Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian has shared the origins of that viral bear sex scene that helped put the already popular RPG on everyone's radar.
I'll admit, while I had been aware of Baldur's Gate 3 for a good while, for the most part I wasn't all that interested in it. Then, all of a sudden, I see people talking about this game where you can have sex with one of the game's characters while they're transformed into a bear. That particular moment really helped propel Baldur's Gate 3 to its monumental success (though I imagine it still would have done well without it), and really showed how wild and weird things can get. Now, while at Brighton's Develop conference earlier this week speaking to Eurogamer, former Larian writer Baudelaire Welch has shared just how that scene came to be, and how it wasn't originally going to be that big of a thing.
When Welch joined Larian in 2020, partway through development, a lot of work had already been done, including for companion romances, but certain characters like Halsin weren't romanceable just yet. "I don't think there were specific plans for him to be a love interest," Welch explained. At the time, the community surrounding the game evidently wanted "daddy Halsin," which Welch knew because they were included in that community. Larian took note of that, and decided to explore what that looked like.