Baldur's Gate 3's lead romance quest designer thinks sex speedruns are "just grand"

One of the developers responsible for putting together Baldur's Gate 3’s excellent companion and romance quests has revealed that they’ve got absolutely no problem with the amusing sex speedruns the game has spawned.

Whether the target is to record an incredibly rapid romance route leading directly to the underpants of a certain Githyanki warrior or to blaze a complex trail in the direction of that encounter with a certain bear, speedrunners have gotten up to a whole bunch of wacky hijinks in BG3 since August. Plenty of people, including all of us here at VG247 (I’m tentatively including Tom in this, he’s probably at least cracked half a smile), have been thoroughly entertained, and it seems the folks who made the game haven’t been immune to that.

Speaking to Inverse, Baudelaire Welch, who served as lead designer for the companion character and romance quests in the game, discussed how they feel about people on the internet competing to shag the characters they had a hand in creating as quickly as possible.

“They're deconstructing the idea of the way romance is presented in the game by abstracting it into something ridiculous. I welcome that,” Welch said of these raunchy races, adding: “It makes those scenes seem even more ridiculous and that’s just grand to me.”

They have similar feelings towards the boatloads of rather steamy and occasionally lewd fan art people have made about each of BG3’s chatty coterie of companions, saying: “We want to give [the game’s fans] more opportunities to express creativity like that.”

I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel better about all the MS Paint doodles I’ve done of semi-nude Gale in poses that allow his nether regions to be easily tucked away behind a conveniently placed stack of books.

In the interview, Welch also discusses the changes made to the game’s romance mechanics in response to player feedback during its time in Early Access, with these including tweaks that stopped Gale and Wyll from bringing up Mystra and Mizora as often while you’re trying to have nice little dates with them.

If reading this article has made you want to go and get it on with your BG3 partner of choice, then make sure you don’t try and record the proceedings if you’re on Xbox, as you might end up in some kind of horny jail.