(SPOILERS WARNING) BG3 Cut Content - Upper City Sisters.. Not Like This..

[Shillitron]

Source: (Some autist on Steam)
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1086940/ ... 885064204/


TL;DR - Act 3 was gutted and it shows. Don't believe Rusty shilling.


---

1) The Upper City - The most obvious one. Swen himself talked about the "Affluent Upper City" just 2 weeks before launch and described as it being fully explorable and yet it's very noticeably absent from the final game.

2) Shar Worship - In EA the player was able to select Shar as a diety which game with it's own unique dialogue trees, especially when interacting with Shadowheart as a fellow Shar worshiper. Despite the fact that voice lines were datamined indicating this had functions well into Act 2, it was cut when the game launched.

3) Karlach's Ending - Datamined content shows that not only did Karlach have a full ending where her infernal engine was fixed and that she survived, but that most of it was fully voiced and complete. However it required triggers from the Upper City portion of Baldur's Gate and when that was cut, so was Karlach's Act 3 storyline. What we have behind have been confirmed to be Karlach's "fail state" endings which were meant to only play if the player neglected her quest chain.

4) Minthara's Story - Minthara was meant to have a much deeper story, including a pregnancy. These were likely cut due to Minthara being a late stage addition to our roster but dialogue lines remain in the games files that show that not only did Minthara have a lot more content for herself but your other companions had a lot more to say about it.

5) Halsin's Story - Another late addition to the roster, Halsin was originally intended to have a great deal more endgame content involving the Druid circle, but this appears to have been cut more early on than some of the other items thus far.

6) Raphael the Merchant - Originally Raphael was meant to be a fully viable option to remove your tadpole, in fact the "Soul Coin" items that you collect in game where originally meant to be a powerful alternative currency accepted only by Raphael in exchange for possibly retrieving your soul as well as a long list of incredibly powerful artifacts from the House of Hope that would be sold by Raphael himself.

7) Avernus - An entire area of the game. Avernus was meant to be fully explorable and of similar size to the Underdark Area of Act 1. It would be a source not only for Soul Coins but other rare materials, highly difficult fights, and special content for Karlach.

8) Tav the Dark Urge - A lot of people were both surprised and excited to see the addition of The Dark Urge origin as the Bhaalspawn/Evil option that was missing from EA. As it turns out, Tav was originally the Dark Urge and they were all one origin. Tav was meant to be Bhaalspawn and separating the two seems to be what caused the narrative divide between the Dead Three storyline and the Mindflayer plot.

9) Omeluum's Ring - In the EA version of the game this ring would block your Tadpole entirely. It could not grow, it could not grow stronger, and you could not use Illithid powers. In the launch version this ring prevents you from being charmed despite Omeluum still stating that it blocked the influence of the Elder Brain/Absolute.

10) Bhaal and Orin versus the Creche - An entire Act 2 battle was cut in which Bhaal's forces, led by Orin, attacked the Githyanki creche which led to a fight where you either sided with one or the other or had a massive 3-way fight on your hands.

11) Orin and the Dragon - Orin was meant to corrupt a Githyank red dragon, leading to a boss fight against a Slayer-formesque Dragon.

12) The Hag Coven in Act 2 and 3 - You may notice that accepting Auntie Ethels help in the first Act can lead to a negative effect when fighting Hags. You may also notice that despite Auntie Ethel having letters from other Hags in her basement, she is the only one you encounter. Originally there was meant to be a full three act story involving the Hag coven including the mysterious "M" who seems to have been their leader.

13) Epilogues - Full epilogue cutscenes have been datamined that varied greatly depending on your choices. These were the "17K ending variations" that Larian told us about, yet they are completely absent in the final game leading only to a fade to black scene at the end of the game.

14) Cazador's Story - Originally Cazador was meant to play a huge role in the Upper City of Baldur's Gate, including being a huge political power. Datamined content also shows that originally he was meant to be a potential ally in the final push against the Absolute.

15) Banite Cultists - The game features both Bhaal and Myrkul cultists rather heavily but Bane is reduced to Gortash alone. Despite the fact that they had full and finished assets for both armor, weapons, and some events the Banites were cut from the final game.

16) Act 1 Minsc - Minsc was meant to be recruited at the end of Act 1 but was cut and pushed back into the later game.

17) Dialogue and Events - Even from Act 1 itself, thousands of lines of dialogue and companion events were cut from the final game. Some of them were even fully voiced and ready to be implemented in game but also referenced other content that ended up on the cutting room floor.

18) Bhaal, Myrkul and Bane as Deities - Cleric's were meant to be fully able to select the Dead Three from the list of Deities. There were even special dialogues in game for player's who played as a Paladin and then multiclassed at least 1 level of Cleric on top and selected one of the Dead Three.

19) Daisy - It's not a secret that Daisy was cut from the game after the last EA release and replaced with "The Guardian." Originally Daisy was representative of the tadpole in your head, not the Emperor, and would attempt to seduce your character into staying in the meadow by the river with her forever. A happy life with an imaginary dream lover while your body underwent ceramorphosis and was lost to you forever. Daisy was such an important part of the plot that both of the games theme songs "Down by The River" and "The Power" are based entirely upon Daisy. Datamined content also shows there was originally an ending where players would embrace a romance with Daisy and give themselves over to the parasite, forever leaving their individual consciousness "down by the river" with Daisy.

20) Companions and the Illithid Worm - Originally companions were meant to accept or refuse Illithid gifts independently of the player choices. You could of course influence them through dialogue to decide who did and did not take the offered gifts, but ultimately it would be based on individual characters choices. This can still be seen in game as a bug when companions will awake after a long rest and claim to have received a gift from their Guardian and yet will have gained no actual power.

21) Romancing Jaheira - Apparently you were originally meant to have limited options to romance and sleep with Jaheira but these were cut last minute. It's unclear why.

22) Tadpole's and Consequences - There were originally meant to be severe consequences from using the Illithid powers too heavily and investing too much into the Tadpole powers. This seems obvious in game and yet ultimately in the release version goes nowhere as the ending is reduced to about 4 choices made in the last leg of the game. You can use all tadpoles or none and receive the same ending.

23) Act 3 Companion Dialogue - If you've noticed that companions have much less to say at the end of their journey it's because thousands of lines of dialogue were cut from companions in the final Act and all for various reasons. This also seems to be the source of most of the companion bugs that only appear in the final act as they're still trying to trigger events that simply no longer exist.

24) Multiple Cutscenes - There are multiple cutscenes that were present for Act 1 that are missing from the final game.

25) The Nautolid - A large portion of the Nautolid tutorial zone was cut in the final release, including cutscenes, dialogue, areas, and an optional fight with 2 injured Imps. This was likely cut for the sake of brevity more than anything.

26) Mol and Raphael - Isn't it odd how Mol will just escape from Raphael on her own and say it was "easy?" Well it turns out that's because they cut whatever the final leg of that quest was meant to be, instead they allow Mol to escape on her own which more or less skips to the end and around the cut content.

27) The Raven Queen - There was an entire second part of the storyline that was cut early on.

28) The Voice of Bane - It's possible to have a brief conversation with Bane, but it remains incomplete as the dialogue is unvoiced for some reason.

29) The Wither's Epilogue - WIther's was meant to narrate an epilogue for the players, to what extent is unsure but instead WIther's is left with a single event in the entire game when post-credit's he can be seen revealing himself as Jergal and mocking a mural of the Dead Three.

30) Crafting - An early access build contained a crafting bench and it seems originally we were meant to have full access to crafting/enchanting gear of our own through certain systems. While these were cut, the items for them were not. This is why items like ingots, gemstones, woods, and other material items appear in game with no use other than vendor trash.


--


31) Helia - The Halfling Werewolf that I sadly forgot was cut from the game.

32) Belts - There is an item slot in game for belts, not a single belt is present in the game as an item.

33) Exhaustion - A 6 Tier debuff for player exhaustion was found in the game after players noted a Bluejay with the debuff/status effect exhausted. This was meant to be a system in place force players to rest more often but was removed despite being left over in an Act 2 portion of the game. This also explains the constant comments from the PC like "I'm exhausted, I need a good long rest."

More here: https://www.dexerto.com/baldurs-gate/ba ... d-2259641/

34) Dragonborn Guardian - Larians last race to be added is the only race who is not available as a Guardian due to time constraints.

[Shillitron]

Before the shills swarm.. most of these things are verifiable in the game files + there are actually ways in the current copy of the game to teleport yourself up to parts of the cut upper city location.

I haven't tried myself but was meaning to try, saw the topic on /v/.

[rusty_shackleford]

Sometimes content just gets cut because it wasn't good. Great example is that one awful kotor2 mod I can't remember right now but @Roguey might.
Upper city 'missing' is definitely content cut due to time tho. Worth remembering they lost their #2 studio mid-development.

[Shillitron]

Sometimes content just gets cut because it wasn't good. Great example is that one awful kotor2 mod I can't remember right now but @Roguey might.
Upper city 'missing' is definitely content cut due to time tho.

Some of these were nitpicking, granted.. and them cutting the nautilus in half was objectively a good call.
But Upper City being gutted and all the content that died with it .. is objectively bad.

Read the list.. a lot of these are fully dev completed and were cut only because they needed Upper City to work.. fuck that. You're coping if you defend it.

[rusty_shackleford]

But Upper City being gutted and all the content that died with it .. is objectively bad.

Possibly.

My theory is that it was cut because they decided to make act 3 'seamless'. Adding another area on top of that was just causing too many issues, and a lot of this is related to them making that decision. My evidence? One of the patch notes mentioned players being unable to load savefiles that grew too big.

[Shillitron]

But Upper City being gutted and all the content that died with it .. is objectively bad.

Possibly.

My theory is that it was cut because they decided to make act 3 'seamless'. Adding another area on top of that was just causing too many issues, and a lot of this is related to them making that decision. My evidence? One of the patch notes mentioned players being unable to load savefiles that grew too big.

"Swen himself talked about the "Affluent Upper City" just 2 weeks before launch and described as it being fully explorable and yet it's very noticeably absent from the final game."


I remember this trailer actually.. your post sort of flies in the face of their marketing. "Save Files Too Big" is a reason to push the deadline, not gut half a city.

[rusty_shackleford]

But Upper City being gutted and all the content that died with it .. is objectively bad.

Possibly.

My theory is that it was cut because they decided to make act 3 'seamless'. Adding another area on top of that was just causing too many issues, and a lot of this is related to them making that decision. My evidence? One of the patch notes mentioned players being unable to load savefiles that grew too big.

"Swen himself talked about the "Affluent Upper City" just 2 weeks before launch and described as it being fully explorable and yet it's very noticeably absent from the final game."


I remember this trailer actually.. your post sort of flies in the face of their marketing.

I don't see how it wouldn't fit. They could have realized they couldn't make it work and had to rapidly cut it out before release due to crashes. Good news is that it will almost guaranteed be returning in an upcoming patch.

[Shillitron]

Possibly.

My theory is that it was cut because they decided to make act 3 'seamless'. Adding another area on top of that was just causing too many issues, and a lot of this is related to them making that decision. My evidence? One of the patch notes mentioned players being unable to load savefiles that grew too big.

"Swen himself talked about the "Affluent Upper City" just 2 weeks before launch and described as it being fully explorable and yet it's very noticeably absent from the final game."


I remember this trailer actually.. your post sort of flies in the face of their marketing.

I don't see how it wouldn't fit. They could have realized they couldn't make it work and had to rapidly cut it out before release due to crashes. Good news is that it will almost guaranteed be returning in an upcoming patch.

Imagine submitting a bug fix that mandates you gut 1/4th of the game 2 weeks before release.

"Swen I fixed the save bug.. just needed to delete half of baldurs gate"

"Good work!"

[rusty_shackleford]

"Swen himself talked about the "Affluent Upper City" just 2 weeks before launch and described as it being fully explorable and yet it's very noticeably absent from the final game."


I remember this trailer actually.. your post sort of flies in the face of their marketing.

I don't see how it wouldn't fit. They could have realized they couldn't make it work and had to rapidly cut it out before release due to crashes. Good news is that it will almost guaranteed be returning in an upcoming patch.

Imagine submitting a bug fix that mandates you gut 1/4th of the game 2 weeks before release.

"Swen I fixed the save bug.. just needed to delete half of baldurs gate"

"Good work!"

When you have hard deadlines sometimes you have to make drastic decisions.

[Shillitron]

I don't see how it wouldn't fit. They could have realized they couldn't make it work and had to rapidly cut it out before release due to crashes. Good news is that it will almost guaranteed be returning in an upcoming patch.

Imagine submitting a bug fix that mandates you gut 1/4th of the game 2 weeks before release.

"Swen I fixed the save bug.. just needed to delete half of baldurs gate"

"Good work!"

When you have hard deadlines sometimes you have to make drastic decisions.

In most industries, going to your customer and saying "You know that stuff I was promising you? I deleted half of it to make this deadline"

> Just Game Development Things

[BLofbr]

Not to be dumb... but the Cut Content is what makes the game totally lame and fucking faggot lame,all these things sound more dnd than what we got. Also in the Early Access there was Scenes i didnt see in live version, it was 100% diffrent, Tadpoles had somekind of Consequences. Most of these things would hade made the Story much more interesting.

Maybe its stupid of me to revive a old thread. Ops.

Okay last Edit I very hope but i find this

Lockpicking wasnt a Dice move,




Stranded fishers helping a Mind flayer

[Anon]

Lockpicking wasnt a Dice move,

That's a personal complainment I have about the game btw, too many dice interfaces. I'm burned out of looking at that crap already. Pretty sure I've wasted at least one accumulated hour of gameplay just dealing with the annoying dice interface, already considering I skip the dice animation every single time.

But anyway, let's hope these content can be restored when they release definitive edition with modding tools.

[BLofbr]

Another useless Animation done By LARIANfags, in EA you didnt pull him out of the faggotportal, but he teleport himself out of it.

More uncessary changes, Astarion doenst run in a faggot ninja stance ingame when in combat lol.

[TKVNC]

I wonder if it will be possible to re-add this when the modding tools get released.

Probably not. But whatever.

[Statesman]

I wonder if it will be possible to re-add this when the modding tools get released.

Probably not. But whatever.

I wouldn't be surprised if BG3 gets an Unfinished Business-style mod eventually...but official mod tools from Larian is wishful thinking at this point.