Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Do you guys like Astarion as an NPC?

And the bite ability is ridiculous.

100% success without an attack roll and a gamey "bloodless" condition for some seconds that in no way matches the name. And you can only bite once per rest. What?

This is how Vampire Spawns actually bite:


5e version is much more flavorful and mechanically superior to Larian's version. Sure, would be too powerful for a level 1 PC. But why does he need to be level 1? Companions can also be introduced later in the game, like BG1&2 do.

He gets giddy about killing kids and tries to murder the MC twice. Maybe i'm alone in this, but his acting like an extremely effeminate homosexual - sorry, posh and grandiose - didn't really hide all that well that he's an evil mofo out for himself.

I mean, from what I understand, devastation will be big enough to affect you no matter if you are around or not, so I suppose that doesn't really matter if he travels with you or not. No point to tell you about it either, if there is nothing you can do about it. Also his body, his choice. Mind your own business

I would be disappointed in a bg game that didn't give us a vampire angle. Baldur's Gate was set in the Forgotten realms, but totally dipped its toes into like the Ravenloft and Spelljammer swimming pools too, especially the sequel.

Astarion works well enough for me as a foppish vampire archetype I guess, but I think where it fails to land right now is that they are giving us a vampire totally outside of the usual setting for vampire storylines. Like the fact that we meet him during the day, just posting by the side of the road in some backwater, doesn't really prime me to get all into the vampire aspect at all. I mean it would be about a thousand times more interesting if we met this dude in some kind of context.

I don't know if we are eventually supposed to be meeting all these Origins before leaving the Nautiloid? Like perhaps his introduction could be made slightly more interesting if we ran into him on the ship rather than just boar hunting at high noon post crash. Or you know, if he appeared with an introductory encounter during our first camp rest, at night! lol Or perhaps in the ruins with the skeletons? Or I don't know, but its such a silly cold open that it's hard to take his character seriously.

Vampires need other vampires and gothic elements for it to work for me, like in a narrative with at least some attention to the setting. Daytime vampires feels a bit dated like 1999 to me. What it gains from novelty in daytime settings it loses in the traditional ambiance. Like if they're going to give me a vampire companion, I just want it to at least kick off at night, and be a feature of the night game. Which is something sorely lacking at the moment.

Also, there's just not enough black threads in this game to support a Vampire angle right now for me. Not exactly related to vampires, but I caught Willow again the other night after playing BG3 for a few minutes, and all I could think when watching the film was how we're still totally missing our Mad Martigan or Sorsha or Bavmorda duds here in BG3 hehe.

It just seems kinda wonky to me, to throw out a vampire at us without some more support from the story. He looks like such a deadpan stereotypical vampire, that forcing the PCs to pretend like they wouldn't instantly call him out on it is also a bit straining. I think it would play better, if he owned the vampirism from the getgo, and the banter handled all the "ok here's a vampire" stuff immediately, rather than dragging it out as a pointless "reveal." Then maybe they could get into the more interesting stuff, like who made this vampire and what sort of vampire bullshit is about to crack off. Cause once I'm in a vampire campaign, I start judging everything by a much higher standard. Plenty of boxes that might be checked off there, but we don't get really any exposition or priming or much follow up. I'd rather meet this character in the City, or I guess on the ship, but if it's the latter with some kind of set up going up there. Make it part of the plot, instead of just a thing about the character, and then I'd have more buy in. Each of the Origin companions feels wonky to me, because they have all this character thrown at us with no real support from the story. Right now only Lae'zel seems to make much sense from a plotting standpoint, cause like how else do you get a Gith companion and Gith vs Flayers plotline going on. But the rest feel like they're jumping in from out of nowhere. Perhaps that's not entirely fair to Wyll, since I guess he makes an entrance that fits the generalized plotline. Shadowheart feels like she is making a more sensible entrance since patch 5 and the artifact. Since they changed what happens with her, I now am looking at all the other current companion starts as like placeholders potentially. Astarion and Gale make the weakest entrances I think, and feel the most shoehorned, or like just being dropped in wherever. Those intros could be better

The concept is great, execution really bad. To put it in simple terms, he needed to be a Rated-R fantasy vampire. Adult themed.
What we have is a PG-13 (and under...) over the top jester wannabe vampire, vampire. Something kids can relate too...hence VERY ANNOYING and superficial.

Don't forget BG:II's brief glimpse at Dark Sun #MakeADarkSunGame

I don't really have much else to add except that Astarion's introduction has been a point of contention from the beginning for a lot of people, especially without an explicit choice to kill him, but it might just be their way of letting all the people who don't have time for that chaotic evil nonsense know what their getting themselves into upfront.

And yes, more calls for prologues or anything really to help establish these characters is always welcome. I might just play as Astarion in my first playthrough just to see what they thought his actions would look like.

My views on Astarion are reserved based on whether he ends up having actual sympathetic depth like Daeran in Pathfinder WotR does.

That's going to be difficult to pull off though, and we won't really know until full release, so we're going to sit through probably another year and a half of the community already having made up their minds on him.

I actually completely agree. The same for Gale, he just has stupid lines. They need to put some depth into their personality and remove the excess of humour.

I perfectly happy with a Vampire Spawn whose captivity has put him into a state of cartoonish arrested development, he wasn't a sympathetic person to begin with and being a victim doesn't just change him into one.

Astarion was the guy who went "So I kicked in the head until he was dead hyeh ha ha ha"


As for the 'humor' I'm not sure, comparing it to the old games I'm not sure how it stacks up. The humor could be all over the place, I think it has more to do with the kind of anachronistic way everyone treats the world they live in. Kind of like the characters in the Force Awakens, their perspective on the Star Wars universe was more like how the audience views it than how people who actually lived there would. Am I making sense?

Fantasy and video game writing has changed a lot through the past 20 years. I think the originals have some solid writing, but I would be interested in seeing a modern take on the sword coast. Instead we got some childish characters.

Larian never had strong story/writing, but I believed they would put some more effort on it. The game is only mature because of almost explicit sex scenes.

Like a hamster talking ranger?

I hate him. He ALWAYS die in my playthrough.
Looks like a character of a serie/film for teenager like Twilight.

Exactly. Silliness was always part of the Forgotten Realms. This is not a grimdark setting, never was...

You can be both, there's a reason Minsc doesn't make a Boo joke over the broken corpse of Khalid

I feel like there is some major misconception about grimdark. Realism or seriousness is not grimdark. Yes, Forgotten Realms do have adult themes, and seriousness, but also has silliness and levity and joke characters and comic relief. It is classic fantasy at its cheesiest, very far from grimdark. That being said, this game is already way darker and more adult than any Forgotten Realms game that I have played.

Baldur's Gate II and Planescape: Torment are more grim than BG:3, though it might not hit as hard because of the change in presentation.

You're right about grimdark, but the term is used pretty loosely

What's the problem with this, exactly? I mean, sure, hamsters aren't the normal animal companions for rangers, but what DM would rule it out? And Minsc is a bit too much of a simpleton at times, but having fairly regular conversations with your animal companion seems reasonable enough, doesn't it? I don't think it's really childish writing, but of course it isn't peak grimdark either. Then again, Warhammer Fantasy Battles is considered grimdark and it has Gotrek with his pet manling, the angriest tree Durthu, semi-intelligent mushroom people, Mannfred von Carwreck, and non-stop comedic relief from the Skaven. Oh, and Sigvald. And Malekith with his mommy-issues. A ranger that blabbers a fair bit with his companion hamster wouldn't really stick out that much, would it?

But regardless there's a fair bit of difference between whatever we consider MInsc and the current Astarion. Minsc didn't feel unreasonable. Astarion, meanwhile, is so obviously something other than what he's making out to be and is triggering the "danger" switch in so many players. And then he admits to being a vampire but despite having been one for centuries, he's still a whiny child about it, on top of being so damn needy. Throw in a memory cutscene where he goes all Nicolas Cage and really externalizes his emotional state and his transformation into an emo teenager meme will be complete.

I don't know about you, but that whole thing doesn't really tick the vampire boxes for me. He's not scary, he's trying to be manipulative but you'd have to be a fairly blunt object for that manipulation to not be immediately transparent, and there's really not a whole lot of "creature of the dark" vibes over him. Also not a whole lot of commanding charisma. One might argue that he's actually a rather pathetic vampire. And once he gets to drink blood, he starts having delusions of being a badass despite really still being very pathetic. Maybe I'm a bit demanding, but I'd expect more from a vampire than it being a fairly convincing drug addict.

Obviously there's also the whole issue of somehow making it conceivable to group with a chaotic predator that considers you food and which is only resisting the urge to eat you because it is mildly inconvenient, but which has openly admitted to wanting to be its own boss and not having to care about stupid rules. Such as not eating everybody. How much of a tool must one be to do that? And yet the writing is trying to push the angle that this makes perfect sense and isn't totally ridiculous, and the other members of the party just go along with it, showing no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

look buddy no disagreement from me. Astarion is clearly twilight much more than blade. I just said that minsc is also a childish character, in regards to the comment above mine. you could say Bioware knew how to fit him better into the narrative which is true, or that he is much funnier, which is also true. but still kinda childish.

Honestly, what bothers me most of all is that the game forces you to treat him like he's a big deal. Like you said, he's so very obviously pathetic, and yet it's not really possible to shoot him down. And when there's an option to antagonize him, he gets the last (pathetic) word.

Like, look at this:



The moment my man turned dramatically, after his edgy speech, i couldn't not magic missile, it was so cringey.

He is childish, as if has characteristics of a child. He is not childish, as if "seems to be written by a child".

It might be humor thing. I find Larian games painfully unfunny. I find comments above about BG3 writing needing less humor confusing, as I spotted little humor in BG3. On the other hand Minsc makes me chuckle, even nowadays. Minsc is a daft character, Astarion seems to be written daftly - unless he is supposed to be incompetent, annoying little shit.