So Larian have now commentated on the claims about "cut content" and things found through datamining. Specifically on Karlach, epilogues and the upper city, but also generally about why things are changed.
The upshot is that things that are just a bit broken will be patched, endings will be expanded in time, but huge swathes of the game that people claim were just removed aren't going to suddenly appear, because they never existed.
There's a datamining thread in this very forum that shows off how much was there. The real takeaway from this is that it's likely going to lead to another flare-up of angry Karlach fans in the near future (they're not upset that the ending isn't poignant enough), that Larian was making very questionable decisions if you take them at their word (cutting the epilogues because they were... too long?), and outright saying that there is no "cut content" just "content they didn't want to release." It's a PR piece, damage control because Reddit is getting very upset about things that may or may not have been actually cut, and the tone of the article is strikingly different to all their other Community Updates.
But like, Larian was never going to re-implement much of this short of outright doing a Definitive Edition and even then it'd be really limited. Most of this stuff is outright gone. Larian's made their money.
As opposed to everyone taking the author of this bloody list at their word? With it's claims of whole game regions that were supposedly just removed, despite the total lack of sources to justify such claims.
Larian aren't saying nothing is cut. Of course things are cut as changes are made throughout development. Bits of those abandoned ideas can be dug up through datamining (I've seen the thread, thanks). But notice how the claims in the list are presented as things that were "meant" to be in the game as opposed to things that got changed at some point in the development process.
It's hardly surprising they are being defensive about it, when there's unsubstantiated rumours being spread around that they lopped off big chunks of the game to hit a release deadline. After all the hard work, I'd be mad as hell about it myself.
Please stop trying to defend the indefensible. Its very obvious that the upper city was intended, starting from Larians own words from 2 months ago about exploring it, to the very questionable placement of NPCs and entrances in act 3, to the many leads into the upper city that remain in the game to, yes, datamined content that shows quest trigger for the upper city for quests that are quite clearly missing as it concerns companions.
