Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Astarion, his back and Raphael.

Sorry for the ambiguous title.

I never had the cutscene of Astarion in the camp, checking his scars on the back. Probably, because his approval for my character is just on mid level.

Now, in Act 2, outside the Mausoleum, at the end of the dialogue of my character with Raphael, Astarion interrupted us and asked Raphael about the scars. My character can also reply something like"what scars are you talking about?" because he never saw them, of course.
Is it ok? Or the cutscene in the camp, is important for a good conclusion?

Completing the quest the way Raphael asks is good for your relationship with Astarian and Shadowheart but involves one of the hardest fights of act 2. Completing it another way is much easier and makes a fight in act 3 considerably easier but comes at the cost of companion approval.

The cut scene in camp is tied to romancing him. If you are not in a romance with him, you learn about the scars through the conversation with Raphael.

It's not tied to romance. You can get that scene without romance in Act2 if you take enough long rests.

Interesting, I thought it was tied to the act 1 romance scene - if we are talking about the same scene. I thought the scene in question was the one in which you help him read his scars.

It's not. Only the sex scenes and the love confession scenes are connected to romance. All other scenes are just general camp scenes with different triggers, even if people associate them with romance.

Which makes it even more annoying, that you cannot ask one of your companions to help you with the scars in Astarion's Origin.

Astarion never asks the player for help deciphering his scars. You just walk in on him. It makes sense he wouldn't ask for help out of his own volition either.

Since the initial question of this thread has already been answered, I hope it is ok to derail it a little by talking about this.

I think the scars should be introduced earlier and differently for two reasons: Player agency and narration.

You have different options to telling your companions about your vampirism with Origin-Astarion than Companion-Astarion has - you can confess to them upon first meeting them, you can clumsily bite an enemy while in their vision and be discovered. You can also decide to share your whole tragic backstory with Shadowheart when sharing a bottle of wine with her. So you have been given a choice to be more trusting than Companion-Astarion would be, just the important topic of the scars seems to be Act 2 locked.

In Act 2 the scars will be introduced for Origin-Astarion either on your second long rest or by meeting Raphael. When meeting Raphael first, which is a very likely scenario, the question about the scars is buried somewhere within the dialogue and easy to miss if you not instantly jump on it. For an story element of such importance of your own character this is a little clumsy, especially if this the way the scars are first mentioned. If you instead get the long rest scene first, Astarion has a nightmare during which he can either try and succeed to figure them out on his own or try to go back to sleep. There could (maybe easily) be a third option for one of your companions to wake up and ask if your are doing alright. This would replicate the scenario of the companion version while allowing for a chance to bond with one of your companions and involve them more in your own story.

I mean, I agree.

However, there is a real life explanation why you can't share the scars.

The game itself is a bit unfinished and there aren't enough players running Astarion-Origin campaigns to justify coming up with a scene about his scars. At the end it wouldn't change a lot for the story, since only Karlach could plausible read it, and no one knows the contents of the contract.
It would be a high effort-low reward addition.

The difficulty of the fight is a bit subjective imo. It shouldn't be a deterrent for trying it if you are interested on doing Astarion's quest.

Without spoiling too much: there's this npc that Raphael asks you to kill inside the Temple of Shar, there's also a quest and a minor fight that is tied to it and involves talking to some rats. Be careful of not doing the rat thing before talking to the npc because it may cut you out of Astarion's quest due to a chain of events.

Also there's a way to solve this npc thing with dialogue and keep Astarion's quest if you pass an insight check.