The PC edition of Baldur's Gate 3 has been moved up from August 31st to August 3rd. The schedule change is widely believed to be a financial one so the game avoids releasing the same week as Starfield. Simultaneously, the PS5 version of the game has been delayed to delayed to September 6, which puts it on the exact same release date as Starfield. Furthermore, as our very own Jeff Grubb has reported, there's still no news about an Xbox S/X version of the game, and the sticking point seems to be Larian's struggles with making a workable version for the Series S.

However, the real big news this week stems from the final Panel From Hell presentation Larian hosted wherein they affirmed that not only will Baldur's Gate 3 support polyamorous relationships, but also, druids can experience coitus while still in beast form. As the Kotaku report aptly summarizes:

The player (controlling the vampire Astarion as their main character), approaches Halsin in a discrete area of the woods. As things start to get hot and heavy, he strips and things seem to be taking their natural course. Then, Halsin loses control of himself and transforms into his bear form. He quickly reverts to human forms and apologizes. Sometimes this happens when he’s giving in to his base desires.

Depending on the dialogue choice you make, you can break things off with him here, reassure him things are okay and proceed as planned, or…you can tell him you like it. During the presentation, Larian was letting the live audience make decisions for the dialogue they would pick and demonstrate on stream, and they found the bear form tantalizing and encouraged Halsin to turn back. It took some persuasion, and Halsin said that…size might be a concern. Nevertheless, they persisted, and Baldur’s Gate 3 let Astarion fuck a bear on stream.

If you want to watch the scene in question, here you go! I even timestamped the archive to the exact scene described above:

Now, this is a bit of a recurring gag, as near the first announcement that Larian would be working on Baldur's Gate 3, they publicly affirmed that their collaboration with Wizards of the Coast would NOT prohibit them from including romances. When certain parts of the internet claimed they were bluffing, Larian made a Community Update video in which they reviewed the various 3D models and sexual positions they had already programmed for the game.

Oh, and the last playable origin character is "The Dark Urge," which will be the first playable Bhaalspawn! Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Astarion, Wyll, Gale, and Karlach are the other options, and if you don't pick them they're party members, and obviously, you can elect to create your own character.

Overall I've been pretty impressed with what I've seen!

Not sure if Ill play it in August on GeForce now or wait until I've had my fill of Starfield before picking it up on PS5.

Been a looooong while since a choose your own adventure has truly excited me or caught my eye.

Now... hopefully I can resolve my class decision so I dont spend 20 hours in character creator and never actually end up playing the game!

Welp, time to create a custom Druid and see if I can wild shape into a different animal during.

I’m really excited for 1.0 of this game. It felt futile to play during early access with how often the major updates invalidated progress. With the latest news being that Dragonborn and Half-Orcs will be playable races, I’ll probably use one of those for a Paladin. A Paladin which fucks a bear, to be perfectly clear.

The game looks really great and I'm looking forward to trying it, but watching parts of the stream I was reminded how I just don't like the kinda characters cRPG enthusiasts and developers seem to love. I remember struggling badly to get into DA:Inq because of it, and even when I played Horizon Forbidden West it was putting me off. It's kinda hard to describe, but there's this tendency for super sincere while also very "extra" characters. I'm down for ridiculousness and I'm down for "down to earth" characters, but this middleground where you're supposed to take it seriously but the characters are largely acting like they're in a TV drama just becomes too cringey for me. And yeah, the general horniness isn't really helping either.

I've previously said that I could never find any video game to be worth the $70 price tag, but sexy naked men in the woods is making a pretty compelling argument.