An interview with Steven Rooney for the Bite & Play YouTube channel. Review and opinion.
The creator of our beloved charming vampire recently gave an in-depth interview:
Episode 1: Interview with the Lead Writer for Astarion from BG3
Well, it can happen in life that an author who has brilliantly created a strikingly vivid, “arrogant, charming, deeply wounded,” lively, and deeply soul-stirring character—one you fall unconditionally in love with—turns out to have a completely opposite view from yours on what kind of endings you like, what is “emotionally satisfying,” and, in certain places (“I generally think of the points in the game where you do something absolutely terrible to an Astarion, and that’s where I’m having the most fun”), on what is “fun”. Perhaps at the root of this lies the difference between the writer’s and the player’s perceptions: the player seeks complete escapism and total immersion, placing themselves in the protagonist’s shoes, being “inside” the game rather than “outside” it, as is the case with passive media like a movie or a book. Well, that’s reality, and we’re all different and can love different things, agreeing on some issues and disagreeing on others. It’s a long interview, so I recommend watching the whole thing if you’re interested, but I’ll take the liberty of simply highlighting the quotes that struck me as most interesting and sharing my thoughts on them. In chronological order, from the beginning to the end of the interview.
In response to a question from Ilya, the channel host: “Tell us about the world of Astarion and what it was like when you first came up with that character and everything surrounding him.” (time 1:27)
Stephen Rooney replies: <..> “We knew we couldn’t make him a vampire-vampire, because when it comes to vampire-vampires, we have to follow the Dungeons & Dragons rules, of course. And vampire-vampires are very strong; they’re very powerful. They’re the kind of people like Cazador.” – Well, it’s obvious that the comparison “people like Cazador” is used to mean “possessing similar powers and might,” which makes the character unplayable as a companion in an RPG and creates an imbalance—something Rooney explains further by saying that they “needed ways to basically nerf him,” before adding Astarion as a companion to the party. It has nothing to do with an illogical perception where possessing similar power somehow, in a weird way, gives the character a similar personality. So “They’re kind of where you end up with Astarion potentially at the end of his arc.”—it’s also about power and capabilities, but I have no doubt that the haters will soon start writing that “AA is like Cazador, Rooney confirmed,” as always taking the phrase out of context. It’s like telling someone, “Oh, it’s like juice!” while pointing out the unusual packaging design of a drain cleaner, and then they’ll decide it’s something worth drinking.
Just like the statement: “The more evil ending where he becomes greedy, power-hungry, and essentially a vampire lord. He kind of replaces Cazador.” (19.32) Astarion took his place, replacing his former tormentor, taking his status, social standing, property (the palace), and the role of beneficiary of the ritual—the very place Cazador had been preparing to occupy.
“If he completes the rite, he will become a new kind of being—the Vampire Ascendant. All the strengths of his vampiric form will be amplified, and alongside them, he will enjoy the luxuries of the living. The arousals and appetites of man will return to him, and unlike Astarion, he will have no need of a parasite to protect him from the sun.”
– This is what Raphael says about Cazador, but later, when Astarion kind of replaces Cazador, all these characteristics—“a new kind of being,” “enjoy the luxuries of the living,” “he will have no need of a parasite to protect him from the sun”—become applicable to Astarion. The phrase “replaces Cazador” here is not a statement that Astarion becomes similar to Cazador in character or behavior. In literature, cinema, and real history, one can find quite a few similar examples—when a former slave becomes the master, when a character “takes the place” of their former tormentor, when a hero wants to take everything from their worst enemy and take their place, and succeeds in doing so.
It’s also worth noting (some people claim that after the ritual, Astarion didn’t become as powerful as he’d hoped, and that the Ascension supposedly didn’t grant him the promised power) that this is more a matter of game balance. If the Ascended Astarion had immediately received the full range of abilities implied by the ritual, he would have simply broken the game’s balance and become an excessively powerful character, which would have made him a cheater.
Essentially, this is the same principle used in Wyll and Gale’s stories: in the plot, both possessed far greater powers before the events of the game, but lost some of their abilities and are gradually regaining them as the game progresses. The same thing happens with Astarion. He doesn’t unlock the full potential of Ascension instantly, but reveals it gradually. By the finale, we see his powers continuing to grow: he’s able to take the form of a bat and begins to understand and use the “whispers of the night,” as he calls it. And that’s not even counting the colossal advantage he gains over other vampires thanks to his resistance to sunlight and a number of other gifts of Ascension, which effectively take him beyond the bounds of ordinary vampire nature.
Further, Rooney explains how the tadpole successfully helped them nerf Astarion, since even the vampire spawn in D&D lore is too powerful for the start of an adventure. The tadpole also neutralized the problems vampires face in D&D.
“He’s probably going to be snarky because so many of my characters end up that way. It’s a style I really have a lot of fun with. Arrogant, smarmy, deeply wounded.” – Yeah, that’s just perfect… And it really is fun… Rooney has undoubtedly created the most vivid and interesting characters in Larian’s games (Fane in Divinity: Original Sin 2, in my opinion, was also the most interesting companion).
Rooney (4.26): “Wizards gave us a lot of freedom. There were definitely more calls earlier on between Larian and Wizards just to try and figure out what the rules were going to be around starting, what rules we could bend, what rules we could ignore. They were very happy. As long as we came up with a good game, as long as whatever we were going to do was working, they were happy to give us quite a lot of freedom, which was nice because then it meant we didn't have to have that vampire that was bound by only moving at night, for example. Absolute classic bit of vampire lore. He burns in the sun, obviously not really going to work in in the game. You can't have him going around with a giant umbrella the entire time or, you know, no hat is going to quite sell.”
Wizards of the Coast praised Larian's flexibility regarding D&D rules. I have to disagree a bit with the idea that a classic vampire who can't walk in the sun is “obviously not really going to work in the game”—it worked perfectly in Baldur's Gate II with the vampire companion Hexxat, who used the Cloak of Dragomir. But the tadpole in BG3 for Astarion’s story turned out much better, no doubt about it. And the satisfaction of knowing that your LI was never once forced to deal with all the classic undead issues throughout the entire game—and that all of that is left in the past if you choose the happy “evil” ending rather than the tragic one—was also very valuable to me as a player. And it was precisely this option that allowed them to show how much Astarion loves the sun, how important it is to him, to show it clearly, rather than just “in dreams and conversations,” as it might have been if Larian had portrayed a classic vampire who can’t do that:
On choosing a race for Astarion (7.52):
“I think initially Astarion in was a tiefling maybe, but he was changed to an elf because sexier. Kind of more accessible for people to romance was the idea.” – Yeah, great choice. Stephen Rooney says that Larian even chose the elven race for Astarion to make him sexier and make people more inclined to romanticize him. And then, thanks to Welch, players became “sexualizers.” That’s inconsistent, dear developers.
Ilya: “Did you have any kind of particular role model inspirations that you took parts of Astarians character from?”(8.25)
Stephen Rooney: “Based on anyone in particular, I think the very, very first concept I had with Astarion was a little bit of, I think the phrase was medieval Deadpool, which was not necessarily vampire based, but was just about the attitude and just someone who was very mouthy. So Astarion turned into someone who was much more refined than that.” – An interesting fact.
Rooney wrote the character of Cazador and most of the storyline involving the other vampires in the game (9:45):
“I wrote a lot of Cazador stuff, I think a fair chunk of the vampires that were kind of around. I didn't write everything to the mansion, but I've said the voices for a lot of the characters in there, so some of it was kind of taken over by other people a bit later in the project, but I had a lot of fun writing those. I would have loved to spend more time with Cazador Astarion’s master. He's kind of a big bad the entire way through. He's someone that looms over Astarion’s character. You only get to see him a couple of times, and it would have been fun to dig into that relationship more. But the sense of this weird mongrel family of vampires living in Boulders Gate in the middle of a city with this awful abusive kind of patriarch. And then the weird brotherly sisterly kind of dynamics that all the other vampires develop with each other. Some of them, like Astarion with Petras, have quite an aggressive sibling rivalry. Some of the others are more sympathetic, so there's a lot of fun stories there, I think, to be told.”
Now for the “bittersweet” endings. It turns out Rooney really likes this kind of thing. But it’s worth noting that he initially had a really great idea, truly in the spirit of a good D&D adventure, but in the end they went with the bitter ending. (11.01):
“At some point through the story, Astarion picks up the Necromancy of Thay, which is a really cool looking book. The artists did an incredible job on it. The original plan that I had was that would be kind of guarded by these spirits. It would be possible to get into the later game at some point dipped into hell. This is all completely cut. And I had the idea of like, oh, it would be great if you could dip the Necromancy of Thay into the River Styx. So the spirits, I think everything that gets dipped into the sticks kind of loses its memory. The spirits forget they're meant to be guarding this book. And basically that is a way that potentially you could get a wish spell out of it. And maybe Astarion could have more of a redemption than he does in the story. So he could go back to a mortal state. He could get rid of the vampirism kind of altogether.
That might have been too optimistic for me. I do like how his story ended up, but we took a couple of swings at like happier endings as well. I love a bittersweet ending so.”
Personally, I prefer Ascension no matter what; after all, it’s better to have both the gift of immortality and a beating heart than to give up immortality, especially since Astarion never said he didn’t want to be a vampire and become mortal—he didn’t want to be a spawn, not a vampire per se, but this original idea (like many of Larian’s ideas that they ultimately didn’t implement—the Upper City in Act 3, the completion of the Karlach quest with the engine repair, etc.) would definitely have been cool for a “good run.” Personally, I believe that this would have brought many players far more joy and genuine emotional satisfaction than the version they ultimately implemented.
Yes, Larian did consider the best options for the so-called “good ending,” but in the end, Rooney preferred the “bittersweet” one. I was sure that if Larian had wanted to do a “good” ending well, they would have done it; I just didn’t expect that the version that ended up in the game could be genuinely liked—well, okay, tastes vary. Rooney says that a happier ending would have been too optimistic for him—that is, not to his taste as a writer, as I understand it—and that he personally just prefers exclusively “bittersweet” endings. Nothing about “healing” and certainly not about “healing from trauma”—nothing of the sort. Rooney, in general, isn’t gaslighting anyone; he’s just talking about what he personally likes. The “healing” that isn’t there is just another headcanon of the fandom.
The description of completing Astarion's quest in the tragic ending of the game looks like this:
“Astarion's fate is sealed. He will be a vampire spawn for the rest of his days”.
In other RPGs, a journal entry like the one made after refusing the ritual would mean the failure of the companion’s quest, but… It sounds pretty tragic, if you think about it. Rooney is a great writer, and he excels at happy, optimistic endings; the Path of Ascension is pure joy—it feels more than just optimistic.
“That ache in my stomach, that hunger—it’s gone. I’m free. I’m finally free! Oh, it feels delicious!” “Come on, I have a whole new world to explore.” “I feel alive, hahaha!”
Perhaps, for true catharsis and a better experience, it really is worth going through the tragic, bitter path first and then treating yourself to the happy one. But for a naive player unaccustomed to this approach to games—one who initially wanted to play “the nice way”—the frightening journal entry and Astarion’s lines: “I should probably start getting used to the shadows again. Who knows how long I have left in the sun?” — may already be enough to experience happiness after reloading and choosing Ascension. It provides catharsis and relief, similar to waking up from a nightmare.
But Rooney himself says he loves endings like that, and so he naturally focused more on what he enjoys, which makes sense. At the same time, Rooney also emphasizes that he had no intention of conveying any “message” or “teaching” the players anything (14:20):
“Don't want to feed into the assumption that I went into writing the character with the goal of delivering a message. I have done that with characters before and it nearly always ends badly because you end up focusing on message more than the character. So I try not to do that these days. And with Astarion, his story is very dark, both in the game and his back story, and it deals with a lot of very heavy themes. There's a lot of themes around abuse, around violence and this awful life that he had led up to the point you meet him.
And it was very important to me that this was a sensitive topic and it be treated with respect. So I very consciously didn't go in trying to say here's my message about abuse, about violence, whatever.”
No “messages.” "cycclees of ab*ze" is just another piece of gaslighting nonsense concocted by people who clearly didn’t want it to “be treated with respect.” Rooney finds bitter endings more emotionally satisfying, and he prefers an unhappy ending (here I’ll break chronological order and quote from a later part of the interview):
Time: 19.25
“And I definitely prefer the first one. (*where “Astarion's fate is sealed. He will be a vampire spawn for the rest of his days“) Like it has the bittersweet energy that I love so much because it has that sense of he's learned how to care about someone. He's gone on this adventure with you. He had all of this because he reverts to kind of normal vampire spawn at the end of it.
He loses his ability to walk in the sun. He loses a lot of the cool stuff that has made him an unusual for a vampire spawn. There's a tragedy that I really love, but it feels kind of emotionally satisfying, emotionally true.
I am biased. I ended up taking kind of a bunch of sick leave towards the end of the project so. The same writer that did The Dark Urge did some of Astarion’s kind of more Ascended arc romance stuff. I tried to go over as much of it as I could, but I definitely prefer the other arc.”
Rooney talks about how Astarion loses everything (“He loses his ability to walk in the sun. He loses a lot of the cool stuff that has made him an unusual vampire spawn”), and this is his favorite arc, as he finds such stories emotionally satisfying. Part of the romance in another arc was partially written by Baudelaire Welch due to Stephen Rooney’s illness. However, Stephen Rooney returned to writing the epilogues. Later in the interview, in response to Ilya’s question: “What would you do differently this time around?” (29.08), Rooney replied:
“There was the COVID pandemic in the middle of it, which did not help. But it was about five years and I did not mentally pace myself very well at all. So I was so burned out by the end of it. Just partly why I had to take medical leave, which is partly why other people ended up pitching in writing some stuff kind of right at the end. The biggest thing that I came away from with Astarion was like, God, just make sure I don't ever do that again.”
Unfortunately, it just so happened that Rooney fell ill and was unable to work on the most crucial plot point for Astarion’s romance on his Ascension path. However, there is no “sexual objectification” in the intimate scene featuring the Ascended Astarion; “They gaze lovingly at one another.” There are some role-playing issues in the AA romance, but if you step over the scene with four bad lines for the player, ignore the “degradation” check, and play with love for Astarion—then everything is wonderful.
It seems to me that Rooney truly deserves to be called a master of “glass,” and he knows how to make sad endings “emotionally true.” “Emotionally satisfying” is something a bit different, in my view; to appreciate the choice of Unascension in that way, you probably need to be able to derive pleasure from such things. It’s not my way of thinking, but I can’t help but note that the UA route is well-written in terms of quality—Rooney truly knows how to make the player feel terrible. I mean this as a compliment—I’ve never had such a painful gaming experience as I did when playing through this route “for the sake of science”:
💬 185 🔁 19 ❤️ 87 · The UA path is my heaviest gaming experience. · I want to say right away, that I'm not trying to belittle anyone else's
I honestly believe that this kind of experience could be used to test the effectiveness of antidepressants—whether they work or not.
But that's a sign of good writing, isn't it?
Rooney created Cazador, and no other arch-enemy in the game has ever inspired such hatred in me—it takes real skill to write an antagonist who evokes such strong emotions.
By the way, Welch deliberately wanted to make the player feel bad, “make you feel I failed”.
They tried to make it feel like a “bad ending,” but they failed—it just turned out to be a bunch of crap with metagaming, a scene with nothing but bad lines, a check that breaks the game mechanics to prevent players from reacting to it, and so on.
It just ruins the immersion, triggering a meta-game reaction like, “Who on earth wrote this?” and a desire to understand why an RPG would include such a novelization that robs the player of their role-playing experience.
But Rooney's approach works—it feels “emotionally true” in the sense that you really do feel terrible if you follow the author's preferences.
Perhaps the reason is that Rooney had no intention of conveying any “message” or forcing anyone to do anything; he simply has a genuine love for writing tragedies and is skilled at it.
You understand that you’re agreeing to this for testing purposes; you have no connection to your Tav during this, and there’s no immersion either—you just want to explore this option so you can see it with your own eyes.
Even with this approach, it still feels really bad.
“Glass” cuts into the eyes and ears and pierces the very heart, slicing through the throat with a sharp shard—which means this “glass” is of the highest quality. It is impossible not to feel its painful sharpness.
There are signs of an emotionally genuine reaction to intense stress—it is well known that we respond to stress and pain with one of three types of reactions: fight, flight, or freeze. If the mind’s natural reaction is “fight,” and the player doesn’t like to eat glass, then the player’s own alignment automatically shifts, which is also understandable. The writing is good—just as one might call a professional punch to the jaw “good” when evaluating the skill of the person delivering the blow.
And to those who called themselves “AA fans” (antis in the guise of pseudo-fans), claiming that “AA should be enjoyed as a tragedy,” the character’s creator directly tells them that he himself prefers—and has gladly created for them—a true tragedy: the UA path.
“There's a tragedy that I really love” – about the Spawn path.
Enjoy the tragedy with the version made for you.
Rooney did not offer any direct assessments of the Ascension path and spoke of it only in indirect terms.
He didn’t call the Ascension path a “bad ending”; he referred to it as a more “evil” outcome. But for a writer working on an RPG, “evil” and “bad” are far from the same thing. Just like for all players who are fans of classic RPGs.
In the earliest fantasy RPGs, the “evil” ending always referred to the ending for the evil companions, in which they got everything they wanted—that is, a happy ending for them personally.
A bad ending is one where the companion dies or something terrible happens to them; bad endings are bad for everyone, regardless of alignment.
Astarion has bad endings—the one where Astarion dies, and the one where Cazador lives.
There is the tragic—or “bittersweet” (as it’s fashionable to call it now)—path of Unascension, which the author favors, expressing his love for such endings in general.
And “Evil”—the Ascended finale, in which Astarion gets everything he wanted.
“I have everything I ever wanted.” © Astarion about his evil ending.
Rooney openly admitted his bias (“I am biased”) in favor of choosing Unascension because he wrote it himself and because he personally loves bittersweet stories.
Rooney also made a point of emphasizing that he does not consider himself the canon god and has no intention of dictating to players exactly how they should interpret the story.
On the contrary, he said he was happy to leave that up to the players themselves.
But the claim that he called the UA ending “the only right one” is false—it is nothing more than someone’s desire to hear exactly that, rather than what was actually said.
So it’s quite hilarious to see how some fans of “bittersweet” UA path are already celebrating, as if the interview had definitively confirmed that the Ascension ending is “bad,” and that leaving Astarion as a spawn for the rest of his days is the only “right” path. What is this if not confirmation bias? After all, if you listen carefully, nothing of the sort was actually said.
Another interesting quote from him is:
“Like it has the bittersweet energy that I love so much because it has that sense of he's learned how to care about someone.”
If it refers to the UA line:
“Nothing special, of course. You're only the first person who I truly care for.”
Both on the happy evil path, Astarion cares for his beloved, and more than that, he speaks not only of care, but of love. A stronger love. Care is just one component of the entire spectrum of love, and Ascended Astarion expresses his care through action:
“Don't worry - if anything happens, I'll protect you”. “I’m willing to share all of this with you.” "Ask me anything, and it will be yours."
This isn't about the romance itself, but rather the fact that UA cares about someone else besides the two of you—for example, other spawns:
“And if they do step out of line, it just takes one or two brutal examples to remind everyone else of their place.” “I'm not a tyrant, I do care for their well-being, I just can't afford to show weakness.”
The ending of the Leader of the Spawn is only available in the romance —Astarion, on his own, would never choose to take on this burden; a romance with the player character is required, and it is Tav who must propose it to him.
If Tav leaves him and the 7,000 spawns are alive, Astarion says he will join them. But at the party in the epilogue, he does so only if the player character suggested finding them right before parting ways.
No matter which path you choose, Astarion cares for his beloved (you can see the Ascended Astarion’s level of empathy in the scene where he sincerely sympathizes with the Tav who agreed to sleep with Haarlep and suffered the consequences as a result). No matter which path you choose—including the Path of Ascension—Astarion worries about Karlach:
Even though Illithids are far from the safest creatures for anyone in their vicinity, Astarion is worried about how Karlach herself is feeling. But is Karlach worth his worries if she was already planning to kill him by trying to conspire with Tav:
Karlach speculates about Astarion’s true nature as if she’s known him his whole life, and is ready to kill him because he no longer fits within her moral framework. All along, Astarion had been helping her carry out her revenge. I don’t think he’d care about her fate—whether she died or became a brain-eater—if he found out about this conversation. It’s a good that Tav can find out about this and never trust Karlach again.
And certainly won't worry about her.
Although Astarion is indeed “learning” to be selfless, he tries his best and wears the necessary masks. UA has a final dialogue:
“I would understand if you wanted to go your own way.” It seems he still hasn’t learned to truly trust his beloved; he expects betrayal and worries that he might be abandoned, unlike the Ascended (“Quite the opposite—I need someone I can trust. And now I know they’ll never betray me.” – a banter with Laе’zel). If Tav says they are not going to break up, then Astarion explains to them why he is so selfless:
“Good, because selfless as I am, I really did not want to let you go.”
But if Tav decides to break up with him, despite all the good qualities he’s shown, then:
“How dare you! After all I’ve done for you—after everything I’ve sacrificed!”—another bitter note in UA’s “bittersweet” romance. Giving up the chance to feel alive again, to be free from the pangs of hunger, and to hear the beating of her own heart was a sacrifice made for Tav’s sake.
But it doesn’t seem as though Rooney is trying to deliberately force players to choose tragedy, even if he himself enjoys it. And he doesn’t want to impose a “canon” on anyone (14.20):
“So even if I wasn't trying to deliver a specific message, I guess knowing that it did land with people, that it did connect and also just wanted to tell an interesting emotional story that would get people to feel things. That's all you ever really want. But you're kind of sitting down to write a character. I didn't particularly care if people love to Astarion in or if they hated him as long as I got a reaction, as long as people didn't feel neutral about him. And I've met plenty of people who did not like him as well, which is also great for me. So no, I mean, the most important thing is just that he is meaningful to people. Some people have kind of seen themselves in a story, and that's means more than you can really say. I'm super happy to leave it up to players to make their decisions about what their experience of this character is. I don't want to stand here like the Canon God and be like, no, this is who he is. This is what he means. Now let people have the the meaningful experience that is important.”
It should be noted that Welch did not write the entire Ascended Astarion romantic arc.
It is known that they wrote lines for Tav in the dialogue scene after the Ascension, as well as lines for Tav in the conversion scene (according to them, they were unaware of the existence of the cut scene set on the night after the Ascension). Rooney spoke about
“some of Astarion’s kind of more Ascended arc romance stuff”.
This isn't about the romance as a whole. This is important because there are sometimes claims that Welch supposedly wrote the entire AA romance.
This is not true.
The difference in the narrative is enormous, as we know from Welch’s statements on Discord:
”it's very much admitting that you failed to think of him beyond a sex object, and care about more than that.”
According to Welch, the player sees Astarion as nothing more than a sex object. The “substitute author” tries to portray the romance as “problematic kinks,” expressing “shock” that the romantic scene includes sex—rather than only what they personally wanted to see in that scene.
“It was definitely a shock to us to see the evil romance scene had explicit sex and not just a problematic/kinky vampire conversion”.
And the script for the romantic scene describes how the player gazes lovingly at Astarion, and Astarion gazes back at you with love: “They gaze lovingly at one another,” sharing mutual delight and trust.
And Rooney wrote a brilliant epilogue for Ascended Astarion; Rooney explained how he returned to the writing process in order to craft worthy epilogues (21:48):
“Not because we forgot an ending. I think there were definitely times where we thought we were done and then something broad would change. I'm sure there was something that I forgot somewhere along the way. But the big one was kind of the game came out without an epilogue scene in camp, which felt a bit sudden, I think, for a lot of people. So we're back in the writing process, getting camp epilogue kind of sorted out and making sure that we had tied up everybody's stories kind of nice and neatly with a bow.”
AA's romantic epilogue is beautifully written and very uplifting, as is the party at the camp—all of Astarion's lines and the charming bat.
The epilogue is very heartening, so it’s safe to say that Rooney had no intention of turning the Ascension path into something negative or of “punishing” players who have their own preferences.
He’s a good writer, and he’s clearly capable of writing uplifting stories, “the story of a winner,” and tragedies alike, but he simply finds “bittersweet” themes more appealing and interesting.
A special thanks for the little bat! <3
“It feels so good. Freedom - true freedom. Finally.”
– he wrote that, as well as:
“We have a beautiful, bloody future to look forward to, my love. I can't be sure what it holds for us, but I know one thing. This is going to be fun.”
What constitutes happiness and “going to be fun” for the character himself, when viewed through Astarion’s eyes, may not be of interest to the writer.
Writers sometimes find it more satisfying to explore their characters’ tragedies and depict their suffering; there are also those who believe that “happy endings are boring.”
The author is back, and it becomes clear why Astarion doesn't insist on turning Tav into a vampire in the epilogue if you don't take a long rest after the Ascension.
And Karlach, in her Origin, can also have a satisfying conclusion to her romance with Ascended Astarion, with her own storyline in the Epilogue.
In the interview, Rooney also mentions that he isn't sure whether vampires have souls in D&D.
“Actually not sure whether or not DND vampires have souls or not or if they've passed on, but they definitely have personalities for sure.” (23.59)
For information: In “Astarion's Book of Hungers” (Stephen Rooney contributed to this book as a designer), Wizards of the Coast confirmed that vampires have souls.
In the description of VAMPIRE INFERNALIST:
“While mortal wizards tend to hesitate before bartering their souls to devils for magical power, vampire wizards often believe their immortality will exempt them from any infernal claim to their souls”.
Vampires have souls, and they can enter into contracts. And in the game itself, we also sacrifice the vampires' souls to Mephistopheles.
“A pact has been made with the Lord of Hellfire. Deliver unto him seven thousand souls, each bearing an Infernal mark, and you shall be free of your chains. You shall know true power. Deliver the souls. Speak the words”.
In the 3.5 edition of D&D, all sentient undead had souls, including vampires, and there were no contradictions to this in the 4th or 5th editions.
“Undead creatures are powered by negative energy. Only sentient undead creatures have, or are, souls.”
Player’s Handbook, 3.5 edition
And if Rooney explicitly states that he doesn’t know whether vampires have souls, that means the developers never intended to suggest that Astarion “loses his soul” after the Ascension. This isn’t depicted in the game; on the contrary, the game’s storyline clearly indicates that Astarion’s soul is intact.
It’s interesting that the UA path looks and plays like a failed companion quest, if you evaluate it from the perspective of quest design in a classic RPG. But if you think back to all the RPGs you’ve played before, failing a companion quest in any of them always results in some kind of tragedy for the companion. Maybe in other games, the developers also enjoyed writing out the consequences of quest failures for their characters—why not? Essentially, a failed quest is the simplest and most logical way to implement tragedy in an RPG. And this can be called a kind of innovation—positioning a companion’s quest failure as the “primary” preferred path for him—no one had really done this in an RPG before Larian.
The UA path is a path of tragedy, not of happy healing. But that was already evident from the game itself. Perhaps for those who wanted “redemption” for Astarion, this outcome feels “emotionally powerful”; in this case, they get what they wanted. When Rooney says that Astarion’s tragic ending is emotionally satisfying, this is most likely to resonate with players who are primarily interested in a sort of “moral aspect.” In that case, they will probably be able to find some sweet in this bitter.
There are other examples in the gaming industry where players were told to make their loved ones suffer:
Dragon Age: Origins. Alistair’s lovers are the unluckiest of all. Either you die and Alistair is heartbroken, or you persuade Alistair to sleep with Morrigan. Personally, I romanced Zevran, and for me, Dragon Age: Origins was and remains one of my favorite games, one that brought me a lot of joy, but can you imagine a conversation like this: “Honey, sleep with that dark witch so I don’t die”? It’s humiliating, painful, and destructive to a relationship. Alistair’s fans also wrote a lot of posts back then, criticizing the game.
Mass Effect 3. The most striking example of “the player wanting a happy ending but getting heartbreak” instead. In this case, it applied to everyone, not just one specific companion. Mass Effect 3 isn’t painful because of a single cruel choice, but because of its overall rejection of a happy ending. You spent over 100 hours saving the galaxy, won someone’s love, and in the end—you die or become a tyrannical god. Your loved one is left with nothing. The fans’ reaction to the romance with Garrus was particularly well-known: “He waited for you all these years, and you just went and died.” Players demanded a proper ending for months. Because this issue affected everyone, not just one segment of the fanbase, the outcry surrounding this game was truly loud.
Stephen Rooney has created a wonderful character who evokes powerful emotions, and, as it turns out, the author himself prefers painful “bittersweet” stories in romance. Okay, that’s his own art form, but I don’t think the author’s personal preferences should in any way force the player to deprive themselves of a happy ending in a game that offers choices. And Rooney directly calls the UA path a tragedy; not a single word about Ascension causing Astarion to suffer in any way has ever appeared in any of his interviews—that’s also worth noting. We can also recall this interesting interview of his:
Astarion's Dark Origins: Baldur’s Gate 3 Vampire Secrets Revealed | Larian Writer Exclusive 🔥
Тime 19.50:
“So you end up with this situation, where you have a character, who is in theory very powerful and is working towards being kind of is chasing that power and that that seem, um, but at the same time is also incredibly weak and Incredibly vulnerable, and playing off that that dichotomy between a hunger for power and a very real vulnerability”.
Stephen Rooney says that Astarion himself is striving for power (which, of course, is evident from all his lines in the game). In other words, this is what Astarion himself wants.
And “very real vulnerability”—yes, before the ritual and especially in the finale of UA, it is precisely this that is felt: Astarion’s painful and hurtful vulnerability in the face of a cruel world that merely lured him with the possibility of regaining his life, let him feel it just a little, and then…
Took it all away.
In an instant, when the tadpole stopped protecting Astarion.
A tragedy for Astarion, with a “bittersweet taste.” Emotional satisfaction for the “good Tav,” who decided to “redeem” this man, either immediately or after their embrace in Act 2.
Rooney had another remarkable interview in which he talked about Astarion's character (21:48):
"The main thing with Astarion character I think was just trying to get a sense of fun into… He could… It would be very very easy to write a character that was very unlikable in Astarion and we absolutely didn't want to do that. He's a bit terrible consistently throughout the game, he's awful in a whole lot of ways. But at the same time he needs to be charming and he needs to be someone that you actually want to have around. Because you’re gonna be with this guy for hours and hours – it’s a long track through this game so… You gotta make sure he’s engaging, he’s fun".
And when is it really fun to play with Astarion? Where do we hear his infectious laughter? On the Ascension path. So Stephen Rooney, it seems, doesn’t have any negative feelings toward the Ascension path; he just seems less interested in happy endings. “That might have been too optimistic for me. I do like how his story ended up, but we took a couple of swings at happier endings as well. I love a bittersweet ending so,”—that’s how Rooney explained his decision to reject the options for a more positive ending for Astarion without Ascension.
