Baldur's Gate 3's 11th hotfix is here, bringing with it a neat little list of tweaks and remedies to Larian's incredible RPG. But frankly, who cares? Because the real meat here is the fact that romancing Gale no longer entails canoodling in an inky black and infinite void and—praise be—you'll soon be able to kiss number one boy Astarion properly too.
"Have you ever had a romance so intense, that everything melts away?" writes Larian in the patch notes, "Well, sometimes that isn’t intentional. We’ve fixed an issue where Gale’s romance scene was playing in what looked like some kind of black void. Consider the ambience restored." So, good news for wizard-fanciers. Alas, the Astarion kiss bug we spoke about earlier this month still persists, but Larian says it's working on it.
"We are aware of an issue with kissing animations for Astarion, and are currently working on a fix," said the studio, "We expect this to be released in a future update." Until then, try not to take the man's palpable disgust at locking lips with you personally.
Truth be told, I'm a bit of a poseur when it comes to this stuff. Don't tell anyone, or publish it in a news article on a website with millions of readers, but I never really found any of BG3's romances particularly alluring, and ended up settling on Shadowheart more or less because I felt like I should probably romance someone. Still, my understanding is that the young folk these days are into that silk-voiced, silver-haired fox and his lust for blood, life, and, uh, lust, so I'm happy they'll be able to properly kiss him sooner rather than later.
And, as if that wasn't enough, the patch also promises that "Wyll and Minthara should now properly kiss a second time without the need to retrigger the dialogue." Romance isn't dead, folks, it's just all been concentrated into an impossibly dense form in a single videogame.
If, for whatever reason, you're interested in the full patch notes, even the non-kissing stuff, here they are in full:
- You can now use soaps encountered in savegames before Patch 4.
- Fixed the game sometimes freezing indefinitely after a reaction to a spell that hits you with multiple projectiles.
- Fixed a crash after using a reaction that causes an attack against a dead creature.
- Fixed an issue causing you to get stuck in certain dialogues unable to continue.
- Fixed a blocker that could occur when trying to Long Rest.
- Dominated followers will now follow the party as expected after loading a savegame.
- Fixed Gale's romance scene playing in what looks like a black void.
- Fixed a Dark Urge flashback accidentally teleporting you to the Lower City.
- The Cursed Skulls in Jannath's Estate are now vulnerable to Force and Radiant damage.
- Fixed an issue that prevented certain characters from executing their behaviours.
- Fixed citizens and refugees in Baldur's Gate sometimes jittering about the place or not using their proper animations.
- Fixed some visual artefacts appearing at camp in relation to Dark Urge and Karlach dialogues. This also solved the bloodstain under Alfira suddenly becoming larger after loading a savegame.
- Wyll and Minthara should now properly kiss a second time without the need to retrigger the dialogue.
- Fixed an issue where a companion's camp night dialogue could be replaced by a different dialogue that couldn't trigger during a previous night.
