The kisses that appeared in the game on Valentine's Day are fanservice. All players got their fanservice with happy faces, and only AA fans should have gotten the cautionary narrative, of course. For February 14, AA fans should get a personalized cautionary narrative about the cycle of violence. Evil Shadowheart killed her parents - her fans don't need moral lessons, only AA fans. Mintara is obsessed with power and can't be fixed? Her fans don't need moral lessons. Only. AA. Fans.
I really agree with this. I don’t really think Larian wanted to create such a divide over fan-service kisses that were released on Valentine’s Day. Larian used the kneeling Ascended Astarion kiss with Bloodweave with a caption of ‘love is in the air.’ I don’t think they’d be advertising a kiss that is suppose to portray abuse.
Also - if we are getting into a discussion that kisses need to have branching paths if your character decides they have regrets about their decision to encourage an evil route, should DJ Shadowheart kisses have those options too? Or maybe Minthara after she decides to poison kiss you? I don’t understand why people feel that Ascended Astarion is the only path that should have disgusted facial expression.
Personally, I think the new facial expressions are neutral enough that you can characterize it how you want. When I first heard how they were ‘too happy,’ I was expecting them to be cartoonish. They have plenty of neutrality throughout them. I am happy they changed them too. The horrified ones limited roleplay if you wanted to play an evil aligned character that was into it.
