Note: This article contains spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Pucker up, nerds! The sixth Baldur’s Gate 3 patch is finally here, and along with a laundry list of quality-of-life upgrades, developer Larian Studios has given us what we truly need: upgraded makeout technology.
Just barely behind schedule for Valentine’s Day, Larian dropped a massive new update this week on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, for our preferred pansexual high fantasy murder simulator. And while the new features have only been live since Friday morning, they’ve already taken Larian’s romance game beyond the level cap. Pre-patch, when asking the party member(s) they’d romanced for a kiss, player characters were limited to rote kissing animations that were touching the first time but didn’t bear much repeating. Now, all party members have multiple lip-locks that the game will cycle through at random, each befitting their personality, and some of them have fans going absolutely feral.
As a staunch advocate of T4T (tiefling4tiefling) relationships, I had to boot up the game immediately to check on my own fictional partner Karlach, she of the mechanical heart and convenient handlebar horn. I’m happy to report that my tragic sweetheart kisses even more cozily now, with plenty of slow forehead nuzzles and passionate embraces. Sapphics, in general, have a lot to love about this patch, in fact: Larian teased the update on February 12 with a video of one of their best “improved smooches,” a scene that finds Shadowheart performing some light femdom on Lae’zel before locking her in a forceful kiss. There’s a reason these two tormented ex-fanatics have quickly become the most popular murdergirlfriends since Killing Eve.
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Larian’s new suite of gender-apathetic kisses generally seem to err on the warm-and-fuzzy side, but one scene, in particular, is both kinky and moderately depressing if you think about it too hard. Players who choose to let Astarion sacrifice thousands of souls in order to “ascend” at the climax of his story will unlock a new possible kiss in which the elven vampire wordlessly orders you to get on your knees. On one hand, to every gay submissive reading this, we hear you keysmashing from here and that’s okay. On the other, the way Astarion behaves in that clip is another subtle, but heartbreaking, way players can experience Astarion slowly becoming more like his toxic, domineering sire Cazador. Just another casual gut punch in Astarion’s award-winning tale of trauma and blood!
Naturally, not everything in the latest patch is about necking, because Baldur’s Gate 3 is — and we checked — not actually intended to be a dating sim. There are also new idle animations when your pals are hanging out at camp (at last, we can simply watch Halsin whittle all day), swapping out party members is significantly easier, and all kinds of bug fixes have been implemented. You can also give Shadowheart a hug after her character arc reaches its own traumatic climax, a feature that was sorely missing from the base game.
But let’s be real: we’re here for the next generation of fictional Frenching, and there is nothing more important than making sure Baldur’s Gate’s various six-foot hotties can successfully lean down and kiss the purple gnome you’ve been playing as for 145 hours. Gone are the days of misaligned digital kisses. Miniature monarchs, go forth and lock lips.
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