Baldur's Gate 3 mocap actors were so dedicated to the RPG's romance that they really kissed, so Larian had to make sure nothing too garlicky was nearby: "We were very careful at lunches"

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Now, kiss!

Baldur's Gate 3 companion Gale romance
(Image credit: Larian)

Baldur's Gate 3 would be only a dry husk of itself without all of the tantalizing romance scenes that give it color, so why wouldn't its actors have fully devoted themselves to crimson and actually kissed?

During the recent Larian Leaks livestream, in response to a fan who wondered if motion capture actors actually kiss when their characters do, animation head Greg Lidstone says "we leave that up to the actors to determine if they want to" – and on Baldur's Gate 3, they all wanted to.

This dedication to romance – and oral hygiene, crucially – actually benefits how natural the movement in Baldur's Gate 3 seems. "If you're hovering" to simulate a kiss in motion capture, Lidstone says, "and now you're tilting your head, and the other person now moves their head, and you don't move your head because you're trying to hover-lip them… it doesn't go well."

Baldur's Gate 3 devs throw a bone to advocates of what would be the RPG's weirdest romance option – by shaming us for not keeping her alive.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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