Summary
With the sheer amount of content inBaldur’s Gate 3, we can only imagine all the instances that didn’t make it into the game. We’re still coming across never-before-seen content from the game almost two years later, but the devs initially had so many ideas that the cut content would make for a great ‘what if’ series.
We’ve already heard about thedevs' original plans to have Halsin kill Isobel. And, while that was a revelation to fans, this next one is much closer to home. Some recently datamined animation that never made it to the game shows Astarion murdering Shadowheart in cold blood. Two of the community’s darlings going up against each other would have caused a major rift for sure.
There Were Plans For Astarion To Kill Shadowheart In Baldur’s Gate 3
In the datamined footage, shared byExtension-Sun-7794on Reddit, we see Astration sneakily approach a sleeping Shadowheart in camp. Upon trying to bite her, Shadowheart wakes up with a start, after which Astarion knocks her down and strangles her to death. It’s truly a brutal scene, especially since it features our favorite rogue and cleric.
“If this actually had happened in the game then I imagine 75% of the playerbase would be killing Astarion immediately,” said one comment. And, by the number of upvotes I imagine they are right. As for what the animation could have possibly been created for, some player theorize it was originally for an Astarion origin run.
“It looks like it could have been part of Origin Astarion’s bite night? If you fail your stealth check in the full release of the game, your victim wakes up and angrily confronts you about it,” guessed one of the comments. “Maybe they originally planned to have an option to kill your victim to silence them?”
It seems there were a lot of initial plans to have Shadowheart killed, as OP revealed. “There’s also a cut set of animations where the Dark Urge kills Shadowheart during her swimming scene in Act 3, but people are already getting incredibly mad at me for posting this Astarion scene, so I probably won’t post it. I imagine naked Shadowheart getting killed will go over even worse than this.”
