Astarion's Worst Memory - Making Astarion reveal his weakest moment in 200 years | Baldur's Gate 3
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2023
- Much ❤️ to the likes and subscribes to help me achieve 1,000 subscribers on TH-cam!
Actually felt terrible for this one...
#baldursgate3 #bg3 #astarion - เกม
Astarion asks like such a touch baddie but really he’s just a scared, abused boy and it’s so sad
And he is my precious baby who I want to see safe, and happy and loved
Its even worse that he was 37 when he was turned, which considering elves arent adults until they reach 100 means he was still a kid when it happened 😭
@@lozpopo Genuinely curious where u found that info?? I thought he was 39, I saw somewhere that his tombstone translated to that but idk anymore... still, he was just a baby (metaphorically) when he was turned, thats just sad T.T
@mwk92 I just went to check and you're right it was 39, 39 isn't even old to humans imagine how young that is in elf terms 🥺
@@lozpopo poor baby got put through a meat grinder and came out the other end absolutely traumatized. I wanna wrap him up in a blanket burrito, give him a cup of blood to sip on, and give him head pats goddamnit!
As someone who’s been a victim of assault… taking away his body autonomy again is a monstrous move
❤
You act like he is innocent bro, he went to take peoples souls. He deserves it.
@Azubjourni I….you’re either trying to bait some inflammatory response, or you’re really that ignorant of his entire arc. Either way, saying someone deserves to have their freedom stripped away over past actions they had no control over….is just messed up, trolling or not. I’d rather hope you’re not being serious because that’s dangerous thinking that drives so much hate and victim blaming.
@@mookiess He had control over it before his soul got taken, dont worry i got the memo just fine. Someone who takes souls of other peopke deserves the worst.
@@Azubjourni So, for example, you're the type to blame, or judge a woman for the way she dresses, because it's only worth what you see, without the slightest kind of understanding, right?
The character has several layers, necessary for deep understanding and interpretation, any disobedience of which would lead to some punishment, he could not do anything of his own free will. Of course, any records or notes you may have seen were from the point of view of one of the victims. But from the point of view of the primary victim, being a slave, then you regress in intelligence and say "screw it" because it's easier
Gods I can't even imagine doing this to him. (I barely have it in me to play a resisting dark urge, let alone a full evil-playthrough)
Not only is he once again being forced to do something he REALLY doesn't want to, but everything he meticulously puts pride in, the only thing he COULD probably control while under Cazador--his appearance--is now ripped away from him. The updated descriptions of his clothing show how precious his clothes alone are to him--they're old, but not ratty. Well taken care of, even his intial armor shows wear but the description points out how carefully embroidered it is--and how it's slowly falling apart. And he embroidered his own underwear himself, it's not a stretch to say he has been the one embroidering and mending his clothes back together as the centuries pass.
Yes, his face he is so proud of now becoming disfigured is really hammering home how much of a body horror this must be for him. Even though every character who uses the astral tadpole and becomes half-illithid looks like that, on Astarion it's so much more painful to see after the mirror gazing scene and he just telling us he can't stand the thought of his body being warped again.
At least he won't be able to see that face in a mirror...
Thank you for making me feel worse, I'm on the verge of crying now.😭
(Nice analysis though, I'm gonna check out his clothing descriptions next time I start up the game).
It's a lot to unpack when he cares so much for his appearance but doesn't even fully know what he looks like. His good looks have been the source of the only sliver of power and safety he knows, so an even more massive source of insecurity to him. So he really is giving up a lot here for the hope of more power.
It's kinda fun being a resisting/good Durge though, Astarion is rather amused by you and your... new-found powers and random acts of violence. The dialogue is great from him when you finally get your 'new form'. haha
A resisting durge is actually a plus on the Astarion side. It gives their romance a whole new layer and purpose. And aside of one occation where you influence it with dialogue to kill non party member you always have skill checks to resist.
Forcing the astral tadpole on Astarion is one of the worst things you can do to Astarion short of betraying and murdering him. 😭 Along with forcing him to drink the tainted blood of that drow potion maker Araj in Moonrise Towers against his express will and then later at camp, after he complains for you pushing him to do because after 200 years as a slave he had problems with saying "no", making it worse by basically telling him to overcome his trauma about being forced to prostitute himself by Cazador and now you by sleeping with you until he realized that once again his body is being used by someone else for their ends, and it breaks him.
Astarion mentions that "Year of Hell" in another scene I've seen, describing how he was stuck in that stone sarcophagus for a year, starving, spending the first months trying to scratch his way out in vain, then the next months just lying there unmoving and numb feeling himself go insane.
But having the Narrator describe it with that soft clinical malice is chilling.
It's sad that the only ways we can get a lot of the information about how much abuse Astarion has suffered is often by mistreating him or scanning his mind for his worst memory.
As a victim of abuse and someone who was forced to stay isolated in a dark room by their self for over 8 months I can understand Astarion more than any of the other companions. You try to fight it at first and then you eventually give in. I remember sleeping for days at a time in order to pass the time faster, to protect my mentality, and to fight the hunger pains as I was only fed once a day. Crazy to think that a husband of nearly 10yrs can do that to someone they claimed to love. I barely remember that time as Ive blocked it out of my mind. My therapist brought it up while we were still learning about each other and she was in tears for half of the session afterwards. Shes never brought it up since.
Do you know what the other scene is by any chance? I just started act 3 but haven't seen it yet and am wondering if I missed something or if it's later on. Thanks!
@monozuki The scene where he tells you about year in a sarcophagus happens if you run into the other spawn in act 3 and don't go fight Cazador right away. They eventually come to your camp to try and take him and he talks about it afterwards.
@@danir4077 Thank you* for replying, I apprectae it!
Oh I see, I only just ran into two of Astarion's siblings in Fraygo's Flophouse (have not entered Lower City proper just yet) - is that the "running into" you meant?
@monozuki Yeah as long as you don't go to kill Cazador rn they will eventually show up after a long rest.
' He will never disobey again ' is so fucked up.
Right? The narrator is so clinical. It gives insight into Astarion's newfound resolve to never put himself in harm's way again. From this moment on, his worldview isn't shaped by right and wrong, but by what keeps him safe.
But even more so, the narration gives insight into Cazador's worldview. To Astarion, his punishment was the worst hell he could fathom. To Cazador, that punishment was simple problem-and-solution. He had a disobedient slave and he found a way to "fix" his defect.
oh, gods, that is such a brutal dialogue chain..... basically yanking him around on a leash just like Cazador would.
When the story of a character in the game makes your blood literally boil and the only thought in your head is "PROTECT HIM AT ANY COST" - this is a well-written story :^)
Thank you Larian
Yup, whoever all the scriptwriters and creators are, they are geniuses. Stephen Rooney is the main creator of Astarion. 😍🥰
Astarion is such a well written character. I have never related to a character so well ever. I went through a lot of abuse and the way he reacts to things, I feel it.
Whyyyyy would anyone root around his mind like that, that's messed up
Daxi did it for us to show us, so we don't have to do it to Astarion. 😢😔
Honesty. Answers.
He’s pixels and I like a good tragedy. That’s why.
My character was platonically close to Astarion and turned full illithid in the end. I could tell he was trying to be polite, but when I asked what he thought, I could tell he had nothing nice to say, so he said it was "different" and he'd have to get used to it. I'm pretty sure he secretly was relieved he dodged a bullet.
I never asked him to try it, though. I knew it would just hurt him. You don't ask your friends to do things they would clearly hate.
this is probably the one time its a good thing that Astarion can't see his reflection, he wouldn't have been able to stand this new change
Thank you for taking one for the team and posting this for us
oh my god even in my evil playthrough i can’t bring myself to do this…you really did take one for the team bc i’m so curious to know but oh my god that’s so terrible i can’t-
What makes this worse is that, as a vampire spawn, he can't disobey Cazador. Which means he was punished for either Cazador choosing his words poorly when ordering Astarion (leading to a misunderstanding so to speak), or Astarion not being able to complete his task. Like maybe he failed to woo someone to bring to Cazador as one of his victims to be. Things that Astarion doesn't have complete control over basically. Just for that he gets buried 'alive' for an entire year?!! And voiceless?? I hope it was by a spell and not by something jammed in or on his mouth, that would have been unimaginably uncomfortable. Although complete silence is possibly worse. I'm guessing he also wasn't fed during that time. Even just thinking about it is making me feel squirmy and my pulse quicken. Once I get to Cazador I'm going to enjoy helping him towards his demise...to put it lightly.😠
I think in another scene when Astarion voluntarily tells the player about what happened, he says that it was because he let a sweet man go and didn't bring him to Cazador, and this is how he was punished for it (unless im mixing up my scenes lol)
To clarify, he wasn't 'buried' for a year, he was sealed away in a stone tomb, in the darkness. He mentions how he had worn his hands down to bone scratching to get out. I also greatly enjoyed Cazador getting his comeuppance. Poor Astation, never again!
@@kilarthmacyou're not. Astarion seems to suggest that he had the will to disobey... And for that got punished
Maybe...he didn't want to lose Sebastian. Or someone else.
wait how can you voluntarily get him to tel you this?? i must have missed it;;;@@kilarthmac
Heartbreaking. But Neil’s acting 🏆
I was gonna watch this thinking it was sweet and then I made the great decision of reading the comments first and NOPE. I don't get how anyone could be so cruel to this sweetheart.
This... Damn... Monster. Gods. Taking advantage of him is ALWAYS making me angry. Urgh, isn't the player as fucking bad as Cazadorr when they want to. I had heard of the year spend buried alive on some other content, but fuck, 'He will never desobey him again' just makes my teeth greet, and asking him to become illithid or you bury him alive too ? GODDAMIT, the writers did a fucking good job of letting the player be Satan himself.
I could never force my companions to do anything they didn’t want to, their VAs/MoCap actors did such a good job making them feel real 😢
This was so heartbreaking to watch....
Having his memories forcibly accessed like that left me feeling sad too.
Thank you for sharing
When I had that conversation with him I wanted to scream in his face for being proud of him to stand his ground even though I went far enough up to the persuasion checks. But to be fair, I want to celebrate everytime he sais no to something he does not want
How does this scene happen? I want to know so I can know what not to do. I don’t want to hurt him
@@Lunakitty1234 beginning of act 3 if you keep the astral touched tadpole. Just like the normal tadpole powers you have the option to persua the others in using it.
@@Heroann ok. Thanks . I won’t keep it then. :)
Nooo poor baby!!! 😢
its even worse when he actually tells you this story (if you ask him if it's true he gave up on fighting cazador). he let a boy escape because he liked him too much to bring him back to cazador, so as punishment cazador locked him inside a sarcophagus for a year. after that he never disobeyed ever again. and then he says "so don't you *ever* judge me for the things i did"
AAA I can never do this to him :( the second he says he doesn't want to do something, I'm like I AM SORRY U CAN DO WHATEVER U WANT BABE I LOV U
When playing Durge, I basically had to do this whole manipulative bs with Astarion for the power boost, and for character building.
But god, out of everything I did in that playthrough, that was the worst.
Because i've been through that, that manipulation, that solitude, that loneliness. Turning his trauma on him to accept something that could make him more a monster than ever, is just a disgustingly bad thing to do, and I could never bring that on anyone.
After doing...that, I turned off bg3 and just laid in bed, thinking, and i felt so much regret. Even if he is just a fictional character, It felt so wrong for me to be so manipulative, even to characters in games.
I let my family do it, my friends do it, I wont nurture any of those tendencies in a game, I wont let them grow out of control. Not anymore.
Thank yoy for taking one for the team and going through with this cursed - likely the most, or at least one of the most - options. I got to this conversation recently and was exploring the dialogue tree like I usually do with him, but when I got to these.. I just couldn't. Hearing his reply when you failed that check was already heartwretchingly awful, I passed the check once afterwards, but as soon as I saw my Tav's tadpole revving up and the Narrator came in, I Ctrl+F4'ed the fuck out of the game. Felt too sick to even try again afterwards.
So yeah, I'm thankful someone else went through with it and shared!
As for the scene itself, it's probably one of the worst things you can do ingame: break Astarion apart - whatever's left of his psyche after 200 years of being tortured and abused - to pick out his lowest, most terror-filled memory and leverage that to force him to obey your will, to make him give in and allow his body to be taken over. Again.
Honestly, thank you for posting this because never in a million years would I ever dare do this to him. But it is an incredibly powerful scene, in its tragedy. 💔
I could never do this to him 😭 poor Astarion, I want to SQUEEZE HIM SO HARD
I have this same armor for him. It makes him look like an old school vampire lord! Cat's Grace is also OP.
Absolutely! Permanent advantage on Dex rolls on that armor is soooo good.
Once I got it, Astarion never took it off in the entire 100+ hour run. It's just too good.
@@axidzz There's another armour that's great for Rogues, it's a magical silver half-plate armor made from mithril so it only counts as medium armour and top of that has the special abilities that it has no DEX bonus penalty at all (so you can use your full DEX bonus) and offers a bonus on Stealth as well. Sure, you have to either take Medium Armor Proficiency as a feat first, or side-class into 3 levels of Bard and then pick College of Swords to get Two-Weapon Fighting and Medium Armor feats for free, but the Medium Armor feat also grants a +1 to DEX, highly useful to Rogues. I found it at the Harper vendor in Moonrise Towers in Act 2, not sure if there's any NPC that drops it. It looks nice, too, with silvery leaf designs on the shoulders and chest plate.
@@TF2CrunchyFrogCat's Grace grants 2 dex and advantage on ALL Dex ability checks and does not require to waste a feat or use multiclass for the sake of medium armor proficiency.
I also made sure he wears only cloth for constant Mage Armor's +3 AC.
Wow...this is just so...cruel. knowing what i know about how he feels like he can't say no and here he is just getting manipulated again. 😢
im super glad i dropped the subject after seeing this , poor guy
Just goes back to reading after that 😂
It's his little self-help book, god knows he needs it
@@lucypher7812 "How to cope with becoming illithid" probably haha
the equivalent of playing some tetris after a fucked up experience to minimise the damage
@@angela8533 Eat brains. The book instructs.
Oh cool, you practically were Cazador there for a moment. What a Nice choice sequence 😊
Nooooo! God no! Not Astarion!
This just hurt so much...
I cant do this even in my evil playthrough
he is just a poor baby that needs all love
At the start of act 3 when the girth come out of the portal, I actually failed the first time because I didn’t see the countdown on the right. Astarion was the last in my party standing when the countdown ended… watched him turn into a mind flayer. Now that I’ve seen this interaction I feel even worse.
Gods, what a difference in narration than if Astarion tells the story himself. Here, the narrator is very detached and factual. These are the highlights of what happened and the result is the Astarion we know today: the Astarion willing to do anything to ensure his own safety.
But when Astarion tells the story, he starts by talking about the darling boy he couldn't bring himself to hurt. He wasn't just wondering if this would be his life forever, but actively wished for death to ensure it wouldn't be so.
Noooooooo 😭😭😭 this is soooo CRUEL
You can get him to tell you about this willingly in act 3, after an encounter with his siblings
After the very first dialogue chain about becoming a vampire I immediately dropped the topic. I tried with quite a few companions and refused to push it/try persuasion checks if they were apprehensive. Gods know my charisma is high enough that I could absolutely make them do it but I don't want to! Finally ended up offering it to Gale since he seemed the most open to the opportunity to get stronger.
people listen to this and still ascend him. could not be me
I keep miss seeing the tent and keep thinking he has a cape…
Astarion's Dungeon gonna be on my Dragon until i Baldurs and Gate😢
Bro the way you just intrude his mind without warning, omg
Some of the ways Tav can talk to people are so fucked 😭
Getting someone's most vulnerable memory out and forcing them to do something they don't want to do is the most horrible thing I can imagine. Even the game can be completed well without being illithid.
I never even tried to give him the tadpole because I could not bear it but I am pretty sure I have heared that story before, I think when you romance him at some point he tells you that he once refused to bring someone to Cazador und thus got punished by being burried alive for a year. I think it means much more when he tells it to you willingly than extracting that from his mind. Nohting against the Player here or anything, I am also currently doing an evil run! Just wanted to let people know I think he is more vunurable and open about it, if he tells you himself.
I wanted him to do it because i thought he looked sexy with the Astral Tadpole and then he says this and I felt SO bad for what I tried to do that I didn't try to convince him
You MONSTER! How could you?
HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO HIM IT'S SO SAD I AM SAD 😭😭😭😭
I couldn’t finish the video 😭😭
when can i trigger that exchange?
Its not when he is forcefully stripped in front of his friends by Raphael?
Wait what? When did this happen?
@@myrrhs01 When you encounter Raphael in Act 2 and haven't already seen his scars (I think you can only see them if you sleep with him), Raphael makes all his clothes disappear to show the scars to you :( And he also makes a horrible slut-shamey joke to add insult to injury
I see. Thank you for this information. *Vows to stab Raphael harder on the next playthrough. Probably even torture him.*@@urbirdfriend
@@myrrhs01 Raph isn't that bad. Pretty upfront about things as long as you pay attention and red the fine print. It's more funny then it sounds.
@@Veldazandtea Well.... funny to Raphael, surely. but Raphael is clearly trying to humiliate Astarion in that scene. Astarion is trying to put up a brave face when he is suddenly butt-naked in front of everyone (with just a resigned bit of quiet swearing), because you can see Raphael knows that Astarion knows that Raphael knows... So he's trying to pretend it doesn't bother bother him, because "hahaha, I'm a rake, right?" but you can see in his body language how uncomfortable he is with everyone staring at him.
Can someone please tell me what this armor is called?
This is lowkey evil
Crime
your dragonborn looks so beautiful
Why would you DO this yo him?
description claims you felt terrible, but this definitely makes it look like you're 1 of the millions of astarion haters who don't understand anything about him or his story 😢
TBH I saved scummed after :P