Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback A Fix For Astarion's Act 3 Approvals

General spoilers below.



Astarion's Act 3 approval and disapproval is all over the place. Reasonably, this is to cover that he may or may not be partway through a redemption arc, without an easy split like DJ/Selunite Shadowheart. But it tries to account for two opposing playthroughs at the same time, and it's very janky. There are conversations where he approves of every option. There are conversations where he disapproves of every option. More importantly, it's not reactive, so you can have Vampire Ascendant Astarion approve of your evil PC feeding Yenna or claiming that your best quality is that you're kind to everyone, and you can have Spawn Astarion disapprove of helping Aylin against Lorroakan even though in his reactions he's sympathetic to Aylin and expresses delight in watching her wreck Lorroakan beforehand.

To fix this, I think his approval needs to be split into two routes upon entering Act 3: a good-ish path and an evil path, i.e. how he started out. He doesn't have a clear point of divergence like Shadowheart does, but I think this could be handled by adding a counter to some earlier decisions that weighs whether your player has been influencing him positively or negatively.

Araj and Yurgir would be the biggest contributors, alongside whether the PC let him bite in Act 1, but I think major quests should also have an impact; saving or raiding the Grove, saving Last Light versus Durge killing Isobel/Tav giving her to Marcus, saving or killing the Nightsong. Certain arc sidequests like Barcus and Mayrina might be worth adding in for a +1/-1, but the biggest hinge is how the PC treats Astarion, so you could have cases like a bad start redemption arc Durge where he still comes out 'good' in Act 3. However, the quest tally should weigh enough that if you have an evil PC who picks every evil option, even if they're nice to Astarion at every opportunity, he should still be on his evil approval set. That's how I'm envisioning this, anyway, though YMMV in implementation.

If the player breaks even on this count, he should default to his evil path. It may be a good idea to set the floor for his evil path above zero, so that the player has to be either significantly good or significantly nice to him to start seeing his character change in Act 3 (and if the player is unkind to him, then no matter what else, he won't change.)

Spawn ending automatically sets him to the good approval set and Ascendant automatically sets him to evil, if he was on a different track before.

From there... 'Good' Astarion is far from a nice person, and he'll still disapprove of handing out money on the streets or Lawful Stupid brand heroics. But at least his behavior could be made consistent, so that it's 'good' Astarion who approves of rescuing a random kid from a hag and 'bad' Astarion who wants you to sell off Nightsong.

I also think it would benefit to have this factor into his final decision at Cazador's Palace. I'm not saying I want getting the good ending to ever be easy. But I think it's tone-deaf that a goody-two-shoes Tav that's been romancing him sweetly for the entire game has the same DC on talking him down as an evil Tav who treated him as disposable. If you killed the Grove and told him to bite Araj? If you've confirmed all his beliefs that the world is a cruel place and power is the only way to thrive? You should be rolling those checks with disadvantage.

Hypothetically, though, that one should probably look at the number on the counter itself and not just whether he's in his Act 3 good/evil path. The Tav that did everything as cruelly as possible should have a harder time persuading him out of the Rite than a Tav who just ignored Astarion up until now, who shouldn't really have a different DC than a Tav who also ignored Astarion but saved the Grove and tipped him onto his good set of approvals.

But that part's less important than establishing some character consistency. Any thoughts?

I was suggesting something similar here. But after looking at all the PADs.
I honestly don't think the separation makes any sense.

A lot of the misunderstanding of approvals may be due to Astarion's character. Wyll may want to kill a bad man out of honor, to save someone, sympathy for someone being wronged.
Astarion - carnage = fun, demonstration of power over the powerful, practical profit.

I don't think spawn changes that much to the world.
It would be too drastic in 4 months. Only to the companions and their opinions.
But Tav can continue to be an evil character and who better than Astarion to support Tav in that? You can choose not to take Astarion to the ritual at all and lie to him that it wasn't that big of a deal. Why should he change from that with 1-2 act behavior.

Astarion is the only evil male companion in the game.

Honestly with approvals it's hard.
For example, in PAD he reacts calmly to Lorroakan. On the contrary interested, the tone is not judgmental. There are tons of PADs where he's the only Evil character. No matter what. Making PADs inactive? Rewriting them is a crime. Adding new ones is a crime, confusing and too sharp a distinction.
For a character like Astarion.


This is what the author says about Astarion.
"Stephen Rooney argues that two important principles must be presented when creating Astarion. The essence of his character comes down to the value of violence and the dark side of humanity, and his extraordinary charm and allure. This balance is crucial, because a shift to either side would make Astarion extremely unattractive or too one-dimensional and empty a character".

Approval is a meta. It's pretty messy right now. But I don't think it's worth fixing. And it will confuse it even more.

Astarion's author has said that he has left Larian Studios. Only the original author should work with approval. It's directly in character.
Such a suggestion is made to bring some clarity to a character's personality. Now it doesn't make much sense without the author who created the character, if the work is done without his quill - it will still be questionable.

Right now, the best thing that can happen to Astarion's character is he won't be touched.

I'm pretty sure they don't do it for every scene. For a lot of scenes where there's no direct dialogue from that specific character, sometimes whoever's writing that scene seems to use very basic barometers like "evil character approves" "good character disapproves" or even "ALL characters approve" even if it doesn't make sense for all of them.
I have a hard time believing Minthara approves of helping Yenna, feeding her or giving her money, and that her writer, Adam Smith, would agree with that approval. It's why I don't take the approval system too seriously, by Act 3 it becomes quite basic and surface-level in the way it works.

Ah, I didn't know that Stephen Rooney was no longer at Larian. What a shame! Though I wish him all the best in his future endeavors. In that case, I agree that it's better Astarion be left alone, because there isn't any executor who can decide what's in character for him, and splitting his approvals/disapprovals requires a fine-toothed understanding of his character that none of us can claim.

Though I would argue that four months is enough to start seeing some drastic shifts, because... that is what the game shows. You would never have been able to convince him to turn away from ultimate power at the start of the journey, and that's not something as simple as getting him to trust the player (the game is pretty clear in that in how the Rite is always a fixation no matter how well he's treated; he can come to feel safe with the player if they're understanding, but he still isolates them as an exception to the rule and craves the power and security to control everything else.) It's only four months, and in one way that's not very realistic... but it's four months of constant upheavals to some pretty fundamental beliefs. His change in attitude is part defusing bitterness (where Ascended ending clings to this, railing at the world that created Cazador, and spawn ending has him move beyond it, 'we deserve happiness, they all do'), but Astarion spent 200 years living in a microcosm that enforced that people didn't care about each other, and any form of altruism was either inherently doomed as something others would prey on, or came with ulterior motives and benefitted the benefactor more than the benefactee. There isn't really any point arguing scrapped EA relics of characterization/plot, but it does seem like the point that no one ever tried to help him was originally going to be further baked into the story - I remember early datamining unveiling a Kelemvorite faction that had a truce with Cazador instead of eliminating him because it was easier to have one powerful undead controlling the other undead in Baldur's Gate and keeping out competitors, even if that meant leaving him his victims as sacrificial lambs.

I digress. I don't especially think it's a problem that he be the only companion who supports certain choices, because in most circumstances where the player would make those choices, he still would support them - and I think there are already cases in which nobody will support the PC's decision. But I agree that having new reactions written isn't an option at this point. I wasn't thinking that certain dialogues would have to be split and not just the +1/-1 attached to them, but you're right, they would, and I'm not interested in trying to polarize his character towards 'good'/'evil' any further than it already seems to be. Which might sound a bit hypocritical, given the nature of the suggestion, but I don't actually want Astarion to be made nicer (as some updates have moved towards.) I love this complicated bastard just the way he is. I just wanted his approvals to match the split that's already presented in his reactions.

(Wyll is an interesting example to bring up re:approvals because there are clearly some relics of EA in his Act 1 approval set - he still has major beef with goblins and approves of cruelty/mercilessness to them even though that seems to have been written out of the story entirely. Though I'm with you on complex motivations - a good example would be how Astarion approves of enslaving the gnomes in Grymforge because they're too weak and cowardly to rebel, and it lets him feel superior, but disapproves of enslaving the gnolls at Moonrise because it's done with mental domination and for the purpose of degrading them, and that hits way too close to home.)

Yeah, he left this month but announced it yesterday.

I agree with your general thoughts, TBH. I don't take approvals too seriously anymore because of what I said, so I don't think it's a priority to create a new system for approvals to branch depending on where the character's going (they don't have anything to actually do this as of now), but I do think DC roll changes to the ritual can be implemented depending on what you did during the game.
For characterisation, I will always take what the character says over what they approve or disapprove of after seeing it be kind of faulty.

I do also think that while Stephen absolutely is going to have a better grasp at handling Astarion, he shouldn't be revered to the point no one else can be fit to do small tweaks here and there. The rest of Larian has also contributed to the character and knows what they intended for his story.

However, in Act 1, they are perfectly crafted and gave a picture of personality. Almost jewel-like in my opinion.
Overall and Act 2 at 70% is doing well too.
I saw some things in Act 3 that were clearly being worked on adding approval.

So in Act 3, I stprare to trim the "for everyone" type jokes or "sloppy, didn't work on that" from where work was clearly being done - it is visible.
Even in conversation with a pigeon. Where Astarion approves of saying directly how brutally killed, that only Astarion and Minthara approve, or that he was killed by a flying cat - evil trickster thing. (Minathra wasn't reacting to that already).

Without the author who created the Astarion character, the changes won't bring clarity to the character's identity, it will just be a different kind of issue. So it's better to work with what's in the game.

In the end spawn from also comes to "redemption" even if 7k die, just not for power, but as a mercy killing. That's another topic of discussion.
In my opinion the main question here is: power by bloody payment or nothing, but right.

I think Astarion's quest should have been more morally complex and with the revelation of his past - so that I could accept the "redemption" arc as something whole and relevant.
Even the narrator says "...perhaps redemption" - redemption of what is my question.
Redemption implies guilt. Astarion, however, had no choice - it was all Cazador's fault, it was an order.
Plot hole.

I think only the player could cooperate with Cazador. But those details I don't know.
Either way I think the backstory of a corrupt magistrate who sold prisoners as food to vampires is alive and doing well. Until I'm told otherwise. It's not headcanon since it's been mentioned with the media, but it's not canon either since the game is coquettishly silent. Which fits the theme of redemption just right.
He also remembers his past - wealth and power.

Maybe the new artbook that Larian is working on will say something or confirm the EA artbook.


Without a direct character creator, yes, as much as I too would like the polishing of the story, it's best to leave it as it is.

Yes, despite all the obstacles and setbacks along the way he is a talented, neutral author with interesting ideas. I wish him only good luck and success.

Agreed that Act 3 isn't great with approvals in general... and generally lacks the same hyper-focus paid to each character that had me fall head over heels in love with this game in Act 1. (My standards are forever changed. Nothing will ever compare to its magnificence.) If I'm sad about anything regarding Larian's trajectory forward, it's that we're probably not getting a Definitive Edition that cleans up Act 3 and adds in all those missing camp scenes and companion interactivity.

Minthara and Astarion are the biggest offenders, but there's times I'm fussed on Gale, too (who's a less severe case of divergent character growth that doesn't align with his reactions.)

That said... is Stephen Rooney the only person who could conceivably write Astarion well? No. But he is a much fiddlier and self-contradictory character than, say, Lae'zel or Karlach. The only other origin with his level of constant mental gymnastics is Shadowheart, and she's already coalesced into a clear good/bad path by Act 3. And I'm not... especially trusting of his character handling? There's been a trend towards making him more... unambiguously good and satisfied with everything in his good ending from release to the current state of the game, when I was happy with things being less perfect and still having a lot of messiness to work through. He's a case where I would want the original hands on deck, because splitting his Act 3 mess into a character-development-in-progress path and a 'still the same terrible person' path invites a lot of opportunity to simplify the character, and overall? With how Astarion and Karlach's stories have shifted from launch, and how Gale and especially Wyll changed from EA, I think Larian is maybe a little too susceptible towards nice-washing the characters to please fandom. So... perhaps I should be careful what I wish for.

Though I'll still lament that you can force Astarion into sex and then have him approve of saying you're a nice person.

...I always thought Astarion approved of Tara eating pigeons because Let The Predator Eat, lol.

I also wish the game differentiated things more between the 7k spawn living or dying (and I wish them living wasn't such a clean ending, realistically that should have had more consequences), but IIRC, Astarion gets upset at the player if they're killed and stresses that they should have had the opportunity to make their own choices that he received. So he does take away the same lesson that he does if they're saved. And mercy killing them is significantly different than sacrificing their souls to the hells for eternal torment.

I agree with power by bloody means or showing the kindness he was never shown, but I also think Astarion's climactic choice has a layer of continuing to do what he thinks he needs to do, versus finally accepting he can say no. That might sound kind of insane given how much he wants the Rite, but consider - he doesn't want to kill his siblings and he doesn't want to kill the spawn (beyond the knee-jerk 'if I erase them, it's like my shame never happened.')

If you romance Astarion, you're shown how he pursues what he thinks he needs (security) by means he doesn't want to put himself through, but thinks he has no choice, practically. The ends justify the means, even if the means are slowly killing him inside. Imo, once the game explains the first half of his romance, and he becomes genuine with the player - the game repeats itself, and wants the player to catch onto that. Hence he starts manipulating the player again, and putting on a front, and going through all that maladaptive Act 1 behavior all the way up until Cazador's death. He latches onto the Rite as something that will fix everything that's wrong with his life - his limitations, his hunger, his powerlessness, his constant unending fear. He has to do it, or he'll be trapped forever. Or... he doesn't, and can face an unknown future without cutting his own heart out.

If you want my take on redemption... I don't like the way it's brought up with Ulma, because he really didn't have a choice for that. But Astarion does have things to atone for, because... he starts out the game as a horrible person who believes horrible things and will do horrible things given the chance. He had no agency under Cazador, but he uses that to hide from responsibility now that he does have agency, and he gradually grew to resent everyone and everything and modeled his idea of success on Cazador, however unconsciously. When he joins up, he wants to watch the world burn for entertainment. You can't judge him for what he did on pain of unspeakable torture, but the problem is that he rationalized it - in order to cope with his situation, sure, but it did change him. He hurts people because it makes him feel strong, lets him differentiate himself from 'the weak' he's terrified of being, and he uses them for his benefit. Gradually he can realize the latter and then the former are both wrong - ergo, redemption.

I don't really have an opinion on the canon status of his artbook backstory. I think I lean away from it, though I'd like it on a less extreme level (ex, Cazador had bought out Astarion, but Astarion was not specifically aiming to become a vampire... which is an odd aspiration for a very young elf anyway.) Astarion being in league with Cazador before he died is fascinating to explore, and it's implied when the player can point out it's weird that Cazador just happened to be there when Astarion died. But it doesn't mesh well with the cycles of abuse theme his story eventually settled on - because in this case, Astarion starts out pretty horribly evil. I vibe with him being a corrupt magistrate who only cared about himself and fucked people over with his rulings, but when you have him wanting to be a vampire from the outset, and intentionally trafficking prisoners/using the courts to condemn innocents Cazador wants to get his hands on? That turns what happened to him into a twisted form of karma. And I personally find that very uncomfortable to imply given the scope of what he went through. I like the story of a shitty person becoming less shitty through the power of empathy, I don't like human trafficking from the outset.

I didn't know there's a new artbook, though! I'd love to see it, and I hope it clarifies the backstory too.

You want proof he wants to do the ritual? Here is Astarion if you don't take him along to kill Cazador:



https://youtube.com/shorts/kF5fnULfrRg?si=dTIPqcU-3TyCbC0I

I think you're misunderstanding me. Obviously Astarion is enraged if you sideline him from his own well-earned revenge and make his decisions for him. That route doesn't just deny him agency, it denies him closure.

I'm saying he's conflicted about what he has to do to complete the ritual, and he's shoving down that conflict and insisting everything's fine until that makes it fine... as Astarion generally does.

Astarion badly wants the ritual. That's, like... super obvious. It's everything he's ever craved. But he doesn't want to have to kill his siblings for it, nor his victims, and he tries unsuccessfully to convince himself he does/that they don't matter. Both banter and devnotes support this (off the top of my head, if you confront him about lying to his siblings that he plans on killing them, he does privately think that's going too far), his breakdown at encountering his old conquests aside.

My point was to say that in the romanced path, you make your choices to benefit you & your play through. Though without the romance, he still wants the choice for himself. At this point, if you do not romance him, you have to "persuade him" to give up the ritual or you can embrace his choice. That would then only be you & your Tav's opinion related to your choices in the game. If you are just an ally with him, he wants the choice to make the decision himself, yet can't do without Tav's eyes. If you play the Origin story of Astarion, is the only time that the player, if they play true to the character can make the choice completely for him, but in the end, it is still just the player's opinion. All of his endings are related to the player behind the keyboard and their choices/head canon/opinion. It is a role playing game. Everyone will have differing opinions on how to proceed with that.

They just need to leave his character alone and allow the player to choose in the end. That is all I meant.

He never truly gets to make the choice by himself, it will always be how the person behind the keyboard wants to do it.

Here is the fundamental difference in our opinions. I went to the game for this story.
For me, it's a story of poetic justice, but a punishment so evil and twisted that you sympathize and generally "join the dark side".
A brilliant idea.

I prefer to explore antagonists, evil characters, but with very complex morals.
Astarion, Lord Astarion are a perfect fit.

He thinks he's too far, but the developers notes also say it's to hold a ritual his "plan", and if you kill one spawn he'll scream that everything is ruined. A plan has to be planned, Astarion realizes it's a bloody price, goes far, but it's a price that must be paid, he had a plan to do it.
He also has the phrase "The only problem with Cazador is that he did this to me".

I don't like the idea of redeeming a complex evil character. (especially so abruptly)
That doesn't seem worthy of the theme of "redemption" to me, call it a "new path".
Redemption of his own character, meh, no.
And if Tav also wants power and continues to play the evil drow along with the spawn of Astarion and wreak havoc - this "redeeming bad qualities" makes no sense at all.

I'm pretty sure a detail like enjoying killing can't be fixed and redeemed - it's either vampirism or just Astarion.

The themes of the cycle of violence don't fit well with everything in general, in Faerun. It's impossible to leave this violence in a coterie as long as it's medieval Faerun, my opinion.
Especially for Astarion - Faerun hates the undead.

Understandable. I found this game long after early access, but if I'd been here from the start, I would've felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. As someone with a friend who was super attached to EA Wyll, I sympathize. It had to be frustrating to fall wholesale in love with a character, and then hit release with something that's several steps to the left of what you were enamored with, and now everyone is ranting and raving about something that's only loosely attached to the version you fell for, and half of them are rubbing the new canon in your face about how ACKSHULLY you're wrong and this is their character now. That's... very tough.

I'm... not really interested in deconstructing minutiae in light of that, unless that's something you actually want to do. Like, my understanding of Astarion accounts for all of those pretty dark bits, but we're coming at this from different angles and ultimately I think we want different things out of the character, so is it worth picking it apart if we're both happy with what we've got?

Pretty sure the murder-happiness is a vampire thing. He's still a gleeful psycho in his spawn ending, at least the unromanced one. But I agree the epilogue's a little too sunny about his prospects, alongside the whole 7k spawn question (in the Underdark? A horde of vampires, who are both ravenous predators no ecosystem could sustain and invisible to infra-vision? Every settlement within 50 miles is rolling for initiative. Though I also think having his siblings lead them all to peace and prosperity is equally weird when you figure they're just as hateful and cynical and traumatized as he started. It's also assuming a horde of 7,000 feral vampire spawn can be managed, but... that's a whole 'nother can of worms.)

My English may be failing me. As far as I'm concerned.
I am ineed understand him in different vector, there's enough basis for that in the game, but I also consider his light sides, because "seducing" the dark side doesn't work without something ambiguous.
I prefer approach to a character like mybg3notebook do, but it's EA, if you're interested you can find tumblr.


I understand.
Generally, EA is an incomplete version of the game, not a draft, at least that's what Larian stated (ugh I can't find that post, if I do I'll post it)
However, Wyll has changed. And people complain that it's written in a boring way.
I don't know if the fans influenced Larian or someone else who wanted a "mass product". Or Larian didn't have the time, or both. Oh, well.

I don't like this attitude towards EA, because in my opinion there are pure ideas there that probably remain, all, or half of them.

Are they really interested in exploring the character?
It's as if a person who studied Leonardo da Vinci's work, having found a draft or unfinished work said: "burn it, it's not a release".

I agree with LiryFire. The more patches role out, the further he gets from being Astarion. I personally wish that they would have stopped prior to patch 6 on story changes, since, IMO they changed too much already. He is still a vampire in Faerun with DnD Rules & Lore. The small touches of the homebrew are better than the constant rewrites all the time just to fit a certain group? of players. I don't think very many people are happy with the changes. Some polish and fixing the bugs, yes. Those need to be done. Without the creator of the character, I hope they don't change anything else about Astarion to make it more confusing than it already is.

Absolutely agree. Fixing the "kissing" and not touching Astarion is the best thing the Larians can do now.