GamesRPGBaldur’s GateBaldur’s Gate 3’I’ve been disappointed so many times': Karlach from Baldur’s Gate 3 talks scrapping the lady stereotypes of RPG romances, says Larian just ‘let me do what I wanted to do’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesRPGBaldur’s GateBaldur’s Gate 3’I’ve been disappointed so many times’: Karlach from Baldur’s Gate 3 talks scrapping the lady stereotypes of RPG romances, says Larian just ‘let me do what I wanted to do’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
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(Image credit: Larian Studios)
“When I’ve talked about the romance, and I said I imagined talking to a woman—that was to make sure that our sapphic players felt included. It’s not to do about the exclusion, absolutely not. If I said I went in and I imagined some hot dude, would anyone blink an eye? No they wouldn’t.”
It’s a relatable frustration that I’ve personally felt to some extent myself—this idea that your mere existence as a queer person isinnately political or a statement, rather than just a way of being. It’s one of those uncomfy biases that’s cropped up in the RPGs of yesteryear too— and sometimes in unexpected ways.
“I’ve been disappointed so many times,” they add. “And I’ll name [them]—Dragon Age, Mass Effect. You’re playing a female, you romance a female, and then it’s weird. It goes all ‘male gaze’.” Karlach, on the other hand, “is [a] soldier, and she’s tall, and she’s big. And of course she can be girly. But she’s more sort of—puppy dog floppiness, rather than feminine and ‘oh okay, now you’ve broken through the hard exterior’.”
She does mention that “of course, the player is an amorphous blob”, adding that it’s “a testament to the writing, directors, and engineers for creating that, because everyone thinks they’re being spoken to” in a variety of ways, even platonic ones. “She’s my bestie, she’s my sister, she’s me!”
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Considering my own response to the character (and a substantial trough of memes you can find with a few spare seconds and a search engine), she’s bang on the money here. A lot of assumptions about what a ‘certain kind of gamer’ will like don’t really pan out in reality—and assuming your demographic only likes a certain kind of female-gazey romance,especiallyin an RPG, is clearly an attitude to be left in the dust.
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Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are ‘pretending to be Republicans’ to gain favor with Trump, skirt antitrust laws, and ultimately ‘rip off consumers and crush competitors’
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Square Enix launches new anti-harassment policy to protect its employees and partners from abusive fans
The Sims begins its 25th anniversary celebration next week with a Behind The Sims episode of news and announcements
Path of Exile 2 numberlord spends 16 straight days killing rare monsters to prove that a stat that makes loot better makes better loot
Palestinian developer raises more than $200,000 to make Dreams on a Pillow, a game about the horrors of the 1948 Nakba
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