Astarion Quest in Act 3 (MAJOR SPOILERS)

[seanj.plunkett]

So I’ve left Astarion in camp this whole time. I made a high Dex Bard who handles lock picking, and frankly he annoyed the hell out of me with all his “DAAARLING!” banter.

But WOW, this was by far my favorite companion quest yet. And boy they did a great job humanizing Astarion. The voice actor did a fantastic job. I actually like him now.

I also love how they gave me such a difficult moral dilemma,. Kill all the vampires, who are really just innocent victims who have sufficed for well over a century. Or release them and risk the community.

I kind of suspected if you let Astarion ascend (killing them all), he gets a big buff. But for once I went with story instead of min-maxing. My character is a softy for victims, so he gave them a chance. It will be interesting to see if regret it later.

[KitTheNameless]

I just got to that scene last night and was not expecting it to hit so hard. Although mine went a little differently... (not sure if you wanna know other outcomes)

Astarion got angry at us, told us all he hopes we die screaming, and then left the group forever. Which made me feel even worse for him, because he's obviously going through some stuff (who can blame him), but now he's alone and clearly not coping well or feeling better about his situation.

But I then reloaded and got the better outcome. In part because he's one of my best in combat and my one good lockpick, and I'm a newbie and afraid I can't win the game without him. But also in part because not a single companion had anything to say about it, while I was sitting there sort of emotionally reeling, which just felt so unsettling and weird that I couldn't deal with it.

Honestly, 7000 vampires is just... too many. I was torn because I felt like my character, as a druid, would feel like that is not sustainable in an ecosystem sort of way, if nothing else. And of course people are going to die. But he just couldn't condemn them to death when they were victims. (Edit: Though, was it technically Astarion making the decision? Idk but I guess, if so, I was thinking of it as my character giving input.)