Sex with a bear has become a kind of meme calling card for Baldur's Gate 3. The game's senior narrative designer, Bodler Welch, called the scene with Halsin a "watershed moment in the game's history."
Even those who have never played Baldur's Gate 3 are familiar with the "bear" scene. Larian Studios showed it before the game's launch during a live stream. The scene attracted a lot of attention from players and the media - it effectively made the game known to many people outside Larian's traditional audience and the RPG genre in general. Speaking at Develop: Brighton 2024, Baldur's Gate 3 writer Bodler Welch delved into Larian's approach to romantic relationships.
"Romance is one of the most enduring parts of the fandom that can be created. People will be writing about romances in fanfics for many years. The discussion of participants in romantic relationships will last a very long time. Take the bear scene in Baldur's Gate 3. ... This scene seems like a watershed moment in the game's history, when the fanfic community feels like it is not a subculture, but the main audience for which the scene and the game as a whole were created," Welch said.
The developer says the game team is aware of all the jokes that players resorted to, what they wanted to do with "daddy druid Halsin" while Baldur's Gate 3 was in early access. It turns out that at this stage of development, Halsin wasn't actually a romantic option, but the developers changed that when they saw the interest it sparked among players.
"And so, to reach out to this part of the community, Larian staged an incredible scene for them, which literally comes from the gay community - a gay bear becomes a gay bear if someone really knows about the relationship."
- "Gay bear" (gay bear) in corresponding slang means "a big, hairy queer man who identifies himself with the label 'bear,' - writes LGBTQIA Wiki. "Being a 'bear' combines gender self-expression, gender identity, and sexuality; a big, hairy heterosexual man wouldn't be a 'bear.' They are typically masculine men aged 30 and older, whose physique may include a big belly, legs, and/or butt," the description says.
Bodler Welch explains that this moment gives the feeling that something from slang, from discussions in Discord, from jokes, suddenly ends up in the game. Earlier, another Larian developer, Greg Lidstone, said that for the romantic bear scene, an intimacy coordinator was involved to ensure that all actors involved in the scene felt comfortable.
Source: GamesRadar
Comments (0)
There are no comments for now