Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian, please ensure you don’t take away player agency with AA in patch 7

? That's not what that's saying. Stupid horror face kisses is calling the kisses stupid.


Fair enough.


Fair enough I could've said that less strongly.

@Ryzaki, thank you for taking my remarks on board.

As to my first point, I’d rather see opinions as “I statements” but I think you got my overall message.

Happy posting!

I believe a key feature of an RPG should be room for interpretation. While Patch 6 diminished that aspect for the ascended romance, leading to anger among many players, Patch 7 also lacks any room for interpretation.

One point worth mentioning is that Patch 7 introduces mod tools, which would essentially allow anyone to mod whatever face they desire for Tav. I don't think it's necessary to impose any extreme emotions or relationship dynamics on the main character this late after the game's release.

I would also like to note that the kiss exists for the millions of people who purchased this game and who might potentially romance an ascended Astarion at some point. It may be helpful to keep that in mind as well.

Overall I think a truly neutral expression would be great

How do you envision it? A kiss with no emotion at all?

First, it isn't really just a kiss; there are multiple things happening before and after the kiss. Second, if you're familiar with art resources, there are subtly happy and subtly nervous expressions.

Personally, I can only perceive D/s with a happy facial expression on my character's face.What was presented as a gif still hints at disagreement for me, and I don't want to play with that facial expression. I really want to have a smile on my face when Astarion puts his hand on the throat, I've seen that facial expression, and I really like the kneeling kiss now. It doesn't evoke any unpleasant emotions like it used to. I've always wanted to do more for Astarion in my game, to give him more love, and in this version of the kiss performance, it satisfies my desire, making up for the lack of opportunities to show love to Astarion in other moments of the game. Tav's face after the simulated slap is playful, I love the smirks and playfulness! It gives the scene a completely different reading - the slap moment was the most emotionally heavy, unpleasant, even triggering moment for me. Now it isn't! When it is a game, and my Tav sees it as a game, there are no associations with rejection or contempt on Astarion's part, no thoughts that Astarion might be disgusted that Tav wants to kiss him. On the contrary, it is perceived that Astarion is as uninhibited as possible, free in his desires, he trusts me completely, trusts me so much that he does not need to put himself in any kind of framework, “rules of etiquette”, “masks of propriety” and the like.Astarion can play all he wants, Tav knows it's a game, and Astarion knows that Tav understands him, and he can afford to play that game with her too. Happiness is being understood and accepted for who you are. And I want to give that happiness to Astarion, I don't want to have a neutral face that gives associations with like just putting up with it. And I myself want to work through some of my own vulnerabilities with the game, but I can only do that if my Tav is happy. So I'm really looking forward to patch 7 with happy faces!

In Bite, yes, there's a moment I didn't really like, and as Silver/ wrote above, it could be interpreted as Tav changing her facial expression when Astarion closes his eyes.
I wouldn't have thought of that, but it's a curious perusal. I'm assuming it's part of an old animation that was filmed rather than set programmatically (just a guess). I think I can live with that. I'll imagine Tav making those eyes because she's just surprised. A sudden bite is capable of surprise, after all. About the look - I can imagine Tav thinking for a second. Whether she should try to kiss him again, lick her lips, or react in some other way. Then Tav smirks playfully, as if laughing at the fact that Astarion took the initiative first. So, it can be said that these scenes allow for different interpretations based on the player's wishes.

There is a lot of content in the game that could negatively affect someone. For example, in Act 2, Tav can after his confession. As long as potentially triggering content can be avoided by being locked behind options the player doesn't have to choose, like the OP of this thread requested for the kisses, I don't think the game or its characters need to be censored.

Hi everyone *please* remember the forum rule:

“While we are aware that sometimes users might want to have these discussions on reference to the games, please try to keep conversations about heavier topics (abuse, sexual assault, etc) within spoilered text with an appropriate warning, so other users can choose if they want to engage.”

From my perspective, most discussion of non-consensual sexual situations would fall under that banner. Can I ask anyone who has posted such content to go back and spoiler it?

I'm sorry, but how do you a romance locked behind the options? The only option I see is to not start it with that character.
Kissing is a reward for choosing this particular companion as a love interest. The buyer's remorse into a relationship with Astarion as a questionable guy should have worked much earlier then, the game gives plenty of opportunity for that if you hesitate somewhere:
What's the point of keeping the romance on the path of "buyer's remorse" for the rest of the game?
Why can "tragedy" only be played out with AA? Where then are the equal opportunities for all characters on the "dark path"?
Why didn't anyone have discontent before patch 5?

It may not end up satisfying either side in the end. I, like many of those who want to express their love for Astarion, will still have to install mods, and those who want a different romance will still get a rather bland version, and may well use mods with more extreme expressions, once they are available. Maybe we should leave in the game what Larian already planned to release, and that allows for different interpretations among other things? Besides, it's already been done and done excellently.

The example you gave is a moment that could negatively influence a player, but it is something that happens only once during the game and, what's more, it's a largely avoidable option (and which, in my opinion, does not even have all these negative consequences, unfortunately).
The kisses, on the other hand, is a request, an action that can be repeated over and over again, until the end of the game. A player therefore, unless they stop clicking on the option, is forced to always put up with those scared/suffering faces (faces that are still there, because patch 7 has not yet been officially released). As much as a player may like the current expressions of patch 6 for the reason you said before, I suppose that they discourage you from continue kissing Lord Astarion and continue the relationship with him.
So I understand if Larian ultimately opted to soften the expressions, also because they spent a lot of time and work to create those animations and I doubt that their goal was not to make people appreciate them.

Not the entire romance. Tav's expressions during the kisses could be decided by the options the player chooses. For example, I think it would make sense for any one of these to lead to the original faces:

-"You're starting to scare me..." after ascension.
-"Give in and kneel" after Tav first tried to refuse.
-"Well, I suppose it cannot be undone now" the morning after becoming a vampire.
-"Sorry! I didn't mean it" in the breakup dialogue.


Like any other path in the game, it can be an interesting story to explore for players. There have been dialogue choices to play the romance like this since Patch 1.


Spawn and ascended Astarion used to share the same kiss animation, so it made sense Tav would react the same way to both of them before. AA's Patch 6 kisses are very different, and warrant varying reactions to them by different kinds of characters.


Alright, let me give a different example:
This has also been in the game since Patch 1.
My suggestion is only assigning the original expressions to a Tav who, in some way, has already expressed being unhappy or scared of Astarion before. That way, only players who want to engage with that narrative would have to see them.

I'm not asking to only keep the Patch 6 expressions and not add new ones. I completely understand other players wanting their Tav to look happy during the kisses. If Tav's reactions to the kisses depended on our choices, like the OP suggested, everyone could have the version of the story that feels right to them.

The author claimed in one of the threads on this forum that these kisses “romanticize abuse”. If we are talking about “romanticization”, then the fantasy “I can fix him” is no less destructive and dangerous, and it is better not to transfer it to real life. Victims of abuse stay in relationships with their abusers often because of similar fantasies and the belief that the person will reform if they receive enough support and love. The very idea that Astarion is not evil at heart, that everything evil in him is the result of fears and trauma, is romanticization. But few people think about the spawn's ending in that context, but AA fans are constantly reminded of it.

I suppose if we get involved with a guy who lunges at us with a knife the first time we meet him, we're all well aware that in real life such people are best avoided rather than trying to make sense of his traumas. I also assume that all Astarion fans romanticize him to one degree or another. Some people have a hard time recognizing him as an “evil character” at all, because they prefer to write off his evil motives as trauma. But if you transfer that kind of thinking to real life, it doesn't look so harmless anymore. But I don't see why you would do that when it comes to a computer game, and that goes for the AA route too.

As for kissing, Tav's scared faces are OOC for AA. It's not a matter of player choice or roleplaying, it's a matter of rewriting an AA character who wasn't someone who would enjoy Tav's fear BEFORE patch 6. The relationship was of a completely different nature. And it's unfair to change the character so drastically six months after the game's release. This is the very thing people were primarily outraged about in February. This issue is already more than “give me back control of my character”, this topic is already venturing into the territory of the player-independent character, the Ascended Astarion. And I think that's given too little attention here.

The creator of this thread can roleplay that her Tav has acted foolishly and is afraid to part with him for fear that AA will take revenge on her once the tadpole in their heads is destroyed. Tav's scared faces contradict AA's script and character. If Tav is afraid of revenge, AA doesn't retaliate anyway. What is the point of the request? The point is to make AA a rapist for no reason because, again, Tav's fears of AA's revenge are a figment of her imagination because it's not in canon. The “trap” is only slammed shut in the very finale, and that, there's no talk of punishments or anything like that. Your Tav's fears don't make AA a rapist.

So it would be fair to either remove these kisses altogether, which everyone can't perceive unambiguously, or to give the option to choose between the standard kisses from before patch 6 and the new ones that will appear in patch 7. I don't think AA would have refused Tav a vanilla kiss if Tav wanted it, just like he didn't refuse to “be gentle” when Tav asked for it in the transformation scene. After all, he always had a tender kiss until patch 6. The problem with kisses is that we ask for them ourselves, no one forcibly forces us, but everything looks like violence. It's just animation after all, so the player kind of loses control of their Tav during the kiss. If my Tav didn't like it, she would have said so, not been horrified. Furthermore, I'm sure AA himself would hardly kiss Tav if he saw a face like that, it's just not in his character. This character was feeling sorry for Tav about the deal with Haarlep, and suddenly he's almost committing sexual violence?

I know what it's like to lose control over your own body. It's a wretched thing.

As far as I remember, those dialogs for AA and spawn are the same, except for this one:

Gods, though I've become untouchable, my precious treasure has been violated still.

It feels like wild OOC.

So the most adequate option I see is just giving players a choice between the standard kiss and the ones coming in patch 7. And I agree that it is in the transformation scene that this choice should be made, depending on which dialog you choose.

Do people here really want compromise for their roleplay, or do they only want AA to be a rapist because the “cycle of abuse” is all they see that route?

I know that the request is not to not introduce the new expressions of patch 7 at all.
I just wanted to explain why, in my opinion, the comparison with the scene you mentioned was not very fitting and why, in my opinion, in the end Larian decided to change the expressions.

I'm just wondering, no negativity. Why are you so eager to have different facial expressions only in AA's way and only in his kisses? Then it's unfair to the other “dark romances” as has been said earlier in this thread. It looks logical if the game has 1 set of facial expressions in kisses because it's romance, and yes, how should new players who don't see any abusive behavior from AA imagine it?

Ask for a kiss with horror?
Ask for a kiss with pleasure?

Who would even add such a thing to the game? Love and consent > Horror

I don't really think it's comparable. AA's kisses used to only have the Patch 6 expressions for Tav. People were bothered by them, and that resulted in the new animations being made. We're not asking to create new different sets of expressions for a companion, we are asking to keep something that already exists.


No, I'm not asking for different ways to ask for a kiss. I think it would be possible to let Tav react in different ways by taking their other choices into account, like I suggested in a reply above.

I consider, what has been in game for 6 months a mistake. A mistake that has been admitted and is being fixed. (Thanks Larian)

Then I think we have to agree to disagree. I don't think they would have animated Tav's face like this in multiple animations, used it to advertise the game and kept it unchanged for half a year if it was a mistake.