Yeah, to get a more satisfying ending you have to
defy Bhaal after the Orin fight. It does not mean you have to suddenly be nice - in a dialogue choice afterwards you can say that you finally can kill for your own pleasure instead of Bhaal's. Which makes you a pretty horrible person and a good match with Ascendant Astarion. You still get the "you are the Heroes of Baldur's Gate" speech, wich is funny considering you are a villain at heart and might already plan to drench all of Faerűn in blood. But at least you can have a talk with your LI afterwards.
I agree that the pro-Bhaal ending is very unsatisfying - why do I have to take over my companions, especially my LI? There still could have been room for a talk afterwards with them, even if your are a super villain.
Exactly. I'm unsure why they thought the bad ending meant we don't care about our companions all of the sudden? Maybe it's something about how you chose the most selfish ending?
But then why include dialogue from Astarion saying "we could have it all, my love" and then enthrall him anyway?
I've definitely noticed a trend in them proposing options and then not following through. People have whole questlines that don't go anywhere.
Example: they seem to hint at the possibility of you obtaining the Crown for Gale and its literally his quest line if you don't have him blow up and you convince him to defy Mystra. I'm thinking "cool! That brings up interesting implications!"
But...no. All it does is give you an ending dialogue where Gale says he's going to fish it out of the Harbour and become a God la-dee-da. Like...k. His mission amounts to nothing like...yay.
