Brierley-Beare, Amy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0675-3268 (2024) Romance as the “real challenge”?: The implications of absent dialogue icons in Baldur’s Gate 3. In: DiGRA Australia, 2 February 2024, University of Melbourne.

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Abstract

The full release of role-playing sequel Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios 2023) has sparked discussion surrounding how optional romance is implemented in mainstream gaming. Bucking recent trends in the roleplaying genre, Baldur’s Gate 3 does not utilise supportive communication tools—dialogue icons—to further clarify emotions and tones of potential dialogue options. Dialogue icons are “any picture, symbol or image representation that acts as a supplementary communication in aid of dialogue (Brierley 2022, 40). By electing instead to not include dialogue icons next to dialogue options, Baldur’s Gate 3 players are having to navigate dialogue that does not clearly signal how to develop romantic relationships. This paper considers how textual features like dialogue icons have led players to become comfortable with segmented understandings of social relationships—romantic and non-romantic—and the implications this brings for representations of queer romance in role playing games.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	A General Works > AC Collections. Series. Collected works A General Works > AI Indexes (General) A General Works > AZ History of Scholarship The Humanities B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BH Aesthetics
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/14354

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