Baldur’s Gate 3 – prudes will have to grin and bear it (Picture: Larian Studios)
A reader is impressed by many things in Baldur’s Gate 3 but especially its adult approach to romance, sex, and nudity.
Like seemingly every PC owner this month, I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3… a lot. It’s a fantastic game and were it not for the slight dip in quality towards the end I’d say it’s as close to perfect as any game I’ve ever played. It’s a great role-player, the combat is fantastic, and the dialogue is great.
It’s complicated, sure, and I imagine the interface looks bewildering in clips, but it’s a full-bodied video game that doesn’t dumb down anything and is clearly made by a very passionate team that has crammed it full of unnecessary, but very welcome, details.
It’s a game for adults, with some complex issues about politics and personal identity but it’s also adult in that the first thing on most characters’ minds is the same thing that real people spend most of their time thinking about: sex.
Thanks to puritanical America there is almost no sex or nudity in video games, with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas famously having to remove its planned sex mini-game (which somehow got left in the code and, well… just google Hot Coffee mod).
There are a few exceptions, with Mass Effect being probably the most famous, although that’s actually super tame and has no real nudity of any kind (I think at one point you see someone’s bum and maybe the side of their breasts?).
Baldur’s Gate 3 works quite similarly to Mass Effect in how romances work, in the sense that you’ve got to talk to and get to know your companions for a long time before they agree to do anything. Except in Baldur’s Gate 3 you get full frontal nudity and something that’s actually 18-rated rather than PG.
I don’t want to come across as too much of a schoolboy, giggling at things they’re not meant to see, but the nudity isn’t actually the point. It’s nice to see a game equating an adult rating with something other than violence (probably because it’s made in European rather than America) but the real reason it’s good is because the whole thing just seems more romantic and real.
I know it’s not something most gamers think of when they’re comparing KD ratios or DPS rates but when was the last time you saw a good romance in a video game?
Can you even name a good romance from a game in the last 10 years? There are some, but for some reason they all involve lesbian couples; I think because developers want to be seen as embracing diversity but only in a way they think will not put anyone off.
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The number of male homosexual relationships are near zero and yet Baldur’s Gate 3 has plenty of them, because it’s not making its decisions based on what the marketing department tells them but what they think is good and right.
This means plenty of heterosexual couples too (obviously, it depends on who you romance and who’s in your party), with everyone represented and everyone acting like a relatable, normal person (even if they’re not actually a human). It’s great but I’m not going to even bother saying other games should use it as inspiration, because I know they won’t. Not mainstream games anyway.
So well done Badlur’s Gate 3 for being adult in far more ways than any other video game ever manages.
By reader Johnson
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A reader is impressed by many things in Baldur’s Gate 3 but especially its adult approach to romance, sex, and nudity.