Baldur's Gate 2 added romance to the beloved RPG series in a move that was influenced by Final Fantasy 7, after the sequel's writing and design director was "scared shitless" by the JRPG, believing that "this is how a game should be." "It was handed to me and I was like, 'James, I'm not a romance guy. Like, I'll give it a shot, I guess, but [are] you sure you want romance?' And he was like, 'Yeah, let's try it,'" Gaider explains. Baldur's Gate 2 writer was unconvinced anyone would care about romance in an RPG: "People don't come here to romance, they come here to fight s**t and battle dragons" Baldur's Gate 3 Shadowheart writer snuck a line into the RPG's epilogue to reference her actor's real-life relationship: "That's us!" "This is going to be horrible": BioWare's classic D&D RPG Baldur's Gate 2 looked like a "hacked-up monstrosity that was still full of bugs" as the devs crunched to get it finished in time for launch Elaborating on this, current Beamdog CEO Trent Oster, who worked on modelling for the original Baldur's Gate game, explains that Ohlen "had played Final Fantasy 7," and Square Enix's game had left him concerned. "They had character interaction and romance, and he was scared shitless," Oster says. "He literally said, 'Guys, these guys kicked our ass. This is how a game should be. We don't know what we're doing.'" Oster continues, noting that Ohlen was "hard on everybody, but he was a humble guy, and if he thought something was better, he fought hard to get something better in the game." That extended to the RPG's setting, as Oster describes Baldur's Gate 2's setting as "kind of like a rollercoaster through some of the most great places in the realms" in comparison to Baldur's Gate 1, which is "kind of linked to one map." Talking about the sequel, he adds: "You're in the Sahuagin city, and you're in the Underdark, you're just hitting all these high spots that you've always read about in books, and you finally start to hit some of these places and it was just awesome." Needless to say, it all worked out in the end – romance has become an increasingly popular feature in RPGs, after all, and it's hard to imagine Baldur's Gate 3 without it. Baldur's Gate 3 publishing lead slams Square Enix's push to automate 70% of debugging with AI: "The idea that QA people can be replaced at a large scale is stupid."