Baldur’s Gate 3 was in early access for 3 years following its release in 2023, during which they received a lot of feedback from players, which helped them customize the game better to make it more appealing to the masses.
This customization process included dialing down Shadowheart’s sassiness and hot temper. These traits, though, are what make Shadowheart one of the more popular characters in the game; it should not be overlooked that she has gone through several levels of dialing down to achieve the right amount.
Larian heavily dialed down Shadowheart’s sass
Shadowheart was much more sassy and arrogant before and was heavily dialed down due to internal and external feedback suggesting it. During the game’s open access period, Larian made monumental changes for the final release after incorporating various players’ feedback.
During a panel discussion at the BAFTA’s An Evening with Baldur’s Gate 3 event, Swen Vincke, the director of the game, shed light on the response he got for Shadowheart’s unbearable mean behavior. He said:
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.
Vincke also revealed a key insight into the earlier development of Shadowheart. He said:
We thought Shadowheart, in the beginning when she was very sassy, she was great because our main thing was, we’re going to create a party of people who distrust each other and then they’re going to grow to trust each other.
Vincke’s mind was changed, and he accepted that writers took Shadowheart’s traits to an extreme after one of the lead writers pointed it out to him.
Larian’s open-access approach was a big hit
Larian had released Baldur’s Gate 3’s first act for open access three years before the game’s final release. During this period, they incorporated players’ feedback and made some major changes to fine-tune the game before its final release.
Larian’s open access lasted for three years, providing enough time for the team at Larian to reflect on their approach and receive unfiltered, objective criticism for the betterment of the game. The game was huge and took almost 7 years to finish.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was attempting something that had never been done before at such a large scale with a small team of just 100 people. The team poured their hearts into making Baldur’s Gate 3, and the labor of their love made Baldur’s Gate 3 one of the best games of 2023.
