Let’s start with a few reminders about my twelfth playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3:
-
The main protagonist of playthrough 12 is Amaranth. She’s a Lolth-sworn Drow Mystic of the Order of the Ascetic, though that won’t have much relevance in this blog post.
-
The primary relationship goal of this playthrough was to fully engage with Shadowheart. I mainly wanted to see what the kissing scenes looked like.
This time around, the relationship path was the most successful it’s been any of my playthroughs.
It started with Lae’zel. She’s attracted to fighting and victory. If she sees you winning at least one battle, she’s likely to initiate a sex scene with your character.
A reminder: BG3 is structured in three Acts. In Act 1, any relationship that you form with any of the characters is still casual and tentative.
Which means that you can ask Shadowheart if she’ll join you late at night for a chat.
Morning arrives.
A couple of your companions remark on this new connection.
It certainly doesn’t stop Gale from making a play of his own.
It even affects the characters’ banter. Note how, in this phase of the relationships, the other characters assumed that you had connections with both Lae’zel and with Shadowheart at the same time.
Lae’zel, after seeing you victorious in several battles, decides it’s time for the next phase of your relationship. She comes to you one night.
From playthrough 7, I knew that if I said “yes,” it would lock me into a relationship with Lae’zel. Certainly she’s worthy of one, but this time my heart belonged to a Shadow.
That marked the end of the relationship with Lae’zel. We were just colleagues from that point on.
Shadowheart, however, continued to drop hints.
Even Withers got in a word.
We come to a point in the game where Shadowheart has a major choice to make: Choose the Dark, or choose the Light.
In playthrough 9, I observed that Astarion’s kisses changed if you chose a Dark path for him. I wanted to see if the same might be true for Shadowheart. So I chose the Dark path for her, then had Amaranth kiss her.
In particular, Shadowheart had an interesting move in one of her kisses: She’d get behind you, kiss each shoulder, and then come back and kiss face-to-face.
Then I restored the game from a save and had Shadowheart choose the Light side. However, I did not detect any difference in the kisses.
However, before we conclude that that there is no difference ever…
An unexpected tangent
I know you want to get to the sex scene. In fact, there’s more than one. But I am going to take a detour first.
Some of the BG3 voice actors have chosen to play the game and stream their playthroughs. They play live on Twitch, with some having either a simultaneous or delayed copy on YouTube.
The ones I’ve found on YouTube are:
- Devora Wilde, who played Lae’zel.
- Theo Solomon, who played Wyll.
- Neil Newbon, who portrayed Astarion. He also provided motion capture and direction for many of the characters
- Neil Roberts, who was one of the voices of the Dark Urge.
- Some actors who streamed BG3 playthroughs for a while but stopped:
- Samantha Béart who portrayed Karlach;
- Tracy Wiles who played Jaheira;
- Amelia Tyler who was the the Narrator;
- Shaun Mendum who voiced Scratch (never forget your Potion of Animal Speaking).
- Last on my list but far from the least: Jennifer English and Aliona Baranova. The former portrayed Shadowheart. The latter was a director for Shadowheart (and other characters) and provided the voice for Corinna the squirrel.
I certainly have not watched the hundreds of hours of all of their videos. In fact, I’ve watched none of them all the way through. I just skim them until they come to some key cutscenes. I like to hear the actor’s comments on the performances during the scenes.
Apart from that, I don’t learn anything about the game from watching the videos. With the exception of Neil Newbon, none of them know much about the D&D system. Neil knows the system, but I think he’s chosen to play the game at a higher difficulty level (as well he should given his experience!) so his combats are just as long as those of the inexperienced players at lower difficulty.
The last pair on my list deserves special mention. Jennifer and Aliona met while working on BG3 and became a couple. They play the game together, often taking turns between controlling the same character. They present a positive image of two people in a relationship. The world needs more of this.
Apart from what I’m about to mention (tangent almost over!), they’re the ones who came up with Moon Lesbians. I wouldn’t have dared invent that term on my own, but if actual lesbians are OK with it, then so am I. I may have cause to mention the characters of Dame Aylin and Isobel in the future, and I want to give context for the reference.
And yes, the actors who had the chance have chosen to romance the characters they played. (Actually, I haven’t watched enough of Theo’s videos to know if his character has romanced anyone.)
Back to the point
In this video, Aliona discusses how she worked with Jen to include subtle differences in both the vocal and motion-capture performances between Light and Dark Shadowheart. I don’t think this would have included the kissing sequences, since those were added to the game later. It might be that if I continued on the path of Dark Shadowheart armed with this knowledge, I would have spotted the difference.
But that must wait for a future playthrough. I wanted to continue with Light Shadowheart, since the Dark path might have excluded one or two characters from the future party of adventurers. Since this was a banter run, everyone had to join us.
At last, Shadowheart invites you a private meeting by a lake.
But that’s not the end of Amaranth’s lively adventures of the flesh!
However, this post is getting long. I’ll split my originally-planned post into two, and save mountain-climbing for next time.