I guess the discourse today is about Astarion being the favourite poster boy of the devs to the detriment of the other characters.
Yes. That's unequivocally true. Wyll having so little compared to Astarion is also an example of racism.
It's also capitalism. Larian can't make more games unless BG3 does well. So far it has, so in their choice of poster boy they chose correctly.
Every business, especially entertainment ones, follows a similar model. Develop stories or games that the previous game helped fund. It's common in book publishing too.
(Which, tbf, is my realm of knowledge, but the business facts are the same.)
What you, if you're indie, or the publisher, if not, chooses to spend time on is the thing/character/aspect/story that will sell the most copies so they can stay in business.
They bet on Astarion being popular because:
1. Vampire, vampire stories don't seem to get old. People want more.
2. White hair, if you're at all into gaming or anime, you should recognize the white-haired anime boy coding Astarion has.
3. He's pretty. In games & books like these, people want to get turned on or be sucked into emotions, that's rather the point. So, of course, they made him pretty and gave him an angsty backstory about it. Have you noticed that his vampire fangs are the more traditional style and the rest have funky (and likely more efficient) chompers with the fangs on the front teeth?
4. Twink, you'd have to be really not paying attention to not notice that one. They tend to be attractive to the largest section of players.
6. Slow burn, a lot of people prefer slow burn romance.
7. Classically handsome. You could turn him into a statue (and can!) and he wouldn't look out of place.
I don't experience this type of point form character building, my characters tend to march fully formed into my head and demand I write them.
But Astarion was built as a fictional character that would (hopefully) capture a broad cross-section of players and give the game some more sex appeal.
Sex sells.
I'd lay money I don't have on every aspect of Astarion's character having been a deliberate choice to encourage sales.
And that's fine. That's what capitalism does. Don't like it? Start voting for social support programs and things like ubi so that people can create without worrying about the bills.
Is it fair to the other characters and to the gamers who love other characters more than Astarion? Absolutely not. I do hope Larian gets the message and produces more content to make them all equivocal.
Especially for Wyll, they did him so dirty.
Is Wyll having the least lines and scenes racist? Yup.
Larian, despite their faults, produced something that so few games companies have done recently. A single purchase, single player RPG without micro-transactions that was an excellent game straight from release.
Other games companies are bitching about that because it's like sand in the oyster of their business models.
Which, for a while now, has been to roll out a game that wasn't ready yet and use the players as unpaid, uncompensated labour to find bugs etc. As a gamer, I've really hated that.
Did Larian fuck up? Uh, yeah. On several issues. But they also made an amazing game that was awesome from release.
It would be a shame to lose sight of that.
It's important to call out the shite when we see it, but the current 'it has to be perfect for me, or I won't play' attitude rampant on the 'net these days is disturbing to say the least.
I've read Larian has a feedback thing on fridays. If this really bothers you, hustle on over and participate in the feedback session.
They're still actively working on the game. They can still make changes and they seem reasonably responsive to fan feedback.
But just remember... the reason Astarion is the poster boy with the most content is because of capitalism. It was likely a cold, business focused decision vs anything else.
Which doesn't make it better. I just figured inserting a bit of entertainment business knowledge might be helpful to the discussion.