As our friends at GamesRadar have reported, Senior Narrative Designer Beaudrea Welch spoke to a captivated audience throughout her presentation at Develop about the impact of the poison ivy-themed scene on the gaming scene: Through her presentation at "Brighton 2024," she spoke about the impact of the game scene. [Specifically, Welch focused his analysis on the traditional conventions of both fanfiction and meme nonsense. Like it or not, the two are a fairly large part of modern gaming culture--especially in games that everyone is enthusiastic about, such as "Baldur's Gate 3." [This is especially true in games like 'Baldur's Gate 3']." Romance is one of the longest tailing parts of fandom you can create." They correctly point out that players will always output fanfiction about "good romance" in any title, and that discussions over specifics will keep the flame of interest burning "for a very long time."
Welch goes on to discuss why the bear sex scene has captured the imagination of players so much. To clear things up a bit for those who haven't played the game, the bear in question, Harsin, is not actually an animal. He is a druid and can take on a variety of "wild shapes," and the D&D 5e handbook handily states that taking this "wild shape" will maintain his mental statistics for the duration.
"This scene feels like a watershed moment in the history of the game," Welch declared, completely shattering the rest of my afternoon.
I have mixed feelings about this on paper. In many ways, it is easy to see Welch's comments here as extremely cynical, even pandering, to a subculture that (let's face it) is only interested in technology playing with toy doll-like trophies and not always interested in actually telling a good story It would be.
That said, there are most certainly writers who can satisfy their audiences with hundreds of thousands of words of alt-universe smut. Needless to say, this is nothing particularly new. Both extreme fan art and fiction have existed since the days of "Dragon Age": moreover, so did the original "Baldur's Gate". The Romance Mod has a legacy.
I would be more troubled by these statements if "Baldur's Gate 3" did not have a carefully crafted and considered story and outstanding character writing. Larian can be cheeky and throw down the small bones while telling a good story - playful and a bit of audience participation is just good theater.
In fact, Welch recalls that Larian made Harsin a love interest as a result of his initial craving during Early Access: "To reach out to a part of the community, Larian took the gay community's identity and calling literally, incredibly He gave them a silly scene - a gay bear becoming a gay bear.
While Larian chose to lean into this, Dave Jones, the voice actor for Harsin, seemed to take it all in good humor and with delight, retweeting a fan art of a shirtless Harsin drying himself with a towel less than 40 minutes before writing time. It's safe to say he's in on the joke, too.
Welch says this wink-wink, nudge-nudge attitude "feels like it's giving players something from the crackfic tradition"-which, incidentally, is intentionally absurd fan fiction. It makes you feel like all the time you've spent joking around with your friends has been acknowledged and seen." How many games have ever made us feel that way?
As fellow PC Gamer writer Lauren Morton pointed out last year, it certainly works, and Baldur's Gate 3 has thoroughly exploited that hive of creativity and imagination with frightening proficiency. Yet, as noted, it still feels like a secondary goal for the game. There is a cheekiness there that does not fall into Flandersization, and as long as Larian's next work does, I'm all for it.
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