Since Baldur’s Gate 3 launched last week, we’ve heard a lot about how wildly horny it lets players be. And in pursuit of steamy encounters, it turns out that many players are willing to overlook some pretty significant character flaws. This has resulted in a lot of the community uttering variations on “I can fix them” for characters like Shadowheart, Astarion, and one other spoilery party member.
Warning: Below are very light spoilers for the early plots of Shadowheart and Astarion. Read on at your own risk.
While all the origin characters have their, well, issues, Shadowheart and Astarion are becoming especially known in the community for being “problematic faves” of sorts. In Shadowheart’s case, she has some pretty strong feelings against certain races (Githyanki and Tieflings especially) that she isn’t shy about uttering.
What’s more, she pretty quickly reveals herself as a cleric of Shar, a goddess that explicitly seeks to destroy order and hope while embracing pain and grief. Shadowheart expresses unwavering, blind loyalty toward Shar early in her quest. Given that her memory has been wiped, it’s entirely possible that supporting her mission could have potentially disasterous consequences.
Astarion, meanwhile, is wildly self-interested and pro-brain tadpoles, and seems to really enjoy it when the player character is mean to people. He’s also, and here comes the spoiler, a vampire, and tries to turn the player character into one too shortly after being recruited. While Shadowheart is over there having moral dilemmas about the nature of good and evil, Astarion is just kind of a massive jerk who thinks it’s fun to mess with others, and supporting him generally seems to involve doing everything from minor mischief to outright murder.
However, both of these characters are very hot, and if people want to roleplay hot makeout sessions with them and more, who cares if we destroy the world a little along the way, amirite?
Of course, there’s a third problematic fave that’s getting a lot of attention from fans too, but they’re an even bigger spoiler than what we’ve discussed above. If you haven’t finished the plot with the Goblin Camp and the Emerald Grove in Act 1, maybe skip this bit and come back later:
It turns out you can also recruit Mithara, the Drow paladin who is one of the three commanders at the Goblin Camp in Act 1. Most players probably kill her in the process of recruiting the druid Halsin. But if you side with her and slaughter the druids in the grove, you can recruit her later in the game and yes, romance her.
But seriously, she’s probably the worst of the bunch. Minthara serves the Absolute, and in order to recruit her you have to do lots and lots of murder of innocent people, and once she joins you, she doesn’t magically become nice. Pleasing her is basically committing to a trail of bloodshed, but just like the other two, fans just really dig the idea of a sultry scene or two with a murderess. Hey, you do you.
In all three cases, players are truly convinced they can “fix” their problematic crushes in Baldur’s Gate 3. We’re not going to spoil the later stages of the game for folks, so we won’t say whether or not those people are right. Good luck to everyone romancing the thieves, vampires, jerks, and murderers. I’ll be over here hanging out with the somewhat less problematic Wyll.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
