I always felt like Gale is a pretty intentional riff on Doctor Strange, with just enough serial numbers filed off that it doesn't infringe, and a tablespoon of Karsus for some D&D cred.
I very much doubt Strange is what they're riffing off of. The lead writers are all British (AFAICT - no longer Belgian!), and Strange wasn't a major character here at all until the MCU, and hasn't left much of a cultural impression.
Rather Strange seems like the latest iteration of a many-decades long series of know-it-all wizards/professors of various kinds. Doctor Who, for example, is much more likely to be a primary reference (or various other Whovian characters) given the actual writers.
Karsus, on the other hand, is likely to be in the mix because they will have had to have read up on Netherese lore and and so on in making the character, and he's going to have come up a lot.
I don't think the characters have been changed significantly. Asterion's abusive relationship was always in his dialogues if you pressed him. It's just a change in what Larian is choosing to reveal about them.
Agree completely. People are acting shocked, but it's like, neither of those is shocking. I already felt pretty bad for Astarion despite him being so annoying, because he explained his history briefly to me, they're just being clear about it now because they're Origin characters and this needs to all come out when you pick them (there's little worse than playing a character on "false pretenses", even if it's the plot of one major and pretty good CRPG
Planescape: Torment - it's not a trick to be often repeated too often - we've already got Shadowheart (probably) and Dark Urge for people who want "false pretenses").
On a positive note,
Tasha's style stats are CONFIRMED by WolfheartFPS who got to use the character creator at length.
So that massively opens up the races/class combos for Tav and mercenaries, like absolutely wildly.
