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

This is an excellent point. The non-consensual element that they introduced in Patch 6 contradicts the nature of the romance Pre-patch 6 where everything was portrayed as consensual.
I honestly believe these animations were introduced without anyone considering the nature of the relationship prior to patch 6 and without intending to change the narrative. Because if it was deliberate, then Larian would have a lot of work to do to make a coherent story. Since the company is not interested in continuing their partnership with WotC, I doubt they'd plan on re-writing the entire A.Astarion romance. Especially when there are so many other outstanding issues with the game.
I also have faith that they would not deliberately make a mess and just leave it.

lol, ignore feedback that disagrees in the discussion and continue for another 38 pages providing the exact same echoing feedback? Okay, interesting approach.

Isn't it great?

I agree, debating with people who have already shown their attitude, feedback, suggestion and everything they could several times in various, sometimes not the most respectful ways doesn't deserve much attention.


Yes, Valentine's Day "love flies in the air" and what triggers people to tears is not normal and should not be in romance and kissing.
From what I've seen about 6,000 people voted against the way Tav's face looks.
On one channel that I won't mention here so as not to attract too many haters.


I could say that the main problem is Tav's face, however after reading people's opinions and also seeing this attitude, I voted that everything is bad. Especially Larian's attitude.
As one person in this thread said. If you're asking about bang with a druid bear and tentacles, then knees and neck area please too. On release asked gently, roughly in an AA romance.
And the knees in general looked something vampire ritualistic. I realize it's fun to play out this scene again and many take the autoraph "on. u. knees." and the phrase meme. But it was special. Now it's an confusion, with that face triple confusion, with the answers in the epilogue " glad to share, my love" confusion x5

More than 89 % dislike or disagree with Tav's faces / non-con behaviour (since there are also people, who tried to influence the vote in a negative way, I would assume the result is around 95%)


Yep, if they would have made it deliberately, they would need to change a lot, all the consensual stuff before and after the new 15-30 seconds non-con sexual deviant scenes. So I still assume there was something going on without knowing about the romance, either not read or not understood.
Oh, please lend me some faith. How someone can turn a "kiss"-scene in a mainstream game, that's supposed to be fun, into a PTSD trigger and odd SSD context with a Valentine's Day patch is more than surprising, you'd think. But when you look at the world and see how much envy, resentment, indifference, environmental pollution and wars are devastating the world, maybe carelessness is something logical.

Personally, I don’t mind disagreement.

Yet, we’re talking about kissing scenes introduced with patch 6, with some big advertising on love and such, and with that particular romance path the one where the player character seems to not enjoy itself.

Prior to that, people were relatively happy with what they had, and even now I guess you can totally ignore the narrative supposedly served with those scenes by just not asking for a kiss. I have to wonder about the strength of a supposed narrative if it’s just easily diminished by a tiny bit of metagaming.

I can get the narrative of Astarion being bad to some extent, definitely once ascended, and the resulting romance being toxic, at the very least. But I don’t think I’ve seen anything in relation to those kissing scenes that would make me think they’re more than a fluke. If it was intentional (which I have to consider as another guess in the absence of any evidence, and so just more or less probable than the rest), and therefore part of a specific narrative, then it is not well articulated. And given the subject it deals with, if intended to convey more in that regard, I would expect to be given an opportunity to deal with it properly. Not just to have to be glad to ask for a kiss, just roll with what happens, rinse and repeat to the point it becomes idiotic, or decide to dump him one way or another without direct connect to the now contentious bit (so not really satisfactory), or just do some metagaming for my peace of mind.

No matter the supposed narrative or the fluke, they’ve introduced with those kissing scenes a problem that wasn’t there (or blessedly ignored, some would say, but no matter), for something that was supposedly a nice sort of Valentine gift. And it’s difficult to make sense of it, for some to not be hurt or triggered, to not feel the disconnect and the breaking of the immersion, and to not scratch your head over it. More so, I’ve seen people on the internet be really harsh with each other talking about ascended Astarion, and a lot of comments on those scenes, like it was the ultimate proof and such (which, right now, is still ambiguous, at best), and sometimes comments that flirt too much with victim blaming for my comfort. That’s, to me, a bit disheartening. I hope we at least know more from official channels soon, maybe it would help me to come to some conclusions of my own, like maybe even hoping is a waste of time (a run with a character is quite a considerable amount of time, after all).

For context - I am a 38 year old woman who was in an abusive relationship in my early 20's. I've talked about it in another thread to so I won't go into it.

Why do I romance Ascended Astarion?
*I have always had the joke that "I like my fictional romances a little bit toxic." ex. In DA2 I love to rivalmance Fenris as a Mage. Yell at me, daddy
*I am a big fan of Dark Romance. I love the trope. I love the possessive, obsessive, "I will burn the world for you", "If you leave me I will hunt you to the end of the world to bring you back". As a grown adult with a functioning brain, I know that IRL this is not healthy. IRL, I'd have a restraining order and get into the good ole American past-time of "bearing arms"
*I am an unabashed villain lover. Jareth in Labyrinth - kidnap me. Lestat - suck me dry. Loki - my snugglemuffin. Villains are fun... and sexy.
*I'm over redemption arcs. I think they're a little boring now and to be honest I'm kinda tired of the implication that evil coded (usually only male) characters can only love or only deserve love if they're redeemed... it's such a black/white way of thinking which is boring and uncompelling. I don't want to "fix" him. I want to enable him.
*I LOVE a corruption arc. I tend to play morally good-leaning characters, maybe a little chaotic, and *personally* I love to RP that instead of forcing Astarion into making "better" choices, I let him slowly corrupt me into making worse ones.
*I just love him, okay? He's so well written. He's arrogant, confident, funny, and he has these moments of genuine care and vulnerability. He's a complex character. I PERSONALLY find his Ascended route to be way more nuanced and interesting... and fun... than his unascended route. It was fine, there were some good moments, but I just enjoy the overall complexity of AAstarion.

Dark Romance has been a thing for a long while, and it's not going anywhere. As modern day philosopher Natalie Wynn (ifykyk) said "I am begging these people to learn to think psychologically instead of literally so that they're not constantly baffled and traumatized upon encountering literally the most common type of sexual fantasy that people have." I don't need to be told this isn't healthy... I know that, that's why I like it... it's fiction... it's and RPG. It's like saying people who chose to kick the squirrel in the game hurt animals in real life. It's a little silly isn't' it? I don't need to fantasize or role play a healthy relationship, I have one. Let me support my evil vamp pixel husband and be his dark consort until the stars fall from the sky in peace. Let me enjoy my game the way I want to.

Larian let us "enable" our evil coded romance choice and continue on with a passionate, possessive, Dark Romance... and we still have that as long as we don't ask for a kiss? I find it hard to believe that Larian would push an "abuse" narrative, but also use that so heavily in the valentines day marketing... so romanticizing abuse? That's pretty disgusting if true. I'm pretty sure this was just a bad animation choice. Please change the faces at the very least, Larian. Make the kisses consensual again.

Yeah… I have to agree. Being totally intentional putting abuse on the forefront in kissing scenes as part of a “love is in the air” Valentine style bundle in their patch, and advertising on it (I think they teased the kneeling one with Gale in place of Tav/Durge), would be quite in poor taste in my opinion. Most of all when it concerns Astarion’s romance. Even if it’s ascended Astarion we’re talking about, they kind of have been praised for the way they handled trauma and surviving it with that character, no ? That would be even more bonkers I think.

They certainly wont be praised now with the state the romance is in.


I think this is why I can not play the game as a whole. Did they really mean romaticize abuse?

If they say nothing about it and they do not fix it in the next Patch I would be inclined to say "yes, they do". And it would make me very very heartbroken as I really loved the game.

They handled trauma and surviving abuse and sexual assault in the worst way, I could imagine, with these new scenes. Survivors felt represented in his route before patch 6, a lot of them chose Astarion, they trusted the studio and loved the path, now most of them feel sick and fooled, after the studio shoved this trigger content into their faces. Sad thing. If they really wanted to romanticize abuse and sexual assault, unimaginable. But these scenes themselves are infact romanticizing sexual sadistic disorder/SA and also promoting (was also shared on Twitter by Larian itself on Valentine's day with a lot of horny comments - and at the end it is SA and sexual deviant content and not BDSM), as a lot of people seem to like and already have explicit said they enjoy that the character is shown being sexual aussaulted against their will (or Tav unhappy and suffering), even if the majority of them are not playing this path.

Why do I romance Ascended Astarion ?

It's more like Astarion I like his character , I like Dark Romance
He is well written and his voice Acting is sublime thanks to Neil living this character for a number of years.
I just can not say no to this character out of my 16 Tav's all on their own adventure 14 are Astarion partnered even the ones I had made for Gale
(The amount of times I break Gales heart as I hit Act 2 is ridiculous)

The Byronic Hero :

Character Traits:
A Byronic hero is often portrayed as:
Proud, moody, and cynical: They carry an air of defiance and misery within.
Scorners of their kind: They distance themselves from society.
Implacable in revenge: Their desire for vengeance runs deep.
Capable of deep and strong affection: Beneath their tough exterior lies emotional complexity.


Overview :

BG3 is my current escape and I'm buried deep within it There is no obvious Narrative that Tav will be treated badly and non consensually at any point till these kisses.(except if you try and break up with him as a spawn/bride)
Especially after his abstinence in ACT 2-3 quest completion.

He likes a bit of Kink yes , He is Manipulative yes but his History thats presented it's understandable.

The unfortunate thing about Astarions rise to popularity in the last couple of months
I believe he is white boy of the month on Tik Tok and the average user of Tik Tok are young and mostly stupid after growing up with the internet unlike us almost Gen X and early millenials.
Gen Z glorifies absolutely horrendous behavior where the abuse is hot conversation escalates.
rabid fans in fandom (any fandom) thanks to the internet age is a toxic cesspool sadly Astarion and it wouldn't surprise me with the thirsty comments sent to Neil on his live streams are a million times worse than they should be.

I do not come from D'n'D I came throught Fantasy and Fiction route to Baldurs Gate and everything felt ok in whatever way one plays this game until these abusive kisses and those that celebrate peoples discomfort with them.
They leave an unpleasant taste in my mouth and my sympathy is with those that are Astarion lovers and SA survivors it's probably 1000X worse for them.

I do not believe this is okay. This isn't addressing the point of the thread so much as it's attacking people in a nasty manner.

The same comments have been repeated in this thread ad nauseam. The overall tone is rude, bullying, and disparaging of real people.

^^

Even though I do come from DnD, Fantasy, & Fiction....I fully agree with the above statement from Ghost.

Well said. I have the same feeling. Most AA romance fans I read or know their age are Gen x or millenials, while the majority who dislike and condemn the AA romance and/or also their fans I know the age were from Gen Z. That's just my own experience and could be a coincidence. That doesn't mean lumping everyone together, but there seem to be some huge differences in understanding and behaviour. At least I grew up with dark romances and I don't understand how people can wish other people bad things in their game or judge other people, which answer, action or route they choose ingame...

It's sad because anti mentality has taken over, especially on twitter. The "fiction effects reality" crowd has been bad for fandoms as a whole. I've noticed tropes and characters that would have been loved if they came out in the 90s or early 2000s now are deemed "problematic" and if you like them, you're a bad person too. It even spread into younger fans trying to police older fandoms. I feel like if this game had come out many years earlier, Ascended Astarion would have been a fan favorite.

100 % agree! I am sure the majority would have loved him back then From all dark romances, for me, it was the best dark romance story (from act 1 to 3) I've ever experienced, even if it wasn't 100 % perfect. And yes, it is really sad, that the anti mentality (who are not playing and enjoying this route) has taken over the internet..

Edit: I upvote and agree with Natasy's post after me -->

I'm so happy you mentioned this!! (Not just because Byron is my forever celebrity crush. He was the real life Astarion, I swear)

Byron also had a few ideas about why women tended to love vampires, all the way back in the Romantic period. It's always been a thing.

The byronic "hero" is a perfect descriptor. Ironically, wasn't another term for it "the satanic hero"? Fitting. Funny how some things never change, huh?

At the end of the day, we *choose* the AA route intentionally because we like the "trope". Forcing victim faces on the audience doesn't match the inherently consensual nature of the path. It's always going to break RP.

Please acknowledge the issue, Larian. Communicate with your paying customers.

Edit to acknowledge how strong and venomous the anti rhetoric seems to have gotten. But I'm encouraged a bit to see the mainstream gamers (not Astarion fans) starting to likewise get annoyed with it. The complaint is now that they're very vocal/repeating the same thing over and over/ and the sexist nature of explaining to women why bad man is bad.

We know. We don't need to be saved.

The operative word is "Jareth." If you don't know who it is, or you're afraid of him, you're young and juvenile, or if you want him to take you away from everything going on around you, you're old peppercorn.
Had the Asesdent appeared a little earlier than his time, no doubt he would have ranked alongside Lestat, Jareth, and other "problem" villains.

@Mirmi: Do you mean Jareth? From Labyrinth, released in 1986? Or another character? <3