Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian please give Spawn Astarion one more kiss!

I love the hug too! but it would be nice to kiss or at least hug him several times like you can with Shadowheart or Halsin, I'm more upset that we couldn't hug him several times. I'm really glad you can hug him if you leave Faerun. I didn't know you couldn't before because I always stay with Astarion.

But yeah I agree it felt like they were not interested in the epilogue. Even his AA epilogue wasn't detailed very much I thought it also felt rushed & you can't hug him there either which sucks honestly (not that I think hugging would fit that?? I'm not sure what would fit for AA).

Add to this that both of his epilogues with Illithid Tav are incredibly bugged and contradict previous events.

I'm honestly confused why his romanced epilogue is majority "go talk to the others." Love the hug, wish it was repeatable though.

Shadowheart you can go back multiple times for hugs and conversation until the conversation ends, Gale has more time as well.

"Has more time", Gale has the most amazing romance epilogue in all departments: reactivity both to plot and environment, dialogue variations for all Origins (I think) that manage to be thoughtful as well as contain call-backs to the specific romance. Someone did and excellent job writing modular dialogue for him and made it feel both personal and meaningful.

And that's basically what makes Astarion's a bit unsatisfying, imo, it's neither personal nor meaningful - and at least for me, multiple hugs can't fix that. Though it would be nice if you could ask him to to the rounds with you as well as hug him when he rather wants to stay behind. ^^

Still if given the choice I'd want to see that stupid "I will always protect you." line replaced or supplemented with one that I'd rather click. But that's maybe just my personal pet peeve.

Oh my goodness yes! I was just thinking about that the other day. It would be nice to have a "We're in this together, I'm not going anywhere unless you want me to leave" line instead. The "always protect you" line doesn't go away unless you click it, so it's not like there's an alternative.

I agree with the meaningful part- perhaps not in the way you mean? To me I get this feeling that the epilogue doesn't come across as... Astarion-y, at all. I only got that impression from his interaction with a friend Durge, and what he says when Cazador's still alive and kicking also reminded me of his sadder moments in the game, at least. The rest feels so very bland I can't see the character shine through all that much, only because he's visually there and making the same sounds.

The I will always protect you line is uniquely fucking awful. I'm in general personally opposed to modding my game to overwrite the canon- but that's something where I absolutely would, because it seems like such a non-sensical thing to add that actively works against the story where my brain automatically assumes it's not canon at all. He does at least seem irritated by it, but not nearly enough, and just the fact the line is where it is feels like the game thinking that's actually a perfectly okay thing to say.

That's a really good point. For example with finding a way to be in the sun, it would be nice if there was some dialouge about "where should we try next," or "maybe we can ask and see if anyone has any leads," or "well that last lead didn't work, but we're not giving up," or something like that.

Or some silliness, like maybe Astarion does his joking bow and Tav plays along with an exaggerated bow/curtsy. After six months together, they should have developed some inside jokes and references.

I love the hug! It makes me melt seeing how happy and comfortable he looks. But I agree his spawn epilogue feels lacking and rushed.

My impression of him was of someone being exuberantly giddy to cover up the feels they have. Might also be my interpretation because his overheard dialogue is mostly him being nostalgic, annoyed that there isn't any blood on the menu or him worrying about the other spawn, if you went down that route. All of which, lack of substance aside, stand in contrast to his mood during the actual dialogue.

As for meaningful, I would expect an epilogue to be a story wrap-up. So I'd want to know how the ending we picked has influenced our lives together and how issues that were left unresolved at the end of the game got tackled in the time that passed. If I play an origin, I would also like some options for my own character to deal with their stuff. Part of why I am such a fan of the vampire book-club ending (It's an ending Avatar-Astarion and Gale can have when the other spawn are alive - for those who haven't read me gush about it.) is because it allows both characters to be vulnerable about their remaining insecurities and offer reassurance to their partner. This helps to get the "there is nothing we can handle" sentiment across while in Astarion's dialogue, it just remains a line. There are no hardships to overcome.


Yeah it's weird. I am often puzzled about who the game implies the player character to be in Astarion's romance, and I find it fairly hard to paint a consistent picture. What I mean: What type of person would think this was a good thing to say after the graveyard scene and the follow up dialogue in the morning? Someone with wax between and in their ears most likely ...

IMO this is less of an overheard dialogue issue but rather a side effect of the dialogue for the spawn route beating you over the head that it's his good ending and the acting's believability often not meshing well with the over-the-top affect they've decided to stick with for most of Astarion's scenes (criticising parts of the acting is surely controversial, but I stand by it). The result is that I can read it as intended as completely genuine by the writers and the actor, just not well executed.

For a well executed, good moment where Astarion sounds completely genuine in his hope and contentment but the dialogue is also not sugarcoating the reality of the horror he's gone through and the future consequences of that, thus making it more real and nuanced, I'd go directly to the graveyard scene. In which, curiously, he drops the affect.

I support this, OP. I think it would be fair and thus it would be more balanced with the rest of companions.
Personally and as an idea, I would love Spawn Astarion to give a tender kiss on the neck. I think it would suit him very well.

To throw in another controversial opinion, I got the impression that someone on his team was not very interested in writing dialogue - or ran out of time. You mentioned in the other thread that the conversation after the graveyard date, felt cartoonish to you, and I think that's also because it isn't a conversation at all. It's a monologue. If the player character helped him to come to the conclusions he is making, and also had the option to make false assumptions, it would feel much more organic. Lae'zel has a moment like this when trying to suss out her feelings after rejecting Vlaakith for the final time and I quite like that scene.

Edit: A moment I really like in the morning-after conversation is when you tell him that you weren't sure if he'd stop the ritual or not. It's also one of paths that feels most like a conversation.

Oh, this is cute!! And very fitting. I like this one

I didn't pay much attention to kisses in the new evil endings, so today I've learned from other people that apparently:


As a fan of both AA and UA, I won't claim I really understand how only-Spawn fans are feeling after this, but I don't think that people who don't like AA route should have to accept a drastically different, unhappy ending where he treats their Tav badly (in many people's opinion) to actually get the kissing animations every other romance gets no matter what... the fact they actually just totally ignored Spawn like that and after that robbed him of his meager unique content as if the two routes are interchangeable is pretty unbelievable and it's so strange it wasn't fixed during 6 months period, but instead it was made even worse.

If these kisses aren't just bugged and they just don't exist and Larian didn't have the resources to give Astarion equal animations for both routes, then making more neutral animations that could fit both of his routes like Shadowheart's could have prevented this big problem happening with AA kisses now, instead of giving everything to AA and ignoring Spawn fans for 2 patches in a row. It would have been a much better solution, but oh, well, now it's too late anyway.

It feels so weird to give nothing unique only to people who had the patience to actually help Astarion and nudge him towards being a better person, work on AA kisses twice in a row and then just say: "Oh, we are walking away from this game. We are done."

Yep, I saw the evil endings awhile ago and saw that they recycled his spawn kiss and was confused why they did that. I don't find it very fair they would only give UA only two kisses, but I also learned that many spawn fans I guess never spoke up about it? I would be very upset if they never consider this reasonable request and just walk away without considering what their fans want. I'm not gonna lie and say the evil endings were low-key irrelevant to me, I am not an evil person enjoyer so those endings I just did not care about it at all. I was really holding out hope that since this was one of their last few patches that they would've finished the kisses for all companions along with fixing the romance banter because I saw that as fair for everyone. Gale having 4 extra kisses for an endgame kiss makes since to me, he is possibly the only companion that is not making it out alive. But, when you play the game there is a possibility that almost no one is making it alive. Every companion should have an endgame kiss not just Gale, Minthara or Halsin. I'd even argue that Karach SHOULD also have 4 extra kisses at the endgame because she is also having an almost guarantee of not surviving unless her, the PC and Wyll all go to Avernus together.

I enjoy AA and play with him often but I play with Spawn much much more. I really wouldn't have minded if they used a recycled kiss in the evil ending if they gave spawn another kiss along with giving him an endgame kiss. It's not fair if Larian does just decide that this is it. I mean people have been begging for more romance/overall content with Wyll and they still haven't fixed him yet in fact I would say they made him WAY worse in the newest patch because now his greetings are bugged to only his low approval greeting. I literally avoid talking to Wyll now because I hate that greeting and I really want to romance him but I'm not if he's so bugged.

I wish they would have made everything equal when all the kisses first came out in patch 6 but they didn't

This is very upsetting to learn. I still didn't try patch 7 yet since I'm not in the mental space for it and then there's this. It's so unfair. So not only did spawn Astarion have the fewest kisses in the game already, but now they are actively taking away his unique kisses? To the point that he has NO unique kisses? It's worse than I thought. Larian, what are you thinking? Why would you even do this? I was unhappy with the unequal treatment in the first place but now it's even worse. So many players love spawn Astarion, so why? I get that it was probably to save a little bit of animation creation time, but I wish they would consider how players might feel before they do this kind of stuff. Of course people will be upset if spawn Astarion already had less content than AA in the first place, and then this happens. It is so easy to see that I could have told you this before it happened.

I don't want to be dramatic but everything happening with Astarion is just ruining the urge to play the game again for me. I've already played BG3 multiple times and explored every path that I cared to do. The only reason I would play it again is to spend more time with Astarion, but now I have too many bad feelings for even that.

I didn't realize quite how barebones the spawn epilogue was until I watched some of the other romance epilogues. And even the unromanced spawn ending has more dialouge, I think, than the romanced ending.

I don't know what the story is with why spawn Astarion now has no unique kisses, but it's such a shame to hear. And that when the AA kiss was fixed twice.

Yep!! I can talk to shadowheart and halsin for probably a good 15-20 minutes but when I talk to my romanced partner (Astarion) I only talk to him, like what 5 minutes? You're telling me the man who said he is the happiest he's ever been with the pc in over 200 years has nothing else to say but to go mingle? He can't talk about new leads to finding a way to walk in the sun or have him look worried about the spawn if you go that route. IDK they really missed it with his romance epilogue.

On reddit someone found the files of a spawn third neck kiss, I'm not sure if they are animated or not but he should have a third one. I'm hoping it is animated & that potentially some modders could get it to work in the game but I still want Larian to fix the issue & not have modders do their work for them because that would mean ppl on console may not get the 3rd kiss to work.

I've seen they've also found what looks like the 5th kiss for AA.
I'm sorry, but since Larian gave Spawn kiss to AA in the new evil ending and their content have so much disparity, while Shadowheart has equal amount for her both routes, it would be only fair to give Spawn AA's bugged kiss as well (with proper facial expressions) if it's possible.
Not to mention, that one of the AA's kisses (which is currently in the game) was first Spawn's personal kiss with Karlach before Patch 6. They keep robbing him of content and giving his content to AA and all the other companions. What is this even?

I also support this request to add content to his romanced epilogue if possible.
And again he is without any kiss in there. So weird and strange to see the more popular path being treated like that. He has no endgame kiss, he has no epilogue kiss, he only has two kisses in total, which aren't even unique to him anymore and from a horrible camera angle.

Let's please not start asking to take content AWAY from a character