Baldur's Gate 3 would be only a dry husk of itself without all of the tantalizing romance scenes that give it color, so why wouldn't its actors have fully devoted themselves to crimson and actually kissed?
During the recent Larian Leaks livestream, in response to a fan who wondered if motion capture actors actually kiss when their characters do, animation head Greg Lidstone says "we leave that up to the actors to determine if they want to" – and on Baldur's Gate 3, they all wanted to.
"They don't have to," Lidstone clarifies, but he recalls that, "on BG3, they actually all kissed. Yeah. There was a lot of chewing gum and mouthwash, and we were very careful at lunches to find food that was not, like, heavily garlicked."
This dedication to romance – and oral hygiene, crucially – actually benefits how natural the movement in Baldur's Gate 3 seems. "If you're hovering" to simulate a kiss in motion capture, Lidstone says, "and now you're tilting your head, and the other person now moves their head, and you don't move your head because you're trying to hover-lip them… it doesn't go well."
So, truly smooching is important, "but that goes back to the idea of the actors feeling comfortable with each other," Lidstone says, "sort of building up that relationship with those two people so that they feel comfortable enough to, like, just go ahead and kiss."
