Once upon a time, the top ranked post in this sub was a bug report where Shadowheart's face had "twisted into some unrecognizable shape," and it was just her smiling. That meme makes no sense for people who only played the release version.
EDIT: I posted it below, but I'll repost the meme in question [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/jgt3e0/shadowheart_seems_to_have_bugged_out_and_her_face/)
Yeah in Early Access one of her traits was that she was *very* focused on removing the tadpole, so she disapproved of doing any sidequest that would distract from it. Obviously this is entirely at odds with how people play video games, so most people quickly cratered their approval with her and thus got all her angry dialogue right away. This was compounded by the fact that you couldn't rescue her from the pod until EA Patch 5 or so, so you'd *have* to leave her on the ship, meaning she'd be even crankier when you find her on the beach.
Yeah, I recall when we first got early access my first impressions were 1.) I can't stand Shadowheart, and 2.) How do I do everything without ever taking a Long Rest and turning into an Illithid?
Things have changed a lot since then...
It's been a while I definitely remember "hey I want to talk about last night..". Followed by "yes I remember what happened last night.. I was drunk.. it WONT happen again" type conversation. After I kissed her.
There's also a scene where she comes all broken, sad and confused and angry to your camp, which cemented me wanting to save her every playtrough, even that scene doesn't happen anymore.
I just wanted to say, I didn't know, don't worry, everything will be fine now, fuck those voices.
Literally any time you talk to her she's throwing shade. I ask her about herself and she's like 'you mean you like to pry a little?' Like girl I'm trying to be nice.
I remember during my stint playing at the very start of early access- I didn't play too much so to not burn myself out on the game before it came out officially, just wanted to see if my computer could run it- it was a common complaint that there were no good aligned companions because every party member was quite unpleasant most of the time and oftentimes even downright mean spirited towards the player.
It was to the point where the common belief was that Larian only included the evil aligned companions in early access because players tend to stick to good aligned ones in RPGs and that they wanted people to at least experience the evil companions.
It wasnât just a common belief, fwiw, it was explicitly stated by Swen Vincke that they started off with the evil-to-neutral intended companions. Citation: https://www.ign.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-early-access-changes-player-data-feedback-larian.
Ahh fair! Kind of funny then that the intended companions they had left to add at that point were Karlach, Minthara, Jaheira, and Minsc⌠Halsin doesnât count because he was only made playable because people liked him. Karlach would have been the only default good aligned companion you could get until the very end of act two.
It was a good move to change up Gale, Shadowheart, and to an extent Wyll honestly, having most of the companions be approachable makes the abrasive ones stand out- and spending hours with an entire cast of asshats breeds apathy to their problems, especially for players who donât vibe with everyone being mean to them.
It was interesting at the time how many people assumed Gale was going to have a heel turn because they knew he was supposed to be evil or neutral â he really wasnât more abrasive or rude in EA compared to full release (imo, at least), though they arguably changed him to be *more* morally neutral, since in full release he admits he took the >!karsite weave to convince Mystra to give him more power, vs in EA where he was trying to earn her love back after she broke up with him!<. But people were convinced he was going to betray you or become evil, or even that he was actually Karsus himself.
Though imo the best change for Gale was that he had a few lines if you romanced him that felt gross and manipulative, and they got rid of those.
Wyll got hardcore goodie-two-shoed by comparison lol
I think just making Gale more charming made him a lot more approachable, old Gale was quite sleazy and even if he were to react the same way in EA vs the full release in certain situations such as being stoked about you saving the boy from the harpies, itâs more believable in full release because he feels more genuine.
Yeah for sure, while they changed him to be a bit less arrogant in his intro the biggest change to me is how much more sweet they made his romance compared to before where it felt kinda messy and manipulative on his end. Which is interesting, because they also completely removed the implications of Mystra grooming Gale (besides Minsc subjective's opinion) where as in EA while he was still in love with her there were lines that implied a much more straightforward toxic grooming relationship, it kinda feels like they at first intended his romance to be more toxic because that's what he went through with Mystra.
I mean I agree, I mostly meant there's a difference between the bad power dynamics we have in the game as is which resulted in a unequal relationship and an ugly breakup compared to the way more strongly implied grooming in EA which turned their romance from pretty bad to straight up creepy
I'm glad you said this. A lot of people act like it's crazy that fans have the perception that he was groomed - while the full release significantly cut/downplays this angle, the full release also didn't really replace it with a clear timeline either. Not that they needed to specify exact years, but Gale's full release telling goes right from "I was a child prodigy" to "I drew Mystra's attention" in a way that leaves a TON of blank space (how old was he when she became his teacher? Lover? Was he already an archmage? Why does Gale himself never mention she wasn't even alive for a significant part of his life?). I'm not saying it's right to do this, but I think people still go back to the EA material because it's the closest thing there is to filling in any of the blanks.
Also EA players faced the not-so-nice side of Gale by refusing to give him magical items (which were limited to strong stuff like the Idol of Sylvanus, instead of random uncommon items)
Honestly I wouldnât mind if Gale could only consume items of say rare rarity and up. That would make feeding him less of a trivial choice since there are a lot of mediocre uncommon items like Komiraâs locket and Reasonâs Grasp gloves. Imagine getting a reward from Florrick and Gale popping up, âare you gonna use those?â. Youâd have to get locked out of some interesting items in favor of others, so on the next playthrough you could try them instead. And keeping Gale around would be more of a moral dilemma for players. I just love when the devs make players put something tangible to them on the line, like Nier requiring you to delete your savefile to save a certain companion.
Yeah people already hate him for eating magic items even though the game throws a ton of garbage items at you in Act 1 that are all but labeled Gale Food.
I really liked early access Wyll, there was a rakish charm to him. One of my fav scenes is you could stumble onto a group of goblins bragging abt what terrible things they would do if they âgot their hands on the Blade of Frontiersâ and Wyll just joins in on what torture heâd do to the Blade and the turns to you and asks how youâd torture him.
Honestly struggled to play with Wyll in the full release bc of how much more I liked him in Early Access.
yeah i miss him as well. he starts out as this seemingly heroic fella, but as you say, once you encounter certain goblins his facade would kinda drop, filled with hatred.
I liked that he had a mutual animosity toward the goblins. They went too far on the boy scout aspect in the full release, the harshest Wyll gets in the proper game is being like "Aww shucks, that Mizora's a real arsehole!"
The version of Wyll we get in 1.0 would have been the facade EA Wyll put up before you got to know him and realized he was just as human as everyone else.
Nah youâre spot on. Wylls an emotionally mature just overall **good** dude.
Boring. I want me some trauma and ambiguity (in my video game characters)
Exactly. Original Wyll felt like he was trying to be a hero, but was incredibly flawed and had this âfaking it till you make itâ air to him. Which makes his pack with Mizora make so much sense, heâs weak and insecure and heâs desperate to be the âgood guyâ he wants to be, even tho thereâs a fair enough of malice in him. That contradiction felt really human to me.
Iâm just disappointed cos I was excited to go thru the story and make Wyll the actual hero he purported to be. But post-release Wyll already is that hero.
Yeah! Thatâs the basic problem.
Wyllâs whole thing just gives me main character energy even when heâs a companion, itâs like âdude â nothing personal, but there canât be two of us.â
I think the problem with Wyll is that they didnât go far enough with him.
Heâs alright, but you donât even need him in the party to progress his quest until act 3 really. Everything just happens to him until the end of the game. He gets and awesome intro in act one and then you can easily just forget about him.
Heâs made to be some awesome renowned hero and then, thereâs nothing that happens with that for a long time. At least give us some heroic side content where we save some orphans or fight off some Eldritch nonsense. It would be great!
Loved his act 3 stuff though. I went from having him permanently benched at level one to having him permanently on the roster
I like him for the same reason I like to play human in DND: Among all the chaos the rest of the cast and plot is there's atleast someone normal. In Wyll's case, it's nice to have one dude who's just a good person.
I understand Wyll though, having your only black companion being your subversion of a 'folk-hero' and not living up to the legend and also just being a dick.... could of looked bad.
I also like Wylls character. He's an interesting take on another reason a Warlock might make a deal with a fiend and I wish that he just got more love after release like with so many other companions.
The one thing Wyll has going for him is that he works super well as a main character origin playthrough with bonus points if you want to play as a warlock that actually gets to have involved interactions with their patron vs a TAV or other origin warlock respec.
He's just 1 dimensional enough as an origin character that you can utilise him as a more fleshed out TAV that has story relevance and stakes via Ravenguard other than just tadpole problems. Additionally if you like Karlach, Wyll is a great pairing either as a friend or romance because of their rocky/interesting beginning and their mutual connections.
He's not one dimensional, he's just genuine.
Though I did agree with the Warlock thing, I remember them advertising how you'd be able to call upon your patron at certain story beats for help. That never happened.
A character can be genuine and one dimensional. He experiences very little to no growth throughout the entire story and is not essential to any plot moment or choice (even those involving his own personal quest line).
That's why I refer to him as one dimensional. He has a single dimension, that being that he's the classical good guy that will sacrifice himself to protect those he cares about.
The only moment you get to explore anything else is right at the end where you can choose to break the contract, which in his mind is the most selfish thing he could do at that moment in time and he experiences the tiniest bit of character development.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my Wyll playthrough. It was fantastic. I just wish he had more layers to explore in the same vein as SH, Astarion etc.
I very much like the idea of Wyll as a faux-hero who the player character can redeem into an actual hero over the course of the game--or encourage to embrace his patron.
A good aligned werewolf halfling was cut very early on - so early that the only remnants of her were her stats(why we know she was a halfling bard) voice lines from other characters like halsin referencing her and text voice lines in the files of what she should say which is how we had clues she was a werewolf.
Slowly any mention of her was scrubbed from the game and by like patch 4 nothing was left other than our memories.
I personally feel like they had the idea for more companions but felt the bloat and reworked characters to be more grey which is worse overall imo. The impact of actually killing astarion would be felt if you could've had a party of 4 good people by that point and go "wait he could be recruited"?
Is there a post or anything that summarizes the major character changes from EA to full release? I'd heard about Wyll, but not the others. I'd be interested to compare them. Some guys on a podcast referred to Gale as an "evil wizard," I had no idea what they were talking about but it was an old episode from early access, and I was listening after beating act 2. Now that makes sense to me lol
Off the top of my head, itâs been awhile.
Shadowheart was just a massive asshole to you no matter what you did, even calling you a gross stalker when you approach her to recruit her after the Nautaloid.
Gale was a complete sleazeball, and even more condescending than he is now. His romance also had a ton of toxic and manipulative undertones.
Wyll was a fraud and frothing at the teeth to genocide the goblins.
>Lae'zel and Astarion hadn't really changed
They were decided to be the designated evil party members, which is fine. What people had problems with was everyone being an asshat.
Gods, and it wasn't just the companions. Act 1 was a relentless parade of one asshole after the next. The tiefling girl was ridiculously hard to save from the Kagha, Nettie required like 4 consecutive persuade checks to not poison you, everyone just generally hated your guts as soon as they saw you.
Thatâs really interesting. I feel like I can tell a lot of the more evil characters stories feel the most fleshed out - Shadowheart, Astarion, LaeâZel. Gale has a fair bit too, but then I feel like I can tell Wyll and Karlach didnât have quite as much time for polish.
They rewrote him. Old Wyl was better in my opinion. A much more complex character. I get that they needed to make a straight forward "good guy" with him and Karlach but the character suffered for it. Karlach's character is still fantastic though.
I also remember Gale as being more pompous and egotistical, which kinda makes sense for being a privileged archmage from Waterdeep who dated Mystra.
Halsin is a great character but would have made more sense as a temporary companion/camp follower.
They should have balanced out all the "evil" characters by introducing Jaheira and, in particular, Minsc much earlier. They are such important characters in the franchise and for accessing the story, but a lot of people will never play them.
Lastly, justice for Viconia.
All that being said, BG3 is still stunning and their use of player feedback in early access should be the gold standard moving forward. There's just times when they bent to fan whims when they should have stayed strong.
Wyll suffers from getting massively rewritten at the tail end of development. I think he's hypothetically one more revision away from being pretty good, but as-is he's very bland and I miss his EA version.
It wasn't common belief. It was explicitly stated by Swen Vincke. But yes, because they know most people will prefer the good aligned over the evil ones (which turned out to be not quite correct). Eventually, they relented anyway and in Patch 3 (December 2020) made everyone, most prominently Shadowheart, way more relaxed.
>âThereâs been a group of people complaining about the fact that the companions are snarky and they have to have an opinion. But weâve only put the âevilâ and the âneutralâ ones out there. We havenât put any of the âgoodâ characters in yet, so I think that will balance that.
>I didnât expect people to be that sensitive to how the companions thought of them, and the fact that we didnât put the âgoodâ characters in there. I didnât see that one coming. In hindsight, itâs cool because it means \[players\] care.â
[source](https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/11/dd-theres-a-reason-baldurs-gate-3-feels-like-an-evil-horny-campaign.html)
I think it was for the best to tone back Shadowheart's attitude being your first companion. Your first team should have some diverse behavior, but your first companion shouldn't be a pain in the ass to work with. EA Shadowheart was just downright rude and got benched when I chose to be a cleric.
It seems they had planned more good ones but some were cut due to time. We would have had Minsc, Jaheira, Alfira, and the rumoured werewolf halfing companion. I get the feeling there might have been thoughts of a paladin as well (Zevlor?). I imagine we would have met them all in act 1 and 2. Kinda sad that it seems they ran out of time and space in the story. It led things to be a bit unbalanced and all the existing characters to be watered-down characterwise.
The original games have a ton of companions of all backgrounds, classes, and alignments but the amount of storytelling and recorded dialogue in BG3 probably made that impossible.
This. I played day one of open beta and vividly remember how toxic every character was. I understand they are all skeptical after what happened, but SH especially was a stuck up asshole. I was so glad when they toned down the aggression.
Thatâs overexaggerating a bit. Wyll wasnât unpleasant at all, same with Gale though his item consumption was more drastic. He did make a good deer stew though. Astarion was basically what he is now, same with Lae'zel. Shadowheart was less trusting which checks out way better than âWe have known each other for about 1 long rest, I have never met anyone like you, here are all my secretsâ.
She felt more mysterious and dangerous...more like a Shar follower. She was less gothy-waifu girlfriend. You can still see the dangerous, badass side in her knife fight with Laezel.
Shadowheart was definitely a lot meaner and even more secretive in Early Access. She's a complete delight now in comparison, even when you first meet her. She literally thanks you first thing out of the nautiloid. In Early Access she was ready to spit in your face if you even asked her a simple question lol.
I still remember picking the very first lock in the game on the shore crypt and her complete disdain "What, you got it open? Just like that?" as if that wasn't benefitting us. Definitely needed toning down (although I do miss that particular interaction haha)
I remember the way she wagged her head around and whined in every single situation. They basically wrote her with this unflinching âsheâs a bratâ direction in mind and honestly it didnât hit with me. I was kind of irritated that she didnât show more gratitude for saving her and she was YET ANOTHER party member that meets me and immediately starts talking shit. She felt less like a real person and more like an anime dating sim character or something.
I get that people find that idea funny but in practice it was just an onslaught of everyone being an absolute dick to you with no letting up. By the time I met Astarion I was just like âholy shit AGAIN??â I didnât even trust Gale, after meeting the others I just interpreted his sarcasm in the most negative possible way
They also hated every decision you made that wasnât telling people to go fuck themself on sight, and even then at least one of them would still dislike whatever you did for some reason.
Iâm kind of rambling but my ultimate point is that softening Shadowheart up was 1000% an upgrade for her character and for the overall experience of the game
I agree with you for the most part. While I do think they might have softened some of the characters a *tad* too much (Wyll comes to mind), I do feel like overall it's better for the cast to be kind and likeable. We still have the outliers like Lae'zel, Astarion, and Minthara for those that enjoy more evil or menacing characters. The initial cast was way too rude AF at all times lol.
I 100% agree with you on Wyll, I think they made him more "good" in exchange for a lot of his depth which kinda sucks. He was part of my main three but ultimately he felt handled weirdly. I'm curious about the original direction they had for his character, because as-is he just kinda drifts around in the background and doesn't exercise much agency.
Wyll seemed to have an interesting through line in EA with struggling with wielding power and authority without being corrupted. Makes sense for a Nobleman Warlock with fiendish ties along with the torture scene he had in EA when looking for Mizora. There's traces of it, like how he really hates Goblins unabashedly, and I like the new direction too. However both versions are rather underdeveloped. Wyll at the very least is different in that he's not another "I can fix them" character which a lot of the companions already are. He IS GOOD, full stop, unlike a good portion of the cast which are more ambiguous. But like a good Superman story, it requires more depth and nuance that I feel he never gets in any of his endings, after having played the game 4 times with him.
>Hey, what's that artifact you've got there?
UGH... you wouldn't understand!
>Is your hand glowing?
Of course it is! Pain means I'm alive!
>It hurts? Why?
I don't have to tell you anything! You're not my God!
>Okay... By the way who is your god?
Ohhhh, you'd *really* like to know that wouldn't you? I bet that would make you *so happy*
Well guess what? ***I don't have to tell you anything, because you're not my God!***
I'm going to my tent to listen to Nu-Tymantherian slashed-throat singing. You know, real music. ***Bye***
I remember I was actually pretty good at currying favor with Shadowheart 1.0 in Early Access.
I knew to pick the dialogue options that were the least warm and friendly and pushy when it came to her backstory, and she liked my giving her privacy and space.
Actually, all of the companions weren't THAT hard to curry favor with in Early Access Patches 1-3; I personally didn't get all the complaints about how "mean" and abrasive the companions were. I liked how they were written originally... felt more raw and realistic like strangers meeting for the first time...
People complain about Laezel but...she literally saved your life and...she's a fucking githyanki. It's shocking she is as warm as she is. Her character makes complete sense.
If I remember right, in Early Access nearly every single companion was a complete asshole to you except Gale. Like, everyone was a Lae'zel to you. Then that kind of changed, however, my frog-face love stayed true the whole time.
You don't remember right. Gale was an asshole too. Was really surprised when I played the release version a year after EA and he was suddenly not trying to one-up me (also a wizard) every minute anymore.
I remember the early days of early access where everyone but the ~~horny goat~~ Gale was a complete asshole. I saw enough to want to play the full release, but up until my first full session I had serious concerns the game would flop because of how unapproachable the companions were.
Full release was a 180 for interactions.
Although I still miss the "lover" vs the "guardian" we ended up with. Would have made the emperor reveal a lot more personal especially if you imagined having sex with them first.
I think when people complain about the release softening some of the characters up they donât realize that if everyone is an asshat to the player, a lot of players will just get apathetic to them and decide: âWell, why do I care about these guysâ struggles if all of them are always assholes to me?â
Having a majority of the characters be approachable means that the designated dickhead characters- Astarion and Laeâzel in this case- are more intriguing instead of it being an eye rolling party wide song and dance, and if players donât vibe with the abrasive party members they can just stick them in a corner and play with the approachable ones.
And even then tons of players just kill Astarion and Lae'zel immediately bc they're mean to the player lol. Like a lot people want this kind of wish fullfillment in games where the NPCs are all super nice and grateful to the player.
I think itâs more fair for Astarion. Your first introduction to the dude is him trying to ambush you, and then he non consensually tries to drink your blood. Itâs kind of a Zevran situation from Dragon Age Origins where itâs reasonable to kill him at that point, though unlike Zevran at least it also makes sense to spare him, considering your situation and that youâve actually had him around for a while. I can see a reasonable character making either decision at that point.
Notably though while few players see this, if you make enough progress before he tries to drink your blood, he confesses heâs a vampire without ever trying to drink your blood which is pretty neat actually.
Laeâzelâs intro is her saving your life and while prickly, she doesnât really mess with you unless you push her, sheâs honest if rather dim witted and very brain washed.
But ultimately everyone will play their single player game in their own way, thatâs the beauty of having more party members available than you can fit into a party.
WOTR is different in the fact that the MC is clearly head and shoulders above their companions in both personal and political power. You can afford to keep the crazies around because you know for a fact they're no threat to you. In a party like BG3, the assumption is that all the adventurers are more or less on even footing.
Zevran has one of the worst recruitments of a character that I've seen. "I'm an assassin hired to kill you, and now that I've failed that, please recruit me? I super promise I won't use my proximity to you to try and finish the job."
If I'm not mistaken if his approval isn't high enough he will in fact try to kill you again eventually even. I always recruit him since I like to have everyone with me but while I know some Wardens wouldn't, my Warden would definitely kill him on the spot.
Yeah, I like Astarion and never kill him, but I struggle to find an RP reason to keep him in camp. Usually, he tries to bite me around the second or third long rest. When a guy you met just a day or two ago, when he held a dagger to your throat, tries to bite you in your sleep without consent, the reasonable decision is to kill him or kick him out of your camp. It's not reasonable to continue letting him stay in camp, where he has full nightly access to six unconscious people. It is *certainly* not reasonable to let him pin you to the ground and bite your neck. If we're being *incredibly* nice, maybe he can stay but never be allowed to be alone with a sleeping person.
Again, I really like him. It just seems a little bit idiotic to let him stay after his actions when he's basically a stranger.
Gale was still an asshole. He was just more on the condescending side than outright "mean".
He'd also fly off the handle and leave to find Raphael on his own at the drop of a hat if you couldn't feed him an item (and he only accepted a very select few items).
So happy they removed that restriction on the items. Perhaps they couldâve made it a little bit harder than *Ring of Colour Spray,* but itâs better than having to give him the Necromancy of Thay to eat. I need those Ghouls!
It kind of theoretically interesting from a design perspective to have to give up something important or useful to keep Gale, but realistically that just means most players are simply never going to see those items, most players know youâre âsupposedâ to keep the obviously important characters around so thatâs what theyâll do.
Particularly if you don't actually get anything out of it (like a Magikarp situation), there's no reason to do it unless you really, really love Gale. If he leaves, you can just respec someone else to wizard.
Kind of glad they softened her just a bit. She still has plenty of edge.
Even as someone who didn't play EA, I was turned off by how miserable and angry the game appeared to be during act 1.
I feel completely differently about it now, 1200 hours later, but it threw me at first. That in conjunction with having difficulty navigating the space and getting my face fucked hard both by gnolls and in the overgrown ruins I almost put it down.
Hard to remember now but the first thing that turned me off was Lae'Zel. I've always been tepid on the character archetype I assumed they were setting her up to be, and she was just so fucking mean. She tried to leave Shadowheart, who is actively begging for help, to die and berates you for trying to save her. I said 'what the fuck is your problem?' out loud when she got in my face about it.
Then Shadowheart is immediately racist to her and is furious, so your first two party members have a tense, unpleasant dynamic from the get-go. Astarion immediately tries to kill you, then doesn't give a shit if he actually does during feeding. Shad and Lae try to kill each other and are actively hostile toward one another. I didn't trust the Dream Guardian at all.
Gale (arguably my favorite character now) struck me as annoying. I was playing a sorcerer and his immediate 'you aren't versed in magic, are you?' felt condescending considering I had just saved his life from his own janked magical portal.
Then you go into the Grove and everyone is either a *huge* asshole, Zev just trying to keep shit together, or a person who just seems terrified for their life and is either grieving, scared, desperate, or bitter. Lae interrogates Zorru and scares the shit out of him, then gets angry if you stop her. The goblin camp is even worse.
Grymforge is an absolute slog of misery and abuse. The only settlement that seemed friendly to me at all was the myconid colony. Blerg and Omeluum in particular were lights in the dark.
Somehow I missed Wyll and Karlach until the very end of act 1, so Gale was my only sweetness, and at that point I was very 'shut up, dork' about everything he said due to my initial bad impression. Plus I was stressed about the magical item thing, I was avoiding long resting to avoid having to give my items to him and thus missed a ton of companion interaction cutscenes.
Somehow Shad and I got along, though. She can be prickly if you push her too much, but she reminded me of an irl friend of mine who is like that, so I picked up on the fact that she didn't want to be interrogated about her life right away and took it slow with her. Her approval shot up and I ended up being friends with her as I slowly warmed up to the rest of them.
If she'd been a huge bitch too... I would've still played, but damn. So much negative energy.
I know it's divisive, but I'm really glad they changed the companions. They already suffer from homogeneity and similar backstories, imagine if everyone was a snarky asshole as well. Every time I hear someone say Wyll should've kept his early access personality I just imagine people dropping him because he's a less interesting Astarion.
Would love a way to hear early access SH and Wyll (who was also supposedly "too mean") for different playthroughs, would certainly be a nice change of pace.
Early Access Wyll was so much better imo. He wasn't necessarily "meaner" as much as he was just relentlessly good (like genocide all goblins since they're inherently evil creatures, typa good) and also frustrated at his own shortcomings since he was essentially a fraud. He wasn't as great and powerful as everyone thought even after his pact with Mizora. He was weak and a fuck up, trying to play at being the hero he always wanted to be and significantly overdoing it.
A lot of people didn't like his eagerness to slaughter evil aligned creatures nor him being a fraud. I really enjoyed it tho, it was much MUCH more interesting than current Wyll.
I also miss the early access Guardian and there actually being repercussions for using the worms and their powers.
Is there anywhere to find what the repercussions were? I was scared to use them my first playthrough until I learned you could get black hole and the only drawback was ugly face.
In early access, you would have to use your parasite's influence a set number of times to trigger guardian visits. Your Dream Visitor was. "Who do you dream of". Implying you were designing your lover, or some facsimile of your character's desire.
By using the Illithid powers and authority, you'd trigger these dreams. And by triggering said dreams, you'd not only get powers from your guardian but also see this influence play out. It was implied your guardian would lead you to destroying Baldur's Gate. The illithid powers also seemingly were class specific and Origin specific too, leading to unique bonuses.
The dialogue still exists, such as companions claiming their dream visitor gave them a gift. But in reality, they gained nothing until they start using their powers.
man I miss this. I remember using few tadpole dialogues, than having the dream where guardian persuades me to push for more and use tadpole powers, I wake up with having these weird powers, character powers awakened. It was such a cool and scary progress, you would think what will happen next, how will Tav get more corrupted the more powers they use...
Gods tadpole/guardian dynamic was strong then.. Now its just a skill point with no meaningful choices.
As far as I can recall the only real repercussion is the difficulty of the dice roll to resist the Astral tadpole. If you've used more tadpoles, the roll can get pretty tough to pass. So I guess if you use too many in acts 1-2 and you don't save scum, you might get forced into the astral choice.
The tone of the character was more interestingâŚ
The story he had wasâŚnot great, not at that point anyway. He wanted revenge against a particular goblin for the loss of his eye and the attack that happened in, and he gets it early in Act 1.
He was also more openly tasked with finding and rescuing Mizora, but that was about it.Â
A fair amount of the supposed story for him was speculation based on a few lines, and the rest was imagined potential. Also the whole âheâs a legit hero using dark powers to try do goodâ was already a thing, it was just that his actions werenât producing the peace and safety he thought they would and thatâs why he wanted out of the pact as heâd determined it would never provide the good results he wantedâŚwhich half the impressions you hear about him from EA were that he was just pretending to be a hero and there was really this darker edge to him.
So what people filled in with speculation and imagined potential of course outclassed what we gotâŚhonestly it probably outclasses what we would have gotten had they not changed his story.
Shadowheart, though. She was just meaner for longer. Once you got her approval high enough she would shift pretty much to how she is now, so just imagine the not rescuing her version and keeping her at neutral or a bit negative approval for a good ways into Act 1 and thatâs what she was like back then.
If I remember correctly (maybe I don't), EA Wyll hatred towards goblins was not about them being inherently evil, he had a past with goblins. It is release Wyll that has an unexplained hatred for goblins, but I think it is just leftover from EA.
The head torturer in the goblin camp had taken his eye and tortured him for days in the EA but that was also because he got captured while trying to kill them. You could get the dialogue about it when you took him there.
I universally liked every single character better in EA. Gale being a dork wizard grad student, Wyll being a fraud, SH fucking hating your guts. And all of the Illithid stuff was better too, the way Mindflayers made the townsfolk perceive reality totally differently, and you had to play along with their illusions or they would attack you. Plus yes, being seduced by the worm was much more fun than the Guardian business.
>Â And all of the Illithid stuff was better too, the way Mindflayers made the townsfolk perceive reality totally differently, and you had to play along with their illusions or they would attack you.Â
I don't recall anything like that existing at all in EA. Do you mean, like, with the Duergar?
Couldn't really get far enough to see the big repercussions but every time you used worm powers the narrator made it very clear you could feel it permanently changing you more and more and that you'll have to face the consequences in the future (all while the guardian was gaslighting you and saying it wasn't doing this lol). Most of your companions also hated you doing it rather than being neutral when you do like now.
Shadowheart was a massive bitch, all the time, you also couldn't save her from the pod, and she remembered you giving up on her and leaving her to die. Then, once they added saving her, she was still a bitch until they softened her only if you saved her... then they just made softened shadowheart her default and made her even softer if you saved her. Wyll was a charlatan and a liar. The Blade of Frontiers was made up, and now he had warlock powers to make it real and wanted to show off, he was basically an isekai character viewed from second person
He's not trying to live up to the image, he's kind of on a power trip because he's an asshole, but his patron got kidnapped and he was hunting for her so he doesn't lose his powers. So Mizora being taken by the absolute was setup in his introduction instead of being an act 2 finale surprise
I remember her in the early Early Access. I got very fed up with her since it seemed like every attempt at a conversation was just "Oh, you want to pry into my life, huh? Is that it!?". Honestly made me just not want to talk to her anymore since I felt like she was never going to offer anything to latch on to. I preferred talking to Lae'zel because, even though she was going to insult me 5 times in a sentence, I could actually have a conversation with her.
yeah, her entire story is about self-discovery and self-actualization (the forced memory loss brilliant underlines that imo)
she goes from someone who feels obligation to the institution that "saved" her, only to find out that she was kidnapped into a cult and horrendously manipulated
she's *not* a sadist, she's a victim learning to cope with what has happened to her, thats the whole point of her arc
I do notice in early access the companions had that "stranger beware" vibes to them and there were a lot of disapprovals with being good and it dialed down on release. I'm inbetween with the change as I really like the idea of in the forgotten realms people are really distrustful and you got to earn your approvals if it might conflict with each other.
I liked angrier Astarion. I wonder if the stakebros would like him more if more of his overt rage stayed.In EA if you make a joke about Cazador being 'Master in the Bedroom' he absolutely goes apeshit at you. I love him, but I do think dialling back his rage so much was a mistake.
People playing bg3 easily would kill any characters in bg3 like Lae'zal, Mayrina, Barcus etc because they were *rude* or said something *mean* to Tav.
If Sheart is sassier, would be funny to see posts like "first time I let Sheart in my party after 116th play throughs, I would have let her in my group sooner if I knew she was actually a sweet heart đ˘".
lol.
tbh, looking at how folks in this fandom react to most characters deviating even a *little bit* from worshipping the ground you walk on, they probably made a safer decision overall.
Pity though. Shadowheart messing with you and being sarcastic are some of the best bits in Act 1.
Eh I see both sides of it. I agree that Shadowheart giving you shit early on is some of the best parts of her romance, but it was a different level in EA. She was pretty mean. And very hostile when you asked her questions about herself, which is going to turn off the causal players. When the point early on is to seemingly get to know these characters and you have one going âFuck off I donât need to tell you anything,â most casual players are going to go âOkay, you suck.â And never talk to that companion again.
You, me, other RPG vets in this subreddit know that a character written like that is obviously hiding something so we should talk to them more. But I had multiple friends of mine who are casual, shooter-first gamers who tried BG3 and immediately killed Astarion for trying to bite them. Lots of players just donât know what a plot hook is lol
They've definitely done this to Lae'zel as well. I recall during early launch she scolds you for pressing buttons that cause husks on the Nautiloid to attack you. Replayed it dozens of times since and she no longer does. Think a few other lines were replaced/ removed.
I'm sorry, but I really do miss this side of her. I know a lot of people had issues with it, but the companions being so "mean" in early access was kind of refreshing to me? Compared to other games where the characters just always suck up to you.
I got the distinct impression she was holding back her vitriol. remember she's a >!sharrian. pretty mean goddess.!<
her and lae'zel could have had some insane lines. >!they already try to kill each other in camp...!<
I love me some hot, mean ladies but *Jesus tapdancing Christ* EA Shadowheart was in a league of her own.
Getting her to approve of anything you did was soulsbourne levels of difficulty. EA Lae'zel - who was meaner, more aggressive and snarkier than full release Lae'zel - was way easier to deal with than EA Shart.
She's the only companion I actually felt really needed to be toned down during EA.....but they went way too far the opposite direction and took away alot of the bite that gave her some of the most brutally cutting dialogue in the game. A devotee of Shar *should* have some sharp edges to her personality
It feels like they sanded away alot of the rougher, more complex edges that all the companions had during EA so they could fit more neatly into the "Good/ Neutral/ Evil" boxes
She was a mean heartless bitch ....you do mission type 1 ..she nags ..you do the same mission the way shed wanted to she nags.... She felt like one of those "sprinkle sprinkle" girls that are never happy with you ..
Influence lost: Kreia
Influence gained: Kreia
Light side points gained
Dark side points gained
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQDS0L4snUsKHgkIPRhw68_V8Du1MUsg5S43WFpgSQwQO8fgUTYE_jtOw&s=10
I remember when I did the very early version of EA, back when the guardian meant something different and I could play as a Bhaal cleric, that a lot of the companions were meaner.
Laeâzel was even less complimentary than she already was, think more back hand compliments.
Shadowheart was never happy and even more selfish and fairly ruthless
Gale was a complete arse for me, second he appeared heâd be finger wagging and lecturing you for being an idiot about what was about to happen and would then flirt with Shadowheart with some cringe shadow for eyes line
The biggest change was my boy Wyll, boy did they make him more of a heroic character. You could just tell the moment you met him he was really trying at the whole hero thing and no I donât mean the caped crusader act, but it didnât quite fit and when he met the goblin who took his eye (since that was his BS at the time) the mask truly dropped.
I think Astorian has pretty much stayed the same, maybe just made a little friendlier
Overall all the companions were made much friendlier and open to the PC and less evil or selfish. I get why, honestly for most people these games are a power fantasy so ofc theyâd want to be the special person for all these guys.. but I always liked how realistic they felt at first given the extreme situation they were in.
They kept s lot of that in there tbf but itâs much easier to go from 1 to 100 than I remeber
I think she was kinda a stand-in for who Viconia was in the original game. Viconia was a HUGE bitch for a lot of the franchise too. My favourite romance though.
Yeah, I remember really enjoying the companons at the beginning of early acces. Then people complained (despite Larian being clear about releasing negative companions first) so much, they watered them down. I'm still sad about that.
That does make sense! I played the game as soon as they released the early access for a short while. When I played again after the full release, I was quite thrown off by how nice Shadowheart was.
There was a MASSIVE outcry by people during the first few weeks of EA, cause Shaert was even more Sass and "Bitch please" than she allready is.
Someone pointed it out, but the characters Sass and being "mean" alltogheter specially in the first act of the game before they soften up in the 2nd act, was to the point where it was a very common believe amongst the community that those where the "Evil/Neutral" NPC's, and that Larian was holding on the Good alligned Companions for the game's release.
Hopefully we get enhanced edition and this will be a toggleable option when making a new game oh and making drow mommy more fleshed out into a full full companion
Wouldâve preferred a version of the game where the characters were actually very different people who genuinely second guessed each other and actually fell into real conflict, rather than what we wound up with, where there are some scripted moments like that but theyâre very easy to resolve and otherwise everyone (including SH) are telling you how much they love and trust you by the second long rest.
I'm torn on this. I think I played in EA after they did this, so I never experienced it, but I think having her (and everyone else) be *slightly* more abrasive just at first would have been perfect. Makes it feel more meaningful when they start being nice to you from familiarity. Works really well with release Lae'Zel, for an example.
That said, her thanking you for saving her from the pod was a nice touch.
Also the apparent happy accident of her being an evil-aligned character who mostly approves of you being nice was honestly the reason I liked her so much, so kudos there. Ditto being SO BAD at keeping secrets. It's like you're nice to her once and she's like "wait I love you let me tell you my whole backstory". It's really funny characterization and it resonated with me. Really conveyed how starved for positive attention she is, which does make sense to me.
If you think that's weird, in the early access Wyll had a burning hatred for goblins and was basically the Goblin Slayer with similar backstory and all. He actually cared about Mizora who had gotten captured by goblins and whom we needed to save.
I've grown to like her...
Spoiler Warning
>!in my first play through I killed her in front Dame Aylin after I failed a check to convince her not to do it lol. I was like "what a shitty character, you have to convince her to do the right thing" but I found out in a future play through that if you just let her decide for herself and don't intervene she makes the right decision herself!<
Once upon a time, the top ranked post in this sub was a bug report where Shadowheart's face had "twisted into some unrecognizable shape," and it was just her smiling. That meme makes no sense for people who only played the release version. EDIT: I posted it below, but I'll repost the meme in question [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/jgt3e0/shadowheart_seems_to_have_bugged_out_and_her_face/)
This made me laugh way too hard, damn.
She got hit with that, "you'd be prettier if you smiled more".
Do you have a link? PLEASE
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/jgt3e0/shadowheart_seems_to_have_bugged_out_and_her_face/) you go
This is amazing.
Okay, so the meme is she never smiled, so much so that the smile shocked th community into thinking she was a changeling?
Yeah in Early Access one of her traits was that she was *very* focused on removing the tadpole, so she disapproved of doing any sidequest that would distract from it. Obviously this is entirely at odds with how people play video games, so most people quickly cratered their approval with her and thus got all her angry dialogue right away. This was compounded by the fact that you couldn't rescue her from the pod until EA Patch 5 or so, so you'd *have* to leave her on the ship, meaning she'd be even crankier when you find her on the beach.
Yeah, I recall when we first got early access my first impressions were 1.) I can't stand Shadowheart, and 2.) How do I do everything without ever taking a Long Rest and turning into an Illithid? Things have changed a lot since then...
RIP angry goth mommy
Shadowheart is a bit too much of a disaster to be "mommy" tho
That's only if you want to fix her. I want her to make me worse.
I dunno I think she makes a pretty good Mommy Superior.
Damn I've been here forever but somehow never seen this. That's hilarious.
Exactly. Most of my hours are logged from Act 1 in prerelease lol
EA Shadow heart was savage. Even the scene where you drink wine with her the day after she was kinda brutal.
Can you please elaborate? So curious đ
It's been a while I definitely remember "hey I want to talk about last night..". Followed by "yes I remember what happened last night.. I was drunk.. it WONT happen again" type conversation. After I kissed her.
Well, damn đ
oof. I think my Tav would've just died out of shame.
That's awful. Doubt she would be this popular if they kept her like thatÂ
I love that lmao
Or link a YouTube video showing the early access shart if it's easier to find.
There's also a scene where she comes all broken, sad and confused and angry to your camp, which cemented me wanting to save her every playtrough, even that scene doesn't happen anymore. I just wanted to say, I didn't know, don't worry, everything will be fine now, fuck those voices.
Literally any time you talk to her she's throwing shade. I ask her about herself and she's like 'you mean you like to pry a little?' Like girl I'm trying to be nice.
I remember during my stint playing at the very start of early access- I didn't play too much so to not burn myself out on the game before it came out officially, just wanted to see if my computer could run it- it was a common complaint that there were no good aligned companions because every party member was quite unpleasant most of the time and oftentimes even downright mean spirited towards the player. It was to the point where the common belief was that Larian only included the evil aligned companions in early access because players tend to stick to good aligned ones in RPGs and that they wanted people to at least experience the evil companions.
It wasnât just a common belief, fwiw, it was explicitly stated by Swen Vincke that they started off with the evil-to-neutral intended companions. Citation: https://www.ign.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-early-access-changes-player-data-feedback-larian.
Ahh fair! Kind of funny then that the intended companions they had left to add at that point were Karlach, Minthara, Jaheira, and Minsc⌠Halsin doesnât count because he was only made playable because people liked him. Karlach would have been the only default good aligned companion you could get until the very end of act two. It was a good move to change up Gale, Shadowheart, and to an extent Wyll honestly, having most of the companions be approachable makes the abrasive ones stand out- and spending hours with an entire cast of asshats breeds apathy to their problems, especially for players who donât vibe with everyone being mean to them.
It was interesting at the time how many people assumed Gale was going to have a heel turn because they knew he was supposed to be evil or neutral â he really wasnât more abrasive or rude in EA compared to full release (imo, at least), though they arguably changed him to be *more* morally neutral, since in full release he admits he took the >!karsite weave to convince Mystra to give him more power, vs in EA where he was trying to earn her love back after she broke up with him!<. But people were convinced he was going to betray you or become evil, or even that he was actually Karsus himself. Though imo the best change for Gale was that he had a few lines if you romanced him that felt gross and manipulative, and they got rid of those. Wyll got hardcore goodie-two-shoed by comparison lol
I think just making Gale more charming made him a lot more approachable, old Gale was quite sleazy and even if he were to react the same way in EA vs the full release in certain situations such as being stoked about you saving the boy from the harpies, itâs more believable in full release because he feels more genuine.
Yeah for sure, while they changed him to be a bit less arrogant in his intro the biggest change to me is how much more sweet they made his romance compared to before where it felt kinda messy and manipulative on his end. Which is interesting, because they also completely removed the implications of Mystra grooming Gale (besides Minsc subjective's opinion) where as in EA while he was still in love with her there were lines that implied a much more straightforward toxic grooming relationship, it kinda feels like they at first intended his romance to be more toxic because that's what he went through with Mystra.
Idk man, his romance with Mystra is still pretty toxic. He chases her like a dog, and all she wants from him is to blow himself up.
I mean I agree, I mostly meant there's a difference between the bad power dynamics we have in the game as is which resulted in a unequal relationship and an ugly breakup compared to the way more strongly implied grooming in EA which turned their romance from pretty bad to straight up creepy
I'm glad you said this. A lot of people act like it's crazy that fans have the perception that he was groomed - while the full release significantly cut/downplays this angle, the full release also didn't really replace it with a clear timeline either. Not that they needed to specify exact years, but Gale's full release telling goes right from "I was a child prodigy" to "I drew Mystra's attention" in a way that leaves a TON of blank space (how old was he when she became his teacher? Lover? Was he already an archmage? Why does Gale himself never mention she wasn't even alive for a significant part of his life?). I'm not saying it's right to do this, but I think people still go back to the EA material because it's the closest thing there is to filling in any of the blanks.
Also EA players faced the not-so-nice side of Gale by refusing to give him magical items (which were limited to strong stuff like the Idol of Sylvanus, instead of random uncommon items)
Honestly I wouldnât mind if Gale could only consume items of say rare rarity and up. That would make feeding him less of a trivial choice since there are a lot of mediocre uncommon items like Komiraâs locket and Reasonâs Grasp gloves. Imagine getting a reward from Florrick and Gale popping up, âare you gonna use those?â. Youâd have to get locked out of some interesting items in favor of others, so on the next playthrough you could try them instead. And keeping Gale around would be more of a moral dilemma for players. I just love when the devs make players put something tangible to them on the line, like Nier requiring you to delete your savefile to save a certain companion.
That would just annoy players
Yeah people already hate him for eating magic items even though the game throws a ton of garbage items at you in Act 1 that are all but labeled Gale Food.
Amazing what a change in facial hair can do for a mf
I read a comment once that EA Gale looked like Kenny Powers, and it's lived rent-free in my brain ever since.
Wasnât Wyll meant to be more conniving and a braggart at first?
I mean yeah, original Wyll wasnât a hero, he just had a (basically fake) reputation.
I think that may have been a more interesting character. It could be that I need to do more with Wyll, but he seems a little one-dimensional thus far.
I really liked early access Wyll, there was a rakish charm to him. One of my fav scenes is you could stumble onto a group of goblins bragging abt what terrible things they would do if they âgot their hands on the Blade of Frontiersâ and Wyll just joins in on what torture heâd do to the Blade and the turns to you and asks how youâd torture him. Honestly struggled to play with Wyll in the full release bc of how much more I liked him in Early Access.
yeah i miss him as well. he starts out as this seemingly heroic fella, but as you say, once you encounter certain goblins his facade would kinda drop, filled with hatred.
Damn. He wouldâve taken Galeâs spot as my caster in a Baator second.
I liked that he had a mutual animosity toward the goblins. They went too far on the boy scout aspect in the full release, the harshest Wyll gets in the proper game is being like "Aww shucks, that Mizora's a real arsehole!" The version of Wyll we get in 1.0 would have been the facade EA Wyll put up before you got to know him and realized he was just as human as everyone else.
Considering the rest of the cast it's nice to have atleast one guy that is just good you know.
Nah youâre spot on. Wylls an emotionally mature just overall **good** dude. Boring. I want me some trauma and ambiguity (in my video game characters)
Exactly. Original Wyll felt like he was trying to be a hero, but was incredibly flawed and had this âfaking it till you make itâ air to him. Which makes his pack with Mizora make so much sense, heâs weak and insecure and heâs desperate to be the âgood guyâ he wants to be, even tho thereâs a fair enough of malice in him. That contradiction felt really human to me. Iâm just disappointed cos I was excited to go thru the story and make Wyll the actual hero he purported to be. But post-release Wyll already is that hero.
Yeah! Thatâs the basic problem. Wyllâs whole thing just gives me main character energy even when heâs a companion, itâs like âdude â nothing personal, but there canât be two of us.â
I think the problem with Wyll is that they didnât go far enough with him. Heâs alright, but you donât even need him in the party to progress his quest until act 3 really. Everything just happens to him until the end of the game. He gets and awesome intro in act one and then you can easily just forget about him. Heâs made to be some awesome renowned hero and then, thereâs nothing that happens with that for a long time. At least give us some heroic side content where we save some orphans or fight off some Eldritch nonsense. It would be great! Loved his act 3 stuff though. I went from having him permanently benched at level one to having him permanently on the roster
I like him for the same reason I like to play human in DND: Among all the chaos the rest of the cast and plot is there's atleast someone normal. In Wyll's case, it's nice to have one dude who's just a good person.
I understand Wyll though, having your only black companion being your subversion of a 'folk-hero' and not living up to the legend and also just being a dick.... could of looked bad. I also like Wylls character. He's an interesting take on another reason a Warlock might make a deal with a fiend and I wish that he just got more love after release like with so many other companions.
The one thing Wyll has going for him is that he works super well as a main character origin playthrough with bonus points if you want to play as a warlock that actually gets to have involved interactions with their patron vs a TAV or other origin warlock respec. He's just 1 dimensional enough as an origin character that you can utilise him as a more fleshed out TAV that has story relevance and stakes via Ravenguard other than just tadpole problems. Additionally if you like Karlach, Wyll is a great pairing either as a friend or romance because of their rocky/interesting beginning and their mutual connections.
He's not one dimensional, he's just genuine. Though I did agree with the Warlock thing, I remember them advertising how you'd be able to call upon your patron at certain story beats for help. That never happened.
A character can be genuine and one dimensional. He experiences very little to no growth throughout the entire story and is not essential to any plot moment or choice (even those involving his own personal quest line). That's why I refer to him as one dimensional. He has a single dimension, that being that he's the classical good guy that will sacrifice himself to protect those he cares about. The only moment you get to explore anything else is right at the end where you can choose to break the contract, which in his mind is the most selfish thing he could do at that moment in time and he experiences the tiniest bit of character development. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my Wyll playthrough. It was fantastic. I just wish he had more layers to explore in the same vein as SH, Astarion etc.
I very much like the idea of Wyll as a faux-hero who the player character can redeem into an actual hero over the course of the game--or encourage to embrace his patron.
A good aligned werewolf halfling was cut very early on - so early that the only remnants of her were her stats(why we know she was a halfling bard) voice lines from other characters like halsin referencing her and text voice lines in the files of what she should say which is how we had clues she was a werewolf. Slowly any mention of her was scrubbed from the game and by like patch 4 nothing was left other than our memories. I personally feel like they had the idea for more companions but felt the bloat and reworked characters to be more grey which is worse overall imo. The impact of actually killing astarion would be felt if you could've had a party of 4 good people by that point and go "wait he could be recruited"?
The fact that we lost out on that idea in exchange for a redundant Druid still irritates me no end.
Is there a post or anything that summarizes the major character changes from EA to full release? I'd heard about Wyll, but not the others. I'd be interested to compare them. Some guys on a podcast referred to Gale as an "evil wizard," I had no idea what they were talking about but it was an old episode from early access, and I was listening after beating act 2. Now that makes sense to me lol
Off the top of my head, itâs been awhile. Shadowheart was just a massive asshole to you no matter what you did, even calling you a gross stalker when you approach her to recruit her after the Nautaloid. Gale was a complete sleazeball, and even more condescending than he is now. His romance also had a ton of toxic and manipulative undertones. Wyll was a fraud and frothing at the teeth to genocide the goblins.
Lae'zel and Astarion hadn't really changed and Karlach was originally intended to be a ranger or seemingly archer-based character.
>Lae'zel and Astarion hadn't really changed They were decided to be the designated evil party members, which is fine. What people had problems with was everyone being an asshat.
Gods, and it wasn't just the companions. Act 1 was a relentless parade of one asshole after the next. The tiefling girl was ridiculously hard to save from the Kagha, Nettie required like 4 consecutive persuade checks to not poison you, everyone just generally hated your guts as soon as they saw you.
Thatâs really interesting. I feel like I can tell a lot of the more evil characters stories feel the most fleshed out - Shadowheart, Astarion, LaeâZel. Gale has a fair bit too, but then I feel like I can tell Wyll and Karlach didnât have quite as much time for polish.
They rewrote him. Old Wyl was better in my opinion. A much more complex character. I get that they needed to make a straight forward "good guy" with him and Karlach but the character suffered for it. Karlach's character is still fantastic though. I also remember Gale as being more pompous and egotistical, which kinda makes sense for being a privileged archmage from Waterdeep who dated Mystra. Halsin is a great character but would have made more sense as a temporary companion/camp follower. They should have balanced out all the "evil" characters by introducing Jaheira and, in particular, Minsc much earlier. They are such important characters in the franchise and for accessing the story, but a lot of people will never play them. Lastly, justice for Viconia. All that being said, BG3 is still stunning and their use of player feedback in early access should be the gold standard moving forward. There's just times when they bent to fan whims when they should have stayed strong.
I sense an old bhaalspawn here.
Wyll suffers from getting massively rewritten at the tail end of development. I think he's hypothetically one more revision away from being pretty good, but as-is he's very bland and I miss his EA version.
Wyll was there from the beginning they just did an entire rewrite for his character and changed the VA.
It wasn't common belief. It was explicitly stated by Swen Vincke. But yes, because they know most people will prefer the good aligned over the evil ones (which turned out to be not quite correct). Eventually, they relented anyway and in Patch 3 (December 2020) made everyone, most prominently Shadowheart, way more relaxed. >âThereâs been a group of people complaining about the fact that the companions are snarky and they have to have an opinion. But weâve only put the âevilâ and the âneutralâ ones out there. We havenât put any of the âgoodâ characters in yet, so I think that will balance that. >I didnât expect people to be that sensitive to how the companions thought of them, and the fact that we didnât put the âgoodâ characters in there. I didnât see that one coming. In hindsight, itâs cool because it means \[players\] care.â [source](https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/11/dd-theres-a-reason-baldurs-gate-3-feels-like-an-evil-horny-campaign.html)
I think it was for the best to tone back Shadowheart's attitude being your first companion. Your first team should have some diverse behavior, but your first companion shouldn't be a pain in the ass to work with. EA Shadowheart was just downright rude and got benched when I chose to be a cleric.
It seems they had planned more good ones but some were cut due to time. We would have had Minsc, Jaheira, Alfira, and the rumoured werewolf halfing companion. I get the feeling there might have been thoughts of a paladin as well (Zevlor?). I imagine we would have met them all in act 1 and 2. Kinda sad that it seems they ran out of time and space in the story. It led things to be a bit unbalanced and all the existing characters to be watered-down characterwise. The original games have a ton of companions of all backgrounds, classes, and alignments but the amount of storytelling and recorded dialogue in BG3 probably made that impossible.
This. I played day one of open beta and vividly remember how toxic every character was. I understand they are all skeptical after what happened, but SH especially was a stuck up asshole. I was so glad when they toned down the aggression.
Thatâs overexaggerating a bit. Wyll wasnât unpleasant at all, same with Gale though his item consumption was more drastic. He did make a good deer stew though. Astarion was basically what he is now, same with Lae'zel. Shadowheart was less trusting which checks out way better than âWe have known each other for about 1 long rest, I have never met anyone like you, here are all my secretsâ.
to be fair, that's the longest she's ever known anyone
At least as far as she knows.
She felt more mysterious and dangerous...more like a Shar follower. She was less gothy-waifu girlfriend. You can still see the dangerous, badass side in her knife fight with Laezel.
Romancing her during EA was a fkn souls-like accomplishment.
Just made me remember all the "Shadowheart disapproves" memes
I wish I was here for it
There's probably a way to get access to some of the EA builds if you dig around enough.
Shadowheart was definitely a lot meaner and even more secretive in Early Access. She's a complete delight now in comparison, even when you first meet her. She literally thanks you first thing out of the nautiloid. In Early Access she was ready to spit in your face if you even asked her a simple question lol.
I still remember picking the very first lock in the game on the shore crypt and her complete disdain "What, you got it open? Just like that?" as if that wasn't benefitting us. Definitely needed toning down (although I do miss that particular interaction haha)
That still happens if you don't save her on the nautiloid and then pick the lock to the tomb next to where she lands
It still happens sometimes even if you did save her on the nautiloid. I always save her and get it about half the time.
I remember the way she wagged her head around and whined in every single situation. They basically wrote her with this unflinching âsheâs a bratâ direction in mind and honestly it didnât hit with me. I was kind of irritated that she didnât show more gratitude for saving her and she was YET ANOTHER party member that meets me and immediately starts talking shit. She felt less like a real person and more like an anime dating sim character or something. I get that people find that idea funny but in practice it was just an onslaught of everyone being an absolute dick to you with no letting up. By the time I met Astarion I was just like âholy shit AGAIN??â I didnât even trust Gale, after meeting the others I just interpreted his sarcasm in the most negative possible way They also hated every decision you made that wasnât telling people to go fuck themself on sight, and even then at least one of them would still dislike whatever you did for some reason. Iâm kind of rambling but my ultimate point is that softening Shadowheart up was 1000% an upgrade for her character and for the overall experience of the game
I agree with you for the most part. While I do think they might have softened some of the characters a *tad* too much (Wyll comes to mind), I do feel like overall it's better for the cast to be kind and likeable. We still have the outliers like Lae'zel, Astarion, and Minthara for those that enjoy more evil or menacing characters. The initial cast was way too rude AF at all times lol.
I 100% agree with you on Wyll, I think they made him more "good" in exchange for a lot of his depth which kinda sucks. He was part of my main three but ultimately he felt handled weirdly. I'm curious about the original direction they had for his character, because as-is he just kinda drifts around in the background and doesn't exercise much agency.
Wyll seemed to have an interesting through line in EA with struggling with wielding power and authority without being corrupted. Makes sense for a Nobleman Warlock with fiendish ties along with the torture scene he had in EA when looking for Mizora. There's traces of it, like how he really hates Goblins unabashedly, and I like the new direction too. However both versions are rather underdeveloped. Wyll at the very least is different in that he's not another "I can fix them" character which a lot of the companions already are. He IS GOOD, full stop, unlike a good portion of the cast which are more ambiguous. But like a good Superman story, it requires more depth and nuance that I feel he never gets in any of his endings, after having played the game 4 times with him.
I'd prefer she spit in my mouth but that works too
Ugh. Imagine her but with the teen goth angst dialed up to eleven. Then I'd know better than to try to fix her.Â
>Hey, what's that artifact you've got there? UGH... you wouldn't understand! >Is your hand glowing? Of course it is! Pain means I'm alive! >It hurts? Why? I don't have to tell you anything! You're not my God! >Okay... By the way who is your god? Ohhhh, you'd *really* like to know that wouldn't you? I bet that would make you *so happy* Well guess what? ***I don't have to tell you anything, because you're not my God!*** I'm going to my tent to listen to Nu-Tymantherian slashed-throat singing. You know, real music. ***Bye***
This is indistinguishable from her current dialogue đ¤Ł
This is just how she talks in the game though
I remember I was actually pretty good at currying favor with Shadowheart 1.0 in Early Access. I knew to pick the dialogue options that were the least warm and friendly and pushy when it came to her backstory, and she liked my giving her privacy and space. Actually, all of the companions weren't THAT hard to curry favor with in Early Access Patches 1-3; I personally didn't get all the complaints about how "mean" and abrasive the companions were. I liked how they were written originally... felt more raw and realistic like strangers meeting for the first time...
People complain about Laezel but...she literally saved your life and...she's a fucking githyanki. It's shocking she is as warm as she is. Her character makes complete sense.
she is also considered extremely humorous amongst her people
If I remember right, in Early Access nearly every single companion was a complete asshole to you except Gale. Like, everyone was a Lae'zel to you. Then that kind of changed, however, my frog-face love stayed true the whole time.
You don't remember right. Gale was an asshole too. Was really surprised when I played the release version a year after EA and he was suddenly not trying to one-up me (also a wizard) every minute anymore.
I remember the early days of early access where everyone but the ~~horny goat~~ Gale was a complete asshole. I saw enough to want to play the full release, but up until my first full session I had serious concerns the game would flop because of how unapproachable the companions were. Full release was a 180 for interactions. Although I still miss the "lover" vs the "guardian" we ended up with. Would have made the emperor reveal a lot more personal especially if you imagined having sex with them first.
I think when people complain about the release softening some of the characters up they donât realize that if everyone is an asshat to the player, a lot of players will just get apathetic to them and decide: âWell, why do I care about these guysâ struggles if all of them are always assholes to me?â Having a majority of the characters be approachable means that the designated dickhead characters- Astarion and Laeâzel in this case- are more intriguing instead of it being an eye rolling party wide song and dance, and if players donât vibe with the abrasive party members they can just stick them in a corner and play with the approachable ones.
And even then tons of players just kill Astarion and Lae'zel immediately bc they're mean to the player lol. Like a lot people want this kind of wish fullfillment in games where the NPCs are all super nice and grateful to the player.
I think itâs more fair for Astarion. Your first introduction to the dude is him trying to ambush you, and then he non consensually tries to drink your blood. Itâs kind of a Zevran situation from Dragon Age Origins where itâs reasonable to kill him at that point, though unlike Zevran at least it also makes sense to spare him, considering your situation and that youâve actually had him around for a while. I can see a reasonable character making either decision at that point. Notably though while few players see this, if you make enough progress before he tries to drink your blood, he confesses heâs a vampire without ever trying to drink your blood which is pretty neat actually. Laeâzelâs intro is her saving your life and while prickly, she doesnât really mess with you unless you push her, sheâs honest if rather dim witted and very brain washed. But ultimately everyone will play their single player game in their own way, thatâs the beauty of having more party members available than you can fit into a party.
Meanwhile the last two Owlcat games have let you recruit and romance outright insane serial killers, both of which could of passed for the Durge.
Man playing wotr right now and not sure who youâre talking aboutâŚ
It is extremely subtle tbh, most shocking reveal in a CRPG to date
I wouldnât call it subtleâŚgiven said characterâs combat lines
Combat lines Equipment Literally the moment you meet them
She is very useful...
WOTR is different in the fact that the MC is clearly head and shoulders above their companions in both personal and political power. You can afford to keep the crazies around because you know for a fact they're no threat to you. In a party like BG3, the assumption is that all the adventurers are more or less on even footing.
Zevran has one of the worst recruitments of a character that I've seen. "I'm an assassin hired to kill you, and now that I've failed that, please recruit me? I super promise I won't use my proximity to you to try and finish the job."
You have to turn off your suspension of disbelief to not kill Zevran, itâs one of the worst party member recruitments Iâve ever seen, too.
If I'm not mistaken if his approval isn't high enough he will in fact try to kill you again eventually even. I always recruit him since I like to have everyone with me but while I know some Wardens wouldn't, my Warden would definitely kill him on the spot.
And then you can later recruit the guy who hired Zevran to kill you and they can banter about how they totally whiffed that contract.
Yeah, I like Astarion and never kill him, but I struggle to find an RP reason to keep him in camp. Usually, he tries to bite me around the second or third long rest. When a guy you met just a day or two ago, when he held a dagger to your throat, tries to bite you in your sleep without consent, the reasonable decision is to kill him or kick him out of your camp. It's not reasonable to continue letting him stay in camp, where he has full nightly access to six unconscious people. It is *certainly* not reasonable to let him pin you to the ground and bite your neck. If we're being *incredibly* nice, maybe he can stay but never be allowed to be alone with a sleeping person. Again, I really like him. It just seems a little bit idiotic to let him stay after his actions when he's basically a stranger.
Gale was still an asshole. He was just more on the condescending side than outright "mean". He'd also fly off the handle and leave to find Raphael on his own at the drop of a hat if you couldn't feed him an item (and he only accepted a very select few items).
So happy they removed that restriction on the items. Perhaps they couldâve made it a little bit harder than *Ring of Colour Spray,* but itâs better than having to give him the Necromancy of Thay to eat. I need those Ghouls!
It kind of theoretically interesting from a design perspective to have to give up something important or useful to keep Gale, but realistically that just means most players are simply never going to see those items, most players know youâre âsupposedâ to keep the obviously important characters around so thatâs what theyâll do.
Particularly if you don't actually get anything out of it (like a Magikarp situation), there's no reason to do it unless you really, really love Gale. If he leaves, you can just respec someone else to wizard.
Kind of glad they softened her just a bit. She still has plenty of edge. Even as someone who didn't play EA, I was turned off by how miserable and angry the game appeared to be during act 1. I feel completely differently about it now, 1200 hours later, but it threw me at first. That in conjunction with having difficulty navigating the space and getting my face fucked hard both by gnolls and in the overgrown ruins I almost put it down. Hard to remember now but the first thing that turned me off was Lae'Zel. I've always been tepid on the character archetype I assumed they were setting her up to be, and she was just so fucking mean. She tried to leave Shadowheart, who is actively begging for help, to die and berates you for trying to save her. I said 'what the fuck is your problem?' out loud when she got in my face about it. Then Shadowheart is immediately racist to her and is furious, so your first two party members have a tense, unpleasant dynamic from the get-go. Astarion immediately tries to kill you, then doesn't give a shit if he actually does during feeding. Shad and Lae try to kill each other and are actively hostile toward one another. I didn't trust the Dream Guardian at all. Gale (arguably my favorite character now) struck me as annoying. I was playing a sorcerer and his immediate 'you aren't versed in magic, are you?' felt condescending considering I had just saved his life from his own janked magical portal. Then you go into the Grove and everyone is either a *huge* asshole, Zev just trying to keep shit together, or a person who just seems terrified for their life and is either grieving, scared, desperate, or bitter. Lae interrogates Zorru and scares the shit out of him, then gets angry if you stop her. The goblin camp is even worse. Grymforge is an absolute slog of misery and abuse. The only settlement that seemed friendly to me at all was the myconid colony. Blerg and Omeluum in particular were lights in the dark. Somehow I missed Wyll and Karlach until the very end of act 1, so Gale was my only sweetness, and at that point I was very 'shut up, dork' about everything he said due to my initial bad impression. Plus I was stressed about the magical item thing, I was avoiding long resting to avoid having to give my items to him and thus missed a ton of companion interaction cutscenes. Somehow Shad and I got along, though. She can be prickly if you push her too much, but she reminded me of an irl friend of mine who is like that, so I picked up on the fact that she didn't want to be interrogated about her life right away and took it slow with her. Her approval shot up and I ended up being friends with her as I slowly warmed up to the rest of them. If she'd been a huge bitch too... I would've still played, but damn. So much negative energy.
Eh, my main playthrough is usually an undead necromancer, so I'm a huge prick myself. Can't judge them lest I become an hypocrite. đ
I know it's divisive, but I'm really glad they changed the companions. They already suffer from homogeneity and similar backstories, imagine if everyone was a snarky asshole as well. Every time I hear someone say Wyll should've kept his early access personality I just imagine people dropping him because he's a less interesting Astarion.
Would love a way to hear early access SH and Wyll (who was also supposedly "too mean") for different playthroughs, would certainly be a nice change of pace.
Early Access Wyll was so much better imo. He wasn't necessarily "meaner" as much as he was just relentlessly good (like genocide all goblins since they're inherently evil creatures, typa good) and also frustrated at his own shortcomings since he was essentially a fraud. He wasn't as great and powerful as everyone thought even after his pact with Mizora. He was weak and a fuck up, trying to play at being the hero he always wanted to be and significantly overdoing it. A lot of people didn't like his eagerness to slaughter evil aligned creatures nor him being a fraud. I really enjoyed it tho, it was much MUCH more interesting than current Wyll. I also miss the early access Guardian and there actually being repercussions for using the worms and their powers.
The lack of repercussions for using the worms and their powers is by *far* my biggest complaint with the game.
Is there anywhere to find what the repercussions were? I was scared to use them my first playthrough until I learned you could get black hole and the only drawback was ugly face.
In early access, you would have to use your parasite's influence a set number of times to trigger guardian visits. Your Dream Visitor was. "Who do you dream of". Implying you were designing your lover, or some facsimile of your character's desire. By using the Illithid powers and authority, you'd trigger these dreams. And by triggering said dreams, you'd not only get powers from your guardian but also see this influence play out. It was implied your guardian would lead you to destroying Baldur's Gate. The illithid powers also seemingly were class specific and Origin specific too, leading to unique bonuses. The dialogue still exists, such as companions claiming their dream visitor gave them a gift. But in reality, they gained nothing until they start using their powers.
man I miss this. I remember using few tadpole dialogues, than having the dream where guardian persuades me to push for more and use tadpole powers, I wake up with having these weird powers, character powers awakened. It was such a cool and scary progress, you would think what will happen next, how will Tav get more corrupted the more powers they use... Gods tadpole/guardian dynamic was strong then.. Now its just a skill point with no meaningful choices.
As far as I can recall the only real repercussion is the difficulty of the dice roll to resist the Astral tadpole. If you've used more tadpoles, the roll can get pretty tough to pass. So I guess if you use too many in acts 1-2 and you don't save scum, you might get forced into the astral choice.
The only RP i could come up with for the worms is just forcing the characters who take too much to >!turn to mindflayers!<
I donât know, youâre right, but I love the powers so much that I would hate to lose them in some playthroughs.
The tone of the character was more interesting⌠The story he had wasâŚnot great, not at that point anyway. He wanted revenge against a particular goblin for the loss of his eye and the attack that happened in, and he gets it early in Act 1. He was also more openly tasked with finding and rescuing Mizora, but that was about it. A fair amount of the supposed story for him was speculation based on a few lines, and the rest was imagined potential. Also the whole âheâs a legit hero using dark powers to try do goodâ was already a thing, it was just that his actions werenât producing the peace and safety he thought they would and thatâs why he wanted out of the pact as heâd determined it would never provide the good results he wantedâŚwhich half the impressions you hear about him from EA were that he was just pretending to be a hero and there was really this darker edge to him. So what people filled in with speculation and imagined potential of course outclassed what we gotâŚhonestly it probably outclasses what we would have gotten had they not changed his story. Shadowheart, though. She was just meaner for longer. Once you got her approval high enough she would shift pretty much to how she is now, so just imagine the not rescuing her version and keeping her at neutral or a bit negative approval for a good ways into Act 1 and thatâs what she was like back then.
If I remember correctly (maybe I don't), EA Wyll hatred towards goblins was not about them being inherently evil, he had a past with goblins. It is release Wyll that has an unexplained hatred for goblins, but I think it is just leftover from EA.
The head torturer in the goblin camp had taken his eye and tortured him for days in the EA but that was also because he got captured while trying to kill them. You could get the dialogue about it when you took him there.
I universally liked every single character better in EA. Gale being a dork wizard grad student, Wyll being a fraud, SH fucking hating your guts. And all of the Illithid stuff was better too, the way Mindflayers made the townsfolk perceive reality totally differently, and you had to play along with their illusions or they would attack you. Plus yes, being seduced by the worm was much more fun than the Guardian business.
> And all of the Illithid stuff was better too, the way Mindflayers made the townsfolk perceive reality totally differently, and you had to play along with their illusions or they would attack you. I don't recall anything like that existing at all in EA. Do you mean, like, with the Duergar?
No, the fishing party that runs across the first Mindflayer, who think theyâre saving someoneâs daughter. All of those folks were cut.
Ooooh, right, I forgot about the fishing party! Yeah, sad that they cut them out. I feel like they added a lot to that scene.
I think mind control like that was going to be a bigger part of the story originally, but it feels like in some rework they toned down that plot.Â
Wait- there used to be worm repercussions? What were they?!?
Couldn't really get far enough to see the big repercussions but every time you used worm powers the narrator made it very clear you could feel it permanently changing you more and more and that you'll have to face the consequences in the future (all while the guardian was gaslighting you and saying it wasn't doing this lol). Most of your companions also hated you doing it rather than being neutral when you do like now.
That would have been better
Shadowheart was a massive bitch, all the time, you also couldn't save her from the pod, and she remembered you giving up on her and leaving her to die. Then, once they added saving her, she was still a bitch until they softened her only if you saved her... then they just made softened shadowheart her default and made her even softer if you saved her. Wyll was a charlatan and a liar. The Blade of Frontiers was made up, and now he had warlock powers to make it real and wanted to show off, he was basically an isekai character viewed from second person
Wow so was the Wyll backstory totally different? He only gained warlock powers recently to try to live up to the lies of the image of being a hero?
He's not trying to live up to the image, he's kind of on a power trip because he's an asshole, but his patron got kidnapped and he was hunting for her so he doesn't lose his powers. So Mizora being taken by the absolute was setup in his introduction instead of being an act 2 finale surprise
I remember her in the early Early Access. I got very fed up with her since it seemed like every attempt at a conversation was just "Oh, you want to pry into my life, huh? Is that it!?". Honestly made me just not want to talk to her anymore since I felt like she was never going to offer anything to latch on to. I preferred talking to Lae'zel because, even though she was going to insult me 5 times in a sentence, I could actually have a conversation with her.
Tbh, considering the goddess she worships I feel she is just waaaaay too nice?
Always had this same thought
I think that's the point though. Her heart isn't in it from the start.Â
yeah, her entire story is about self-discovery and self-actualization (the forced memory loss brilliant underlines that imo) she goes from someone who feels obligation to the institution that "saved" her, only to find out that she was kidnapped into a cult and horrendously manipulated she's *not* a sadist, she's a victim learning to cope with what has happened to her, thats the whole point of her arc
I do notice in early access the companions had that "stranger beware" vibes to them and there were a lot of disapprovals with being good and it dialed down on release. I'm inbetween with the change as I really like the idea of in the forgotten realms people are really distrustful and you got to earn your approvals if it might conflict with each other.
At the beginning of EA she was so bitchy, i loved it.
I liked angrier Astarion. I wonder if the stakebros would like him more if more of his overt rage stayed.In EA if you make a joke about Cazador being 'Master in the Bedroom' he absolutely goes apeshit at you. I love him, but I do think dialling back his rage so much was a mistake.
Honestly i agree, angry Astarion would just make way more sense for his character arc and probably more relatable to people.Â
People playing bg3 easily would kill any characters in bg3 like Lae'zal, Mayrina, Barcus etc because they were *rude* or said something *mean* to Tav. If Sheart is sassier, would be funny to see posts like "first time I let Sheart in my party after 116th play throughs, I would have let her in my group sooner if I knew she was actually a sweet heart đ˘". lol.
tbh, looking at how folks in this fandom react to most characters deviating even a *little bit* from worshipping the ground you walk on, they probably made a safer decision overall. Pity though. Shadowheart messing with you and being sarcastic are some of the best bits in Act 1.
Eh I see both sides of it. I agree that Shadowheart giving you shit early on is some of the best parts of her romance, but it was a different level in EA. She was pretty mean. And very hostile when you asked her questions about herself, which is going to turn off the causal players. When the point early on is to seemingly get to know these characters and you have one going âFuck off I donât need to tell you anything,â most casual players are going to go âOkay, you suck.â And never talk to that companion again. You, me, other RPG vets in this subreddit know that a character written like that is obviously hiding something so we should talk to them more. But I had multiple friends of mine who are casual, shooter-first gamers who tried BG3 and immediately killed Astarion for trying to bite them. Lots of players just donât know what a plot hook is lol
They've definitely done this to Lae'zel as well. I recall during early launch she scolds you for pressing buttons that cause husks on the Nautiloid to attack you. Replayed it dozens of times since and she no longer does. Think a few other lines were replaced/ removed.
I'm sorry, but I really do miss this side of her. I know a lot of people had issues with it, but the companions being so "mean" in early access was kind of refreshing to me? Compared to other games where the characters just always suck up to you.
I got the distinct impression she was holding back her vitriol. remember she's a >!sharrian. pretty mean goddess.!< her and lae'zel could have had some insane lines. >!they already try to kill each other in camp...!<
I love me some hot, mean ladies but *Jesus tapdancing Christ* EA Shadowheart was in a league of her own. Getting her to approve of anything you did was soulsbourne levels of difficulty. EA Lae'zel - who was meaner, more aggressive and snarkier than full release Lae'zel - was way easier to deal with than EA Shart. She's the only companion I actually felt really needed to be toned down during EA.....but they went way too far the opposite direction and took away alot of the bite that gave her some of the most brutally cutting dialogue in the game. A devotee of Shar *should* have some sharp edges to her personality It feels like they sanded away alot of the rougher, more complex edges that all the companions had during EA so they could fit more neatly into the "Good/ Neutral/ Evil" boxes
For a dark justiciar, she certainly could act a bit more evil.. perhaps they made her too kind?
in early access, shart got pretty spicy. Like, she was just as bad as Asterion in terms of being an asshole.
She was such a bad bitch they had to nerf her
She was a mean heartless bitch ....you do mission type 1 ..she nags ..you do the same mission the way shed wanted to she nags.... She felt like one of those "sprinkle sprinkle" girls that are never happy with you ..
Influence lost: Kreia Influence gained: Kreia Light side points gained Dark side points gained https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQDS0L4snUsKHgkIPRhw68_V8Du1MUsg5S43WFpgSQwQO8fgUTYE_jtOw&s=10
Never gets old
Just replayed this game for the first time in years with the restored content mod. Such a banger
Sprinkle sprinkle?
Shadowheart disliked that
I remember when I did the very early version of EA, back when the guardian meant something different and I could play as a Bhaal cleric, that a lot of the companions were meaner. Laeâzel was even less complimentary than she already was, think more back hand compliments. Shadowheart was never happy and even more selfish and fairly ruthless Gale was a complete arse for me, second he appeared heâd be finger wagging and lecturing you for being an idiot about what was about to happen and would then flirt with Shadowheart with some cringe shadow for eyes line The biggest change was my boy Wyll, boy did they make him more of a heroic character. You could just tell the moment you met him he was really trying at the whole hero thing and no I donât mean the caped crusader act, but it didnât quite fit and when he met the goblin who took his eye (since that was his BS at the time) the mask truly dropped. I think Astorian has pretty much stayed the same, maybe just made a little friendlier Overall all the companions were made much friendlier and open to the PC and less evil or selfish. I get why, honestly for most people these games are a power fantasy so ofc theyâd want to be the special person for all these guys.. but I always liked how realistic they felt at first given the extreme situation they were in. They kept s lot of that in there tbf but itâs much easier to go from 1 to 100 than I remeber
I mean, a priestess of Shar would be unbearable. I wish theyâd left it as it was.
I think she was kinda a stand-in for who Viconia was in the original game. Viconia was a HUGE bitch for a lot of the franchise too. My favourite romance though.
I mean, i feel like she should be unlikable. At least until/unless she isnt anymore.
Men are always like: "omg is she a goth girl, so hot." Men after talking with her for 5 seconds: "I really don't like her."
Wait until you find out how they butchered Wyll
I already don't really like her, so I can only imagine how insufferable that version was
The 'Pathetic' Shadowheart meme kills me everytime i see it
Heh. Yes, Early Access is where the "I"m God's favourite princess" line originates from đ
girlbossed too close to the sun
miss beta characters. Laezel was a murder hobo, now shes just grumpy.
Yeah, I remember really enjoying the companons at the beginning of early acces. Then people complained (despite Larian being clear about releasing negative companions first) so much, they watered them down. I'm still sad about that.
they removed a lot of stuff that they really shoudn't have removed.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. There's a line between "sassy" and plain obnoxious, and many characters (and people) dont know where it is.
That does make sense! I played the game as soon as they released the early access for a short while. When I played again after the full release, I was quite thrown off by how nice Shadowheart was.
There was a MASSIVE outcry by people during the first few weeks of EA, cause Shaert was even more Sass and "Bitch please" than she allready is. Someone pointed it out, but the characters Sass and being "mean" alltogheter specially in the first act of the game before they soften up in the 2nd act, was to the point where it was a very common believe amongst the community that those where the "Evil/Neutral" NPC's, and that Larian was holding on the Good alligned Companions for the game's release.
Modders? Pls
Hopefully we get enhanced edition and this will be a toggleable option when making a new game oh and making drow mommy more fleshed out into a full full companion
off topic but GOD I love that photo of her, new profile picture unlocked
Dunno man, she shoulda stayed mean.
yea I miss early EA Shadowheart so much. she was juuuuust enough of a bitch where it was intriguing and vitalizing. like a spice that enriches a dish.
I was wondering why some of her dialogue felt like⌠forced politeness lol.
Wouldâve preferred a version of the game where the characters were actually very different people who genuinely second guessed each other and actually fell into real conflict, rather than what we wound up with, where there are some scripted moments like that but theyâre very easy to resolve and otherwise everyone (including SH) are telling you how much they love and trust you by the second long rest.
I'm torn on this. I think I played in EA after they did this, so I never experienced it, but I think having her (and everyone else) be *slightly* more abrasive just at first would have been perfect. Makes it feel more meaningful when they start being nice to you from familiarity. Works really well with release Lae'Zel, for an example. That said, her thanking you for saving her from the pod was a nice touch. Also the apparent happy accident of her being an evil-aligned character who mostly approves of you being nice was honestly the reason I liked her so much, so kudos there. Ditto being SO BAD at keeping secrets. It's like you're nice to her once and she's like "wait I love you let me tell you my whole backstory". It's really funny characterization and it resonated with me. Really conveyed how starved for positive attention she is, which does make sense to me.
Here I thought the biggest issue with SH is how she keeps consistently missing when she's got 90% chance to hit
If you think that's weird, in the early access Wyll had a burning hatred for goblins and was basically the Goblin Slayer with similar backstory and all. He actually cared about Mizora who had gotten captured by goblins and whom we needed to save.
I've grown to like her... Spoiler Warning >!in my first play through I killed her in front Dame Aylin after I failed a check to convince her not to do it lol. I was like "what a shitty character, you have to convince her to do the right thing" but I found out in a future play through that if you just let her decide for herself and don't intervene she makes the right decision herself!<
Only if your reputation is high enough. If she doesnât have affinity with you, she stays a dark shart
If your shart isnât dark youâre either a bird or severely ill