I just wanted to come back here and advocate again for some of this stuff, especially less "goody", "hardened" type romances (i.e. Lucanis)
I was just in BG3 and if you have played that game, there's a companion called Shadowheart. Not my favorite, didn't even expect to get her questline since I wasn't pursuing her this time. I almost always play a paladin class if I can, mage next choice if there is no paly.
So, Paladin. And there's a mechanic where if you do something bad, you break your oath, so you have to be really careful if you want to be a good-aligned paladin. Well, I tried to psych out a goblin who was torturing someone, failed the roll, and this play through I am not doing any save scumming. None of the options were really good so I took the least "bad" one, just tweaking the torture rack of the prisoner a little. Welp, that was enough to break my oath.
Went back to camp, couple scenes were queued up. Supported Shadowheart, or at least, didn't intervene, in a "bad" thing she wanted to do. Finished my oathbreaker "Oath", did a couple more long rests to finish up scenes and triggered her romance well, WELL before I expected to. My good-aligned paladins never got anywhere with her before at least act 2.
Done with long rests and the initial kiss scene, leave camp to go continue the adventure. Well, there's a question mark above her head because apparently right now, in the middle of a goblin camp, with a guy getting tortured and screaming in the background is the PERFECT time for her to tell me more about herself. that's a pretty long dialogue too, so about 3-5 minutes of learning about her backstory, her dreams, while some guy is getting tortured and our other two companions are standing awkwardly behind us somewhere. Some of this stuff can happen whenever affinity gets to a certain point so there's so much potential for absurdity like this.
Now THAT is a romance. Freaking hilarious. Ten to one this is not going to end well on a dark path, but it's certainly going to be interesting.
A romance with a Hardened Lucanis could be very dark, very bloody, very vengeful, and it's such a missed opportunity that they did absolutely nothing with it. He could have EASILY had two, maybe more paths, which would have made the game so replayable.
Welp, time for Tav to head to the next room to get tortured herself, see if she can't get a goddess' blessing.
I miss the Friendship/Rivalry spectrum so much. According to the AMA I think they felt it was unable for this game, because the threat was so great that all companions would see it through to the end. Which is wild, since even a fully rivaled companion in 2 wouldn't leave you. I think ONLY companions you hadn't maxed out (i.e. Isabella or Fenris) would leave based on middling approval.
