However I maintain that not being able to talk with Asterion about Baldur's Gate is a massive missed opportunity that I hope gets ammended by the time of full release.
What would Astarion have to say, really? Depending on how honest he is, he either remembers very little of his mortal life, or wouldn't want to discuss it because it'd paint him in a terrible light. As a spawn, he was only let outside to lure people to Cazador's dinner table. So what is there in terms of conversation? Which taverns are best to pick up strangers at?
Shadowheart is too missing a lot of her memories. Only Wyll seems like he'd be up for a chat, but then another problem: what would you have to talk about? Baldur's Gate is not a small city, and Wyll is a noble turned Flaming Fist turned local celebrity. Maybe if you're a noble or another hero you'll have some shared experiences to talk about, and those I think will get some acknowledgement once the background tags are properly implemented. But what would he have to say to an urchin or a guild artisan? You're in completely different social circles, walking completely different paths in life, and have completely different experiences of the city.
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but if I meet someone from the same city while travelling, the place itself will be a conversation starter at best.
It'd be good if companions asked you about yourself though. All too often in these games it's you interrogating everybody else, and never the other way around. I want to know everyone's history, why don't the others want to know mine? PoE did a little bit of that in the beginning, and it was very nice to flesh out my character's background beyond the option at character creation.
The main reason it's a missed opportunity is precisely becuse it's an opportunity to build both their and your character. The same goes for Wyll. He can talk about his perspective of Baldur's Gate as someone high class, and depending on how you're roleplaying your character (assuming they stick with the idea you're a Baldurian by default) you can compare and contrast your feelings over the place. Maybe you hate Baldur's Gate, maybe you love it. If you're an urchin or an artisan, then that's an opportunity for you to clash based on your different upbringings and perspectives on the city. It's an opportunity for you as the character to better define your own history and inner life. And for Asterion, they could have it be that he's unfamiliar with aspects of Baldur's Gate that he probably should know, and it's an opportunity to subtly set up that he's not who he says he is. There's lots of opportunity there that's so far left untouched.
Also, I heartily agree with you about more people asking about us. I loved how they did it in PoE.
Why can't I clash over personality instead? Why does character building have to focus on where they're from, instead of who they are? More accurately, I guess, is why does "where they're from" even matter. It wouldn't matter if Asterion was from Baldur's Gate, or Luskan, since our initial meeting, and first camp scenes are contentious, to say the least. Are you implying that if he wasn't from Baldur's Gate, he'd behave differently?
This brings me to the biggest disconnect I've seen in these forums, pretty consistently; why are players acting like they've played the whole game? To wit: "Gale doesn't talk about Waterdeep." What conversations does he have in Act 2? What about Act 3? Is Waterdeep going to be relevant to our current story, or a bit of exposition for the sake of exposition? Things like "I've played x hours in EA, and I still don't know who the Absolute is, so "bad writing"" is a thing too. It may even be in this very thread, this time...
At the end of the day, I'm more concerned with missing content. I'm concerned that Gale's romance arc is so hard to achieve, even if I don't particularly care to romance him. It shows me that something is broken and needs attention. That's a lot more relevant than "he doesn't talk about Waterdeep", and I feel the need to add "yet" to that, because I have no idea what's on the table for the rest of the game. I'm concerned with how much is tied to LRs, with no indications that you need to take them, which is how I've managed to miss a majority of the camp scenes, because I'm rarely there. Note here that I'm not talking about content from future acts, but content that is already in the game, and can be easily missed.
