Baldur's Gate 3

Pavel

@Tez It’s okay, children run away when at 0hp.

ETA: Ask not how I know this.

Solstice

On Astarion:

I think they either really bungled his chances to grow throughout much of the game, not limited to the epilogue - or they made his lack of growth a calculated choice. I’m leaning to the latter.

As he’s currently characterized: Rip the fangs out of that boy’s head and he’s stripped down to an indignant complainy nobleman who gets angry if you help the peasants and has to be dragged kicking and screaming to not commit murder on a mass scale, including the children he lured to their deaths. And sulks about that extensively before grudgingly admitting it was a good thing.

Honestly, him zipping offstage to the sunlight equivalent of yakkety sax as his ‘good ending’ is about the best the person he was could hope for. He can go spend a century or two finding redemption in the Underdark! Popular spot for it.

We could not fix him - and I do suspect that’s the point.

So given all that, I was all about it.

Cobalt

@Tez said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

@Cobalt NOT MY LIL THIEFLING BABIES!!!

that will be hard, it is true.

But murderhobo gotta murderhobo

Roz

@Solstice said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

@Roz

On Astarion:

I think they either really bungled his chances to grow throughout much of the game, not limited to the epilogue - or they made his lack of growth a calculated choice. I’m leaning to the latter.

As he’s currently characterized: Rip the fangs out of that boy’s head and he’s stripped down to an indignant complainy nobleman who gets angry if you help the peasants and has to be dragged kicking and screaming to not commit murder on a mass scale, including the children he lured to their deaths. And sulks about that extensively before grudgingly admitting it was a good thing.

Honestly, him zipping offstage to the sunlight equivalent of yakkety sax as his ‘good ending’ is about the best the person he was could hope for. He can go spend a century or two finding redemption in the Underdark! Popular spot for it.

We could not fix him - and I do suspect that’s the point.

So given all that, I was all about it.

Yeah, idk if I just made different choices? But he definitely grew a whole lot in the playthrough I did.

I don’t think it was either “they bungled his growth or made a conscious choice not to have him grow,” I think it’s “he can grow a lot or a little, he can make good or bad choices, it just depends on what choices YOU make, and what you encourage from him.”

It wasn’t the point that I couldn’t fix him, because I absolutely helped to make him a better, more empathetic person. That’s why his comedic sendoff felt so awful.

Solstice

@Roz

~~Maybe I missed the approval cutoff for the more sympathetic reactions.~~

Edit: Really seems like you need to be romancing him for much of this to surface, which feels a missed opportunity.

bear_necessities

@Cobalt said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

@Tez said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

@Cobalt NOT MY LIL THIEFLING BABIES!!!

that will be hard, it is true.

But murderhobo gotta murderhobo

I tried to murderhobo and the grove is where I realized I am not capable of being a murderhobo lol

Roz

@Solstice said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

@Roz

Definitely not ruling it out. On a heavily intricate game like this, I suppose it’s hard to say that we had the same experience.

At least for me, by the time we reached Cazador, it took me dragging him by the heels to not murder the 7000 folks assembled there, betray the party, or leave. If your experience was a different one, still more kudos to Larian, but I assumed from the articles I’d read online that this was a common thing and a reason to avoid bringing him to his own quest resolution.

So yeah. ~~Maybe I missed the approval cutoff for the more sympathetic reactions.~~

Edit: Really seems like you need to be romancing him for much of this to surface, which feels a missed opportunity.

(Also, uh, spoilers being weird for anyone on this post? Clicking my own spoiler is expanding Roz’s.)

Lol yeah I can’t see your spoilers But FWIW, I didn’t romance him my first playthrough, but I still felt like I saw a lot of growth from him from our friendship.

Solstice

@Roz

Just wiped out the spoiler in the previous tag. Weird spoiler tag being weird. I resume it noooow and hopefully it doesn’t continue to weird at me.

Anyhow, I agree that he starts to say progressively nicer things in confidence with the PC, but that never seems to reflect his actual impactful decisions. Him being largely unwilling to put his money where his fangs are is what made me want to write him off in my Durge playthrough - I felt like he was a total waste of effort because after all the time I spent trying to make him see that he doesn’t have to be a dick, his capstone quest has him be a monumental dick unless you choose the one out of 5 options that strokes his ego enough to have him not consume the lives of people he already destroyed the happiness of. And even after save-scumming to pick that correct option, dude was still huffy about my choice to release the captive children he kidnapped and allowed to die (What the fuck Astarion.)

Like, I dunno, the parallel would be dating Ashley or something in Mass Effect. She grows to care for you, and says nice things to you, but at the end of the day she’s still a big 'ol Space Racist.

So I think the capstone quest definitely earns him that little ray of sunshine in the ending.

Great character. Entertaining as hell. Pretty irredeemable as a person.

All that said:

I have fallen hard for his voice actor.

Aria

@Solstice said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

Unrelated:

Astarion Goose needs to be a mod.

https://youtu.be/6CNAL3kFRDo

There are TWO animated versions of Goosetarion on TikTok and I watch one of them every day, then giggle like a complete fucking idiot at that laugh of his.

I have fallen hard for his voice actor.

It’s been a miserably stressful few weeks at work, the amount of stupid TikTok videos (including Goosetarion) about this game and this character has seriously become a stress-release valve, and the amount of gleeful nonsense and kind engagement this man has with the game’s fanbase is just . I have very strong opinions on the character, his background, and his ending – including just being floored that Larian would explore those topics in a game, on a male character – but regardless of whether or not people agree…

Neil Newbon is hilarious and awesome. This is objective fact.

crawfish

@Solstice He waited four years to play the game and literally just started. He has it up on his YouTube channel and seems to post at least once a week.

Here is part one.

He’s adorable.

Aria

@crawfish said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

@Solstice He waited four years to play the game and literally just started. He has it up on his YouTube channel and seems to post at least once a week.

Here is part one.

He’s adorable.

I had the first 25 minutes or so of that playing in the background while getting ready for work the other day. Listening to him go through the agonizing over what stat to make his dump stat and whether or not he could cope with a low Charisma was both amusing and relatable.

Solstice

@crawfish

Bless you for bringing this into my life.

TNP

So, wanting to play a druid plus finding Karlach who I love led to difficult party decisions. Astarion was a must for his thiefly skills and Shadowheart because everyone needs a cleric. But Gale was a must as spell support.

Until I found a tip online. Druids and clerics can take 1 level of wizard. This lets you learn spells from scrolls and cast wizard spells equivalent to your casting level, not limiting you to just level 1 wizard spells. You can put them in any of your spells slots as normal. Granted, they’ll use intelligence and not wisdom/charisma but there are a lot of great spells where that doesn’t matter. Plus it gets you the friends cantrip so your persuade works better if you don’t have a high charisma.

Bye bye Gale.

Vulgar Boy

I’m still just dicking around in the first area.

The characters are like “WE NEED TO REMOVE THESE BRAIN WORMS!!!” and I’m like shut up dipshit, you need to explore these random ruins. We can deal with your stupid brain worm once we have enough old dishes and cups to fill the inventory of every member of the party.

Also, I hate Astarion because he’s already become the inspiration for MUSHdom’s dorkiest people to play him badly.

I already survived the Mad Hattering of 2010. No more, please.

Solstice

I-I liked the early hair!

…and sad poems.

Aria

There is now an official Goostarion themesong, as sung by Neil Newbon himself. You’re welcome.

Cobalt

I MESSED EVERYTHING UP WHOOPS TIME TO SAVE SCUM

Mega spoilers:

no matter how much you love shadowheart WAIT to finish her quest in act 2 until after you go murder your way through moonrise towers, whoops, poor sad abandoned tieflings

Vulgar Boy

Whoops. Cut off Gale’s hand.

Oh well. I probably wasn’t ever gonna use him.

Solstice

@Cobalt

Yeaaaaaah, I messed that up too. Wasn’t willing to redo the 20ish hours over again, but felt terrible.

Roz

I FORTUNATELY got warned about that one and avoided it. I definitely would have been heartbroken.