These days, no game launch can be 100% perfect, and alas, such is the case with Baldur’s Gate 3. A lot of bugs had to be fixed right when the game was launched, and the developers at Larian Studios, always on it, did deliver, with a quick initial patch that many were grateful for.
Many of these patch items were, honestly, quite silly, including “improved Volo’s aim during your ice pick lobotomy,” and “penises C and D no longer clip through some githyanki clothing.” Truly the most important of gameplay fixes! But one bug in particular, people had some funny responses to—responses that reminded me a whole lot of a similar debacle with Dragon Age 2.
Gale, the wizard companion, will invite you to share in an intimate moment once he likes you enough. He’ll teach you how to summon the Weave, and if you do well enough (it’s hard to fail, since this is also where his romance is initiated), you can get to the point where you essentially meld magical minds. From there, you can let him know how you feel about him, using magical mind-melding visuals.
The trouble was, before this patch, there wasn’t a strictly neutral option. If you went ahead with the mind-melding, you essentially had two magical options: either visualizing a nice li’l wizard smooch, OR committing an act of great anti-wizard violence against him, including putting his severed head on a spike. This led to some people who just didn’t want to murder Gale accidentally initiating a romance with him, and then getting weirded out when, later on, they tried to romance their intended companion, only to get a very sad lecture on jilting from him.
Ultimately, it’s a nothingburger of an immersion problem that Larian dealt with appropriately, but some players have noticed that there’s been a demographic trend regarding who’s been the most vocally bothered by his wizard lustin’. And those people are—you guessed it—straight gamer dudes:
Yes, their ire is very funny, as well as annoying, for various reasons these responders touch on:
Maybe I’m biased because I did go into the game with the intention of two-timing Gale and Shadowheart until I was forced to choose between the two, but I honestly didn’t think it was that hard to back out of a romance with him. The game made it clear that getting closer in the Weave was a deliberately intimate choice, so it already gave you an option to back out before things got too hot and heavy. If anything, the moment where I think a neutral dialogue option was most needed was during the tiefling party, where you can talk to a drunk Gale with basically only three options: 1) you’re a sexy little wizard and I want you, 2) you’re a nerdy little dipshit and I’m over this conversation, or 3) Leave.
What makes all of this especially funny to me, however, is how similar this whole “situation” is to when Dragon Age 2 released, and all the gamer dudes got annoyed that Anders came on to them. (Coincidentally, he was also a wizard.) In that scenario, all you had to do was literally be nice to Anders, and he’d start testing the waters by flirting with you:
Just like with Gale, certain gamers were outraged by this seeming display of “wokeism,” to the point where they were writing petitions to fire Anders’ writer and add an option to remove gay content. And honestly, again, maybe I’m just biased because I love Anders, but even this isn’t that “forced upon you.” God forbid a man express attraction to another man and just see how he responds, right? Anders has a lot of problems, one of which is toxic jealousy, but in my opinion, none of the behaviors he exhibits are any worse than how random men on the street have treated me. Not even close.
Similarly, Gale grew to annoy me, and I found a lot of his overly-clingy behavior to be a major turn-off, but there was nothing about how he was written or portrayed that merited such a response. It’s just dudes being afraid of dude love, per usual, which is silly to the umpteenth degree, considering how queer D&D tends to be:
So hey, kudos to you, Larian, for responding to players’ requests so promptly, but at the end of the day, Gale can be gay. Let the wizard be gay, lads.
(featured image: Larian Studios/Bioware/Know Your Meme)
Published: Aug 30, 2023 05:07 pm