‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Respects Its Short Kings, Towering Queens, and the Enbies That Fare in Between

A month ago, my Tav finally got a night with Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3, uncensored by the “Under Construction” image from early access, and I noticed something interesting. Right before the two brushed up on a tree, Astarion jumped into the arms of my Tiefling Sorceress. This was similar to the viral image now meme of Lauren Phillips lifting Alice Merchesi. The animation appeared to reflect the slight variation of body type differences. Tav has a tall muscular frame whereas the dandy vampire-spawn has a petite build. Did this animation appear for everyone? Was the game taking their body shapes into consideration?

@spiderjoce the gate beckons #baldursgate3 #bg3 #astarion ♬ original sound – joce

via @SpiderJoce on TikTok

Yes! When kissing (a more easily repeatable action), the taller of the two characters would bend over, or get on knee for an embrace. While Gnomes, Halflings, and Dwarves (alongside Githyanki) were among the least selected races for original characters (as of the first week of the PC release), these Tavs deserve love too! That totals roughly 9% of origin characters. Unfortunately, these small moments of affection didn’t render correcting with all the shorter folks.

@tgcnews Had to do another moment ? #baldursgate3 #baldursgate #dandd #dungeonsanddragons ♬ Hidden Gods – Tunetank

via @TCGNews on TikTok

Here, Tav shorties going in for a kiss would either kiss the air or the sternum a.k.a. between the breasts of feminine characters (still a win for some). But those with buggy kissing didn’t have to wait long for a fix. Of the 1,000 updates to the first patch, Larian Studios made addressing this a high priority. The introduction declared, “We’re bringing back Short King Summer with better kissing contact for short races!” Loving tall characters would no longer be limited to Shadow expressing her desire to be thrown over Karlach’s shoulder. Larian was gonna give us consistent range!

Short King Summer

In the detailed August 25 patch notes, height was mentioned five times. 80% of those fixes were specifically for shorter races. Fixes accounting for short races included scenes like kissing (including on even ground), nautiloid, Astral Plane, Moonrise Towers, and recruiting Gale. Some of these fixes were contact issues and others were the camera angle not settling correctly.

Despite being a cosmetic bug that only affected a small fraction of players, Larian Studios quickly fixed it anyway. This lines up with the way some of BG3‘s developers talk about creating the game. When asked if his background in data colored his experience with player stats, Larian CEO and BG3 Director Swen Vinke shared that, when possible, he avoids looking at the dashboard of player stats.

“We have people who look at it, but I try to not do it because otherwise it can influence the creative decisions, and I want to make sure that we keep on investing heavily in things that maybe 0.001% of the audience will see. It is important that any journey that you take in your game is going to be equally rewarding.”

While I’m pretty sure Vinke and others mean that in the context of gameplay, it’s meaningful that this extended to various identities, be they fictional or otherwise. Especially when groups like people with dwarfism often get dealt a bad hand by fantasy writers and artists. While body shape varies mildly by race, a number of other customizable elements still go beyond many other games. This includes depictions of various human races, skin types (like featuring vitiligo), and height variation.

(via Larian Studios, featured image: Larian Studios)