The developers at Larian Studios originally planned for players to recruit Astarion in a different way in Baldur’s Gate 3. In a presentation at GDC 2024, it was revealed that players were intended to find Astarion in a pod, similar to Shadowheart’s introduction, and would have needed to convince him to leave by making him believe that the sun was not out. It’s uncertain how players would have achieved this, considering Astarion’s likely lack of knowledge about his immunity to sunlight in this scenario.
The proposed scene was ultimately scrapped because the game does not feature a traditional day/night cycle, making it implausible for Astarion to believe that the sun wasn’t in the sky in the middle of the day. Larian Studios acknowledged that some scenes in their 2019 plans were not well-suited for visuals and had to be discarded due to their impracticality. Moreover, the developers recognized that this scrapped scene risked prematurely revealing Astarion’s vampiric nature, which could detract from any future surprises planned for his character.
While Astarion’s vampiric traits may have been evident in the existing scene, introducing his fear of sunlight at the outset would have been too obvious.
