#carm plays bg3: astarion origin

[carmsgarms]

When Orin ruins the bloodbear love test

[carmsgarms]

Look at his stupid smug little gremlin face sjskhdh

[carmsgarms]

I had to stop playing my Astarion run, it just wasn't as fun as I was hoping. I made it all the way to act 3 to get my bloodbear scene and called it quits because I'm not having fun making him be nice to everyone (which is my own fault but I wanted to romance Halsin and Karlach).

I miss his silly little quips and reactions to things.

Idk if this is an unpopular opinion but I think he's much better as a companion than as the MC. I find it far more interesting to guide his choices with any other MC and I just really enjoy seeing Neil's acting

Idk maybe I'll go back and do an evil run later but I was having more fun as a Karlach origin and as Durge

[carmsgarms]

hi! I've seen you talking about your Astarion origin - I was debating playing one, but I've not done an origin yet. Is there comparatively a lot less voice lines? Because I feel like not being able to talk to him in camp etc, you'd loose HOURS of his content. Is it like using him to talk to NPC's, which you can kinda do on a different run, and he's just missing from camp?

I also struggle to see him as any kind of leader, especially in act 1 & 2, bless him 🤣 but that's another issue.

so, tl; dr, your results may vary but I am having more fun doing other origin stories. If you want to really dive into his inner turmoil, and if you're interested in seeing other characters have unique dialogs with him, at least give act 1 a shot and see how you feel. But I really missed not being able to just walk up to him in camp and hear him being a silly little guy who always has something to say.

long answer with some mild spoilers -

I'm going to be so honest, I didn't enjoy it. But I think it was my own fault. Him not being any kind of leader or having the ability to make his own decisions makes role-playing him hard, and you /do/ lose out on a big chunk of his voice lines and Neil's physical mocap acting. A lot of the physical movements you see are the standard tav reactions to things.

You can hear his overworld dialogs (("don't touch me" "ooh what's in here")) more often and some little quips that usually only tav would say, like some general observations about whats going on ((things like "well it looks like we have to do x to accomplish y" and those do have a fun little bit of Astarion flourish to them). There are some interesting astarion-only cutscenes (you actually do get to see him having nightmares about Cazzy in act 1) and you /do/ get some fun dialog choices that are unique to him as well as some unique responses from other characters, but I feel like you really lose out on seeing his growth in response to someone else's leadership.

I did enjoy act 1. I feel like I got the most unique options from it because you can choose when and how (and to whom) to reveal that you're a vampire spawn. Act 2 is where I started to feel like I was losing touch, especially because he doesn't have any sort of strong reaction with Araj besides being like "ew no."

Granted, I made a lot of choices that I don't think Astarion would make (like saving the grove and generally being a good person) because I wanted to romance Karlach and Halsin. I origianlly was romancing Gale and I kinda wish I had stuck with that route but I REALLY wanted my bloodbear moment. I think it would be more fun to do an evil run, or at least do your best to roleplay him and make choices you think he would make. Every choice I made felt wrong trying to make him nice. I think if I go back and be just a touch more evil it would be more enjoyable.

I have a lot of opinions about doing the Astarion origin run, but as I'm going through my evil durge run and seeing how many things you can do differently, I might give it another shot at some point. I am really enjoying my evil durge and my Karlach origin run (it's easy when you can just always pick the good and nice options lol)

Also! thanks so much for asking!! let me know if you have any other questions! I'm happy to continue to infodump about what my origin playthrough was like ^^