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

He is a childish character written by an adult. You could say the same about Astarion. If you think there is a problem with the quality of his writing that's fine. But don't say childish characters are a problem.

Since we're talking about Minsc, you guys do remember he's like that because of a head wound, right? There's a difference between someone behaves like a child because of a head injury, and someone who acts like a kid because he chooses to be that way. This is not a statement as to what I feel personally about any character, since I haven't played the EA of BG3 and don't know what anyone is like in the game. I'm just saying generally, that, in case of Minsc, it may feel convincing and not annoying, because we know that he doesn't choose to be like that, and/or partly, perhaps, simply because his writing doesn't tend to annoy players. At least, to me, it feels that way. "Having behaviors like those of a child" doesn't necessarily mean that person is acting like an obnoxious, spoiled brat.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Minsc, and, in fact, I don't really get why many people seem to really adore him and treat him like he's the icon of the original saga. He occasionally gets on my nerves, but for the most part, I can stand him. So that's about Minsc. On the other hand, someone who acts childishly and like a spoiled brat because he feels like acting that way, will most likely be annoying, whether irl or in a video game.

Sure.

I don't quite get why we compare Minsc vs Astarion. Minsc is more of a comic relief character... Astarion is chaotic evil(?) vampire. Quality of either aside, I do think it curious that someone brought Minsc to the defence of Astarion. Is Astarion supposed to be a comic relief? Is how bad he is in concealing his vampireness a joke in itself?

It might be me, but I just see why would it be a compelling to have Astarion around - unless BG3 aimes to be a Cohen's Borthers style adventure following group of idiots to their demise. Minsc wasn't bright, but you could trust him to have your back - if he was annoying, he wasn't harmful. Astarion will stab you and everyone else in the back and is bad at doing it (story wise). That's a terrible combination. Even if I would play an evil character, Astarion simply isn't someone useful.

Exactly the point, Minsc had a prior brain injury and was written as so. I would say the writers explored his personality trait well and he had a superb voice acting to begin with.

Astarion on other hand was supposed to be the evil character, but he is filled with silly humor lines, hand maneirisms and a voice directing that also pushes him a little over the top. And it is not only him, I think most of the companions (with exception of Laezel) also have a childish behavior to different degrees.

I wonder how much poor cutscenes add to that. With move to a more cinematic view, things would need to get more subdued... You dont have to make large, over the top gestures when the camera is zooming at your face. You don't have to oversell intent with voice, if there are face animations and gestures to add to that. Cinemanitcs are such a mess at the moment.

Absolutely, but I also think there is a fundamental flaw in the writing and the personality concept for these characters.

I think they are still in some sort of WIP. I believe as it was shown that in time they may change or hopefully get better writing. As someone pointed they are really over the top and most of their dialogues just don't show adult, but instead a bunch of ppl who doesn't know how to communicate normally without trying too much. One or maybe 2 companions, ok, but all of them share the same feeling for me. After my second playthrough I was already bored in talking with them tbh.

Since I was forced to watch all the seasosn of Vampire Dairies + the full Twilight saga by my wife, I hate vampires. I take a lot of pleasure to kill him everytime.

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Tbh - those (Vampire Diaries, Twilight and I would add True Blood) are not real vampires. I used to love the vampire genre, but those fandoms nearly ruined it. I f you ever want to read a really good vampire novel, try Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Or Lost Souls by Poppy Brite - the last one has a character, that could be Astarion (chaotic evil vampire that doesn't give a shit about others), if Larian didn't try to please the Twilight crowd.

Vampires aren't real in general, this is like saying that someone's reimagination of fictional creatures is somehow "less real" than yours, because it is not horror. Well, the horror genre didn't invent vamps. As fictional creatures they exist in different folklores, and with more variety. It is not always evil undead, that is just the trope Western authors like to repeat.

Well... I enjoy pretty much all BG3 followers, even if I do admit that I believe they all have their flaws (regardless if it is character flaws or what I'd consider writing flaws.)

Regarding Astarion in particular, I really enjoy his snarky attitude as a player, however my character is hardly as impressed. The main issue with Astarion (imo) is that his character SCREAAAAMS vampire, but the PC (regardless of intelligence and/or Wisdom) is way too stupid to figure it out. You have the running water where he goes like "OH NO RUNNING WATER... OUCH, OWH, EWH" as we go across, we find the boar that he goes super defensive about and then you have his entire appearance. Including fangs. Yet, some time after that the game goes "AND THERE YOU SEE HIM FOR WHAT HE REALLY ISSS" and the PC goes "Oh damn, how did I miss this!?" .... I mean, that pretty much makes any player go "Yeahh... Surely my character could not have figured that out earlier. Nu uh, no way." irl - but that is a writing problem, not a character problem for Astarion. Stuff like that is bound to happen when you don't have a live DM that can allow the players to react.

I know that vampires are not real. But even the vampires in folklore are as a rule more dangerous and dark than your typical Twilight vampire. And since Twilight, you seldom find anything else but those whiny wannabe vampires. ANd Astarion fits right into that.

Notice that I was not a big fan of vampires before Twilight too
Werewolves are much more interesting for me (not from Twilight however ). They have fur, they can replace bedrolls, they like to run on the snow ...

How vampires were imagined in folklore was very regional; not all were "evil terrible blood drinkers" and some had little to do with what you describe. Some would in this modern times probably considered more dark comedy than horror. Just because Western media likes to reuse the same trope, doesn't make this trope neither more original, nor more "real".

In most mythology all kinds of revenants, including vampires, were feared. There might be exceptions, but they were rare. Certainly, vampires were not seen as sexy beings until recently due to - as you mentioned - modern western media, in most cultures, they were described as looking clearly dead and sometimes even rotting. True, they don't all drink blood, some absorb your life force (like the chinese Jiangshi) or eat your flesh (as in some legends from my home country Germany), but in most tales, they are not seen as anything than a terror.

You are referring to mythological vampires, while Astarion is clearly meant to be a literary fiction vampire like any other D&D vampire.

I believe that is (or certainly should be) called "Superman paradox".

I'm pretty sure there's not a whole lot of folkore vampires that are actually nice people that are just misunderstood, and who really want to fit in, but they just can't fit in, but they really want to be friends, but they can't be friends, because they are trapped in the prison of pure torment that is their lack of a soul!!!

And obviously something can be true to a concept or less true. We all have ideas of what "dragon" means, be it the Oriental or the Western version, so imagine if someone decided to make a story where a dragon was a winged cow that has a very nasty swooping attack where it farts gas while belting "MOOOOOOOOH!" at a terrifying volume? Fun encounter, sure, but what does it have to do with the concept of dragons? Not a thing.

Astarion (and Twilight) have as much to do with the general concept of vampires as a farting winged cow has with dragons. And frankly it doesn't matter if you could find a funny folk tale somewhere that lets vampires be something other than monsters, because that doesn't change the general concept of vampires.

That might be true, but folklore came up during the discussion and the literary vampires are based on the folklore anyways, they are not invented out of thin air. So I don't think, that the mythology behind the literary fiction is wrong to discuss.

I am way out of my depth talking about social context of the story, but I think what we have here is conflict between "classical" male representation of the vampire (sexual monster stealing your women that are yours that should be killed) and female powerfantasy vampire (taming of a monster).