But it feels like a punishment for people who put in the work of trying to help him be a better person.
This is the part that trips me up the most. The devs talk about how his whole story is about trauma stemming from abuse, and how Astarion feels like he's been just used and abused for his life. If you actually engage with him from that perspective, and push him to heal, this just happens. But if you go down the ascended path, his ending is much more fleshed out, and he seems ostensibly happier than he was in the unascended ending.
Even though all the ascended ending is, is him becoming Cazador 2.0 and restarting the exact same cycle of abuse he went through, just with other people.
Kinda messed up if you asked me.
My thoughts exactly.
He doesn't even need to be healed from vampirism, or to immediately be able to walk in the sun without the worm. All he needs is an ending scene that doesn't turn all his pain and struggle into a tasteless joke.
But it's not just the ending. Overall it feels like more work was put into his ascended dialogue. And mechanically you only benefit if you ascend him (the bite and the extra damage). So like... I sacrifice all that good quality writing and extra damage because I want to do what's right for the character and in the end both me and that character get slapped in the face with a wet dirty rag.
