This game sometimes just...completely lacks emotional intelligence.
Could not have put it better myself. The player invests hours into the character and in case of Astarion, doing a quest which isn't even tied to the main plot!!! It's a completely skippable thing entirely! So I'd expect that kinda "uncaring" ending when we did not invest time in him, did not talk to him, did not help him...this is not how it's supposed to look when Tav is his friend, and particularly not when they're his love interest.
Astarion's ending, his romance epilogue, how he wants to rediscover himself as a person but the game won't give us a chance to see any of that outside of the graveyard scene, the whole poly thing with Halsin and the drow orgy, the "i'll protect you" line with no other options, even just how the nicest thing you can tell him when he's trying to read his scars is "shut up and turn around" (maybe I want to rp someone nice and gentle once in a while). You get up to 5 opportunities to stake him during bite night, but not a single one to run after him in the ending and not a single one to check up on him during the drow orgy. Can't ask even once what the vampiric hunger feels like while you can be very concerned about Shadowheart's wound. Can't give him that portrait. Can't give him any gifts, which was surprising because he hasn't been given anything nice for 200 years and it would be common sense for the player to want to give him something.
Other characters get these moments too. And Halsin feels like his writer turned him into an atrocity on purpose to troll all those people who asked for more of him in EA, and now we all have to deal with it.
