The co-creator of the Dragon Age franchise has commented on the reaction to one of Baldur’s Gate 3’s main female characters, saying fans “always treated male characters with more forgiveness”.
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People don’t like lae’zel?? She’s by far my favorite. Please more strong women who want to fuck me.
My woman friend who I got to play a little co-op was also immediately like “she’s hot. I like her”, and found shadow heart to be a little whiney.
lae’zel is perfect - well written, well voiced, a bit tanky, adds tension. there’s nothing to forgive. boy gamers are notoriously sexist. this is their problem, not larian’s.
This encounter was contrasted with the player’s first encounter with Morrigan, the much-loved Dragon Age character. “It does everything right to make you like the character, before showing you her darker side,” Clark said of Morrigan’s introduction in Dragon Age: Origins. “I don’t think they did this with Lae’zel.” Gaider dismissed this suggestion, saying “it truly does not matter”.
That’s the best part. Why would you like a character male or female that is openly hostile to you? You wouldn’t. That’s the point. She isn’t your friend (at least towards the beginning), you simply share a common goal with this githyanki. I wouldn’t be more forgiving if she was a guy. She’s still being an asshole to me. But it works especially for evil playthroughs as the relationship works totally fine as something that’s just transactional in nature.
You know who I couldn’t forgive? Alistair. All he needed to do was shut his damn jackass mouth for 10min. Really hard for me not to see him in Gale everytime I talk to him.
I have a soft spot for Lae’zel. I had it before I started learning more about her. Idk, I think early on I was just like this person is literally an interdimensional space pirate who has a culture literally alien to me. It made me more accepting of her.
The only reason why I don’t use Lae’zel is because Karlach exists and she’s a goddess (who also fills a similar party niche)
My first play-through I one-shotted Karlach while she was moping. Didn’t catch on she was a party member until later.
Well, you get to keep the OG Wyll appearance in that case!
Team Karlach forever! We just need a Bard so I can stake Astarion and never look at his smug, sadistic ass ever again.
There is a bard but she is easy to miss.
Alfira (the teeth-ling bard in the Emerald Grove) can join you. But you have to have the Dark Urge in your party and do a unique interaction that afterward will allow her to join you. In solo, the only way to have the Dark Urge is to select it as your PC.
Forgiving of what? Her dommy mommy sex scenes?
Her adversarial nature? My dudes, she is actually quite tame for a gith and if you play deeper into her story line, you’ll discover that and also get her to stop being a bitch to everyone she’s first meeting. Can’t blame her for being an asshole when she takes orders and worships an evil lich (whom she doesn’t even know is an evil lich) that raised her and others of her kind to be unquestioning killing machines.
Yuck
Lae’zel was my favorite origin character and who I ended up romancing and sticking with through my playthrough.
I wouldn’t have expected that going into it, but I found her writing to be probably the most complex and interesting arc out of everyone.
Whereas Shadowheart, who I went into it thinking would be the one I’d want to romance, was insufferable by halfway though and I was regularly wishing she had less relevance to the core plot.
I’m glad Lae’zel wasn’t male, and honestly I find the suggestion annoying given that the entire plot around the Githyanki is extremely focused on the matriarchal nature of the society.
More Amazons in our media, please.
Shadowheart and Lae’zel both annoy me and I really use neither if I can help doing so. Granted, I’m still getting to the side quests in Act 1 before moving on, so grain of salt, but they both currently occupy one end of an uninteresting extreme imo — Shadowheart the shrinking little flower that needs saving, Lae’zel the shallow, judgy barbarian I’m shocked to hear would have an arc.
I dislike her because she’s unendingly rude and violent for no reason, even when the occasion would go over better if she chose to cool it. If she were male, I’d still hate
herhim because it’s every time he opens his mouth. Nobody likes a dick bag.As noted in the article, Astarion IS pompous and mean, but the important part is he’s snarky instead of outright abusive, is rarely outwardly violent, and does what he does in a way that’s funny. I keep him on my team purely to hear him backtalk Wyll and reminisce about hedonism and do not get the sense at any point that he would hit me over the head with a club and drag me into a cave.
If he acted all rough and edgy and broody instead of intentionally looking for amusement via horrifying randos just to see what they do, I’d consider him the world’s most boring fanservice.
Anyway, the actual shining gem is Karlach and I’m increasingly in disbelief that I’ve seen no one singing her praises. I usually do find female characters underwhelmingly written and moments like Karlach are very needed reminders that I’m not some weird misogynist, I just hate bad writing and it’s everywhere. I fell INSTANTLY in love with that energy and remain so.
Ultimately, I may not like the one, but I am glad we’re able to do Warrior Female now and go all the way with actually making them warriors. More Amazonians in media!
One of the keys to writing a compelling arc is to start somewhere you can juxtapose against with where you end up.
Both of your characterizations of the characters may not remain the same as you play though.
Of course, the cool thing about what Larian did is that whether they do or don’t depends a lot on player interactions and choice.
You may have a very shallow Lae’zel by the end of her arc in your game depending on both certain choices and the roll of the dice.
I don’t like her, but I used her a lot. I hate Astarian so much that he’s never in my party. A lot of the npcs have unlikable elements
Astarion I absolutely cannot stand either.
I love Astarion. My character is pretty evil for the first run so he fits in nicely too
Lmao, I meant to play a good character and mostly I’m succeeding. I still usually do the good thing, if not so much the…altruistic nonpayment thing. But I’ve gotten a lot of amusement out of the realization he is making me worse.
It’s just so fun to listen to his snark that I have trouble turning down an option I know he has an opinion on. The writers, animators, and voice actors all did an incredible job on this game and his actual backstory beyond what I had expected to be lame twilight fanservice is SO much fun for someone as overanalytical as I am to take apart. I find guessing at his psyche as interesting as it is realistic.
However, functionally, Astarion is the demon on my left shoulder. And he is ruining me.
Oh look, a click bait IGN article! And no one was shocked
No it wouldn’t have mattered. She’s a single minded, xenophobic , zealot asshole. That wasn’t my jam for the first play through. I barely tolerate shadowheart, but she got heals and sacred weapon. I’m a devotion paladin and I will smite their god(s)!
Nah, assholes are assholes, her personality is just so confrontational that I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t think gender has anything do with not wanting every conversation to be a small fight full of insults.
I’m just confused how everyone has got so far, met so many people, and read so much backstory!
For a start my inventories are such a mess that I have no idea if any of it is important, I’ve never bothered to try out any other characters beside my main party because I don’t want to move equipment around it’s hard enough getting my main party members wearing the best thing they’re carrying and I’m sure I’m missing out on things because they get lost in my inventory without being read or accidentally sold before I need them - having things lost in second characters inventories while they loiter in the camp would be super annoying.
