Actually, the funniest thing that Warhorse could do is make it so that in the opening of KCD3, Hans and Henry have a hunting trip and they get ambushed like the beginning of KCD2, but if you chose to make Hansry canon, they have an afternoon delight right before the ambush and you get the post coital buff for the first fight of the game, so that the optimal way to play the game at least at the start is to get the Gay Sex Buff.
From a game design perspective if they actually did this, there’d be two dialogue paths of Platonic and Romantic and you’d actually have to have benefits and drawbacks to both dialogue paths, so if I’m being serious about this:
Both paths would start with Hans lamenting his imminent marriage with Henry reassuring him that nothing will change between them (the connotation of him saying this will change based on later dialogue options.) Hans, of course, brought wine along for this hunting trip to drink his sorrows away. This is where the dialogue actually starts to branch off. You can toast to Hans’s last days of freedom (Platonic) or to his upcoming nuptials (Platonic) or their heroism at Suchdol (Platonic) or to just to “❤️Us” (ie Hans and Henry) (Romantic) [you can do up to three toasts, so long as you can handle your drinking checks]
Hans says something like “I’m going to miss this” to which Henry can offer another toast, which will lead into the Platonic Cutscene of them drinking together before Henry and Hans lay down for a nap. Cut to the Clock [You are Sleeping Off the Wine]
OR if you chose the “Us” option for any of your toasts, it unlocks an extra dialogue option of “❤️is that all you’ll miss?” where they actually talk about how Hans’s arranged marriage affects them as a couple, which is its own dialogue tree that sets the tone for the romance over the rest of the game. No matter how that conversation path goes, it will end with Henry suggestively asking if his lord only brought him out here to lament his fate. Hans will act offended that Henry questions his motives before leaning into a kiss and—Cut to the Clock [You Are Enjoying Your Lord’s Company]
Both paths converge on a cutscene of Henry sleeping on Hans’s shoulder, with the only difference being what they’re wearing. If they only drank together, Henry will still be wearing a brigandine chest plate, and Hans will have on a cuirass. If they did anything else, they’ll only be in pourpoints. They’re approached from all sides by bandits who intend to ransom to the groom-to-be to his bride. Their unusually savvy captain seems to understand the massive political significance of this wedding. The fight is effectively unavoidable.
For the Platonic Path be either drunk or hungover, since all they did was drink. For the Romantic path, Henry and Hans were distracted from drinking, so instead they having a post-coital buff called something like Afternoon Delight that raises Str, Ag, and Vit +2 like Secret Herb in KCD2.
This means the trade-off for going full platonic is being tipsy/hungover in full armor, and the trade-off for romance is less armor but better overall stats. Since strength and agility buff melee damage and vitality governs stamina, Romantic gives you better offense and Platonic gives you better defense. What makes Romantic more viable than Platonic in this proposed setup is that Romantic doesn’t leave Henry drunk or hungover because they stop drinking earlier on. A Romantic Path Henry therefore never has debuffs on him, only the Afternoon Delight buff.
If you already know the game’s fighting mechanics, the buffs to all combat stats more than makes up for not having a brigandine, so more experienced players should go for the romantic path while newer players would be better served by the extra layer of armor.
There will be people that tell you the optimal path is to go for a single toast so Henry is mildly hungover for the fight, these people are lying to themselves. Gay sex is the Meta.
