Companions are one of the most important features in Baldur’s Gate 3. Many players dedicate entire playthroughs just to building a relationship with another character. However, one of the companions causes frustration with a scripted cutscene: Astarion, the slightly arrogant high elf.
Spoiler warning: The article covers character development and companion content and contains slight spoilers for some of the characters – roughly from Act 1.
Who is the companion? Astarion is a High Elf and a Rogue by default. You find him quite early in the game and can recruit him as one of the 10 companions and even start a romance with him later.
Basically, Astarion is more on the “evil” side, but doesn’t complain too much to “good” players either. His charm and appearance in particular make him a fan favorite, and many players try to get hold of him.
This is the problem with Astarion: Most companions have certain interactions with the player, which usually take place while resting. However, Astarion has a cutscene quite early on that is always triggered.
The problem is that this cutscene is quite important for the companion’s personal quest: you catch Astarion sucking blood and find out that he is a vampire. However, this cutscene can also appear when another one is actually planned.
Once you’ve gotten far enough in looking at certain companions, you can invite them to intimate moments and even pastoral hours. Some companions are even so offensive that they challenge you instead (and don’t tolerate any objections).
This is exactly where it can happen that the romantic meeting doesn’t take place, because instead Astarion shows up to ram his fangs into your neck.
Baldur’s Gate 3 became immediately famous with a special love scene:
The makers of Baldur’s Gate 3 show an intimate love scene with a bear and are immediately banned
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“I thought it was funny – now it happened to me”
This happened to some users on Reddit when they were actually looking forward to a sex scene with the Drow Minthara. This is particularly annoying because getting Minthara as a companion is extremely time-consuming:
After the slaughter in the grove, the goblins have a party in your camp and Minthara leads you to a ruin where she offers to have sex with you. This is exactly where Astarion can barge in and live out his bloodlust instead. Then sex won’t work anymore.
This is how you get around the problem: To a certain extent, the problem is a bug or more likely that players are apparently playing differently than intended. Because the Astarion scene is postponed until you take a long rest.
However, some players, especially experienced ones, don’t rest that often. On the one hand, because it is not always necessary, and on the other hand, because quests can fail if you rest too often. The players then prefer to be cautious. But there are a few tricks here:
The long rest system is already causing one or two discussions, precisely because of the fear of missing out on something. A good middle ground seems to be to take a long rest after every 3-4 fights. This way you don’t miss too much and still get all the cutscenes.
You can find out how you can really approach your companions here:
Baldur’s Gate 3: Romance Guide for all companions – This is how you end up with your companions