If the reams of art and lovelorn fanfiction are anything to go by, Baldur’s Gate 3’s romance system was one of its most successful parts. Keep, Larian, your remarkably complex imsim-y RPG gameplay; we just want to kiss vampires.
But did you know that, in the fantasies of BG3’s writers, it would have been possible for others to kiss vampires*? In an interview in the most recent edition of Edge magazine, Lae’zel’s writer Kevin VanOrd admitted that the BG3 romance system we got is not, perhaps, the BG3 romance system of his dreams.
“We had a lot of great ideas that never made it into the game because of time constraints”, said VanOrd. For instance, what if the romance system had a kind of platonic equivalent? “I would love to have a friendship system in addition to a romance system, where you get special events like dates.”
I absolutely would have found Gale more tolerable if he had tried to get me to join his five-a-side football club instead of relentlessly trying to bone me.
Also? “I think it would have been really cool for characters to have romances with each other, outside of the player,” said VanOrd. I’ve never agreed with anything harder. One of my favourite parts of Mass Effect 3—a pretty flawed game, all told—was that characters like Tali and Garrus would kick off their own little romance plotlines if you weren’t buttering up either of them. It was cool! It made the world feel more alive, and it made my character feel less like the centre of the entire universe.
But make no mistake, VanOrd isn’t glum about how BG3’s romance system turned out in the end. It’s just that, like possibly ever game dev who ever lived, he would have done more given more time.
He’s still rather chuffed at how much the game’s characters continue to set the internet on fire and, yes, he has seen your AO3 smut: “Something that makes me happy is getting to see all the wonderful artwork—safe for work and not safe for work—with which players interpret the characters.”
*Yes, I know Lae’zel and Astarion hook up if you reject them. Please do not send me emails about this.
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