Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Fixing Astarion's "Good" Ending

That seems remarkably unintuitive (not the avoiding a scene thing but the rest of it). Why in the nine hells would you make a choice that awkward?

Agreed, I really hated that Tav has to reassure him as if we didn't establish before we want to be with him all the way.

Regarding the ascendant route,

Maybe in his eyes it's different if there is no more looming danger, distractions and all the possible competition has gone their own way? He has Tav all to himself at that point. He can take his time trying to convince Tav to change their mind.
It could also be a spared remnant of cut content and not just a loophole. Perhaps it was possible to stall it a bit and have some extra time to decide before the end of the game.

At the current state of the game I'd call it a loophole. The player avoids standard long resting mechanic to prevent a specific scene from triggering. And it serves as an argument for some people to say he isn't in fact 'evil' or controlling as ascendant. It just makes the spawn ending way less compelling and meaningful. The player gets nothing really in this path after the lovely scene at the graveyard.

> less dialogue
> "I'll protect you"
> the terrible ending cutscene
> needs reassurance from Tav if we really want to stay with him

That's why I'm hoping the spawn path gets some something nice, because they clearly didn't develop it well enough. I guess they were going for bittersweet but right now the ending is just bitter, half-cooked and stuffed with dirt.


It's totally unintuitive but it's also kind of funny and creative that the game lets us do that. Larian is known for allowing to play their games in unconventional ways. They made it possible for a reason, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to have the lines voiced and mo-capped.

Totally, they dropped the ball here. There's no sugar-coating it. All we can do is hope this ending gets the love it deserves. Currently in all my playthroughs I stop playing each time I'm about to fight the brain. I don't want to see that ending cutscene or have that last dialogue. Left such bitter taste in my mouth that I don't want to go through it again.

Same.

To me he's a very relatable character, so that ending was brutal.

As someone who normally plays a Seldarine Drow, if he can't stay in the sun and we can't fix anything whatsoever about that (why not Larian?), then we go live in the Arcane Tower.
Spend a bit of money (of which I seem to have plenty) fixing the roof, the one missing bit of floor and the lighting, got a nice garden there, a few lights around the garden and interior that aren't blue tinged (or can be - choice) would make it feel quite homey etc . Remove the elevator and put in a spiral staircase so that anyone can move between levels. Can bring Scratch and the Owlbear and even Yenna and her cat, plenty of room there. Guest room for any of the others to pop in.
Bernard thinks we belong there, place is protected so why not?
And thats just a miniscule corner of the Underdark, so much we could go and see as a couple.
Can always pop back to the above world at nighttime for some tavern life etc its not difficult to get to portal back to the underdark at sunrise.

Really all we need are some better choices, not necessarily what I have described above of course, but choices - that's what the spawn ending is missing.

That and being able to hug him, and protect him at the dock of course.

I want to be able to give him a ring or an amulet of day walking, thats the only thing he ever seems to miss but that;s because nothing else is ever offered to him.
Would he go for a cure if one was offered? We don't know because its never raised as a possibility in spite of Jaheira intimately knowing a cure from BG2.

And yeah I haven't fought the brain after my first playthrough either. I really detest what the ending didn't give us.

He also misses seeing his face in mirrors - pretty sure he can just pull a Gale and cast Mirror Image for that, though.

My Tav would definitely prefer him alive over dead, for a variety of reasons, but if sunlight resistance is the only thing on the table... well, better than nothing. And a quest is a quest (she's 100% the adventuring type).

Oh mine too - Warm body is preferable to a cold one.All sorts of drawbacks to him remaining a spawn if you think about it. No kids of course (not a major consideration for me). I want to be able to travel with him, same as you can in the ascended route, and not being able to cross running water unless hes carried over it in a cart presumably driven by me is a definite drawback to that. The logistics of managing a proper travel schedule with avoiding unbridged rivers and streams and only being able to travel at night - unless I do the cart driving in the day when hes asleep which means I'll be too tired later to spend quality time with him - to say nothing of how we will manage feeding as when he is awake he'll need to hunt which cuts down travel time - well I like a challenge I suppose. rofl

Do you reckon I'm over thinking this? hehe

Just give us a cure Larian - make our lives simple.

Also, once he loses the tadpole, there's the small inconvenience of once more being bound to your coffin/crypt/grave site etc. I assume Cazador transferred piles of dirt to the manor somewhere and that's where they all rested. What do you do as an adventurer? Lug it around with you? Did they just ignore that with the vamp companion in the Enhanced Edition?

Uh, what are all those spawn in the Underdark going to do... well, maybe this is a Larian homebrew thing. Like the lack of claws and spider climbing.

Couldn't a sorcerer or a wizard just offer to cast something for him?

The coffin thing seems to only apply to true vamps in BG3. Astarion says Cazador needs to rest in his coffin during the day. The spawn slept in beds.

Not Mirror Image. Minor Illusion might work.

I also agree that the ending should be improved. I can accept an open ending where you end up looking for a way for him to see the sun again (or to cure him from vampirism). But the way he burns and becomes a joke doesn't work in a situation where the relationship (romance or friendship) is good. Maybe they should have offered a choice in a dialog. So, yeah, you can be a jerk and joke about him not seeing the sun again. Or you can cover him, help him in any way or go with him. Choosing for the player and doing it in a way that most dislike is wrong. It would be like forcing all players to become Illithid no matter what in a way that is passed as the character's choice. It is taking away agency in a wrong way.

I left another reminder in Larian's Discord feedback channel that this ending is bullshit. They seem to be looking there more than here.

But it's not just Astarion. 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.

Adding salt to the wound is the fact that you can give Shadowheart the flower she offhandedly mentions liking, so it's not like giving gifts to the companions isn't a thing in the game. It's just a thing with this one companion. For some reason.

Shadowheart is god's favorite princess. But even she isn't safe from some of the game's bullshit.

I always give Astarion Durge's cloak, it really fits his whole thing. Would be nice if I could do that as an actual gift.

I would like to give him the portrait from Fevras. The cloak is ok and practical, but with a Durge that seeks to reject the urge, it would be a "tainted" present. The portrait is specific, so Astarion can see himself. Or even better if you were to find a portrait from before he turned to spawn so he (and we) could know what his eyes looked like. And the color.

But the the fact that with SH you have a dialog that says "I think we missed the opportunity to connect" or something similar while we don't have that option with Gale (who was bugged since EA and had plenty of missing scenes) or any other companion tell us all about which romance was prioritized. And which personal quest, for that matter. After all, SH has one abandoned Shar temple in the underdark, another huge temple plus mandatory trials in act 2, and another temple and quest in act 3. I would have been nice to have all that with all companions, but especially with Astarion.