Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 7 Ascended Astarion's kisses goes against his story as written

No, I didn't mean you personally. I meant it more generally because too often in this discussion there is an attempt to reduce something to good or evil and classify it morally as such.. Yes, this question is certainly one of the most discussed and who has the sovereignty of opinion. For me, Larian has confirmed my view of AA with the changes to AA.

Question, in case I have missed something: have there been more changes other than polished expressions during the epilogue and Tav's face?

Spawn deserves as many kisses as AA. Im sorry but AA has three? why cant Spawn have thee as well? I do not see an issue for people pushing for equal treatment.
IM not attacking you I'm genuinely asking.

A few smaller things have been changed, such as how he responds to companions' questions when they ask about the relationship between him and Tav.

There is certainly no problem with people making the case for more content for spawn Astarion, but we're probably venturing too far from the topic here. Folk should feel free to create new (or add to old if they can find them) threads about other romance paths.

You're right i'm sorry, i got too frustrasted and i apologize.

And again, the number of kisses is not a thing that interests me. If you feel better "Give Spawn a new kiss".

Quality>Quantity is what I think.

Ahh, okay, I'm assuming you're talking about the previously bugged party banter? I actually, personally, -from an opposing point of view- really like the insight you get from one of his interactions with Lae'zel. I fear I'm getting too off-topic, but I'm overtaken by my need to gush over that kind of stuff. My bad, I promise to stop now!

It would be nice for UA and others to get another kiss. I also wish AA would finally be given some kind of romantic interaction in the epilogue -- he's still the only one who has none. I understand your frustration, because that right there frustrates me.

no i get you, I just want equal things. I do apologize for my frustration. I can see how it doesn't interest some, but I still want things to be equal

I haven't looked at the Lae'zel thing yet, thanks for the tip, I'll take a look at it.

You mean the power sharing one?

I haven't checked if they also trigger if you do the no-need-for-sleep ascension.

Edit: I feel some gushing and slight derailing is good for moral!

I think the conversation and discussion has taken a turn away from the original point. This isn’t about how many kisses UA vs AA have, while it would be nice to have one more for UA, I don’t think it should be a priority. Personally I don’t go up to Tav’s romance every morning to give them a kiss. It’s nice to have especially for screenshots and in nice locations, but I admit I don’t really mind it. This is also not a discussion about fairness between companions. So I think this topic should better be dropped going forward.

I feel the thread has been opened in the first place to discuss the changes In facial animation Tav has in the AA kisses, which is a very valid point. I understand that the other thread about patch 6 was opened because fans felt the added kisses (kneeling, biting, neck) COMBINED with the shocked facial animations forced a narrative onto some people and their characters that Tav must be scared of AA. objectively speaking the kisses are rough and dominating over Tav, that was the point of AA (not only my opinion, general sentiment), so the kiss animations themselves are good and fitting for his character. However i see that the reaction Tav had does force a narrative onto the player that they might not agree with, which is bad and SHOULD be changed. I agree with you here 100%. But now patch 7 did that in the other direction as well. Now it is also forcing a narrative onto the player that Tav likes this treatment and as you can see here, many people also don’t agree with that.

Also to the point of “Tav would only be shocked the first time”, but that doesn’t mean they would LIKE it going forward. The shock would still be there every time because at some point maybe they do expect a different kiss to be met with the same ones again (kneeling, biting, neck). Both facial expressions fit a variety of RPs. Like I said last night, for my Durge it makes more sense to be shocked every(!) time because she is not used to be submissive. For others it might more sense to be 100% into it and smile every(!) time even without a shocked face the first time.

Hence why it makes complete sense to have both expressions toggled by dialogue somewhere along the path to the kiss. And I don’t agree with it being meta-gaming at all. In that case you could argue that someone who has trauma of bleeding from the wrist (for example self harm) needs to meta game to avoid him biting Tavs wrist in turning-night. This is a one-time thing, I don’t mean to say “oh just getting triggered one time is okay”m but it’s at the discretion of the player to pursue this path and not everything will go smoothly all the time. I don’t mean to disregard any trigger or trauma here. Same with the facial expressions, when you choose option 1 and get a facial expression you don’t like, try option 2. And keep choosing the one you like.

Disregarding someone’s RP because your own RP is different is not fair. Just because you see AA in a different light than someone else doesn’t make their RP any less valid. This goes for both sides here. Saying larian confirmed *your* view of AA with the changes is no better than people saying patch 6 confirmed *their* view of him. I’m not arguing whether or not one path is better for him or not, both have their positives and negatives.

It sucks that Astarion is divisive, and AA even more so, but there is a solution that both sides can be happy with. Both are / were in the game. All it takes is one dialogue flag. And what sucks even more, is that one side agrees to have both expressions and the other doesn’t. Nobody is trying to take away patch 7, it’s staying no matter what. All we want is the option to revert back to patch 6 without mods. Quite frankly I don’t understand why one side is okay with having more options and the other doesn’t. You have so many options in the game you don’t have to choose, so just don’t choose here either. Just pick the one you want. Nobody is saying REPLACE patch 7 and patch 6 again, we just want BOTH.

I don’t know how many cared to read my wall of text on the first (or maybe second?) page but I really tried To give both sides of the narrative their time to shine, to maybe show some who are stuck in one narrative that there are very valid and very good reasons for one or the other expression. I really did try here, okay? I feel I am about as neutral as one can be on this topic and it just sucks to have this fight in general, but even more so when literally nothing anyone says is taken into account by the other side for the most part.

It’s honestly frustrating and I see this in real life so often and can’t help but draw parallels. If one party feels slighted, they will do everything to get the advantage. And once that happens, they sit back and enjoy while someone else now feels slighted and can’t enjoy anymore. Of course you don’t want to give up patch 7 because it fits your narrative, but now it doesn’t for others. I don’t understand how you can not feel bad when people have the exact same feelings you had with patch 6. Nobody is taking away patch 7 faces from you, this is not what anyone wants. But to claim patch 6 took away player character(!) agency and not see how patch 7 does the exact same thing, refuse to see the other POV and refuse to agree to a compromise, is in my opinion very bad practice.

Thank you, truly it means the world to me that you agree. I want AA to have as much love as everyone else. When I play AA in the epilogue I want the guy to kiss me or something? Similar to the UA hug.

Yes, at least something

Why is it important that anyone on this forum agrees to a compromise? It has already been explained several times that forum users cannot do anything to convince Larian of your concerns. The underlying accusations don't make the issue seem particularly serious, but more like a defiant reaction.

Larian changed the expressions in patch 7 most likely due to the uproar patch 6 caused. So sure, while patch 6 supporters could do the same and get their favorite expressions back at some point, it would be a better way to show some sort of community here by compromising. Larian doesn’t have to listen, but we all know they might if they know they can make players happy. And as it stands now, a great group of people is not happy to the point of not enjoying the game anymore. There is nothing to indicate why larian decided to change the expressions in such a drastic way, so the assumption that it was due to fan feedback is strong. At the very least, they must have had their reasons to implement patch 6 in the first place because that was not guided by fan feedback at all. Nobody said “make my Tav make this expression”, so that was the way they themselves must’ve envisioned Tav in this relationship. They only changed it because fans wanted it.

There is certainly no requirement on forum members to reach compromise or agreement. Fortunately, only Larian need to take on board feedback and decide how to balance competing preferences and their own vision. As I've said more than once in this thread, we need to be ready to agree to disagree. But please let's not belittle or dismiss the opinions of those with whom we disagree. Remember that our forum rules require us to respect the opinions and character preferences of others, and we can disagree without disrespecting.

I'm also seeing a lot of to and fro between the same few users here, which is absolutely fine as long as everyone is enjoying the debate and having fun, but that's not the vibe I'm getting.

Can I ask everyone to remember it is also against forum rules to flood the forum with repetitive messages, and recognise when you've made your point and it's time to step back and move on?

It is not written anywhere that we must necessarily find a common agreement and much less that we must agree with such a proposal.
Maybe in your eyes it is a good compromise, but many have already written on several occasions why they do not agree and other proposals have been put forward, which obviously one can agree with or not.
In the end it's Larian decision to do something about this matter and how, or even do enything.


We don't know the real reason why they decided to fix the expressions. Maybe it's because for fans requests, but also not. So please, don't say things like this like they are the only truth.

I said above:


Could I ask that other forum members don't repeat the same point?


I've also seen a couple of people object to people saying that Larian made the changes to AA's kiss animation because of feedback from fans. While we can't know for certain, that seems no more than a likely statement of fact, and is recognised by fans who wanted the changes who have thanked Larian for listening. *In and of itself* there is nothing wrong with claiming that Larian responded to fan feedback when they made changes, though it also seems reasonable to believe they'd not have made changes had they not also seen merit in that feedback.

Where things would start to breach forum rules is if people suggest that the fans who didn't like the patch 6 animations were not perfectly entitled to give the feedback they did, or held them responsible for the specific change that Larian made in response to feedback or any negative experiences of people who don't like the changes. Please be very careful not to cross the line, and consider if you are making claims about why the change was made why you are mentioning it: the cause of the change doesn't have much if anything to do with the content or merit of the new animations, and if you're bringing it up in a negative context then it shouldn't be surprising that people experience that as blame.