I romanced everyone in DA:O once. (It's probably my most replayed game of all time.) I think I force myself to forget that a hardened Alistair goes along with it too. I was a little disgusted tbh lol. I never cared for pirate hoe even in her first appearance. Was disappointed she was a main character in DA2 but DA2 was my least favorite overall. Partially because I didn't care for the romance options. Anders was retconned into oblivion from Awakening and all the characters were kind of... awful. Hopefully this game doesn't go that route. I personally loved DA:I but I usually find the complaints against it valid. But the characters were such a huge step up from 2. I only ever played BG1 so I didn't get to experience the BG2 romances. (Really wish I had. Not sure why I never played it given how much I loved the first and DA:O) ANYWAY. I romanced Alistair 99% of the time and wound up with a husband with a very similar sense of humor. (no regrets)
The thing about Astarion is that I KNOW he's lying to me and he knows I know he's lying to me. He's good at persuasion and I think he enjoys the dance of seduction. Saying you're just in it for fun takes some of the fun out it for him, I think. Ofc, I definitely hope it means more. But yeah, having approval tied dialogue would be awesome. I just want more opportunities to develop the pc's relationship with him. I feel like there also needs to be more options to flirt with him. Also, why don't we get approval gains from him when we choose the flirt options? He seems like the kind of person who would get an approval boost if you flirt with him. As it is, it seems pretty easy to get his approval up playing a neutral or chaotic good character.
The moments of vulnerability give me the most hope. When he drops the facade of being all charm and shows that he's terrified and wounded. Especially when he gets the Cazador dream. You get an approval boost from him when you try to connect but he throws up those barriers so fast--he's afraid to let anyone close but the approval makes me think that he wants to. I feel like gaining his trust could be very rewarding. Just, pleeeeease Larian... don't make him a one note slut.
Oh, my husband not only has very similar sense of humor to Alistair's but he also looks a lot like him too! One of my best friends whom I kinda got to play DAO was shocked when she saw my husband, err, before we were married of course! So, a fedora hat tip to your impeccable taste in men my friend.
Anyhow, I don't think Astarion actually lied as much as he omitted telling the truth. It's not really a lie if you don't really talk or mention stuff you should have probably come clean about, but then again, Astarion is, in essence a very damaged and scared elf deep down. And oh, on both my full EA runs I went out of my way to not use tadpole powers, so sadly I had no dreams trigger... but a while ago I reloaded older saves out of curiosity and triggered them all in a row, I still don't understand why the 'good' path is not giving you any dreams, Larian, please fix, let tadpolers keep their dreams and give power deniers another ones. BG1 did it, a 20 yr old game, so can you, no excuses.
Now the reason why in fully released game I won't use the tadpole either it's been pretty much implied, if you succumb to corruption, you might doom yourself and those close to you. And I swear, I'm gonna be real pissed if tadpole deniers will get the exact same endings as full blown tadpolers. It's gonna be ME3 3 colored endings all over again. I really hope Larian will deliver on the promise of actions having consequences. On that note, if there will be tangible consequences, I might go on a super evil mind control run too. Out of sheer curiosity of course. Speaking of curiosity runs, I once, uh, let Loghain live and my god watching Alistair's reaction literally broke my heart. Who knew a bunch of pixels could make a grown woman cry.
Back to Astarion - well, he didn't lie about his master tho, I don't know if you've seen the modded origin character access, people basically can use a mod and pick an origin to play as, and my god, I've watched Astarion's Cazador scenes on youtube, as heartbreaking as Alistair's reaction to Loghain becoming a gray warden. Cazador is literally a grade A douchebag, oh, and apparently, there is a scene when Astarion wants to bite you that requires detect thoughts spell (what isn't properly implemented yet in EA) that you can make him spill the whole info on only being allowed to feed on animals until the point he's gotten a tadpole in his head. And apparently, after you cast detect thoughts on him in the entire Cazador talking scene in the camp after having these tadpole wet dreams, he has some extra lines of dialogue, but again, I'm not sure if it's implemented yet or not. But overall, Astarion hasn't lied about Cazador being a monster, I am still curious as to why he dreams about him, of all the things one could dream about. And yes, I know he has a very hostile reaction if you ask him why Cazador.
Edit: As per usual, I'm fixing my own typos.
Ah, OCD is so fun.
