Baldur's Gate 3 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard are both "very LGBTQ+ friendly," former EA dev says, "but one handled it perfectly and one fumbled it"

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"Baldur's Gate 3 just supports you"

Dragon Age: The Veilguard
(Image credit: EA)

Who you date, who you murder – it's all up to you in Baldur's Gate 3 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Though, a former EA employee says BioWare's latest Dragon Age installment isn't quite as graceful about it as Larian's D&D masterpiece.

Speaking to FRVR in a new podcast episode, former EA designer Alex Hutchinson speculates on what will happen to what the publisher calls its "player-first values" after a group, including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, recently moved to buy it for $55 million. Hutchinson thinks that "maybe" the country, in which LGBTQ people and activities are criminalized, will negatively impact BioWare's proud history of including queer options in its games, but the Dragon Age developer is already hurting itself.

"Baldur's Gate 3 just supports you and any decision that you make," Hutchinson continues, "but it doesn't feel like it has an agenda. But it lets you – which is, I think, exactly how to handle all of those issues. Like, embrace people's cool choices, but don't front-load it." Speak for yourself – I'd like my lady orcs to date other lady orcs under the bright light of day.

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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