Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General shadowheart in patch 5

The problem with Shadowheart and the reason why many people find her annoying is a combination of two factors. Firstly, her preferences while sensible from RP perspective are contrarian to how people play RPGs. Shadowheart doesn't want you being too active amd exploring content: she doesn't want you to ask questions and learn about her or the artifact, she doesn't want you talking about tadpole with Ethel, she doesn't want to open the doors to the barn where Ogre and Hobgoblin are having fun, she doesn't want you to open Selunties chest, etc. People usually play RPGs to find challenges and overcome them, Shadowheart wants to evade those conflicts and ignore them, which basically means she wants you to ignore lots of content. Secondly, she is vocal about what she wants and thinks. For example, Laezel only wants to find githyanki creche, but Laezel isn't nagging and whining too much when you do other quests, she only occasionaly reminds you that you are wasting time from her point of view, while Shadowheart is constantly giving advices and directions and is visibly annoyed when you ignore her.

Shadowheart isn't a "tsundere goth emo girl", Lae'zel is. Shadowheart just has an anti-fun personality. You can become best friends very fast, if you playstyle matches her personality, but for many players it doesn't and that's the root of the problem.

Just want to second Alyssa_Fox's point above that in my first run through of Patch 5 Shadowheart really liked my MC from about the 3rd dialogue. It just depends what you do, what you say, and if you pry you need to make sure you are going to pass whatever check it throws at you.

Seriously? Why should I (in game) care about any of this if I'm a good-aligned person? If you're a priestess of Shar, by definition you are NOT a decent person.

Let me ask you this. What if the game allowed my PC to say to SH: "Your so-called goddess is an insane psychopath whore, and if I ever get the chance to lop her head off I would do it gleefully." What would SH's reaction be? What would my PC's subsequent relationship with SH be?

If you are even a mildly good-oriented PC, and you are ROLEPLAYING your PC properly (which is to say, true to the nature and lore of the setting within which your PC exists), SH should not be "savable" or "redeemable" simply because she should not be in your party in the first place. In fact, it may even be the case that she would be dead.

I have to admit that I'm a bit of mixed mind that eventually I'll probably have to pry on that artefact to get the full story. I haven't yet because I don't want to play the irritating person that takes "What's this?" as their personal theme song. I'd much rather have it that, yeah, you could poke and pry, but you could also just build up trust with her and eventually she'd come to you with concerns or issues. Then again, I haven't done too much, so maybe she does do that eventually.

What? I'm pretty sure you lose Rep with Lae'zel by doing anything that doesn't involve murderhoboing or telling people to piss off. She's just as much of a pain in being anti-content as Shadowheart. The only difference is Lae'zel is more interesting. The sniping about noses was great and was pretty endearing.

There is a difference between just losing influence and losing influence in addition to having your companion berate you or make a snarky comment about your "incompetence". Laezel is vocal sometimes, but on average she is less vocal about your actions compared to Shadowheart.

Eh. A lot of gods encourage seeking to redeem/save people from situations like this. Eilistrae followers are all about that sort of thing. And Selune and Shar have a long history of luring each other's worshippers away in setting.

Shar also has a long history of drawing followers by seriously misrepresenting her motives and intentions. Or her identity for that matter. So Sharites that pure victims/puppets are also not unheard of.

If she was upfront about being a Sharite and being directly hostile that would be one thing. An LN Helmite zealot would probably go full inquisition on hearing it but in this case she's being understandably standoffish and doesn't admit "I serve Shar" until much later which means you get a chance to see that she's really not very in line with Sharite principles. So if we the player didn't know ahead of time my response would be "what the hell are you doing with that abusive predator? Girl, your employer is bad. Get out of that job."

I'll be honest, i think the whole Shar thing is going to be the predictable 'haunted past i was forced into but im really just a person that wants to be loved' cliche, but i'm fine with that if they continue to make her more pleasant to be around. I have no interest in having to pass a dozen skill checks just to find out that yes, all those shar icons on my outfit do indeed mean that I'm a follower of shar and i'm glad you don't care and if i don't pass those checks i get treated like a piece of shit for daring to try to get to know her.

Patch 5 is a step in the right direction as far as i'm concerned

There's just too much of it. There is too much of it everywhere. She really looks more like the main character than Tav or anyone else lol. I know that in DOS2 Fane was important for the plot, but it has never been felt as strongly as here.

Oh yeah. D&D crpgs tend to hold tight to tropes and I don't expect any more. I was always a bit annoyed that we're just forced to leave her trapped until now. I didn't begrudge her attitude in light of that. And a lot of her critical dialogue was very much "are you crazy? That's such a big risk!" By comparison I get quickly tired of Lae'zel snarling and going on about the superiority of the githyanki. I'm interested in her story yes. But she's not a priority for me.

I'd like Alfira, Shadowheart, and that wounded teifling the cultists want you to kill over her.

But most of that is personal taste.

I expect that they'll work on this on a character by character basis. And yeah she's a protagonist design specifically because she's an option to choose as your main character. All the companions are going to end up with the same treatment.

Duplicate.

My final opinion and suggestion on the matter: They should keep her as a relatively unlikable character throughout act 1, with some dialogues suggesting there's another person there and the personality could be different. So no major character changes early on.

Then in the next act (or when her content is being addressed) have it begin to influence her character. She doubles down on Shar and becomes a crueler, or darker character OR becomes a lighter, nicer character.

Essentially a neutral character that can be influenced into a good or evil alignment. Other characters should have similar content. Could also reflect in ending slides.

Xoti in Deadfire comes to mind, it's also something in Pathfinder too. Having an influence on their development is major [for me] in RPGs, but they shouldn't become some dependent personality that can't function without the PC.

@Nyloth Isn't she the most popular companion? They could just be trying to "fix" her character first. I sincerely hope the rest of the cast gets similar effort and development time though. Those numbers are telling.

Okay. Good. This is now getting somewhere. So you say this to her, and then what? What might her response be, do you think? A "nice girl/decent person" response, or something else entirely? I have my own answer. What is yours?

I totally agree, and have been saying/predicting this from Day 1. But unlike you, I am very strongly not okay with it. This is exactly the kind of trite, pathetic, superficial cliche in cRPGs that really grates on me.

Yup. Me thinks SH is the true protagonist of the game (prolly the lead writer's beloved character or some such). Our PC is a completely irrelevant and pointless schmuck just along for the ride.

I despised shadowheart for a lot of reasons. Chief among them being that I had to go very much out of my way to stay on her good side and frankly it was a pain in the ass trying to do so. Had to make choices and dialogue options that just did not fit me in the slightest and re-load every time I ticked her off. Even Lae'zel (the scary lady that routinely says she'll kill me) is somehow nicer, less unpleasant and even more understandable.
Even shadowheart's story makes me want to leave her on the beach, "Oooh I have a vaguely mysterious story but, don't ask me about it" . That is even worse than Gales story of "I am a wizard that did something stupid and now have wizard problems" .....fek off story! Even her name sounds like something out of bad edgegirl fanfiction. So no, I'm not going to be more curious about that goofy lookin box after she griped at me for the dozenth time for being nice.

Half of the time I did not even bother picking her up due to her underwhelming combat prowess and constant disapproval. Sure I know some people really liked her and adamantly defend shadowheart as a "really great character", while going out of the way to find her the very best build to optimize her into a super awesome part of the squad etc, ect... But screw all of that noise when every other character in the game is more likeable and almost immediately easier to make useful. Even Wyll is instantly more effective in combat and more capable of killing things and supporting the party right from the get-go.
And please gods spare me the builds and justifications alright? I don't give one fig about how people think I should go out of my way to like her or make them a good part of the squad when I already like and use literally everyone else.

So with all that in mind and knowing full well that people will probably think she's been "completely ruined"...

Meh, she's alright now.
Still has that sarcastic bite to her dialogue and is cagey as hell with her story that I still cannot be bothered to care about but, I get a lot less disapproval from her now and being able to save her from the pod instead of just leaving her behind just plain feels better despite my long standing wish to shove her off a cliff.... Plus with the new roll system that let's ya cast guidance and such as you roll actually gives me a reason to take her along. I don't think she'll ever be a favorite character but, she's tolerable now.

I would like to think like you, but I strongly doubt it. It can't be that all the companions have a personal quest connected with the plot.

This was not in DOS2, so I don't think it will be in BG3.
Larian tried to change Shadow's personality to please others, dedicated a panel to her, expanded her storyline as part of the first act. And besides, she talks every 5 minutes in the game, because her opinion is put in priority by the game, other companions also have reactions to these situations, but if you are with Shadow, then the game chooses her. I don't think the other companions will get the same attention.

I would like to believe this, but... idk. Right now its looks bad for me.

This being a CRPG, I expect it to be somewhat accelerated as compared to a novel or long-run TV series (which themselves are rather accelerated to real life). My expectation would be a sort of "what do you know?" sort of response which would be an echo of things people say in real life situations as to why they stay in abusive situations. She's had a little bit of this here and there already. Her dialogue is full of risk assessment and a cynical attitude toward people in general. There's next to no intentional malevolence going on and in fact she is supportive of being respectful of people and following through on promises and the like.

Ideally stages should be:

encounter and work with due to mutual problems/survival > the discovery she serves Shar shadowed by the other major problem > trying to get her to move away from Shar > her shifting

And that's really skimming it. Ideally I'd work that story arc to be a character-focused novel or series. But this is a game and it'll cover the shift in about the same length as a law-and-order episode.

But I don't expect too much depth from games like this. They cast too wide a net to reach much depth.

That said, I support the idea of worshippers not necessarily sharing their gods' alignments. That's so very realistic and presents a lot of interesting story options from homicidal/inquisitional priests of Lathander all the way to adherents of Bane that are just don't have much experience with other gods or their worshippers.

Sorry, sounds like a copout to me. Interesting you bring up Lathander, because Lathander is my most favorite god in FR. If I ever play this game, and that's a big if, I hope I am able to play a champion of Lathander. And as such I will press SH hard from the first moment I realize what she is and will not accept her evasiveness for even a second. Then, when she eventually drops the 'nice girl' ACT and reveals her true Sharite self, it'll be off with her head.

Btw, for anyone who wants to understand the true nature of Shar and her minions, I very strongly recommend the Forgotten Realms novels of The Twilight War trilogy. Simply as excellent fantasy fiction these novels are well worth reading because Paul Kemp is an awesome writer. But you will really come to understand a lot of the lore about Shar, Mask, Selune, and Lathander from those books.

And here I thought convention on the forums was that she was a brainwashed Selunite put on a suicide mission.

I think it will be this indeed, and I too am fine with it. Innovation is a good thing, but we should remember that there are some good old stories worth to be narrated

My main problem with SH changes is that pre-patch you had to struggle to keep her around but, after a while, you could have started seeing her good side (her thanks, favourite flower, the wine, the insecurities). You could have started seeing that the edgy Shar-worshipper was an archetype not so well fit for her after all.

Now she just makes sure to remind you she is grateful every three lines of dialogue.

Idk, it seems to me that Larian has succumbed to the pressures of the whiny unable to bear a character who was not compliant from the first minute. It's really a shame though, it would have been much more valuable to discover the true personality behind that evil facade a little at a time rather than right away.