Baldur's Gate 3 director says the bear sex meme got so out of hand that people were trolling his son with bear pictures

It's been weeks since the news surfaced that Baldur's Gate 3 lets you hook up with a bear - really, it's a Druid who can shapeshift into a bear. Larian's highly-anticipated RPG has seen unprecedented success in several categories on Steam , we've been experimenting with mods and party compositions, and we're still working on our Baldur's Gate 3 review-in-progress. And yet, as much as I try to escape it, I'm still writing about bear sex.

I suppose I can't complain, considering Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke recently revealed to PC Gamer that his own son, who presumably had little to no direct involvement in the whole bear sex scandal, has been mercilessly trolled by people sending him pictures of bears.

"My son comes to me telling me 'dad, people are sending me pictures of bears from everywhere," he said. "I wasn't ready for that. I could overhear him going like 'Yeah, I KNOW!' [to people who called him]."

We here are GamesRadar were as puzzled, and admittedly amused, as anyone when a late-stage Baldur's Gate 3 development update explicitly tempted players with, "the joys and pleasures of sexual congress with a wildshaped Druid?" Here's Vincke on the decision to include this, uh, feature, in the game's marketing campaign:

"We wanted a scene people were going to talk about, but we wanted to show that this was a cinematic game, with characters that have depth to them. The bear's obviously a druid, and he has a story. He's been around for hundreds of years. He's lived with bears for part of his life also, so that's where the bear thing comes from. It's interesting when you start thinking about it, what it meant for him living with bears, right? Because there's also horny bears in the world."

Vincke quickly told PC Gamer, "I shouldn't have said that," referring to the thing about horny bears. That aside, his explanation sounds reasonable enough, but something tells me his son is probably a lot less accepting of it.

Moving on, check out our definitive ranking of the best Baldur's Gate 3 classes.

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.