Baldur's Gate III Announced - ...and it's coming to Google Stadia and PC

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As a fellow straight woman I agree personally, but the BG3 subreddit is full of women (seemingly real women, not troons) thirsting for Astarion. I don't get it.
Another straight woman here, I’ve actually touched on this before:

1. The whole seductive vampire trope

2. His snarky personality

3. His tragic past (women have natural nurturing instincts so it's easy for us to care about him) and the way he gradually softens up to show the real him if he's being romanced

Obviously, your mileage may vary (I’ve seen plenty of women call Astarion ugly), but that’s how I see it. Women are just suckers for vampires, bad boys and men with vulnerable sides. He may be undeniably fruity as fuck, but if female players can bang the pretty boy vampire with their female characters regardless, they’re sure as hell going to.
 
The whole thing was such a difference from Baldur's Gate 3 and the FOMO that drives its romances. I wish RPGs would stick to this sort of writing, cut the apron strings and let you fuck up relationships when you're unintuitive or not paying attention, and reward you for taking notes. It makes the writing so much more impactful.
I agree, everyone in BG3 is way too receptive. Even something as simple as a character having sexual/racial preferences would add flavor to their personality. Every single character in BG3 is yours for the taking with a couple of obvious dialog choices (or in the case of Lae'zel, nothing at all). You'd think we were all servers at the same restaurant instead of illithid mind-control victims trying to save the world.
 
I like the custom mode options. I can play honor mode with tactician, end up having to avoid conflicts and choosing battles wiser than when I usually play. Honestly, I think that would solve some of the late game stuff, I tend to do too much in act 1 and 2.
 
(I’ve seen plenty of women call Astarion ugly)
Ok glad I'm not the only one, felt like a total outlier.

Between his too-small animalesque eyes that aren't set deep enough, flat sloped forehead, and prominent teeth, poor guy looks like a shi-tzu to me. (His hair although pretty, doesn't help the shi-tzu thing) Halsin has the exact same weird features, but it works way better because I imagine he was intended to look bear like.

At first I thought the sloped forehead was a reference to that one image in the 3rd edition PHB that showed elves having crystal skull styled anatomy. But, none of the player character elf faces have that feature (I don't like those faces either because of a lack of lore accurate-ness) so I can only assume that whoever made the character model for Astarion also did Halsin but not any other elves.
 
I just like hanging out with Astarion, like people have said before, he’s just a sassy gay best friend. Once you get his approval up enough and advance through his story, he’s pretty chill to talk to.

And also as mentioned before, Astarion is okay with you fucking someone else, but only because he’s still hesitant to be physical because of used the way he was for so long.
 
I was playing Rogue Trader (mild romance spoilers) and there's a shut-in noble character who gets all her information about the outside world from books and this made her a hopeless romantic. At the very first interaction with her after she joins your team there's a book on the table that she was reading, and if you examine it you discover it's a sappy book about woo. Hours of playtime later she "accidentally" drops a silk handkerchief in front of you and if you roll an awareness check you see she's secretly looking at how you react. I remembered the book she was reading and acted out one of its corny moves and she was ecstatic. It surprised me and was kind of a sweet moment. If you're romancing her and at any point come on to her sexually she gets really angry and storms off because she wants a Jane Austen courtship. In contrast I was constantly pissing off my teammates in BG3 and not only did they all still want to fuck me, but told me I'm like no man they've ever met and that they're deeply in love with me.

The whole thing was such a difference from Baldur's Gate 3 and the FOMO that drives its romances. I wish RPGs would stick to this sort of writing, cut the apron strings and let you fuck up relationships when you're unintuitive or not paying attention, and reward you for taking notes. It makes the writing so much more impactful.

Yeah Cassia is very poshy. The straight male romancable companion is Heinrix von Calox, the Inquisition wizard.

He is a bit of a mixed bag with the traits. He has the dark secrets dangerous guy with tragic backstory, but he is the "handsome and muscled stoic" type instead of fruity, but you can cuddle him after he gets tortured by the aliens. Pretty much a dark drama romance type of thing.

He is not the Shepard style "we bang ok?" fratboy romance.

These are the straights, the rest are playersexual.

There is the smuggler lady which is closest and is what you get to regular romance when you chuck Han Solo, an arabic princess and victorian treasure hunter in a blender.

She may also be the one who tried to bang the eldar, and is generally the hornier one.

The Eldar seems like an emo bpd girl who needs uwu handholding as humans are mean to her.

The Dark eldar I don't know, but I think he wants to rape you, hilariously the only gay option.

You need to be Loyalist (lawful evil) to charm the straight guy, loyalist or good to charm the noble girl, good for the elf and smuggler girls, and Chaos(very chaotic evil) for dark elf rapeys.

So to be a fag you need to go evil, which is hilarious. And you need the based aligment for the straights.

I don't really mind plaxersexuality, but BG3 could have added more decidedly evil or good companions who need you to match aligments better on the men front. Astarion you can redeem or enable. Sharty you need to redeem. Minty wants to be mrs Tyrant. Karlack is goody two shoes wholesome chungus. Lazael is kinda neutral I think? So there is 2 good 1 evil option and 1 neutral. Gale is either enable or redeem. There is no strictly bad guy or good guy romance. Hansin is just down bad and wants his bear wand wet. No Prince Charming or Dastardly Dude.

If Aylin/Minsk was a romancable man or you could recruit/Romance Gortash or the torturer dude from the gobbo dump...
 
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Another straight woman here, I’ve actually touched on this before:

Obviously, your mileage may vary (I’ve seen plenty of women call Astarion ugly), but that’s how I see it. Women are just suckers for vampires, bad boys and men with vulnerable sides. He may be undeniably fruity as fuck, but if female players can bang the pretty boy vampire with their female characters regardless, they’re sure as hell going to.
This is a very opportune time for this discussion, since as it happens a gay friend of mine has started playing and he is not a fan of Astarion, who he described as a "traumatized bottom." He also doesn't care for the vocal performance which he says sounds like a straight man trying to do a stereotypical gay voice. He's not averse to gay characters in games, he loved Dorian in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

So yeah, maybe Astarion's fangirls are faghags subconsciously noticing that he's just a fop, not actually gay.
 
Found a lil' musical thing that seems relevant to the current conversation

ERYN
Is Astarion gay or European?
 
Late to this but I have been gifted this game recently and started playing it and I am glad you can avoid romancing the characters since I have no interest in doing that and it always bothered me about Witcher III that you basically get raped as part of the story. But some of them come on way too strong. I had to reject that green woman twice, she keeps saying she wants to taste my sweat. :(

I also read a guide about weather I should go to the Underdark or through the mountain pass first and it said do the mountain pass first... Well that turned out to be a huge mistake as I was totally underleveled for it and I had to eventually load a previous safe and do the Underdark first, which was a much better experience. I enjoy this game so far. I like the red devil woman the mostest because she is funny and a great asset in battle. My least favorite is Gale because he sucks and also needs to be fed magical items regularly? Does he get better later on cause I am so annoyed with him, I leave him at camp but he still bothers me. I am also pissed that Halsin doesn't want to be in my party after I killed the entire goblin camp for him and now he just bums it at my camp being lazy and eating my food.
 
If Aylin/Minsk was a romancable man or you could recruit/Romance Gortash or the torturer dude from the gobbo dump...
If you go the grove destruction path and return to the Goblin camp later on, you find everyone has left except one: this dude named Glomp the looter. He was the only goblin that seemed like a genuinely cool dude. He had a really cheery attitude, despite his allegiances with the Absolute. Doesn't strike me as the romance type, but I thought it would be cool to at least have him at camp as someone to talk to.

Screenshot 2023-10-31 232622.png


Only other goblin I thought was pretty cool was that guy locked in the cage who was staunchly devoted to Maglubiyet. Brakkal was his name. He got me thinking he could be a Cleric or a Paladin, and Maglubiyet his patron deity. He seemed to have companion potential too, wanting to see the Absolute destroyed for the sakes of revenge and also to bring his goblin brothers and sisters back in line under Maglybiyet.

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The war paint on his face makes me think he would ideally be a War Domain Cleric, which would be appropriate for a Maglubiyet follower.
 
I was gonna buy a gift card to use to buy the game but Amazon disabled the ability to use it. Its stupid. Wish they just made a standard physical edition or at least offered it cheaper lol. Will it go on sale?
 
Abdirak has a lot of fans, there's something really endearing about that BDSM priest. Shame he disappears after Act 1.

That aside, something kinda weird happened. I KO'd Minthara the other day, then did Gut, and then went through the necromancy ritual scene with Ragzlin. Afterwards he told me to go see Minthara and when I went to check on her, she was up and talking with her henchman again. Did I mess up here by not initiating the ritual cutscene first? Or does it not matter as long as I knock Minthara out again? I'm assuming (and hoping) it's the latter and that the game just woke her up because you're technically supposed to see Ragzlin first.
 
I didn't try it yet myself but supposedly, if you want to recruit Minthara, you need to ensure she is marked as "temporary hostile" before knocking her down. Otherwise, game will count her as dead. I also recall reading on the net that Halsin won't acknowledge you defeating three leaders if you rest after knocking her out but before talking to him. I'd reload save from before knocking her out, just to be sure.
 
Don’t talk to Minty, just commit a crime in front of her so she’s temp hostile and use a non-leathal damage attack to knock her out. Then go do as you would normally do (without a long rest) and you’re good to go.
 
I didn't talk to Minthara, I stole the scroll on the desk to get her temporarily hostile and then KO'd her. My issue is that she got back up, most likely because the game wants you to see Ragzlin first and then go to her. I don't mind knocking her out again as long as it actually sticks this time.
 
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