I've seen people objecting to the new direction of the romance scenes should you choose to have Astarion complete the Ascension ritual, and I feel like it highlights how many people have missed the entire point and direction of Astarion's character writing, and why this change was made.
From the very beginning, Astarion's writing has revolved around one simple facet: Larian Studios correlating between his being a monster known for being predatory and manipulative, and his queer male sexuality.
Astarion is the most queer-coded character in the game, with his entire personality based around stereotypes of queer men: an effeminate male character with "pretty" looks, contributed to by his elven nature. He's vain, petty, spiteful, and often complains when he doesn't get his way. But above all, the story frequently associates his vampirism with his sexuality, and how he uses said sexuality in order to prey on innocent people. His backstory revolves around how he himself was groomed into victimizing others through his sexuality by another queer male villain. Part of his character arc involves him becoming aware of and ashamed of his sexuality because of how he made use of it as a predatory monster. And of course, we can't forget the fact that one of the first things he does in the party is the classic analogy of him attempting to bite the player character against their will, in an obvious parallel to sexual assault.
In his good ending, Astarion rejects embracing vampirism and "ascending". This concludes with him being forced back into the shadows, into the darkness, for not embracing his vampirism doesn't change the fact that he is a vampire. It simply treats him slinking away into obscurity and away from others as a positive choice, the right thing for a vampire to do. He will never stop being a vampire, but distancing himself from others is his good ending. (Note that vampirism in 5e can be cured by resurrection magic on the vampire after they have died, or through certain spells such as *ahem* True Resurrection.) His evil ending is an embrace of being a vampire, and with it being a heartless predator who takes what they want from others. Everything to do with his vampiric nature is something that is wrong, and from the very start, at the very heart of his characterization, that 100% includes his queer male identity.
That is why Ascended Astarion's romance scenes have been changed to include that element of unease and discomfort on the player character's part. Because Larian Studios wants to make it absolutely clear that by embracing his vampiric identity, every aspect of his person that they associate with his predatory, manipulative, monstrous nature is evil. That very much includes his queer male sexuality, which Larian's writers made part of Cazador grooming Astarion into a predator and Astarion's parallel to a rape attempt toward the player character. They want to make it perfectly clear that by embracing an identity they associate with being a queer man, Astarion's "romantic" scenes are innately evil and wrong.
