You might have noticed that Baldur's Gate 3 has an extraordinarily large female audience, and for years, I've had my own theory as to why this is. Much like Dragon Age (rest in peace, my sweet angel), Baldur's Gate 3 features high stakes, fantasy-filled adventure, swords and sorcery, and charming characters that you can smooch. Essentially, it's a Romantasy--a term given to the plethora of women-oriented novels that feature all of the above.
Regardless of if you love or hate the term, Romantasy has exploded in popularity over the past decade, and part of that is thanks to writer Sarah J. Maas and her A Court of Thorns and Roses series. For over five years, that series has been on hold while Maas worked on other novels, but now, the sixth book in the series, A Court of Splintered Harmony, is finally here--or at least it will be later tonight. Anyways, it's basically GTA 6 release day for thirsty women, and Larian's latest post proves that team is well aware of it.
Earlier today, Larian took to Instagram to share a post referencing the series ahead of A Court of Splintered Harmony's release. In it, the studio shows off a few of the saga's most notable characters in Baldur's Gate 3's character creator while ACOTAR-related audio plays over top.
But while Larian celebrating ACOTAR was already enough to made me giddy, the best thing about this post is that it proves that someone at Larian knows ball. Each clip perfectly pokes fun at a character's most iconic (or notorious) moment, or references an inside joke from the ACOTAR community. This includes Feyre's watery bowels, the invisible fleck of dust Rhysand is constantly picking at, and the fact that Feyre's garden-loving sister Elain probably could have helped her family and grown a few crops while they were, you know, starving to death in a small cottage. And the Withers-Suriel comparison? Masterful.
Suffice to say that as both an avid reader and gamer, Larian's post delighted me. And as someone who has been yelling about how many of the best games around are secretly Romantasy games (The Witcher 3, The Blood of Dawnwalker, just about every Final Fantasy...), you have no idea how validated I feel right now.