Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game that seemingly allows every moral gray area one wants to explore through their gameplay decisions. The various companions in the game can also exhibit heroic to cruel actions. However, a cut scene uncovered by a dataminer is not well-received by players due to its dark theme.
What does the scene entail? While sifting through cut content from Baldur’s Gate 3, the author of the Reddit post stumbled upon a deleted scene that was removed from the game. It shows Astarion attempting to sneak up on Shadowheart. A scene that resembles the final version of the game where the vampire attempts to drink the player’s blood at night.
In the version of the finished game, you can confront him, voluntarily offer him your blood, or kill him outright. However, the dataminer’s scene with Shadowheart showcases another variant that puts the beloved vampire in a different light. He pushes Shadowheart to the ground and begins to choke her until she eventually lies lifeless on the floor. This causes discomfort among many players.
Here is the trailer for Baldur’s Gate 3:
Fans agree that the scene was rightly removed
What is the reaction to the dataminer’s find? The community’s reaction under the Reddit post is quite unanimous. While the game offers various opportunities for cruel behavior and even several truly evil endings, the presented scene seems to put the beloved companion in an uncomfortable light for some players. Especially because the scene might just be too realistic:
- Wakez11’s comment with the most upvotes under the post states: “I can imagine that 75% of players would have killed Astarion immediately if that had really happened in the game, haha.”
- Yeetles1 thinks: “I like Astarion, but if they had kept this animation in the game, I would have killed him immediately. That’s really terrible.”
- CombinationSimilar50 says: “My God, that’s really dark. (…) This particular animation has something that just feels too … real? Durge (Dark Urge) is already evil, but this here reminds me way too much of something that happens in real life.”
- Sinkrast explains: “That’s because the scene has an eerily ‘realistic’ harshness. There’s no excessive blood, no magic, no demons, and no fancy stuff. It’s a man sneaking up on a sleeping woman and then choking her as she fights for her life.”
In what context does the scene stand? Some players and the original author of the post believe that the scene was originally specifically created for an origin campaign as Astarion. After a failed stealth roll by the vampire, his victim might wake up and become hostile towards him.
A commentator (Hyperspace_Towel) wonders whether Larian initially planned to include an option to kill the victim to silence them. However, there is no evidence for this. The dataminer can only hypothesize about the exact timing of the scene. Yet the proximity to the final scene in the game is quite evident.
Even a year and a half after the release in 2023, players continue to discover hidden content in Baldur’s Gate 3 that can surprise even hardcore fans. Besides the little surprises within the game itself, many cut contents also offer new insights and discussion material about the game’s development, as the dataminer demonstrated with their post. Another player already showcased a huge iceberg of this deleted content, revealing more secrets of the game: Player shows the huge iceberg of content that never made it into Baldur’s Gate 3
