What I find weird is these animations and, apparently, Tav's fear are occurring before end game, and could even be before the Durge scenes depending on what order you do things in. I'd find it hard to believe that the Emperor or Bhall would just let their chosen instruments be turned into quivering scared children by some upstart vampire (in their eyes rofl). A scared Durge would rip his head off and Empy would likely either take over Tav immediately or rescind elder brain protection and let the tadpole take Astarion.
So she isn't scared, that simply doesn't fit in the game as it stands - the frightened facial animations are just ridiculous.
However at the end of the day my feeling is that Larian changing the dynamic between 2 people so massively, half a year after game release, is overwhelming unfair to a loyal fan base. I don't know what they were hoping to achieve apart from make some AA fans feel awful and allow SA fans to say 'We told you so'.
Agreed. Beside the fact that it's just bad rpg writing to take away player agency like this, it does not even make any sense in the context of the story, as you wrote. If Tav/Durge are so afraid and feel so bad as they show in the animations why would they even stay with him? Nothing is preventing them from just leaving him or even kicking him out. He can't use any compulsion because of the tadpoles.
But the player wants to stay because they want to see the end of the story, so they are stuck with either watching their character acting totally ooc or breaking up with AA and be forever alone. Stuck between two bad choices. This is fanservice gone horribly wrong.
