Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Fixing Astarion's "Good" Ending

The last thing is a problem with reactivity in general in act 3. No one bats an eye, if you as resisting Durge dies and gets resurrected.

As for soul coins: those souls are already destroyed, there is nothing you can do for them. Not to play it down, it's still bad, but as far as I understand from playing DnD for a long time, there is no going back from becoming a soul coin.
As for Karlach being very invested in the refugees fate: she witnessed them being thrown to Avernus ( there is a DnD module dealing with that : Descent to Avernus, the prelude to what happened in BG 3)

And nevermind companions showing interest or not to one another. I agree, that Astarion and Karlach are not likely to be interested in each other and left to their devices, Karlach ends up with Wyll, which was s kind of cute, and Astarion has that fling with Lae'zel. But if you play that origin, it's up to you. And op played Astarion origin before anything else, so they did go in blindly. And I'm a big fan for throwing together people, that are pretty unlikely to even meet, outside the special tadpole situation. I played the Astarion romance with a very sweet and good aligned forest gnome bard lady - which worked surprisingly well. He actually apologised to me for his racist remarks in act 1.

You must have played different game i guess, the same Astarion who would enjoy watching you having fun after the party most certainly would not be into her lmao.

Tiefling refugees and 7k vapmires are in totally different part of the game, there are good reasons why Wyll and Karlach won't join the party if u slaughter the grove or won't immediately leave after ascension, but thats hard to understand for some i see.

Agreed, act 3 needs a lot of work. I still think she should have some scruples when it comes to using them. I don't have a problem with her caring about the refugees, but she should certainly have a more explicit reaction when it comes to the ritual. Right now she's not particularly bothered. Origin Astarion should have some extra dialogue options where he convinces her he can fix her engine, like he does if Karlach is the main character.


I prefer to pair him with someone more his type, but everyone should do what makes them happy. They're free to play the game the way they want.


He also enjoyed watching that scene in the barn but I doubt he wanted to be a participant.

Again, something that goes against her very nature and results in souls being sent to the type of realm she has a personal quarrel with, should elicit a more extreme reaction from her. There should at least be a difficult persuasion check that, if failed, would significantly lower her attitude towards Tav. Thanks for that condescending remark btw, totally made your argument stronger. Not.

Ametris: Sadly Karlach and Wyll are both pretty unfinished, she was the latest addition and Will had a complete rewrite and it shows. I love them both, but they have far less reactivity than every other companion minus Halsin. There was some stuff hinted, that those two get some love in patch 7, which makes me hopeful.

I especially hope for Wyll to get some good content, because he suffered the most when it comes to writing. The rewrites sadly made me completely uninterested in him as a character and I found him quite promising when watching some footage during early access.

I do like him, but I agree, he needs a lot more content. And it is kind of jarring, that no one recognises him as the dukes son in act 3. I really hope, he gets some more to do.

I get that for some people the entire point of playing an Origin story is to play that character as the opposite of how they're usually written, but that's not the case for everyone. I'm the kind of person who will play a completely linear game 2-3 times just to re-live the story and spend time with the characters and setting. I figured Origin would also give me extra content about specific characters that I wouldn't get by playing as a new character.

Also, I had been reading a lot of commentary about the game and characters well before I started playing; that's why I decided to give it a try in the first place. So... I wouldn't say I was going in completely blind.

There are some interesting devnotes about the Astarion/Karlach romance option, but I'm guessing this is not the place to post those.

Come to think of it... canonically, Astarion and Karlach grow to care a great deal about each other. She remains kind to him even when he's at his most sharp-tongued. If your Tav is romancing both of them, he'll tell you to break things off with him to spare her feelings (emotional growth, we love to see it!). So... even if they're not romancing each other, why not have the option to have Tav suggest he accompany her to Avernus? Obviously, this would be a spawn-only option, because 1. he'd still have to worry about sunlight 2. Karlach wouldn't agree to spend years with Ascended Astarion 3. Spawn!Astarion is the version who chose to break the cycle of abuse rather than perpetuating it, and begins to approve of good character actions. This could well be another step in his character arc... plus, no radiant damage, no running water, and an excuse to shed rivers of demon blood.

I just had the scene in act 2 , where Raphael tells Astarion about Cazadors planned ritual. And Karlach was so protective of him ( Astarion, not Raphael of course) and said she would protect him from his former master.

Talking about alternative endings for Spawn Astarion, I'd much prefer it if unromanced Spawn Astarion would go to the Underdark to help the other spawn if you let them live. From what I have gathered (which might be wrong) he currently always gets the hero-adventurer ending as a default and you have to jump through some loops to get the Underdark ending. Which is a shame. I liked his realisation that freedom means responsibility and that he maybe should go and help them, even though he really doesn't want to. It seems like a much better conclusion to his arc under these circumstances.

Yes, his default is adventurer and the current only way to get him to go to the Underdark on his own is suggest it at the Elfsong Tavern and then break up with him. (If you just break up he says he will do it but doesn't).
It's curious because the original datamines for the epilogue had him going to the Underdark as the default if the Spawn lived.

I strongly agree that going to the Underdark should be the default if the rest of the spawn live, and the much less satisfactory "adventurer assassin" thing should happen only if the other spawn aren't around.

I actually prefer the adventurer ending for Spawn Astarion, if only because it's hard to imagine him managing any sort of population and because the epilogue handled that ending in a very inconsistent way that left a bad taste in my mouth. It's true that him leading them makes for a nice arc in where he started (ruling over other people's lives for his own self-interests) to where he ends up (ruling over other people because he cares what happens to them) but I just can't see him as a leader or being happy being a leader, and the adventurer ending also has parallels as well.

The majority of people (87%) prefer the hero ending as evidenced by this poll with 12K votes:

What is you favorite non-romanced Spawn Astarion ending?

I can imagine. The adventurer one is more happy go lucky and treats "freedom" as easily digestible concept without any drawbacks, it's more in line with the wish to make everyone happy. The mood change between romanced Underdark and unromanced Underdark (when he's a companion) is weird to me, in the romanced version he's constantly worried, while in the unromanced one he's more winging it.

In my opinion they made the right call by making this the default ending. I don't think he should be responsible for the other spawn, but only for himself. Well, in the romanced version he has to worry about a juicy meal walking among hungry spawn so I can imagine it taking a toll on him.

Thank you for the laugh. <33

I think it's generally disappointing that he has one default spawn ending and another one that is locked away behind a dialogue-choice so random, that probably nobody gets it as a natural conclusion to their story (unless you are playing as God-Gale currently maybe). I like the conversations you can have with Astarion about the other spawn and would have loved it if they had been given a little more depth relevance for Astarion's epilogue decision. If the Underdark ending was the result of your ingame choices instead of a weird save-scumming experiment, the poll perhaps would look different too. Similar how there are people who strongly prefer one of Shadowheart's Selunite endings over the other.

Apart from that, it's also nice to see that Astarion surprises himself by doing a decent job at something he didn't imagine he would be good at - and of course that he gets to burn that stupid palace down.

I wanted to start a new thread, but I think it would get lost. so I brought my thoughts here:

We only asked for a different camera angle

This is another attempt to request a few changes to the spawn (good) ending. After some discussions in the spawn Astarion corner, I've noticed three wishes that are particularly important to us, but sone have been partially ignored for a year.


The camera angle during the new kiss:

We were really happy about the passion in this kiss, how he leans forward because he wants to be close to Tav.

But the rest of the kiss is seen the back of his head. The intimacy that was shown so wonderfully in the graveyard scene, so close and intimate, is not the case here. It's just a camera angle we're asking for.
however, the request of the Ascended corner is immediately addressed and the beautiful face is changed noe.

The final scene at the dock:

Thank you for adjusting some comments regarding Astarion's decision not to become a monster and for feeling the drawbacks of the curse again. A decision that most companions celebrated with respect and pride. Now that the sun is becoming his enemy again, however, he is being mocked.

But most importantly, we wanted (romance, or even as a friend) to give him some kind of reaction.
Something like - 'I will follow you', 'we will find a way'. A reaction, anything....
Unfortunately, Tav remains emotionless, which is extremely unsatisfying.

The dialogue in the epilogue:

when romanced I am extremely grateful for the hug, for the way Astarion seems so calm and content in the epilogue. But in the romance, you are left wondering. The unromanced spawn Astarion has so much to say, so many positive changes.

A dialogue with the same answers could be possible.
It feels unbalanced compared to Ascended Astarion in the epilogue, where the changes are clearly felt through dialogues.

So, has the hair-view-camera not been changed for none-large player characters in the upcoming patch? I haven't read anything about it in the other kiss threads and didn't want to throw more kindling on the pyre.

Just gonna leave THIS here.

Your Quote... "This game isn't here to satisfy your HC. nobody has a real happy and why should you have it? if you don't like it, then you don't like the story. then you have no right to say that they should change it.
take it as it is. redesign the story in your home, in your head"

I think it's hilarious that some people feel so entitled to ask for changes when they've told other fans they don't even get the right to ask for changes and to suck it up. How about asking for changes that YOU want to see without being toxic? Do better!
And THANKS, Larian, for making the beautiful improvements that YOU deem to be important.