Bg3 Hot Take Edition

[u/Feeling-Classroom729]

I'm feeling spicy and I want to hear some of your hot takes about the game. Perhaps, I'll see the game from a fresh perspective and/or learn something new.

There's no limit to the hot takes you can share.

I'll go first.

Despite Araj's negative reputation, I think she's one of the best merchants in the game. In act 2, she carries the risky ring and the ring of free action, which is already amazing. But she also offers unique elixirs in act 2. In act 3, she sells sanguine explosives, which is basically a level 4 fireball that you can buy for less than 20 gold. Getting the unstable blood condition from her in act 3, can also be powerful if you build around it. The +2 to strength is super powerful if you're willing to torture Astarion, but even without that, she's still an amazing npc. She's a little pushy with Astarion, but she ultimately accepts his no. So, I don't stay mad at her.

I don't think completing a "good run" automatically makes your character good aligned. Basing your decisions around not making your favorite npcs sad is not a sound moral compass. I think there are more morally neutral people out there than people are willing to admit. It isn't a bad thing to be morally neutral. Jaheira is canonically true neutral in the older games, and people love her.

[u/tricky_toy]

Astarion gets too much love than he deserves. Asshole tried to take advantage of us in our sleep, but declines biting a drow even though it helps the party.

[u/moistwaffleboi → u/tricky_toy]

The whole part of him trying to bite you makes absolutely no sense, too. He claims he needs the blood because he's weak, and if you then allow him to bite you, he says he needs something more filling afterward. So, in reality, he didn't need to bite us at all. He could have easily just gone into the woods to look for an animal to bite.

I remember I saw someone once who said that, unless you're meta-gaming, there's literally no reason for anyone to keep him alive. Who wants to keep someone in their party after they literally try to assault them in their sleep?

The funny thing is, I never see Astarion fans talk about the fact that he tries to assault you while you're sleeping. It's so gross, and it's not mentioned nearly as often as it should be.

[u/FireDragon737 → u/moistwaffleboi]

Astarion always made me a bit uneasy and it is because of the bite scene. He tries to guilt you into letting him bite you and if you express any reservations, even though he knows damn well he doesn’t need to bite you. And if you trust him too much (as in you don’t tell him to stop or you fail the checks), he will kill you. Someone did a freecam after the fact and it shows Astarion still biting you even well after you die, meaning he is aware he just killed you and then he kept going. And then the next morning, he’s all “oh no, something bad happened” and walks away from your corpse as if he didn’t literally just murder you and that it isn’t a big deal that the camp leader is dead. When you get revived, he acts like you’re being unreasonable for being upset that he killed you.

[u/moistwaffleboi → u/FireDragon737]

Yeah, him trying to guilt you during that scene always made me feel really gross. He knows he can easily go into the woods to hunt, yet he tries to assault you, then gets mad when you tell him you don't trust him because he literally just tried to assault you.