Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 6 Destroyed Player Agency with Astarion

This was my exact read on him as well. His speech right after turning Tav is about covering the world in shadows for his children.

I think, personally, his vision would likely be something along the lines of, "my spawn will rule, mortals will serve." From a tactical standpoint I imagine he'd try to turn as many people as possible. Whole cities. And let them do his bidding. He is immensely powerful. His plans won't be small time like the others. He's now final boss material.

Just like any evil characters could be nice and interesting.
Like murderers (he's a vampire, but he's not Louis at all), racists, manipulative narcissists.
I mean, like Astarion.
He literally smiles telling Tav how he will stab Tav if the worst case scenario happens of course.

Of course with evil characters you want to play differently in a roleplaying game, support, say "makes sense".
Otherwise we just wouldn't have Astarion, or Minathra, or even Laezel on the team. Because they are terrible and the character has to fear and hate them. No romance and no satisfied kisses. That doesn't happen because it's a role-playing game. Now here it is on February 14, it happened in a kiss with AA, absurdity.


Astarion: I've been out seeing the world, visiting cities charming dignitaries, and making friends up and down the Sword Coast.

Kinda "Friends" but, yes. He has a curious passion for politics (?) Although he could just do parties 24\7. He loves the upper class and the structure of it.

While I understand those who see Astarion’s story revolving around the cycle of abuse, I have always viewed it more as a narrative about what it means to have freedom.

I think spawn Astarion is truly free, and this is the happier outcome for him. AA will always be a slave to his appetites; for blood, power, luxury. I actually imagine him as insatiable in this respect. Nothing will ever quite be enough to satisfy him, he’ll just keep chasing more for eternity.

Which doesn’t mean Tav can’t be happy to sit by his side and watch the bloody show unfold. I actually believe AA wants them there as an audience and a source of support; they complete him in the sense that having a devoted, adoring consort fulfills his ideal image of a ruler. He also acknowledges several times that they are more powerful as a united force.

I saw it the opposite: For me, Astarion wasn't truly free. Driven by his vampiric hunger, unable to walk under the sun, regretful in some scenes. When you've experienced what it's like to not be able to do something in life, to lose your eyesight, to no longer be able to walk, to be disfigured by an accident, just some examples, to live with such things your life is a heavy burden and it can break people and depresses them. Power, luxuries, to be evil.. I don't see that the Vampire Lord would feel such kind of burden. Of course, he has other disadvantages. But so, everyone put's his own sight and feeling into the story and chooses, what's best for them, their roleplay or what they think, is the best for their romance Partner. Also, I wish for every path the content, it deserves, and that everyone can be happy with their own path, without degrading other pathes.

I agree with some of this except Ascended Astarion has no blood hunger. It's one of the first things he says after ascension. He's ecstatic because the pain from needing blood has gone away. He literally doesn't need it any longer.
Power and luxury I'd agree with as he has had neither for 200 years and has always been a victim of abuse. This however does not mean he will necessarily turn into an abuser himself literally overnight.
People should be free to put any spin on it they want or that makes them happy. I have no problems with the Spawn route (other than that bloody awful dock scene) I've actually played both but this does not mean I should accept the Ascended route has to make me a victim. As you said Astarion himself acknowledges several times that Tav completes him - you can be his consort and the game allows you to be - right up to these kisses in patch 6.

Simply put - this game is an RPG.
We should be free to role play a romance however we want without being told/shown we are now victims of an abuser.
Until patch 6 we could - If this had happened to any other romance nearly eight months after release the cries of anguish would reverberate from the rafters and the threads in these forums would clog up overnight.

As the OP says, patch 6 has destroyed player agency and that is unacceptable in an RPG.

Interesting thoughts!
I look at the story differently. But generally coherent with the style of thinking.
I was thinking about the "permissiveness" story here.

You are right Tav can be on the same page doing various vice, what Astarion approves and enjoy permissiveness.
Overall it's great to let the different dynamics of the romance play out.

The whole narrative is about Power, it's one of the dominant songs and it's a theme that gets addressed over and over again: What it can mean to have it, to not have it, to wield it and what it can mean for different people. As @KillerRabbit pointed out, Astarion's driving force is fear, he wants power in order to never be afraid again. In his Ascension ending, power is just that for him, a band-aid and a security blanket. He has wast power, but he doesn't use it. He host parties and weaves webs, all things that make him feel powerful without testing his limits. Because only if his sense of being powerful is unchallenged can he feel safe.

Spawn Astarion has conquered his fear. His two friendship-endings show this, he either fights on a daily basis or has taken on the challenge of creating a community of spawn in a hostile environment. He is free because his fear no longer limits him, while Ascended Astarion is still a slave to it. That would be my interpretation, besides the whole abuse thing. After all abuse also can be about feeling powerful and in charge for the abuser.

I think we’re in agreement, Anska.

I did want to clarify that while AA no longer craves blood, he does lust for it in the sense that he enjoys murder and still has a desire to ‘taste’ everything Faerun has to offer.

It’s worth noting, as others have, that AA lashes out with abusive words when challenged. It’s his knee-jerk reaction to feeling powerless and out of his depth; you can see it in how nasty he is to Origin Karlach when he realizes he can’t sleep with her at the Tiefling party. So I think it’s perfectly fair to imagine that a complicit, conspirator Tav would never see this side of his personality and would therefore not show fear during a kiss.

It’s only the scared expressions that ruin it for me. AA himself reads as domineering in the kisses, and that does fit.

Should you be able to romance Ketheric and fix him because it's an RPG?

Player agency doesn't mean you get to fix demonic Astarion and make him not an abusive monster.

No. But the players should be able to RP with the characters the creators already gave us to RP with.

That's ridiculous. Saying he doesn't use his power when he has gained a strong political status and is using it to the fullest. Partying has nothing to do with a "band-aid" - it's a reflection of his image as a hedonist. Take everything from life. Because he's alive! He's living! Breathing, eating, tasting wine, seeing his reflection. How else is he supposed to use his new powers? Destroying the cities he wants to take over from within? Foolishness.

And if spawn has conquered fear, why does he need a knife behind his back,
when he sees DU ?)

With illithid he takes the knife too, while AA doesn't care. Because AA is confident of himself and his power, if he has to, he will use it. It's just that in political games physical strength is less important than intricacies and lies.

By the way, thanks for bringing up Keterik Torma. Despite the fact that he plunged an entire region into darkness and was the chosen one of the evil god Mirkul, he surprisingly loved his wife. I doubt he kept her on a chain.
Keterik's wife died when she was still young of a serious illness. Engraved on the sarcophagus are the words:

Here rests Melody Torm, beloved wife and mother. "He probably didn't mean beloved, he's an evil monster." (sarcasm)

A letter from Melody to Keterik has been preserved for centuries.
"What a monster." (Sarcasm)

In one of the Stonemason's Guild diaries, one can read that perhaps Keterik only became a Selunite for the sake of his wife and daughter, and after their deaths - his faith died with them.
And this man took the slippery slope of Sharrah to forget the pain of loss. Keterik can literally be persuaded to skip one fight out of his three forms just by mentioning his dead spouse's name.

The characters evil worldview is a bit more complex than just black and white. Draw an analogy now to AA.

I'd rather believe AA would burn half of Fairun if his "prized investment and favorite pet" repeats Melody's fate. Just on emotion and just because he can.

The line of hedonism is very in Astarion.

This is for example before the PB ritual in Act 3.

Gale: What did you have in mind? A quiet party, toasting your return with a few good friends?
Astarion: Less 'quiet party with friends', more 'days of hedonistic debauchery'. But otherwise, yes.

Astarion wants to party before the ritual.

Or there's the Spawn ending with Karlach going to hell:
Astarion: And I intend to. I can go anywhere, do anything, indulge in whatever hedonism or carnage I like. Once I stay out of the sun.

AA does hedonistic parties because he just wants to and can.

Isn't that whataboutism or something of the sort, though ? Ketheric is not a romance to begin with. Astarion, spawn and ascended versions, is. It's content created, advertised, sold, to put it maybe in exaggerated words. Something some are invited to participate in if they so choose. I'd say, for what it's worth, it requires trusting that it will be handled for the best. If there's an intent to tell one story in particular, then it could be made a bit clearer, I think. And it certainly doesn't have to be about fixing him or not. To me, it's about the player's character having the possibility to exist a bit more, beyond some bits of it being taken over at a whim and used as cheap props out of the blue, everything else be damned.

I feel the expressions also simply are too much for a contextless repeatable animation because the stasis of horror becomes unintentionally comical after a while. Especially the kneeling kiss has the appearance as if it was the first time this scenario plays out, so when it plays on repeat instead, with ever the same expression on display, it becomes weird.

Strong emotions are best saved for narrative situations in which they have purpose. Gale's Morphic Pool kisses for example are beautifully desperate and absolutely wonderful because they serve a purpose, they are supposed to show you how well and truly terrified Gale is of the final battle, which can become important a few minutes later, when he basically begs you to allow him to sacrifice himself to ensure victory.

So, I think that kneeling kiss, as it is now, would be best saved for the very end. You know, when Tav tries to break up with A!Astarion at the end and he just laughs because now it is too late? Then give the player one choice to move forward, force them to ask for a kiss an then give them the kneeling kiss. That would be cruel but it would absolutely get the message across and it would be a quite suitable horror ending.

I really like that! I think that's a good idea.

That would be great, I think. It would serve the purpose of reserving the horrified face for an appropriate context while preserving the ability to role play the relationship as agreeable to both parties if they choose different dialogue options.

In response to the question about whether role play should extend to changing an ‘abusive monster’ I would suggest that is beside the point. The case some of us are making is that AA is not, by default, an abusive monster. There has always been narrative ambiguity and open endedness that provided players the opportunity to fill in some of the gaps. Actually, it goes a bit beyond that. I would say that in some instances we are given evidence that AA, while being possessive and paranoid, wants nothing more than to keep Tav safe and lavished in luxury forever.

Locking this aspect of the story down, especially after so long after release, feels abrupt and even unfair to those who were otherwise enjoying their valid interpretation of the narrative. To be clear, I think there are several valid narratives and I loved that about the game. It felt like great role play that the player could weave in their own story.

It's been a hundred years since I've posted here, but the topic is getting sharper and sharper with each patch....
I'd like to put everything in its place. Let's start with spawn, personally I don't think he "conquered fear". Spawn is the embodiment of fear and weakness. Weakness of the individual. There is simply no "redemption" in the path of spawn. In classic literature, we all know about the monomyth, so in the spawn path, the monomyth doesn't work. It would work if the spawn at the end of the game burned in the sun after realizing the gravity of his past. But he lives, and his life is overly romanticized.
At the game's launch on August 11, a hotfix was released that removed the narrator's words about rejecting the Astarion ritual: "now you are forever a pathetic spawn, condemned to live in the shadows" (c) Yeah, I didn't know that the character would be so quickly rewritten and "improved" for the " proper" playthrough. Spawn is essentially a broken, repressed individual with no choice. A spawn can't choose how he lives or who he is, because he's just a spawn. He is forcibly bound to the Protoganist, who skillfully manipulates and imposes his vision of the world on Astarion, ignoring his personal desires. Even if his desires, in the protoganist's opinion, are wrong and "not right", the protoganist has no right to force Astarion as an individual to follow the "right" path.
Think about it, if you were confused in life, but wanted to show your will, would you be pleased that someone with "good" intentions makes you break yourself and blindly follow the path that he, and not you consider the right? Every person has the right to make his mistakes and actions and live with them and no one has the right to dictate the "right" vision of the world imposing it as the only correct one. It kills free will. I will probably say a terrible thing, but the players who make Astarion give up his desires break him depriving him of his freedom of choice.
At the same time, AA himself decides how he should live and who he should be. He is independent of the player, he is an individual with his own desires and worldview. He is not a cruel tyrant or a power-crazed fanatic. He is a sensitive person who for the first time in 200 years remembered what it is to be alive. What it means to feel, to have emotions, real live emotions, what it means to be alive as an ordinary mortal. And Astarion is enjoying it. He says he's going to wrap the world in darkness and make it beautiful for his children. He is very gentle, he wants to be happy with his family and he loves and cherishes Tav. Loves truly, because only AA can have real feelings as a mortal, Spawn is deprived of that because he is effectively dead. And all of AA's words, though they have a tone of dominance, are not cruel. It's real live feelings. And it's terrible that patch 6 doesn't care about that. It's terrible that they make a monster out of AA, although only AA can really feel and be alive.

Just BRAVA.

Brilliantly put.

??????.

That's an interesting argument and I'd say that in a macros sense you have a good point. Where I think your point (particually about ignoring his desires specifically) loses ground is the fact that his desires literally involve damning many innocent souls to hell. At that point the argument about what he wants kind of gets eclipsed by the sheer horror of what getting what he wants entails. The ritual sends, the souls of people to be tortured for eternity in hell. Who's looking out for their freedom of choice? Whatever you feel about the kiss, patch six didn't turn AA into a monster, he was already a monster for going through with the ritual.