You can head canon all you want, but let's be honest, it's clear that this is just an arbitrary choice to make "good" players have to think twice about saving SH in the beginning.
My point is that it is an actual temptation to use the powers. In order to potentially save a companion character, you might have to compromise... or you might just have to stick to what your gut tells you "DON'T USE THE TADPOLE, LUKE" and have faith that she'll somehow be okay.
It's a whole lot better than, "Do you want to use your tadpole powers to pry into Gale's head to learn his secrets?" No. I'm not going to pry. Even if I'm bad, I probably won't pry because I need allies to survive. That's not much of a temptation. As a good person, having to decide whether to save SH from the pod or not, and knowing if I don't I am giving up a potential companion for the helm fight, that's a bit more of a serious temptation.
My point was, they can explain it a bunch of different ways, and by providing this one little tweak, making it so you have to use the tadpole to save her, they now make not saving her a bit more tempting than in previous patches where you could just unlock the chest, place the piece in the machine and set her free.
This playthrough, I saved her once and I didn't save her once depending on what I felt each character would do. One would compromise and use the strange new powers to save her while the other was like, "Um. Sorry. I have to use some strange powers to save you? I don't think so."
It was nice to see Shadowheart at the dank crypt entrance again like it was in the earlier patches before I could save her on the nautiloid. I hadn't seen that dialogue play out in quite some time.
