Major spoilers forBaldur’s Gate 3ahead.
When I saw my diplomatic and calculatedly cold Tav—whom I very creatively named “Tavla” after myself because I ran out of ideas that day—standing at the Grey Harbour Docks with her companions as the sun set over the River Chiontar, I sighed. This was it, I realized. I was witnessing the culmination of an over 150-hour journey I had embarked on with nothing but eagerness, frustration, and sheer amazement, because I knew thatBaldur’s Gate 3had pushed the standard for RPGs to a new height. Leaning back, I fought to suppress the tell-tale sign of my dreaded sentimentality as my Tav prepared to bid her heroic farewells to the companions she had come to call friends. This moment, I thought, would feel like a bittersweet finale to my adventures inBaldur’s Gate 3. Lae’zel was first. Then sweet Karlach, swept up by judicious Wyll in a last-minute plea.
And then, thecamp rogue-jester began to retort with one of his usually sarcastic lines to grant the bittersweetness a humorous, lighter tint. I was ready to roll my eyes and chuckle at the antics. But his sentences were interrupted with a complaint, stemming from pain. “What the—oh gods. Oh no,” he said in sudden realization. With horror at the dots I began to connect, my hand flew over my mouth when I realized that my choices had condemned my favorite campmate to a life in the shadows he dreaded.
“Well… it was nice while it lasted!”Astarion reminded his comrades and the audience, his face alight with an ashen hue and cracks revealing that he was burning under the sun. Then, he ran, unceremoniously and in a hunched posture much unlike himself. This left me to panic and second-guess the choices I had made to “save” him—and whether “saving” him was actually the right call. What should have felt like a surefire victory lap was muddled by the fact that I had potentially picked aheartbreakingly wrong choice inBaldur’s Gate 3: sending my favorite character toward his doom.
Interview with the Pale Elf: Deciding Astarion’s Fate in Baldur’s Gate 3
As a seasonedDungeons & DragonsandThe Simsplayer, there isn’t a character creator out there that doesn’t hate to see me coming. I knew what I was doing when I went into thecharacter creator inBaldur’s Gate 3, and my checklist was as follows:
Traversing the early hours ofBaldur’s Gate 3, I knew I had stumbled upon something truly special in gaming. Through my carefully constructed Tav, I interacted with everything that Larian Studios’ magnum opus offered me: stressful deadlines, grueling early combat, and absolutely remarkable companions. Among those companions was the snide Astarion, one of the crueler campmates with a passion for mockery, flair, and self-preservation. And when I declared this character as a favorite, I’m fairly certain my fellow Baldurian-entranced friends canceled their plans for aco-op playthrough inBaldur’s Gate 3with me.
My Tav, sharingAstarion’s moral alignmentsuperficially, was usually on the same page as he was—much to his chagrin when I had to pivot and ensure my Tav did the right thing during critical moments. And although my Tav and I were going through a digital tug-of-war toward a “good” playthrough, little did I know that this same struggle was one Astarion was going through himself. Behind the facade of his feline grace and his coiffed hair lay a story of abuse and torment that forced me, and many players, to put controllers down to process what we’d just heard.
Astarion Freaked Me Out
Learning about Astarion’s backstory made the gears in my head turn. His vampirism delighted my inner 12-year-old, who was obsessed withBrad Pitt and Tom Cruise inInterview with the Vampire, causing little Carla to squeal with joy. His personality and his whims became a code for me and my Tav to crack. And above all, his story and thirst for revenge provided a ghastly underbelly to everything that was delightful about him. It made me uneasy. He was fascinating, yes, tormented, of course, but also deeply wicked as a result.
Astarion’s personal arc inBaldur’s Gate 3is defined by a cruel paradox: the choice between reclaiming agency through monstrous power or preserving his soul at the cost of vulnerability. Once a high-elf noble magistrate in Baldur’s Gate, Astarion was abducted and enslaved by the vampire Cazador, forced into centuries of servitude as a vampire spawn. Most harrowingly, he was used as bait and a sexual pawn to lure victims. After two hundred years of degradation, he’s given the chance to ascend: becoming a Vampire Ascendent, free from his master’s control. But ascension demands the sacrifice of countless lives and risks turning him into the very kind of tyrant he once feared. Sparing him from ascension preserves his humanity and opens the door to healing, but also condemns him to a life in the shadows, never fully free. Whether to ascend Astarion is not just a gameplay decision—it’s a deeply personal moral crossroads, with no clear right answer. And his blind insistence on taking this power to himself in the mid- to late-game was the reason why I started to almost regret myTav’s romance with Astarion.
Stay in School: Doing The Right Thing
I’ve spent a portion of my life thinking about vampires. The scope of my academic career was centered on the study of literary and media depictions of vampirism. From the classic Dracula and Carmilla to the breakthroughLady Dimitrescu fromResident Evil 8, my master’s thesis was equal parts critique and love letter to camp and queerness as presented by vampiric figures across various media. A significant thematic undercurrent of this thesis is the notion that the presence of vampires is inherently perceived as a threat to the status quo —a threat to everyday “normalcy” as depicted by a ruling class, regardless of its composition. And a grossly simplified version of the question presented by the thesis is: “Why not let vampires (and whatever group they’re representing)… be vampires (themselves)?”
InplayingBaldur’s Gate 3, I realized I had failed myself as both a scholar and a gamer. I realized: Astarion’s anger and his inclinations were purposefully grotesque. And my discomfort with his whims and backstory was simply me being a reflection of those who had wanted him to be purely consumable. So I pushed away the uglier aspects of his character to both our detriment; nearly believing that he was irredeemable due to his hurtful nature, both vampiric and otherwise.
And when the choice came - when Astarion stood at the precipice of ultimate power, begging for the agency he’d been denied for centuries - I thought about my work. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’tlet Astarion ascend. By then, he wasn’t just a campy companion with sharp quips and sharper teeth; he was a living thesis of his own: a poignant study in the cycle of abuse, survival, and reclamation. I had watched him claw his way back to selfhood, only to find that freedom might mean becoming a monster in a different shape. In sparing him, my Tav made space for him to be all his perfectly messy, self-important, scheming, vulgar self—without hurting anyone else in the process. And in that choice, I not only embrace my academic ideals, but also the beginning of one of the most harrowing fictional journeys toward healing I’ve ever encountered, as both a scholar and a human being.
The Spawn Ending: A Bittersweet Grief
The panic that shot through me when he ran away from the Grey Harbour Docks in the end-game caused me to pause the game and look at my spouse dumbfoundedly. I thought I had done the right thing, only to be rewarded with what I thought, in my premature grief, to be the worst ending conceivably possible for Astarion. I thought him dead and one of thosecharacters that simply can’t be redeemed in theBaldur’s Gatefranchise.
Thankfully, in the quiet moment of the pre-Epilogue scene, he was waiting for my Tav to wake up: alive and well. He spoke of freedom and of what lay ahead, and of being at my Tav’s side, whether in a quiet life or one seeking a cure. And yet, through all this chatter of brighter days ahead, my gut reaction was to think that this was nothing more than a consolation prize.
“So Why Did Keeping Him a Spawn Make Me Grieve?” And Other Academic Conundrums
I overreacted when I first saw him burned by the sun. The visual was visceral, and in that moment, it felt like failure wrought by rose-colored glasses. But Astarion remaining a spawn was, in truth, a thematically perfect ending—one that reflects the world-class narrative depth ofBaldur’s Gate 3and its characters. It was the kind of ending that refuses easy answers and perfectly happy endings. The kind that trusts its players to wrestle with ambiguity, pain, and the haunting echo of the “what if.”
I grieved because I underestimated what it meant to condemn him to a life in the dark, forever denied the light he had just begun to yearn for. I grieved not because he died, but because I thought he would—half-liberated, half-lost—and I was the one who made that decision. I projected tragedy where there was actually transformation. In trying to spare him from monstrosity, I feared I’d broken him instead.
ButBG3’s epilogue partyproved me wrong. Astarion was there, smiling, jolly, teasing as always. Not monstrous. Not broken. Just changed. At peace, even. Perhaps it wasn’t the freedom in the stereotypical form often depicted in the media, but it was still freedom. Because sometimes, the right thing isn’t easy. Sometimes it costs something. And those may be the stories most worth telling—the ones that hold space for mourning, even in survival.
Baldur’s Gate 3
WHERE TO PLAY
Abducted, infected, lost. You are turning into a monster, but as the corruption inside you grows, so does your power. Forge a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival, and the lure of absolute power. Caught in a conflict between devils, deities, and sinister otherworldly forces, you and your party will determine the fate of the Forgotten Realms.THE ULTIMATE D&D EXPERIENCEChoose from a wide selection of D&D races and classes, or play as an origin character with a hand-crafted background. Adventure, loot, battle, and romance as you journey through the Forgotten Realms and beyond. Play alone or as a party of up to four in multiplayer – and select your companions carefully.A CINEMATIC STORYTELLING EPICForged with the new Divinity 4.0 engine, Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you unprecedented freedom to explore, experiment, and interact with a world that reacts to your choices. A grand, cinematic narrative brings you closer to your characters than ever before, as you venture through our biggest world yet. Romance, deceive, aid, obstruct, and grow alongside your friends thanks to Larian’s next-generation RPG engine.
