About a year ago, Larian Studios went viral with a scene in Baldur’s Gate 3 where a character becomes intimate with a bear. Now, senior developer Baudelaire Welch has explained how the scene came to be in the game.
Which scene is it? The particular scene is one of the options for a hot night with the character Halsin. If Halsin has joined you in Act 1 and you have brought his storyline to a positive conclusion in Act 2, you can start a romance with him.
The sex scene with him has two scenarios, in one of which he transforms into a bear for the act.
Larian Studios went viral about a year ago with exactly this scene: They showed excerpts of how the playable character Astarion engages in this very act. MeinMMO editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski also talks about it in the GameStar Talk:
“Turning point in the history of video games,” says the developer
What does the developer say? Baudelaire Welch is a senior developer at Larian, specifically working as a Senior Narrative Designer. During the Develop:Brighton 2024, he spoke about the infamous bear sex scene. He specifically addressed the ever-growing community of fanfiction writers and readers:
Romances are one of the longest-lasting parts of a fandom that one can create. People will write about a good romance in fanfiction for years to come. The character analyses in these debates will continue for a very long time.
Take the bear scene in Baldur’s Gate 3. Why did it impress people so much? That’s what it meant to me when I was involved in Baldur’s Gate 3.
This scene feels like a turning point in the history of video games, where the fanfiction community feels like they are not a subculture but the majority of the audience being addressed in a scene and in the game as a whole.
Baudelaire Welch, 11.07.2024
Furthermore, the developer states that Halsin was never meant to be a romance option. The overwhelming feedback from players during early access prompted Larian to make more of his character. They are also aware that players have given Halsin nicknames such as Daddy Halsin
or Druid Daddy
.
The Larian team actively incorporated fan feedback and considered how to actively engage an essential part of the community.
Fanfiction: From Fix-it Fics to Alternative Timelines
What is fanfiction? This is one of the first times a developer has talked about wanting to specifically address the part of the fanbase that writes and consumes fanfiction.
Fanfiction is text based on existing stories. The authors are usually anonymous and have no official design options in the work on which they write.
Fanfiction is for many a chance to rewrite established stories or explore other possible plot endings:
Fix-it Fics
, for example, are there to fix storylines that have gone poorly from the author’s perspective – such as when a favorite character has died or a relationship has broken down.- Similar to Dune: Awakening, alternative realities can also be explored. In the survival game, for example, the actual main character of Dune, Paul Atreides, was never born. So the game is also, in a broad sense, a fanfiction.
Sometimes these stories also emerge from the internet: The book series 50 Shades of Grey was originally a fanfiction of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. However, most authors and readers remain among themselves on one of the many possible platforms like Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, or Fanfiction.net.
Baudelaire Welch likely assumes that if Larian had not directly included the bear sex scene in the game, some players would have written it themselves anyway. He is probably right.
In fact, there is also news on the more technical side of Baldur’s Gate 3. The tooltips in the game are not quite as accurate as one might think: Baldur’s Gate 3 has been lying to you for months; nearly all tooltips are incorrect
