Unlike my previous Origin Karlach playthrough, this one was not planned. As I get further into my playthroughs of BG3, I have certain goals planned, but don’t necessarily have all the other factors filled out. In playthrough 5, I wanted to romance Lae’zel because I hadn’t before (and Bill stated that she was one of the best written romances in the game) and I wanted to try difficulty tactician with no mods, but I didn’t have a specific Tav in mind. Due to that, I figured I’d try another Origin character. Of the companion characters I had left, the only two I was curious about were Astarion and Gale, and I was still kind of salty about Gale given playthrough 4, so the internet’s favorite vampire it was.
And meh? I had a similar problem to playthrough 4, in that Astarion is just much more fun as a companion character than as your playable character. Neil Newbon voices him so well and he has so many snarky funny banter that it’s a waste to use him as your playable character. He does get a few more lines here and there in reaction, but not nearly worth it.
I was also disappointed by how often things would happen within Astarion’s storyline and there would be no response. One of the big plot reveals in the late game is that the hunters pursuing Astarion have a legit reason: he kidnapped their freaking children. You’d think that this would have some sort of special scene for Origin Astarion, or some “dude, what the fuck” reactions from the companions, but nope, everyone pretends that you’re just learning about the price of cabbages. What even is the point?
Gameplay
I’d been trying tactician mode for the past few playthroughs, but I understood that it was easier than it should have been because I had mods on. So this time, I tried it without any mods. Since I was worried how I would do, I stuck with my favorite consistent build for Astarion, a gloomstalker ranger. He had great burst damage and did very well sticking to the shadows. Since I always keep the romance interest in the group as well, I made Lae’zel an Eldritch Knight because I figured I needed the consistent damage burst from the loving tag team. The others I was able to branch out a bit more. I won’t suffer you to go through all ten companions, but the ones that I had thoughts on:
Shadowheart – in a major turn of events, I kept her entirely a pacifist. She did not intentionally do damage the entire game (aside from accidentally setting off traps), and stayed only as the party healer and buffer. This very much goes against how I tend to play (part of why I challenged myself) so I frequently was sitting there on her turn going ‘wtf can she do?’ There’s only so many buffs a person can do, and sometimes I really just wanted her to hit something. While it was nice to have someone just constantly healing my characters, toward the late game, I would much rather have had someone dealing damage and ending the fight sooner, rather than healing the damage I took by letting the enemy have extra turns.
Minthara – I made her a death cleric, which is an interesting take on her. Having the death cleric talent of ignoring necrotic resistance was very helpful, but it actually doesn’t do anything for enemies that are IMMUNE to necrotic damage. This made her somewhat useless in those situations, and since they aren’t rare, it was sometimes frustrating. The selling point is that her cantrips can target two enemies instead of one, which was worth it.
Jaheira – poor Jaheira tends to get the short end of the build stick from me since she joins late enough in the game that I tend to try new builds that I haven’t done before, and they don’t often work out. In her case, I tried a swashbuckler rogue, and found it extremely helpful! Fast, dealt lots of damage, great bonus action options, and good skill distribution. Definitely a build I will continue using in the next playthrough.
All that being said, how was tactician mode without mods? Actually, easier than I thought. The first few levels were difficult, especially early on, but once I got to about level 5, where most martial characters get an extra attack, I didn’t really notice much difference anymore, at least in battle (I still struggled with resource management). While tactician does force me to focus a bit more on, well, tactics, I think my general party builds are so good at melee burst damage that I tend to smash enemies hard enough that they don’t get many turns to smash me back.
Romance
As I said, this game I romanced Lae’zel, the militant githyanki soldier. She’s easy to have sex with (I think someone set a speed-run record of 4 minutes?) but difficult to form a relationship with. As the romance progresses, she confesses her feelings for you beyond the sex, and asks you to defeat her in combat to prove that you are worthy of an actual relationship. If you are able to, then she begins to soften. It’s a nice contrast to the rigid and abrasive Lae’zel we meet at the beginning.
Still, I had a lot of difficulty connecting to this romance. It’s a bit odd to me, since I am weak to the aforementioned ‘enemies to lovers’ trope, and I generally favor the whole ‘tough love interest softening toward the main character’. Trust me, I wish I wasn’t so basic. Bill has also said that he considers the Lae’zel romance to be one of the best written. There are definitely sweet moments. But I just didn’t feel any immersion in it. I don’t know if it’s because I was playing an Origin character and not a “me” character, so I didn’t sink fully into it, or if I just didn’t connect well with Lae’zel in particular. It should have hit all of my buttons, but it didn’t.
Although I will say that the possible ending of (SPOILERS) riding off with into the sunset with your hot warrior girlfriend on the back of a red dragon is pretty freaking cool.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll need to wait to romance her as a Tav to see if it was just my disconnect with the Origin playthroughs.
Personality
Part of the reason for choosing Astarion as the Origin playthrough was because I wanted to test out different choices that I don’t normally make. I typically make the “good” or “smash” choices, and in my evil playthrough, I chose the cruel and violent options. Astarion can be all of these things, but he is, on a whole, self-absorbed and pragmatic. As a Companion character, he typically disapproves when you stick your neck out for other people, and always tries to make sure he comes in first.
So whenever there were options of “not my problem” or “stand by silently”, I chose those. It didn’t feel very good telling starving orphan children to piss off, or to walk away from someone whipping their slaves, but I have made my opinion on how toxic early Astarion is very well known, so y’all shouldn’t be surprised. The one saving grace is that Astarion is very fond of animals, so I still got to interfere with people who were mean to their animals.
It also slightly surprised me how often the game took “do nothing” as “making a choice against the other person”, but I guess that’s a realistic life lesson, no?
I still couldn’t let him Ascend though. I saved right before the decision and made it anyway, knowing that I would save scum and go back. But even knowing that it wasn’t permanent, it made me uncomfortable. Astarion’s whole arc is about overcoming the cycle of abuse, and learning that the endless pursuit of power is not safety. Choosing to let him Ascend genuinely feels like throwing away all of his character growth and sending him back to his toxic fuckboi status. It also turns him into such a jerk that I can’t understand why people find it hot, but I don’t know, maybe go ask Doomed Laurelin or something. I figured that if I was playing as Astarion, I at least wouldn’t have to deal with the asshole comments and banter, and I was curious what made so many people choose this option, so I chose it at first just to see. He gets a more powerful Bite/heal attack, and a couple of other cool attacks, but nothing that makes the choice worth it for me. There are also things that narrator says that makes it VERY clear what the correct option should have been, so I did one fight and then immediately went back and made the choice I would have made originally anyway.
Wrap-up
Ultimately, I think I’m probably done with Origin playthroughs. This is two in a row now that I tried the more interesting characters and did not find it worth it. It’s easier for me to roleplay as them, but harder to genuinely connect with their decisions and relationships. Given that I play this game to distract me from ::gestures wildly at the world::, I’d rather do playthroughs that I can immerse myself in. I’ve heard good things about a Gale Origin, but I’m not sure I would commit to doing that until I run out of ideas for other playthroughs, which may be a while.
The last two playthroughs also felt more like a slog than my other ones — I still enjoyed them, but not to the same delight that I had the previous three (hence the shorter blog posts as well). I’m hoping that it was just because they were Origin runs, because I do love this game and want to feel connected to it more than I have been. It may also be because the novelty is wearing off, but I hope not.
Taking the “not my problem” roleplay also meant that I let a lot of people die through inaction in playthrough 5 than I am normally okay with. In particular, I have left one group to die in the past three playthroughs, through evil or roleplaying decisions. My next playthrough is going to have the goal to save as many people as humanly possible, and given how icky I have felt with the recent evil and apathetic playthroughs, I’m choosing to play #6 as someone gullible, naive, and starry-eyed. One could even say that she’ll have to fight the dark urges inside herself and choose to cycle back to the light. Shouldn’t be a surprise who she ends up being.