Summary

  • Baldur's Gate 3 offers endless interactions, allowing players complete freedom.
  • The viral bear romance scene put the game on the map, pushing boundaries.
  • Larian's game showcases deep choices and unique narratives, attracting a wide audience.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is such a deep game that no player could possibly have experienced every possible interaction. I know I’ve missed countless side quests and character interactions on my three playthroughs (none of which I’ve had the guts to finish yet), but that’s part of the fun. That’s why I have three playthroughs. If I continue at this rate, I’ll die with 153 playthroughs of the game, still yet to see an ending. Even then, there’ll probably be something that I’ve missed.

Something that nobody missed, however, was the bear romance scene. You’re probably picturing it right now just from reading the headline. Even if you didn’t romance Halsin – how does it feel to live with a terrible taste in men, by the way? – the scene was played in a pre-launch livestream and took the world by storm.

“Have you ever considered the joys and pleasures of sexual congress with a wildshaped Druid?” lead writer Adam Smith wrote in the accompanying press release. “Because at Larian, we have.”

As Astarion and Halsin-bear got down to business, the world shook. News sites picked up the unusual coupling and the scene went viral on social media. A year on, Baldur's Gate 3 senior narrative designer Baudelaire Welch dived back into the pool of sexual freedom at the Develop: Brighton conference (thanks GamesRadar for the spot). “This scene feels like a watershed moment in game history, where the fanfiction community feels like they're not a subculture, but are the majority audience being catered to in a scene and in the game as a whole.”

Halsin almost wasn't romanceable at all.

Welch is right, but I worry he’s downplaying the impact of this trailer. His Develop: Brighton presentation focused on the fans who’d been following Baldur’s Gate 3 throughout early access, those who labelled Halsin as “Druid daddy”. Larian wanted to give the fanfiction writers something back, let them know that their fantasies are being catered to, and to make a joke that “the gay bear becomes the gay bear”.

While I’m sure this was a watershed moment for fanfiction writers in the Baldur’s Gate community and a statement to the wider gaming world that you really could do anything in this RPG, it was even more important than that. The viral nature of the clip made Baldur’s Gate 3 known to thousands, if not tens of thousands, more players who suddenly realised that this wasn’t just any old cRPG. This was something different.

Without this livestreamed bear action, I don’t think Baldur’s Gate 3 would have launched as hot as it did. I think it still would have been critically lauded, but it might have been a great game with a dedicated audience telling you that you really should check it out rather than a world-beating, award-scooping phenomenon that we’ll remember for decades to come.

It still would have been successful, it still would have grown into one of the year’s best loved games through word of mouth. But I don’t think it would have reached the casual audience. A casual audience who likely didn’t even romance Halsin in their playthrough (he didn’t make the top three romances, according to Larian) and, if they did, likely asked him to stay in his human form.

Close

The bear romance scene didn’t turn on the masses. Gamers aren’t a swarm of people solely motivated by a penchant for paws. But it told us that Larian was pulling out all the stops for Baldur’s Gate 3. It was letting us do whatever we wanted, no matter how spicy our desires. This wasn’t another railroaded RPG with a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ choice at every crossroads, it was deeper than that. And we wanted to check out just how deep it went.

The bear romance made us curious, and stepping foot into Baldur’s Gate 3 made us realise that Larian hadn’t just dug a deep well, it had excavated an ocean. Our choices were not only deep, they were wide, too, and we could approach any problem with more options than we could think of. The chapel you enter soon after landing on the Storm Coast is a testament to that, and after quickly understanding that this was an extraordinary game, we all stuck around.

I’m not saying that none of this would have happened without the bear romance, but it certainly helped things on their way. It just goes to show that for a successful game, all you need is brilliant characters, perfect writing, vastly deep mechanics, and a vampire shagging a bear.

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