Shadowheart, the fan-favorite cleric from Baldur’s Gate 3, was originally a much more sassy character before being “heavily dialed down” due to internal feedback.
Shadowheart’s sassiness and hot temper are two of her most defining traits that make her one of the more popular Baldur’s Gate 3 romance options, but at some point in the game’s Early Access period, it sounds like she was downright mean. GamesRadar+ had the chance to attend a panel at the BAFTA’s: An Evening with Baldur’s Gate 3 event, and director Swen Vincke revealed a key insight about Shadowheart’s early character development.
“We thought Shadowheart, in the beginning when she was very sassy, she was great because our main thing was, we’re going to create a party of people who distrust each other and then they’re going to grow to trust each other.”
Vincke admitted that the writers went a little too far in their effort to make other party members distrustful of Shadowheart, recalling an instance in which another developer (likely lead writer Sarah Baylus but only their first name was used so I can’t confirm) saying “I really don’t like Shadowheart.”
The host of the panel then asked for clarification about whether Shadowheart’s sassiness has since been dialed down, and Vincke replied, “yeah, heavily dialed down.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 was in early access for about three years, and in that time Larian made a bunch of major changes for the final release, and plenty of those were based on player feedback. At one point during the panel, Vincke remembered early access players being vocal about certain elements they viewed as missteps.
“The players were telling us ‘this is a mistake, you shouldn’t be doing this, we are saying there’s 100 of us saying it now, in the future, it will be millions of us. So fix it now.'”
Personally, I just want an optional mode where you get to play through the game with all of Shadowheart’s unfiltered sass, although I’d frankly be afraid to see how her relationship with Lae’zel early on would play out in that universe.
Find out where Baldur’s Gate 3 ranked on our list of the best RPGs ever made.