I think your comparison to goat simulator is a good one to illustrate what I'm saying. I love a good rpg with a blank slate. My go-to example is Pillars of Eternity. You start as a blank slate there, but in those games the Watcher can be a dynamic character within the plot if you put some effort in and meet the game where it's at. I've made multiple characters in those games and given them personal character arcs that span both games. But in BG3 Tav never really gets to be dynamic, even if youput the effort in.
As for where our points of view diverge, I think it's down to your reaction to the supposed ideology in the game. The way I see it, some degree of ideology is inevitable in a story, because stories follow an internal logic set down by the writer. I don't see it as the game punishing us for not adhering to morality. To me the writer simply presented a story with a number of branches and each branch leads somewhere. I don't think, even based on the info you quoted, that the writer wanted us to necessarily not go the ascended romance route. It's just that to him the writer, he envisioned an outcome for that route and seeing that is a valid way to play the game. Do I think what he said was presumptuous of how players would think and behave? Yeah, I'd say so. But he's a human limited by his personal scope. He clearly never imagined that players would see ascending Astarion as a righteous act of genuine love. I don't know that I would have either. And if he was coming at the story from the perspective of Tav not being a factor as a character and this story unfolding specifically for the benefit of the player watching, with Astarion as the main character and the focus, then I think it makes sense why he'd produce this final result. If this were always the outcome from the beginning, I'd say that it's perfectly logical. Astarion's story is about abuse, perpetuating it or stopping it. He's shown to have a lot of negative instincts and selfish drives, so of course if you feed those instincts you're going to get a character who's selfish and abusive. That seems like entirely the way this story would naturally unfold to me.It's not punishment, it's cause and effect. To me a more egregious example of them trying to present some kind of morality or object lesson is if you give the githyanki egg to the society of brilliance. Apparently it hatches and the baby githyanki wants and is able to kill them all. Just because.
