Astarion is NOT Evil | Baldur's Gate 3 | Modern Redesign & Analysis

hello everyone this is Kara here and no it's not calamari welcome back to my Channel or if you're new to the pond go ahead and take a dive you might like it here today we are talking about my latest hyperfixation Boulders Gate 3 or at the very least the characters which everyone who has ever been in a DN campaign knows is the most important part of playing so obviously spoiler warning for the companion quest lines and their romance routes okay so it's not a secret among my friends on Discord that I have been playing Boulders Gate 3 nonstop so far I am 150 hours and 2 and a half campaigns into the game though to be fair my sister also plays on my account and computer and that adds to my hours but most of the time it's me playing I admit everything about the game is so satisfying from the combat navigation looting the character interactions to the all important dice roles in this video I will be trying my hand at drawing these characters I've been staring at for nearly 200 hours now and give you some tips that helped me capture their likeness better while dressing them up in clothes I think they would wear if they lived in modern day without further Ado let's dive right into it starting with aarian an Cunin his name being something you learn when he takes you to his grave at his fin companion scene after beating kazador who is arguably the face of balers Gate 3 and the most popular character to come out of it so far I mean how could he not be he's a high elf and a vampire that's like if you fused legalis and Edward Cullen together just one of those on their own is already going to do well but both at the same time laran knew exactly what they were doing men's is so pretty and I really wanted to do him justice so let me show you some aspects I picked up that helped me capture his likeness better mostly around the face and head area so focusing specifically on that asterion actually has very round eyes and I was pretty surprised about this I expected a more kind of slanted sultry shape but they're actually quite big and heartwarming like how a cat would look at you when it wants food his nose is very straight tall and slender so kind of like your typical Anime boy nose if you need something for reference and of course his hair is actually swept back and parted to the right his right in particular and has a very wavy voluminous texture which we know from the game is actually a result of pomad for his clothes I wanted to put him in something stylish and flamboy like something you'd see on the cover of Vogue it's noted in his page of the balers Gate 3 concept art book that his clothes are a mix of 18th century Libertines and European rock stars of the early '90s both very fashioned forward Concepts at their respective times they chose this aesthetic specifically to Echo aerion's desire to live a life without restraint so I personally think the supermodel lifestyle of parties networking and International travel would really suit aarion and kazador the evil vampire lord who is his master is his evil manager that he wants to eventually separate from but is still bound to by his agency's contract anyway back to game aarion for a second obviously he's super popular because he's super pretty but it takes more than just looks to impress me I didn't actually come around to aarion until pretty late into act two of my first camp campaign and you might be wondering why I said 2 and a half campaigns instead of three or two earlier and that's because the very first campaign I did I ended up not liking how my character looked anymore so I decided to restart luckily I was still in act one and I hadn't gotone too far into the story yet so it didn't really count I swear most of my time spent in that game was just on character creation I kind of wish they had sliders for all the facial features instead of just having pre set faces You Can't customize at all but that's what mods are for I guess so as I'm drawing the close-up of aarion here you can see his facial details a bit more clearly and what I've noticed about aarion is that he has a rectangular head shape that is still very like sharp edged but also long and narrow being a high elf He has high cheekbones an angular jaw and a strong chin just everything about him is is very angular and sharp but also delicate and beautiful as you can probably tell by now this drawing is very different from my usual art style and I tend to do that when I'm drawing while referencing an existing character um or just real people um if you've seen some of my um fan arts of actual YouTubers and uh part of the reason I decided to do this video is to kind of challenge myself a little bit and practice drawing men to be more comfortable doing it cuz I feel like I struggle a lot more drawing guys than I do drawing girls anyway my first actual campaign didn't count for my first run I decided to play as my character Colette whom you might recognize from my series wild word so obviously she needed to be a rogue unfortunately that meant I didn't really need to have aarion in my party because I didn't realize that you could ask Withers to change the class of the other playable characters initially I was exploring with him Gail and shadowart but then I realized there's really no point in having two Rogues in the party so aerion was sent to Camp jail in favor of Lazelle and then I swapped Gail out for Will and that was my party for a while unfortunately that meant I never built up enough approval with aarion and he rejected me at the teeling party which apparently just hard loocks you out of his romance completely now I am a save scummer through and through and I'm not afraid to admit that I play for myself and I want to see all the possible outcomes but for Aaron's rejection I didn't really care enough about the romance aspect that I never reset and just went on with my life I ended up accidentally doing a no romance run because Colette is repulsed by even the slightest hint of affection and every time a character would come onto her the in character part of me just revolted to the point that Withers called me out on it but I did really like Aaron's design and I do find his dialogue amusing so I decided to give him another try after changing his class to a paladin how chaotic is that but here's my logic I found Lael prec cresic absolutely rancid and she kept arguing with shadow heart who I needed in my team way more than Lazelle so I needed a fighter that can tank hits and be a meat shield for the rest of my squishy party while being capable of supplementing additional healing when I want to spend Shadow Hearts spell slots for guiding bolt or Spirit Guardians and you know what it worked out so good my Paladin aarion is an absolute Beast that hits like a truck gets three attacks per turn heals and is proficient with heavy armor so at the adamantine Forge I forged the adamantine scale armor and put it on him and he looks really good in it and the longer I journeyed with him the more he grew on me que my second campaign where I played as myself did I finish the first campaign no I had a feeling I was missing out and decided to start over again and go through everything with a fine tooth comb I made myself a half wood elf monk who half wood elf what I made myself a heal elf subspecies wood elf who can bend the four elements to her will look if you're going to give me the opportunity to become the Avatar master of all four elements I'm going to become the Avatar master of all four elements but in this second playthrough I decided to try a bit harder to get character interactions at camp and oh boy here I thought I was special for not doing any of the romance routes when in actuality I was missing a lot of the story and context for those characters for aarion he's sassy and Theatrical but you can always tell when he's putting on an act and when he's being sincere aarion is one of those characters where you shouldn't take everything he says at face value and it's more often than not he's using a facade to protect himself from the people around him plus he's just my ride or die every time I want to try a an unconventional approach shall we say he's the only one who will approve like no matter what crazy thing I want to do or say he'll be the only one backing me up and that's why I love him there's a statistic on laan's website that says that over 100,000 people have been rejected by aarion and one of the things I love about him is that just like every cat he has to come to you and I love a person that is isn't so forward in pursuing their romantic interest unlike the rest of the other party members I'm looking at you Lael as you might be able to see here while I'm shading I'm picking colors like purples and pale pinks to really accentuate Aaron's power and make him look kind of bloodless and corpse-like which obviously he's a vampire um and it's kind of different from any type of shading I've done before but it it was actually pretty fun and I think I managed to kind of capture that corpse like feel so I don't know let me know what you think but here's the thing with drawing in a more realistic style you also have to do a realistic nose which is something that I I really struggle a lot with I don't know what it is about noses that just it always eludes me I don't know why do they they they freak me out a little bit I always see people online saying how easy it is to draw like realistic noses but I think it's just the nostrils that always get me I don't know what it is about the nostrils that just kind of freak me out but anyway Aaron's eyes were also kind of tricky for me to capture in a more realistic style particularly because I had to remind myself that he has round eyes he doesn't have sharp angular eyes and generally I'm not really sure how I feel about these set of illustrations because my art style has gone completely out the window for this one and it's almost unrecognizable to me and I I'm not sure if I'm pushing too hard for realism and accuracy at the expense of my individuality so I'm not sure how I feel about it as I've said he's like a cat he decides when and how he wants to do things enjoys causing senseless but harmless chaos and you shouldn't tell him what to do people have said that you have to play an evil character to romance asarian because he disapproves of General heroic acts and being nice to people but I've come to learn that his disapproval over things like that are more like sassy little eye roll that doesn't really affect his approval rating of view as much as treating him as a person and respecting his autonomy and being nice to him plus there are some heroic acts that he does approve of for example freeing people under oppression like the nolles that are being compelled by an absolute cultist in Moonrise Towers or freeing the owlbear Cub from the goblin camp or even giving yenna some coin after she asked you for help looking for her mom aarion always roots for The Underdogs that don't usually get much love creatures that are generally hated and perceived as monsters kind of like him I don't know if it's just me but when I hear that asarian is a toxic red flag who you can't trust I expected him to be way more toxic and betray you at some point in the campaign or seriously duck you over in some way but he doesn't he's actually pretty Ted me as far as toxic characters go yeah he starts off only being nice to you because he needs you and if you go to romance him he seduces you to get your protection and uses you in a way but you know he never actually hurts you or has the chance to instead he ends up finding that he does sincerely care about you and the rest of your party members if you have him in your party when you go to the gith yanki crash and let blel go into the aisk I know this sounds like a bunch of gibberish if you don't play bg3 aarion will actually be very concerned for her and urge you to save her and something I don't see enough people talk about when it comes to aarion is that unless you're doing a dark urge run or ascending him at the end of His companion Quest he genuinely changes for the better through the course of the journey he's very sweet and devoted to you and he'll even say you changed him for the better but I kind of disagree with this notion people only change if they want to you can't make someone change if they're not willing to so the fact that aarion often asks you what he should do and changes is because he wants to I don't think he's a bad person or like a completely bad person deep down or maybe he used to be but he's been constantly punished for 200 years so like I like to think he learned his lesson maybe so you didn't really fix him he fixed himself you were just there to give him the support he needed something that he never had also if you complete Aaron's companion Quest you find out that he was only 39 when he was turned into a vampire which is still a baby in elf years and even still has his baby name meaning Little Star he hasn't even gotten his adult name yet which elves only get at the age of 100 so yeah aarion lived a pretty tragic life though I can't really say if he ever lived an honest life his entry in the bg3 concept book says that he's a corrupt Elite who has always sought power and eternal life and the whole reason he died and became a vampire spawn was because he was a magistrate that made a ruling the girl were not happy with resulting in his murder good news is he might still have a family even after 200 years of force servitude since High Elves lived to about 750 50 years I guess what I will say about Aaron's romance is that it isn't for everybody because aside from his looks and the vampire elf watp pod fantasy he really doesn't offer much in terms of courtship compared to the other companions aarion is not romantic or sentimental everything he says is always backhanded because that's how you he protects himself he's very avoidant and hates being vulnerable and that's exactly why I I like him because I too am this way getting emotional and mushy makes me want to escape from my own body romance with aarion is very much about being patient providing companionship while still being independent from each other it's very well suited for someone who really values their personal space and Independence and I know I got in trouble for saying this on Tik Tok but aarion is so Ace coated there's something to be said about the fact that once he finally got his autonomy back he preferred not to do it as in the dirty because if you talk to him about being in a poly relationship with hen he won't deny you but he will ask if it's because you guys haven't hid it in a while if you bring him to the J twins after you're together he'll actually refuse to partake that to me implies that he's only been having the dirty because he was pressured and felt he had to whereas he feels safe with with you and knows that you won't force him to do anything he wouldn't want to do so he felt safe saying No this also implies to me that he only agreed to a poly relationship because he doesn't want to lose you completely because maybe he worries that smex is an important aspect of a relationship that he feels he can't fulfill to your requirements and before I see people commenting no aarion is not ace he wants physical intimacy at the end some people on the a a spectrum like demisexuals do have smacks and self-pleasure you know for demisexuals in particular they just need to form an emotional bond with their partner first like everything else to do with sexuality it's a spectrum and everyone is different as I've said before what estaran says and what he actually wants are two different things if you're doing the non- ascendant route he will be just as happy for you not to propose the dirty and just spend time with him at his final scene plus it's kind of an agreed upon thing that people on the a spectrum are typically the ones making the dirtiest statements and inuendos so that still fits with his M Mo I also think aarion might fall into the Aros Spectrum I picked this up when looking at the dialogue options for his final romance scene before you officially become a couple now any other character if you were to tell them that you'd prefer to stay friends would get pretty upset hurt or heartbroken a star on in the meanwhile will be extremely grateful if not as happy as if you were to ask him for a relationship he doesn't crave romantic love like all the others he just wants someone by his side whatever that person may be to him of course this is all my personal interpretation and you're obviously free to disagree with me anyway here is aaran let me know what you think of my interpretation of his modern look in the comments below and speaking of modern times and modern luxuries how about getting access to Japanese snacks shipped straight from Japan to your front door every month because they definitely didn't have that in medieval times it would have taken at least 5 months to deliver cargo by boat and that's not even mentioning all the Pirates and that's why this video is sponsored by Tokyo treat and sakurako my favorite sponsors ever because they send me food every month and my family and I always look forward to the next time they box arrives at our door Tokyo treat and sakurako are monthly Japanese snack boxes that send you different variety of treats depending on which box you subscribe to Tokyo treat will send you the latest most exclusive limited edition and seasonal flavored Japanese snacks that are only available in Japan for a limited time meanwhile sakurako supports local Japanese snack makers and will send you 20 traditional authentic and Artisan Japanese snacks including Japanese teas and a special Japanese table wear this month's table wear item is the sukimi dish which has an adorable rabbit on it and as you guys know I was born on the year of the rabbit so this is a happy little coincidence they have a different theme every month so you can always look forward to something new and if the snacks look a little bit unfamiliar to you don't worry because each box contains a booklet that will tell you all about each snack as well as any allergen information and it also contains a lot of information information about Japanese culture so if you're looking to get a gift for yourself or a family member or a friend or really anybody check out the link in my description to get $5 off your first subscription thank you so much for hanging out with me in the pond for a while I hope your skin didn't get too pruny let me know which balers gate companion is your current favorite and big shout out to my lovely Pond dwellers on patreon if you want to become a pond dweller and get early access to my content then join my patreon if you want to see more from me then please follow me on all my social media I'd really like to get 10K followers on Instagram so if you could follow me there that'd be awesome if you want to submit fan art or chat with me join my Discord server and if you want more of my stories check out my wild word series here on YouTube because that will make me really happy all the links are in my description and I will see you all in the next video [Music] goodbye [Music]

Channel: callimara

Views: 8,809

Keywords: baldur's gate 3, astarion, callimara

Id: 5-iU_MVMh0A

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2023