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Mod author: “LCA“
Version used for review: 1.4.3
“This mod allows Corwin to be added to the party in Shadows of Amn, and Caelar to be added in Throne of Bhaal. Players can either continue the romance they started with Corwin in Siege of Dragonspear, or they can start a new romance with her after her arrival in Athkatla. The mod adds more than 200 new dialogs spread across the four games of the Bhaalspawn saga. Moreover, there are dozens of new items, quests, and cutscenes to enjoy.”
Love conquers all; including taste, apparently. Among Beamdog’s additions to the Baldur’s Gate series, Schael Corwin has always been one of my favourites. She’s a very grounded and stoic character in a game filled with the fantastical. I’ve been burned before by a mod that promised to introduce new content for Corwin, and unfortunately I’ve been burned once more.
Love Conquers All transforms the storyline of Baldur’s Gate by making the player character’s relationship with Corwin into a driving force for much of the plot. The only other mod that I can think of that does this — that I’ve played, at least — is the Imoen Romance mod. If you think that’s an unflattering comparison, it is — but for whom, I’ll leave up to interpretation.
There are a few new conversations in Siege of Dragonspear, but they’re fairly minimal, and ultimately don’t add much of substance to Corwin’s character or the game beyond assuming the player character’s perspective and telling you how strong and physically attractive she is.
A majority of the new content in Siege comes right at the end, where she vouches for your goodness during the trial and gives you a letter that tells you to find Soultaker Dagger and send it back to her in Baldur’s Gate.
Love Conquers All takes perhaps the easiest route imaginable for Soultaker and Skie resolution — the djinn in Irenicus’ dungeon gives you the dagger, then you take it to the Government District and have someone send it back to the city with a letter. There are a few cutscenes that play out when the player sleeps that shows what’s happening back in the city as Skie is revived, but after that she’s largely absent.
It’s obvious that this plot thread is addressed purely as a means to an end. In this case, the end is having Corwin join your party. I can’t really fault the mod for that, though. Even The Cost of One Girl’s Soul. a mod that also continues this plotline, somewhat rushes its resolution as a way to get Skie into the party.
Several days after sending the dagger, Corwin turns up and informs you that she’s been ordered by the Dukes of Baldur’s Gate to assist you in taking down Irenicus, and then Skie is hardly mentioned again. It’s clear that the focus is on Corwin.
One of the most common complaints about Corwin in Siege of Dragonspear is that her romance develops too quickly. Beamdog did the best with what they had, but ultimately the expansion was too short to really sell the idea that Corwin had grown genuine feelings for the player character. Giving her more time to breathe by bringing her into Baldur’s Gate II seems like an excellent idea with a lot of potential, but Love Conquers All skips right to the payoff.
When she joins you, she’s already infatuated, calling you “dear” and “love.” From there, the relationship has no real growth or conflict. Attempts at vulnerability, like her concerns about leaving her daughter Rohma or reflecting on her life decisions, feel surface-level and fail to add depth to her character.
The only interesting development takes place in Spellhold. When Irenicus recaptures the party, he personally acknowledges Corwin and the Soultaker, and has Corwin incapacitated and removed from the party.
That’s right! Welcome back, “love interest kidnapped from party” mod trope! I missed you since the last time I saw you… when I played Saerileth. It’s a brief return, however, as Corwin can be rescued about ten minutes later.
So why does Irenicus kidnap Corwin? Well, he has a dastardly plan… he’s going to put her under a geas and have her assassinate the Dukes of Baldur’s Gate! Why, exactly? I don’t know — maybe just for the shits and gigs. He says “She will be returned to Baldur’s Gate, where she will assassinate the Council of Four on my behalf — a fitting punishment for their arrogance and willingness to meddle in my affairs.”
I find this to be somewhat out of character for ol’ Jon. I’m not entirely sure if sending one operative to help take him down warrants such an extreme reaction, even from one as literally soulless as Irenicus. Oh well, it’s never mentioned again.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of Love Conquers All is its Shadows of Amn epilogue, which takes the player back to Baldur’s Gate alongside Corwin. While this concept has significant potential, its execution falls short — not due to sparse content, but because of critical flaws in what is present.
The mod’s disregard for player agency, a consistent issue throughout, reaches its peak here. The epilogue robs the player of meaningful choices, relying on auto-dialogue and rushing through events at a dizzying pace, prioritizing the mod’s predetermined narrative over player-driven roleplay.
That said, the sequence begins on a promising note. Following Ellesime’s speech, the player returns to Baldur’s Gate — a narrative beat tied solely to Corwin’s presence — and is greeted at Wyrm’s Crossing by Nederlock and Bence Duncan. A brief opportunity to explore the city follows, offering a handful of side quests of varying quality, before culminating in a briefing with the Dukes. While the setup suggests a compelling homecoming, the mod’s insistence on controlling the narrative undermines what could have been an engaging, player-driven experience.
Upon finishing the briefing, you have a scene wherein you propose to Corwin. You’re actually forced to marry her if you’ve gained a wedding ring at all. It’s not really a choice.
Once you’ve returned back to Corwin’s home, you find that Rohma has been kidnapped by Beno (her absentee father) and Illasera the Quick, who’s been hunting the player. This is actually a pretty compelling plot point and a solid introduction to the Five. You end up killing Illasera in the same temple under the city where you killed Sarevok. Skie gets to do something for the first time in the whole mod, as well, and helps Rohma escape.
Back at the palace, the Dukes inform you that Saradush is under siege, and the Bhaalspawn pose a growing threat to the Sword Coast—so it’s off to Tethyr you go. But first, you and Corwin have to say goodbye to Rohma. Honestly, someone needs to step up and take better care of this child! For the third time in a row, Corwin is heading off on another expedition and leaving her daughter behind. Despite earning a fortune from adventuring with you, she declares that she’s going to keep working with the Flaming Fist and aims to become a colonel.
Do the Fist have colonels? Bence is a corporal, Nederlock is a marshal… there are no Flaming Fist colonels, as far as I’m aware.
When you’re saying goodbye, Rohma tells the player that she loves them. The mod very lightly tackles the idea that Gorion’s ward may become a parent to Rohma, but largely sidesteps the topic, even when there’s a complete wealth of interesting ideas one could touch on there. Rohma outright saying “I love you, CHARNAME” feels wild, considering that at this point, you’ve met her twice.
Throne of Bhaal is light in content for Corwin, but it does introduce Caelar as a recruitable companion given the player has fulfilled some very specific requirements. I fulfilled them, but my game bugged and didn’t allow me to recruit her. Given what I’ve read in the files of her dialogue, she seems equally light in content beyond her initial recruitment, but you can make her jump from atop the Basalt Tower in Avernus by refusing to take her back to Faerûn.
Now, I’ve spoken a lot about the writing, but there’s something worth mentioning before I continue to do so — there exists a patch for this mod that introduces several explicit scenes into the game between a male player character and Corwin. I won’t go in-depth, because I like to keep this website relatively Safe for Work, but I have played it, read through everything it adds, and I think it represents something emblematic about Love Conquers All as a whole.
The explicit content itself is reminiscent of an Archive of Our Own smut fic, so it’s hard to review seriously, but there some problematic situations worth discussing — there’s a scene that essentially devolves into Corwin sexually assaulting the player, and the mod just assumes that the player actually enjoys it, despite the only dialogue option available at the time expressing genuine discomfort and fear. Yikes!
The explicit scenes devolve Corwin’s character into nothing but a vehicle to deliver a fantasy of a strong, dominant woman who constantly marvels at how amazing you are at intercourse.
It makes one wonder who the target audience is. One certainly does wonder.
I’ve gone this long without mentioning the portrait. Yes, Love Conquers All gives us the Baldur’s Gate version of the “Hire fans LOL” meme by beautifying Corwin in a portrait that makes the scarred, sunkissed soldier into a disturbing smooth-skinned AI monster. Even the shape of her head is different! God forbid women have jawlines, right? The option to use the original portrait is there, but the new portrait is the first thing a prospective player will see on the Github page.
The entire mod, explicit or otherwise, is written with this male-centric perspective. The relationship with Corwin is not one of nuance or depth, but of shallow, unconditional love, where she is depicted as subordinate to the male gaze — that is to say, her complexity and autonomy is diminished in favour of catering to a specific audience. If that seems harsh, I’ll put this here.
The player’s autonomy, too, is diminished in the lack of dialogue options to even express how they feel about the events unfolding around them. It’s as though the mod was written with a very specific vision for what this relationship should be, and the player can either take it or leave it.
I reached out to the author, because perhaps worse than any of this, the mod contained AI-voicing, trained off the hard work of Corwin’s actual voice actor. I brought to their attention the ethical concerns and they have said they are planning on removing the AI-voicing. That being said, I’m still going to talk about it.
I’ve discussed mods that use AI-voicing before. Crucible and Call of the Lost Goddess, two of my favourite mods to be released in recent memory, both extensively use AI-voicing. The difference there is that those mods make use of services that have hired people for the explicit purpose of making AI-voices as a product.
Training an AI on an actor’s voice without their permission is unambiguously immoral, and doing so with the intent of generating sexually explicit lines is disgusting, and distinctly dystopian, in my opinion. The last thing we need in this community is to be known for mistreating the artists that have contributed to creating the games we love.
Thankfully, as I said, I brought this to the attention of the author and they responded promptly and respectfully, promising to remove the AI-voicing.
Love Conquers All is ambitious, messy, and clearly caters to an audience far removed from myself — but I can see why some might enjoy it for what it is. I was initially drawn to the headcanon of my player character returning to Baldur’s Gate after the events of Throne of Bhaal and settling down with Corwin. Admittedly, this mod has soured that idea for me, though perhaps that’s because it doesn’t align with the cottagecore propaganda I would have indulged in had I been in the author’s place.
Despite the criticisms in this review, I genuinely look forward to seeing what the author creates next. For a first project in the Infinity Engine, it’s an impressive technical accomplishment, and the author’s responsiveness to compatibility requests and willingness to make changes shows a commendable dedication to their work.
Thanks for reading.
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