Halsin should recruit into the party right after the camp celebration. At that point in the game he'd be more interesting both mechanically for party composition and for the story delivery. All his lines foreshadowing the Moonrise material and the Thaniel subplot could be delivered in Grymforge or along the Risen Road paths.
By the time you arrive at the Last Light he is instantly upstaged by Jaheira, and so for him not to accompany us during the Shadowlands interlude means he totally misses his chance in the spotlight.
I think Kagha would have been a more interesting companion, because then you would have had the Evil Shadowdruid foil to Jaheira's Harper Druid, similar to Faldorn in BG1. Instead they sorta just redid Cernd from BG2, but without the Native flare there. Like he's pretty much the werebear to Cernd's werewolf right? But you don't get anything there beyond what Jaheira is bringing to the table in terms of druid stuff, like you might if we had some Shadowdruid sub plots.
It should be possible to side with Kagha and get a similar amount of content in the Shadowlands. Maybe she's haunted by Arabella or her parents or whatever. Honestly would have the same amount of buy in there for a Thaniel subplot, where the dark half is like him messing with Kagha's head the whole time. Obviously you'd need some way for the Rite of Thorns not to crack off, but that could have been handled with Halsin banishing her and then she recruits into the party. She also has an interesting Animal companion, similar to Faldorn's wolf, whereas Halsin is just sorta his papa bear self. Doing the Mushroom spore circle with Kagha could have been interesting too, like where siding with zombie mushrooms maybe she could try to twist them to the shadow druid side with Glut.
But in any case, having one of those druids (Halsin or Kagha) in the party for the entirety of Act 2 would give them more of a sense of purpose. The cut character for me is meh, cause I don't have anything to go on for her really. Having a Werewolf might have been cool, who can say, but the Viper would have been relatively easy to plug in. I honestly think any character in the first act could have been a bit player sidekick/B team style Companion, even if they didn't have a ton of VA to go off there. Most of them already got a hook in from the first act material. They probably would only need a few more lines to round em out, and then slot em in to an Act 2/3 questline that acknowledges their existence at various points afterwards.
Last edited by Black_Elk; 24/08/23 04:13 AM.
