Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Let Astarion make his own decisions [spoilers]

(sorry for bad English)

Final Astarion quest disappoints and causes a strong scandal in the community.

In the end, you must persuade Astarion not to perform the ritual, or you will help him and get a "bitter" ending. Your character becomes "offended" by default, which is shown by dialogues. There are two negative answers, and two strange ones. Let's say there is no option where your character would be happy with the result or did not ask for anything, because the main thing Astarion is happy. Honestly, all four options look bad for me.



My problem is that other characters can make their own choices based on your previous decisions. For example, Shadow, you can tell her to "decide for yourself." Gale also makes decisions based on what you have convinced him of before. Both of these systems work much better.

Is it possible that Astarion also has such a system and I can't detect it? People blame each other for either forcing him to make such a decision, or misunderstand the character. One of these people is your writer, as far as I know a lot of people can't track their message in the game because ppl choose Ascension for different reasons and I think "sex as a reward" is the last of them. I would like the ritual not to be about sexual objectification. Sorry, but at the moment of the ritual, this topic does not pop up in the dialogues between my character and Astarion.

Everything that concerned sexual objectification should end in the second act. There is a very good dialogue that leads you either to break up or to strengthen the relationship. I also didn't want the choice of an evil character to be associated in the game only with the opinion "I want to get sex" (this is about Minthara and Lae also). This is a very strange and unreasonable position.

I know some people say "you don't see him" and that just proves my point. If you play for evil, then you see in the desire of power a good opportunity. You agree with Astarion, you do not think "he is different", you think "I agree with you! I also think about how cool it would be to manipulate all these people." You choose evil answers and get a different reaction from Astarion. It is logical that your conclusions about the character will be different, but this should not go out in "you misunderstood him".

To eliminate all disputes, make sure that Astarion makes the decision himself. If your character is a good hero, then Astarion watches they actions and decides to redeem himself. If your character is a villain, then Astarion chooses power. At the moment, only one answer in the final quest solves everything, and that's sad.

As for romance, it would be great if we had the opportunity to convince Astarion not to turn us into spawn. For example, to gain his trust. Someone will say "evil characters don't trust". But guys Gortash, come on! Why wasn't this opportunity considered for Astarion when our relationship is much better? Gortash agrees to an equal union with you and trusts you.

Turning into a spawn looks like a punishment (or explain why it is so important for him to bind us to himself). So we are being punished again for an evil game. There is no pleasure in playing as an evil or even neutral character if you are constantly being punished for it. I don't need the game to give me moral lessons. I play for fun. If you don't want players to enjoy the evil way, then just don't add it. I appreciate that you have added obviously evil companions to the game, but I don't like the idea that it is necessary to redeem them and this is the only correct option.

I don't like it when fans define one solution as "the best" and another as "the worst". An evil and a good ending should not be defined as a failure or a victory. You have a game with evil gods who have been glorified for centuries. But if you play an evil character, then you only get a salty taste and a cropped ending.

I can agree that the character should be given the opportunity to make his own decisions, but I would also like the level of ability check to change depending on our behavior.
If I act out evil, kill children in the druid grove, do all sorts of bad things and all the time I want more power for myself, and therefore in order to persuade Astarion to refuse ascension I need to roll 20-25 charisma, because all my actions in Acts 1 and 2 were nagging him to such behavior.
Or if I save everyone all the time and show by my example that it is not necessary to manipulate people to achieve results, 5-10 charisma is enough for me.
It seems to me that adding such a check on the behavior of the main character would have better played on the atmosphere of Astarion’s final quest.

Some people say they didn't have to roll the dice. But I think they accidentally killed spawn during the fight and didn't notice. Or I don't understand something.