Multi Baldur's Gate III
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Saw this fan edit lol all main characters of Baldur's Gate III are now bald lol:
saw this lol
Read If your MC has a mind reading power, MC can use it on possible waifu Tsundere elf ShadowHeart and discover that Shadowheart is indeed attracted to MC from the start despite her hiding it with her tsundere thing lmao
Read this tweet lol
Indeed they are listening to fans feedback well too. I hope the complete game will not disappoint especially regarding main waifu Shadowheart's story lol
Saw Shadowheart fanart
Shadowheart got a new fancy book:
Read more theories on Shadowheart's story based on the datamined Shadowheart's voice files:
The Cleric and healer is Shadowheart, a snarky Half-Elf on a sacred mission to reach Baldur's Gate for the glory of her goddess, Shar, who is considered Evil in-universe. Shadowheart is so devoted to Shar that she chose to suppress most of her memories, which she believes she will recover when she reaches her destination.
However, Patch Four came with a wealth of dataminable sound files, single sentences linked to the different companions. Some of these phrases are combat barks, while others express the characters' opinions on different objects and people. Others are clearly part of elaborate dialogue trees, waiting to be reassembled in future updates. At first glance, Shadowheart's lines were mostly barks, but surprisingly, some are incantations to Selûne, the Good-aligned Moon Maiden, and the sister and rival of Shar. In other words, Shadowheart can be heard praying to her goddess' greatest enemy.
The following datamined lines call Shadowheart's loyalties into question:
the Origin Characters have deep ties to Baldur's Gate 3's developing plot. The main beats of Act One (which is all that is available in early access) hint at a vast conspiracy to replace citizens and key political and religious figures with mind flayers -- an "invasion of the body snatchers" so to speak. This involves abducting a person, implanting them with a mind-flayer tadpole and then taking them to a special place to neutralize their powers and make them subservient.
This "special place" is Moonrise Tower, a religious hub that was devoted to Selûne. The starting area bears the markers of this focused worship. The name of the blighted village is "Moonhaven," the Druid Grove has many murals depicting the victory of Selûne over Shar a long time ago and the Owlbear's nest is a Selûne place of worship -- and it's the only one that remains intact (at least until the player character arrives).
Additionally, the goblins have set their camp over a desecrated temple of the Moon Maiden. However, the goblins didn't destroy these places -- Dark Justicars (Shar's Templars) did. Shadowheart is trying to follow their trail to get help, and this trail is leading her to Moonrise Towers.
There's also the matter of Shadowheart's lost memories. Why would her memories endanger her mission if she is as devoted to Shar as she believes? Could it be that she's able to draw on Selûne's waning power and that she might be the key to defeat the new Absolute -- or at least to force whoever is at Moonrise Towers to remove the party's tadpoles? Or could she be an avatar or a descendant of the goddess herself, which is not an unlikely event in the Baldur's Gate universe? In any case, these lines make Shadowheart's missing backstory all the more intriguing.
The Cleric and healer is Shadowheart, a snarky Half-Elf on a sacred mission to reach Baldur's Gate for the glory of her goddess, Shar, who is considered Evil in-universe. Shadowheart is so devoted to Shar that she chose to suppress most of her memories, which she believes she will recover when she reaches her destination.
However, Patch Four came with a wealth of dataminable sound files, single sentences linked to the different companions. Some of these phrases are combat barks, while others express the characters' opinions on different objects and people. Others are clearly part of elaborate dialogue trees, waiting to be reassembled in future updates. At first glance, Shadowheart's lines were mostly barks, but surprisingly, some are incantations to Selûne, the Good-aligned Moon Maiden, and the sister and rival of Shar. In other words, Shadowheart can be heard praying to her goddess' greatest enemy.
The following datamined lines call Shadowheart's loyalties into question:
the Origin Characters have deep ties to Baldur's Gate 3's developing plot. The main beats of Act One (which is all that is available in early access) hint at a vast conspiracy to replace citizens and key political and religious figures with mind flayers -- an "invasion of the body snatchers" so to speak. This involves abducting a person, implanting them with a mind-flayer tadpole and then taking them to a special place to neutralize their powers and make them subservient.
This "special place" is Moonrise Tower, a religious hub that was devoted to Selûne. The starting area bears the markers of this focused worship. The name of the blighted village is "Moonhaven," the Druid Grove has many murals depicting the victory of Selûne over Shar a long time ago and the Owlbear's nest is a Selûne place of worship -- and it's the only one that remains intact (at least until the player character arrives).
Additionally, the goblins have set their camp over a desecrated temple of the Moon Maiden. However, the goblins didn't destroy these places -- Dark Justicars (Shar's Templars) did. Shadowheart is trying to follow their trail to get help, and this trail is leading her to Moonrise Towers.
There's also the matter of Shadowheart's lost memories. Why would her memories endanger her mission if she is as devoted to Shar as she believes? Could it be that she's able to draw on Selûne's waning power and that she might be the key to defeat the new Absolute -- or at least to force whoever is at Moonrise Towers to remove the party's tadpoles? Or could she be an avatar or a descendant of the goddess herself, which is not an unlikely event in the Baldur's Gate universe? In any case, these lines make Shadowheart's missing backstory all the more intriguing.
PC gamer Dev Interview:
"I never expected us to be 400 people to make BG3," Vincke told me. "Nobody expected it. But it's literally what we needed to do it. We had a choice. There was a moment where we started understanding what we needed to do to make this game. We thought we understood. Then we actually really understood. And so we had two choices: we could scale it down, or we could scale ourselves up. And so we chose to scale ourselves up."
I asked Vincke where he thinks BG3 fits within the broader D&D landscape, in all its forms, and the answer came easily. "The benchmark incarnation of 5th Edition in a videogame," he said. "That's what we're trying to do. I think it's already very good, and it's still getting better."
The growth for Baldur's Gate 3 means Larian is nearly 10 times the size it was in 2014 making Original Sin, now spread across 7 studios around the world. Cinematics were a huge complicating factor that affected everything else in the game, even dramatically impacting the writing process. On Original Sin 2, the writers could tinker with text until essentially the last minute, thanks to an automated pipeline they built that would send new text straight to the recording studios for actors to record the next day. But that doesn't work when every dialogue scene is meticulously animated—writing has gone from one of the first steps in the process to one of the last.
"There are so many steps in between now, so many people that need to look at it," Vincke said. "Cinematic designers, cinematic animators, the casting director, lighting, VFX, SFX. So you don't just add a line like that anymore. You're very aware of your cinematic budget, the cost, and the waterfall that follows from it. We've had to reinvent ourselves, how we work… so that we can still iterate."
I asked Vincke if the growth is risky, thinking back to Larian dancing on the edge of bankruptcy to make Original Sin. Of course it is, he said. But based on Larian's track record with the Original Sin games, I also believed him when he said: "We've never been about the money."
"I guess a lot of people say that, but it's really about what we need to make this game. I would literally have a revolution inside of my company if I forced them to lower their aspirations, the things they want to do. They're really proud of Baldur's Gate 3. They really want to reach the ambition that they have, because they all played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 in their youth. This is a very important project for them. I'm happy we're doing it this way, because I think it deserves it, and we have the means of doing it because of the success of the previous games. I would not have wanted it to be a game that had to be scaled down."
Larian's currently working on Baldur's gate itself, building out the city, and also filling out D&D's spell library and implementing its remaining classes. Then there's time-consuming polish, which is why he announced that Baldur's Gate 3 won't be fully finished until 2023.
"This is a very specific niche of game where you have a lot of narrative with a lot of systems coming together," he said. "If your agency is [limited], you're guided down the routes, you're not gonna be happy when you're playing it. It breaks the entire thing. The problem is the only alternative is just, fuuuuck, you need to cover it all. But we figured it out, and we're doing it.
"There were really lots of easy cuts that we could've done. But then it wouldn't have been the game that it needs to be. We're not going to release it if it's not ready. It's going to be quite the thing, you know. When you go to the character creation and you can select all those classes, all those sub classes, and then you start that journey—knowing everything you can do on that journey, it's going to be quite the thing."
"I never expected us to be 400 people to make BG3," Vincke told me. "Nobody expected it. But it's literally what we needed to do it. We had a choice. There was a moment where we started understanding what we needed to do to make this game. We thought we understood. Then we actually really understood. And so we had two choices: we could scale it down, or we could scale ourselves up. And so we chose to scale ourselves up."
I asked Vincke where he thinks BG3 fits within the broader D&D landscape, in all its forms, and the answer came easily. "The benchmark incarnation of 5th Edition in a videogame," he said. "That's what we're trying to do. I think it's already very good, and it's still getting better."
The growth for Baldur's Gate 3 means Larian is nearly 10 times the size it was in 2014 making Original Sin, now spread across 7 studios around the world. Cinematics were a huge complicating factor that affected everything else in the game, even dramatically impacting the writing process. On Original Sin 2, the writers could tinker with text until essentially the last minute, thanks to an automated pipeline they built that would send new text straight to the recording studios for actors to record the next day. But that doesn't work when every dialogue scene is meticulously animated—writing has gone from one of the first steps in the process to one of the last.
"There are so many steps in between now, so many people that need to look at it," Vincke said. "Cinematic designers, cinematic animators, the casting director, lighting, VFX, SFX. So you don't just add a line like that anymore. You're very aware of your cinematic budget, the cost, and the waterfall that follows from it. We've had to reinvent ourselves, how we work… so that we can still iterate."
I asked Vincke if the growth is risky, thinking back to Larian dancing on the edge of bankruptcy to make Original Sin. Of course it is, he said. But based on Larian's track record with the Original Sin games, I also believed him when he said: "We've never been about the money."
"I guess a lot of people say that, but it's really about what we need to make this game. I would literally have a revolution inside of my company if I forced them to lower their aspirations, the things they want to do. They're really proud of Baldur's Gate 3. They really want to reach the ambition that they have, because they all played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 in their youth. This is a very important project for them. I'm happy we're doing it this way, because I think it deserves it, and we have the means of doing it because of the success of the previous games. I would not have wanted it to be a game that had to be scaled down."
Larian's currently working on Baldur's gate itself, building out the city, and also filling out D&D's spell library and implementing its remaining classes. Then there's time-consuming polish, which is why he announced that Baldur's Gate 3 won't be fully finished until 2023.
"This is a very specific niche of game where you have a lot of narrative with a lot of systems coming together," he said. "If your agency is [limited], you're guided down the routes, you're not gonna be happy when you're playing it. It breaks the entire thing. The problem is the only alternative is just, fuuuuck, you need to cover it all. But we figured it out, and we're doing it.
"There were really lots of easy cuts that we could've done. But then it wouldn't have been the game that it needs to be. We're not going to release it if it's not ready. It's going to be quite the thing, you know. When you go to the character creation and you can select all those classes, all those sub classes, and then you start that journey—knowing everything you can do on that journey, it's going to be quite the thing."
Gnome will be a playable race in the game:
They tweeted Shadowheart fanart: