Interviewer: Since we are there, I'am curious what it was like writing so many different romance arcs? It does affect certain things. I was curious, how did those come about? Who did you talk to? How did you make it logically consistent within the world? And was there a particular story that you liked, that you thought was is the way should have gone?
Stephen Rooney: We had a narrative director come in, they then went on to write the Dark Urge, but kind of to work on the romance stuff, specifically with the different origins. So I worked with them on figuring out and they came in kind of later in the project. We had already started some of the romances, but maybe kind of polishing out the romance arcs, and making sure that they were fun, making sure they were interesting.
With Astarion, how you go about romancing him is difficult kind of itself. He's such a flirt, he has such kind of energy of someone who's trying to seduce you. Basically it is what he's doing all the time to everybody. So how you take that and then how you flip it to a genuine romance was fairly challenging, because you had such a strong mask that he would wear the entire time.
And, as you romance Astarion, you can romance the more good version, the more good ending of his story, where he stays a vampire spawn. Spoilers, if anyone hasn't played the game in the last two or three years, the more evil ending where he gets greedy, he's power hungry, he becomes essentially a vampire lord, he kind of replaces Cazador, and I definitely perfer the first one. Like it has that bittersweet energy that I love so much. Because it has that sense of he's learned how to care about someone who's gone on this adventure with you. He had all of this because he reverts to kind of a 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 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 perfer the other arc.
Interview with the Lead Writer for Astarion from BG3
