Baldur's Gate 3's performance director has explained some of the background behind the RPG's infamously viral bear smooching scene.
Before the smash hit game came out, developer Larian Studio was smart to promote one particular feature: sex with a druid shaped in grizzly bear form. Obviously, the clip went viral across the internet and probably sold the game to many people who just wanted a thirsty/freaky fantasy sim.
The topic of bear-human intercourse expectedly came up during performance director Greg Lidstone's Game Developers Conference talk, where an audience member asked about the role of an intimacy coordinator during those outlandish sex scenes.
"What happened in my life that led me to this point? There's a bear in the scene!" Lidstone joking starts. "No, we made a very conscious decision." Lidstone explains that many games he's worked on in the past - in the "Wild West" - didn't use intimacy coordinators for "scenes that can be really kind of difficult" and were "dealing with very sexual topics."
"We wanted somebody there to sort of keep an eye on this and make sure that the actors felt safe," he continues. "So we had a Zoom call with the intimacy coordinator [Enric Ortuno] and were chatting with him, and he was lovely and we just got a really good sense that he would be there for the actors and that he was confident enough that he would stand up to me if I was making the wrong decisions."
Lidstone acknowledges the tricky power dynamics that come with directing intimate scenes, too. "As a director, I'm dealing with an actor and there's a shift, I tell them what to do and they kind of have to do that," he says, before explaining that an intimacy coordinator is needed to "level that playing field" while actors are playing off "raw emotions."
Elsewhere at GDC, Larian Studios announced that it wouldn't be returning to the world of D&D for Baldur's Gate 3 DLC or Baldur's Gate 4 - though license holder Wizards of the Coast apparently aren’t to blame for the split.
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