Because it's kissing. I'm not being sarcastic I literally think it's just that, it involved kissing and so they bundled it in with a bunch of other similar updates and put it out on Valentiine's day for a thematic release time. Larian have never been masters at marketting. Swen admitted himself in the past that they did not know how to market the game, and that apparently has yet to really change.
While I agree with your theory sincerely, but then it goes back to what I said before: know your audience, especially when one of your target audiences tends to be sensitive, emotional, sentimental and you ask them play romance in a game and be objective ? I mean it’s not Skyrim or call of duty , it’s a rpg game full of emotions. Can’t they see on this forum these fans analyzing everything because they really are so invested in this beautiful story? And even if what you mentioned was really their initial approach of this game, I think at this point, they really need to reconsider it, if you see how many fans actually got hurt and triggered , and I don’t think that’s what they paid for, especially the new animation came 6 months later after release, it’s not like a book that i knew it was going to be disturbing so much so I would just ditch it ,they let it happened after 6 months! and if by this sudden change is the way they try to tell the players this is how abusive narcissist would do , I would say it’s too cruel , considering this is supposed to be entertaining, and they ripped these fans heart out so they could prove a point, that’s just….
I don’t mean they need to change the whole concept of tav, what I really mean is since they know whole Astarion romance arc is mainly targeting female players( some males for sure too), then what they can do best is at least be sensitive about it , considering a lot of ascended Astarion fans are already felt left out by the Astarion fandom, the dev could’ve really be kinder to them.
*forgive me if it seems confusing because english is not my first language.
