#like dgmw act III astarion is still kind of an asshole a lot of the time

[syn0vial]

thinking this morning about how much astarion changes from act I even without the direct influence of the player. like, even if you play the most apathetic or evil tav, astarion still does seem to become less callous and cruel over time? for example, in act I, when you encounter the adventurer liam being tortured in the goblin camp, you gain quite a bit of approval from astarion for refusing to free him and instead continuing to torture him yourself. but even already by act II, when you find another stranger being tortured—the patient in malus thorm's operating room—astarion is disgusted and angry at his torturer, comparing him to cazador, and will approve of you intervening.

or, how in act I, astarion will approve of you letting arabella die and disapprove of helping her (lbr, in act I he disapproves of you helping pretty much anyone). but by act III, when you meet yenna, another child in distress, he approves of helping her the second you meet her and urges you to save her if she's kidnapped by orin. similarly in act III, he'll approve of taking action to save vanra after she's devoured by the hag and even of comforting her afterwards.

it makes me think of neil newbon's quote about astarion—how, while he's knowingly immoral and manipulative, he's also very willing to being moved by new people and experiences. like, i'm definitely not someone who buys that astarion is a naturally good person under all the trauma—everything we know about is past suggests he was a shit person before the trauma, too—but i also wonder if that susceptibility to being moved and changed by new people and experiences is what we're seeing with the changes in his approval.

like, in act I, he's just spent the past 200 years—the majority-to-vast-majority of his life, depending on if you accept the dates on his tombstone—surrounded by evil and cruelty of every kind, so naturally he approves of what he knows. but as the game goes on and he spends more time with people who aren't part of that environment (not just tav but the other companions as well!) and experiences things that aren't unrelenting abuse and pain, we start to see these shifts in his thinking where he's like, huh, maybe life doesn't have to be a never-ending parade of torture and callousness and exploitation. maybe other options are possible. maybe some of them are even worth it in the end.

i just kind of love that even irrespective of tav's decisions, if you pay attention, you can kind of notice astarion going through a miniature character arc in the background of the game. maybe you still play a major role in deciding the outcome of the most significant moment of that arc (the ritual), but even before that, astarion is already experiencing his own shifts and realizations.