New Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Changes Player Character Response to Ascended Astarion Kisses

If you don't want your player character to look like they're afraid for their life during Ascended Astarion kisses, there's a new mod that will help you do just that!

By Hannah Adkins

It's no secret to anyone involved in the Baldur's Gate 3 fandom that as much as this game and its characters are loved and will likely go down as some of the most popular game characters of all time, there are plenty of individuals and specific paths that can be taken that a lot of the fandom aren't particularly fans of. One of the most divisive instances of this is Ascended Astarion – a path you can secure for your game where after confronting and disposing of his former Master Cazador, you allow Astarion to become an Ascended Vampire.

This does result in the lives of 7,000 Vampire Spawn being sacrificed, and Astarion does become pretty unbearable as his newfound power will have him demanding respect and approval...but the extra power is definitely a bonus when it comes to finishing out Act III. There's a lot of opinions and debate that bubbles to the surface pretty frequently in regards to Ascended Astarion's character and whether or not this is his "bad" ending.

But we're not here for that debate, we're here because Astarion has some of the most pleasing kiss mechanics if you've romanced him and allowed him to ascend, and currently the code written into the game includes the Player Character, both Tavs and Dark Urges (Durges) alike, looking upset, worried, or downright afraid of their lovers new kisses. The problem here is that a lot of people who are exploring this particular route would be anything but upset or afraid of advances like this from Ascended Astarion, so seeing their Tav or Durge react that way breaks the roleplaying aspect for them quite a bit, because it's not the reaction they'd like to be giving.

Thankfully, a new mod on Nexus Mods created by FluffySpider changes this! The mod, Happy Facial Expressions for Ascended Astarion Kisses, makes some alterations to look happy instead. The mod's description from the creator:

"I figured out which facial expressions were used during AA kisses and swapped all scared, sad and pained ones that were used in the kisses to happy facial expressions. Yeah, you've heard it right, for now it's just a replacer that swaps the original facial expressions to happy ones, so your Tav/Durge may express themselves a bit weirdly during other cutscenes. It can also affect npcs that use the default/vanilla faces available to you in the character creator. That's it until I figure out how to edit only kiss-related files without touching the original animations. If you know if there's a file that contains a list of animations that are used during the kiss, let me know, and I'll try editing it, so we can have a version that won't alter original animation files."

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So if you want to express your happiness during Ascended Astarion kisses, be aware that your Tav or Durge will also have these happy expressions for all sad, pained, and scared moments in other cutscenes, an issue that may extend to some NPCs as well. Personally I think this sounds perfect for a Durge playthrough, but it sounds like this is something the creator will work to isolate the specific kiss files and issue a fix to the mod in the future. If you're concerned about it though, the creator also notes the mod can be installed and uninstalled at any point, so you can wait until after ascension to install the mod so the majority of the game's cutscenes are unaffected. 

Is this a mod you'll be testing out? I'm definitely looking forward to it in my Bhaal's Chosen playthrough! 

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