I think you have a very specific idea of what constitutes feeling bad in a video game. I consider it to be just any sort of negative emotion. Sadness counts, being made to feel guilty, having any sort of negative emotional experience counts. I don't think the tadpole is meant to be a situation where you feel excited, you're meant to feel dread and urgency. When you go to the goblin camp and find out they're roasting a dwarf, you're meant to feel disgusted, when you get to the end of Karlach's quest, you're meant to feel sad. When Orin kidnaps a party member, you're meant to feel scared, shocked, paranoid and off balance. All very bad feelings that are valid to want the player to feel.
Authors should show it in such a way that the player feels it. Again, not everyone will feel it, they will feel it in different ways, but if the writing is decent, everyone will appreciate it anyway, depending on the spectrum of their own feelings. And the feelings should be realistic, they should be “inside” the game, with faith in what's happening. The feeling of breaking the fourth scene, for example, in the dialog scene after the Ascension, the feeling of indignation about how badly the lines are written - this is clearly not the feeling a player should feel in a good RPG. I'm not even talking about the fact that players should definitely NOT experience triggers by suddenly being exposed to traumatizing content. The player should feel like their Tav within the game world, not a critic and “investigator” trying to figure out why this game is doing such an ugly thing. It's definitely not the negative emotion that games are supposed to evoke. Yes, I didn't feel any fear or urgency over the tadpole because I understood that it was a tie-in to the main plot of the game, yes, metagame thinking, but you can't help it, too many games have been played by me in the past, but that didn't stop me from finding this tie-in interesting and the game gorgeous. But when I learned Astarion's story, I got a sense of dread for the proposed ways to get rid of the maggot, what if it works? Everyone gets rid of the tadpoles, and Astarion loses everything the tadpole gives him, and Cazador can control him again. I grudgingly allowed only Omeluum to watch the tadpole, and I was very interested in letting Volo dig into my eye (I thought I'd reset after he popped my eye out, I just wanted to see it, but the artificial eye in return was too cool). Now that's an unusual emotion, the reluctance to get rid of the problem, the writers clearly didn't plan to evoke that emotion, but the players take it as they do, and that's great. It's not sad with Karlach, it would be sad if she wasn't the “main mouthpiece” against Astarion's Ascension, and her lines in Act 3, including the offensive to me line, “I hope he'll treat you well...” (I'd kick her out of camp after that if I could, and if it weren't for her dependence on tadpoles) make me spit on her character and see her as a tool to solve the problem of who will become illithid. I genuinely cared for her in act 1 and 2, I previously really liked her, to me she is ruined by “morality” and another attempt to make me feel like I'm “doing it wrong”. Orin gets a bear shaped rattle and my thanks for getting rid of Halsin for the entire 3rd act. I wish this quest had made me feel anxious, but Halsin has been corrupted to please the “shitposters” and I don't like that kind of sex-crazed companion.
For the sake of comparison, I can mention the game Disco Elysium, which is impossible to get through without emotion, with the game author never forcing it, he just shows and writes it in a way that works. Another player advised me to see what would happen if I chose lines corresponding to a person of radical nationalist views, and... it was horrible. Unreal to go through. The writing is great, horrible in just another sense, in terms of “feel”. The person who recommended it to me cried during that playthrough himself, even though he was a man not prone to crying over everything. That's how it's written. I don't know if it can teach anything, it would have to be tested on someone who could pick such lines “from themselves”, but the average player is made to feel in a real, artistic sense. Of course, if an author of such a level as the author of Disco Elysium were writing a romance for BG3, we'd probably feel something strong, and it wouldn't be triggers because of traumatizing content (Disco Elysium has a double warning to the player before a violent text description of a scene about mercenary atrocities, even though the scene has nothing to do with the player personally, and it's text, not video).
So we're in agreement that it's about execution, grand. Like I said, I was only speaking out against the idea that's cropped up that games trying to make players feel bad at all is blanket bad. I wanted to be a voice against that specific argument that's been made. I think the execution with Astarion's story with the new kiss was an absolute failure and frankly it seems that Larian has just failed with Astarion however you slice it. Either they didn't want him to be automatically abusive in which case the additions now have failed to do what they wanted, or they did want him to be abusive and they completely failed to showcase it before patch 6, and then patch 6 failed even moreso because nothing else changed so it's just bizarrely out of character. Larian's creative process just seems to overall be a chaotic mess that produced all the good stuff they have by accident, almost.
I do want to bring up something that's come up a while back though. I wanted to just let it pass but it's been bothering me and I don't expect that anyone else will speak up about it. A little while back in either this thread or the other Astarion thread you pretty much said that anyone who loves Astarion would always choose to Ascend him if they want the best for him, and I think that that's wrong. Like, that opinion is inherently wrong. It would be like me saying that someone doesn't love Karlach if they don't force her to go back to the Hells with them to fix her engine. Or saying you don't love Shadowheart if you don't turn her away from being a dark Justiciar. I may think that that's her best ending, but it would be wrong of me to tell someone else that the way they play indicates they don't love a character enough. That stance fundamentally bothers me. When spawn fans gang up on ascencion fans, they're being toxic, they're wrong, they're engaging in shameful behaviour that should have no place in fandom. But up until that point their love for the character and their interpretation of the events of the game are every bit as valid and deep as yours. I am not saying you're as bad as those Spawn fans who constantly have mobbed and belittled ascencion fans. You objectively are not, not even close. But I also think you are wrong in this specific opinion you've espoused.
