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Baldur's Gate 3 Dev Diary Talks Romance Mechanics
For many players, romance mechanics in large-scale RPGs are easily some of the most crucial parts of the entire experience. After all, in the likes of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or The Witcher 3, the option to form an intimate connection with an NPC gives the player a lot of freedom to shape their character and further invest in the role they're playing.
The importance of romance options is far from lost on Larian Studios, the team behind the long-awaited Baldur's Gate 3, which recently posted a ninth entry in its dev diary series covering how love interests and social mechanics work in the game. It seems the development of romantic relationships will be a crucial part of the sequel's character interactions, with Larian spending a lot of time to make these moments feel authentic to the protagonist players have built.
"When you meet the characters in this game, they're not just sitting there waiting for the player character to happen upon them," says lead writer Sarah Baylus when discussing Baldur's Gate 3's companions. "They have their own motivations, their own reason to be there, their own history, and when the player meets them they have an opportunity to form a party that has a shared goal."
She goes on to highlight that, because of this, the characters players will meet are all from very different walks of life and will clash with each other and the protagonist depending on their decisions. These can range from choices made in one on one conversations to moral decisions made out in the open-world, with NPCs having an opinion on the player based around more than if they said a few nice things to them in a private conversation.
Build these relationships up enough and romance can blossom, with Baylus claiming that quiet moments around the campfire can build relationships (as well as tensions). To accompany these growing romances, Larian Studios has spent a considerable amount of time making sure players can expect intimate scenes and moments regardless of what race they choose to play as in Baldur's Gate 3. It seems like there's a large number of great moments that can be shared with the vast majority of characters, with motion-captured cutscenes being shown off during the dev diary.
As Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke tells fans during the diary's conclusion, the game isn't too far away now, with the early-access version of Baldur's Gate 3 slated to hit PC and Stadia on October 6. It'll be the first mainline entry in the series since Baldur's Gate 2: Shadow of Amn back in 2000, marking a 20-year jump between games, so players will no doubt be expecting something extraordinarily special. It'll be interesting to see whether it can live up to expectations when it debuts in just over a week's time.
Baldur's Gate 3 enters early-access on October 6 for PC and Google Stadia.
