I was about to get into a whole thing arguing that you're wrong about the relationship between ideology and freedom of choice in an RPG, and that's still my opinion but I realized that it would not have been worth it to really get into the muck of that argument. What I will say though is that I don't believe that BG3 was ever a game about playing a role and getting realiztic reactions from the world. I think that Larian's goal with this game was to let the player do all kinds of stuff and see reactions to it, but that actually playing a role, playing a character within the game was never something that mattered to them. The player can do all sorts of things. The player can still ascend astarion. And then they see an outcome of that. But Tav isn't a character, Tav is a vessel for the player to do things and affect the world through. I don't believe that Larian ever really considered Tavs being characters that have agency. We the PLAYER have agency, we can make any choice we like. We have the freedom to do that. And we do that via the shallow puppet that is Tav. When Astarion ascends, to Larian it's not because Tav loved Astarion so much they do this monstrous thing, or because he hungered for power, Tav doesn't have complex motivation. If Astarion gets ascended in anybody's game, it's because the player wanted to see what happens, that I believe is Larian's view. I think that comes through a lot in the way the various devs talk about the game. They talk about it like a sandbox full of stuff that happens. The companions have agency and depth and internal lives, and the game is about seeing those things. Or not seeing them and seeing something else.
