Nearly a year on from release, Stardew Valley Baldur's Gate 3 modders provide a rare update on their Halsin romance

The good news is that the potentially bear sex-boasting script is done

The creators of Baldur's Village, a Stardew Valley mod revolving around a community of characters from Baldur's Gate 3, have been pretty quiet since their work escaped being "mistakenly" zapped out of existence by Wizards of the Coast last April. Now, ahead of Baldur's Village's first birthday, they've provided a progress update on the Halsin romance arc they've been working on in the interim.

"It's been almost a year since our release," main developer XunHe1145 wrote in their first post to the Musk platform in nearly a year. "We just wanted to drop by and say: Halsin's romance line is in production! This has always been a passion project. We've all been busy with real life, so updates are going to be slow and at our own pace. But we have some good news on our progress: Halsin: His romance script is 100% finished! We are working on his art right now. Even though we are busy, we really want to finish every character's story properly (hopefully, haha)."

So, no release window for seducing the pixel art druid to get all up in your Emerald Grove as of yet, but it's nice to hear the group are chugging away at his storyline. While I appreciate it might be unwise of me to anticipate which question that news might leave on your lips, I'm going to do so anyway. Will Halsin's romance arc in this Stardew mod include its own iteration of Baldur's Gate 3's infamous bear sex scene?

That's what I was wondering when I first caught wind of it around this time last year, and proceeded to ask XunHe1145 about it for my old home, VG247.

"As for Halsin’s romance arc, while we haven’t finalized all the details yet, we can say for certain that Halsin will stay true to his character," the modder told me. "Our goal is to balance giving players the elements they’re excited to see while ensuring the storyline fits naturally within Stardew Valley’s tone and mechanics. It’s something we’re approaching with care, and we’re looking forward to sharing more as development progresses."

No definitive yes to the ursine ugly-bumping as of that point, but I took from that answer that the team hadn't totally ruled out at least including some cheeky nod to such a thing. Maybe I should ask again now the script's done.

Regardless, at least it sounds from this latest update like we might not have too long left to wait before finding out. If you fancy giving Baldur's Village a go in the meantime, you can find it on Nexus Mods.