide certain dialogue options from the player based on such an option.