“She Started Out As Jason Bourne” – BG3’s Shadowheart’s Sassiness Needed Pulled Back To Be Likable

Highlights

Shadowheart’s early access version was too mean and had to be toned down to avoid player backlash and improve overall party dynamics.
Larian Studios initially designed her to be like Jason Bourne, but realized they had created a party that nobody liked due to their distrustful nature.
Despite some players finding her sassiness to be a mistake, others, like myself, appreciated her unfiltered and blunt interactions, making her a favorite character.

It’s hard not to love Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Shadowheart. Her sassy attitude, understandable trauma, and cold-as-steel approach have won the hearts of many fans throughout Larian’s stellar fantastical narrative. One of Shadowheart’s best traits comes from her ability to always share her hot takes without care and unflappable passions, but it seems as though she was a little too much in her early access days.

Shadowheart‘s ability to trust you in Baldur’s Gate 3 can be an endeavor in itself, but she was initially much worse and needed to be “dialed back” so that her main mission could shine, and also so players didn’t hate all party members.

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Shadowheart Was Once Even Meaner

Talking to IGN, Larian Studios’ head Swen Vincke gave readers a little more insight into Shadowheart’s development process and how they had initially pitched her to be the Jason Bourne of Baldur’s Gate 3. Vincke said that at the beginning, all the party members were designed to be very unsure of anyone they met, but soon, the studio realized that they had created a group that wasn’t particularly liked.

“Originally the very idea was you met a bunch of party members that had absolutely no reason to trust you, but plenty of reasons to distrust you. And we went a little bit too strong on that, which is hard. Because we ended up with a party that everybody hated.”

Shadowheart too had to be dialed back as she was just a little too mean, so to make sure her storyline regarding her trauma and Shar was the main important focus, Larian “dumbed her down a little bit.” “She started out as a Jason Bourne, that was her original pitch, actually. And that evolved a little bit, but essentially, she’s a character that gets to make a very, very powerful choice when she meets Nightsong in the middle of Act 2, and that’s a very big moment for her. So I felt that was pulled up quite well.” said Vincke.

During a panel at the BAFTA’s: An Evening with Baldur’s Gate 3 event where Vincke was speaking about all things BG3, GamesRadar noted that he discussed how, during early access, Shadowheart’s sassiness was the topic of some heated conversations among player feedback. “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.'”

I personally loved Shadowheart’s unfiltered and blunt as they come interactions. Not only did they make me laugh, but it also made me grow even fonder of this cold yet misunderstood Half-Elf Cleric who absolutely became my favorite character from the game because of these qualities. I’d be more than happy to play through the entirety of Baldur’s Gate 3 with an even meaner Shadowheart – new mod anyone?