Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The amount of cut content is just heart-wrenching.

Indeed. Seems people are missing something.

Although it's not very convincing when the community update states the upper city was never meant to be freely explorable (because why wouldn't it be?!), I agree with Ixal here


I'm all for cutting content if it improves the story. For example the whole side quest
could have been cut for all I care, because it doesn't add anything to the story imo.

What I'm missing really are good resolutions / closures for different story threads. For example

Anyway, all in all I enjoyed the game a lot, but I feel like SiriusVI. This could have been literature.

Couldn't put it better myself. I mean, you literally watch cutscenes for 1/3 of a game, all dialogs are cinematic. And then at the end of (in my case 90 hours) playthrough you get punched in the face with a pitiful short epilogue for a memorable adventure? I know the attention span is short nowadays, but surely we can manage 10 minutes cinematic closure to tie the loose ends.

If they're thinking about the same ones I am, someone posted them in the big Reddit comment thread on the Community Update. I think it was several lines that indicated there was an Upper City map distinct from Lower City and from the ending gauntlet 'Upper City.'

I'll file that under hearsay, thanks.

It was conclusive enough that a dataminer who was arguing there was no evidence for the Upper City in the files ended up admitting that there was some evidence. It matched the code used for triggers to enter area maps such as Moonrise. So, a little more than hearsay. It was something like BG3_LOWER_A, BG3_END_A, BG3_UPPER_A, BG3_UPPERCRYPT_A. Lower is the city as is, End being the climax location, and Upper not corresponding to any location in the game as is. Not exactly a map full of content, sure, but evidence of something.

Agree. But compared to CP BG3 is a much better game. CP is boring with a dead city more a movie than a game. But you are right. So i would be glad if they bring a DLC with more content (even cut content).

Clearly, the audience can tell that *something* is missing in Act III.

Whether it was cut or the last act of the game is unsatisfying for the community is almost irrelevant. The narrative threads were set up well. Extremely well. But they're not paying off in the current iteration.

My guess, and it's just a guess, is that there are writers on the staff who had to compromise some narrative vision for one reason or another, and that turned out to be a mistake.

I assume you mean this comment by theredwoman95 and subsequent conversation?

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/164tswd/comment/jyakfb3/

If so is there any reason you omitted the tiny little detail that the location tags are from almost 3 years ago? All the other dataminer (Gattman) “ends up admitting”, is that there was likely an upper city area at least considered in early development. They suggest it was likely removed when smaller regions of the city were combined into larger ones, but that is really just speculation.

That is very very different from the claims that the upper city was a complete separate zone in addition to what we got being cut from the game at the very last minute. There appears to be no evidence of that at all, and it doesn’t even sound feasible to me. They’d be mad to make changes of that scale a couple of weeks out from launch.

So all we really seem to have on this upper city business is that misleading quote from Sven. God knows what possessed him to say that, but I’m sure he regrets it now.

Unless anyone has anything more concrete?

I agree. It ultimately doesn’t matter why the end result is unsatisfying. Whether the original artistic vision was bad or whether the original artistic vision was changed to meet a release deadline doesn’t matter. What matters is whether the game, as it is, feels satisfying. Data mining is just an attempt to figure out why certain aspects of the game feel unsatisfying.

It doesn’t matter when cuts and revisions were made. It doesn’t matter whether the content that was cut was finished or well done. Ad hominem attacks against data miners will not improve anyone’s gaming experience.

Hag Coven content was cut. Ethel's letters to her sisters in Baldur's Gate are STILL IN THE GAME. Yet you encounter no hag coven, but only Ethel. Same for Myreena's brothers. They didn't get killed in my playthrough, but they never reappeared in the Lower City.

You also never encounter the Gondians after rescuing their family in the Iron Throne and freeing them at the Steelwatch Foundry, because they're meant to reside in the House of Wonders in the Upper City, but the Upper City is cut.

There is also a random Flaming Fist that gives a speech in the final battle, but throughout the entire Act 3 the Flaming Fist are hostile mercenaries that never truly are interacted with and convinced to come to your side against Gortash.

There is not a single Harper remaining after Orin kills the contingent in Baldur's Gate, somehow the few we know remain all at Moonrise Towers. The Harpers storyline for Jaheira just goes cold.

Minsc is recruited way too late into the game. As a result, he really has no story whatsoever besides the joke that you rescue him after he got randomly tadpoled by Bhaalists. Very undercooked.

Hag Coven content was cut. Ethel's letters to her sisters in Baldur's Gate are STILL IN THE GAME. Yet you encounter no hag coven, but only Ethel. Same for Myreena's brothers. They didn't get killed in my playthrough, but they never reappeared in the Lower City.

You also never encounter the Gondians after rescuing their family in the Iron Throne and freeing them at the Steelwatch Foundry, because they're meant to reside in the House of Wonders in the Upper City, but the Upper City is cut.

There is also a random Flaming Fist that gives a speech in the final battle, but throughout the entire Act 3 the Flaming Fist are hostile mercenaries that never truly are interacted with and convinced to come to your side against Gortash.

There is not a single Harper remaining after Orin kills the contingent in Baldur's Gate, somehow the few we know remain all at Moonrise Towers. The Harpers storyline for Jaheira just goes cold.

Minsc is recruited way too late into the game. As a result, he really has no story whatsoever besides the joke that you rescue him after he got randomly tadpoled by Bhaalists. Very undercooked.

I see a lot of complaints about the upper city being cut and hopefully being readded.

I don't see how this could reasonably happen. You already hit level cap going into Act III pretty quickly with a lot of remaining content. If they added the upper city, you'd spend way too long capped out, but if they raise the cap, it breaks the balance of the ending.

They could make it post-ending content, The only way would be to alter the approach to the ending if you do upper city content, but that is a lot of work and unlikely IMO.

I just don't see a path for this being re-added. IMO I'd much rather see Avernus, it seems more viable.


This is my biggest complaint with the game.

Act I is amazing, but Act II is _WAY_ too short. Not necessarily in length, but in the amount of available content and exp. They made a comment a few days ago saying that was by design, but the problem with that design philosophy is that it basically forces you to do everything in Act I so you are leveled appropriately for Act II and III. IMO this kills replayability, because every time you play a new run, you don't have much choice in skipping content in Act I or Act II. IMO you shouldn't have to repeat every quest and mission line every time solely to reach appropriate levels.

If you skip missions or content in Act I, there is no room for catchup in Act II and, again, forces you to do everything in Act II. It isn't until Act III where you get the chance to pick what content you want to do and skip some of the missions to reach level cap. If you reach Act III at too low of a level, there is no way of doing this either because you'd be way too low level. It really frontloads the game.

What's frustrating about this post and list is that it seems there was more for both Act I and II available, but it was cut and a lot of content was kept in Act III. I think it should have been more balanced out and spread out.

Disagree. It makes a massive difference to what comes next, and people’s expectations about what comes next. Particularly since Larian have confirmed they will keep working on it (to some extent at least).

At one end of the scale, there could be things that Larian fully intended to be in release, are close to being complete, but cut for time or technical reasons at the last minute. In which case, it would be feasible to finish off and they would likely want to do so.

At the other end, we have rough ideas, never really developed and dropped long ago because Larian thought it didn’t work. ie “content” they decided was bad, waa not properly developed in the first place and will never ever see the light of day.

Or anything in between those extremes.

Hag Coven content was cut. Ethel's letters to her sisters in Baldur's Gate are STILL IN THE GAME. Yet you encounter no hag coven, but only Ethel. Same for Myreena's brothers. They didn't get killed in my playthrough, but they never reappeared in the Lower City.

You also never encounter the Gondians after rescuing their family in the Iron Throne and freeing them at the Steelwatch Foundry, because they're meant to reside in the House of Wonders in the Upper City, but the Upper City is cut.

There is also a random Flaming Fist that gives a speech in the final battle, but throughout the entire Act 3 the Flaming Fist are hostile mercenaries that never truly are interacted with and convinced to come to your side against Gortash.

There is not a single Harper remaining after Orin kills the contingent in Baldur's Gate, somehow the few we know remain all at Moonrise Towers. The Harpers storyline for Jaheira just goes cold.

Minsc is recruited way too late into the game. As a result, he really has no story whatsoever besides the joke that you rescue him after he got randomly tadpoled by Bhaalists. Very undercooked.

I wrote my own thread on this tpic, because I felt this one was to clogged, and wouldnt be seen. So of course it got locked.

Here is what I wrote in it

"I just read the update, and I know there has been a lot of discourse surrounding so-called cut content. And I get the sense from the folks at Larian are... a bit upset at the reaction to it, not in the angry way, but in such a way that they feel sad at peoples reactions toward it.

I want to offer a different perspective on how this discussion should be views, because when you get deep into the content of these discussions... the topic of, what I will call "Unrealized Content" is less contentious and critical than it may seem on the surface.

There are areas in the game people feel are lacking, and the existence of this unrealized content gives them hope that those areas of the game will be bolstered in oncoming updates. And people are thus actually excited about the cut content, because they dont want Larian to have to do more work than they have to do.

AS well a lot of the unrealized content in the game could be used as a basis for DLC, presuming that the datamined content is only the tip of the ice berg... people are practically giddy at the possibility that work on what could become DLC is already done on some level.

People arent being angry or critical, look at the reactions to the Unrealized Avernus content in particular, almost everyone directly addressing that content utilized for DLC instead of being re-introduced via a patch or anything. Heck even many people talking about the upper city think it would make good DLC.

Bottom line, is that... when the criticisms are primarily, that people want more... its not the end of the world. Its really tempting to see the conversation as purely critical, but I promise if you read what people have to say, and even talk to them... you will see there is excitement there to.

(also peoples problems with the Karlach endings, are not their lack of poignancy... and the epilogue could be 5 hours long for all anyone cares)"

People who are currently playing the game or who have already completed the game do not benefit from whatever comes next. We have no idea what Larian views as being worth the time and effort to change or when those changes might be implemented (beyond what was announced in Community Update #24).

If you really care to figure out what content was cut, you should just do your own datamining. All data mining claims are verifiable.

I’m sure you’re right, at least for many people, but what if much of this content never actually existed in the first place? Then you have lots of people getting excited about stuff they think can be implemented with a relatively small amount of effort when really Larian would have to make it from stratch (not the dog).

Avernus is a good example of this, because as far I can see, the rumour of an Avernus level seems to originate from this list. Maybe the author of that list got it from somewhere else, maybe there is actually evidence, or maybe they misunderstood something someone else found, or maybe they completely made it up. Bit hard to tell when they didn’t bother to say exactly where they got their information from or exactly what was supposedly found.

Now we have the likes of Screenrant jumping on the bandwagon:

https://screenrant.com/baldurs-gate-3-cut-content-bg3/#having-exhausted-as-a-status-condition

Their source for these claims? Just the same Reddit post, which laughably had already been removed by moderators before they put this article on their site.

I’d have thought a well known entertainment website should know better than to blindly accept what random people say on Reddit, but apparently not. That’s real sloppy journalism.

Interesting take. This forum is full of people making suggestions on what they would like to see changed. I’m guessing that the majority have played or are currently playing the game. But whatever Larian do with the game is of no benefit to them? Really?

Do you tell people who believe all the claims in this list that they should datamine it themselves, or just people who say we should be careful about unsourced information? I’m not the one spreading rumours around the internet.

I see you commenting in here a lot basically denying everything. Check community update #19 yourself and you will see that they did in fact talk about being able to explore the upper city. They lied two weeks before release and said nothing 1. Secondly this is a very disgusting bait and switch tactic and before you say "oh how many people wouldn't have bought the game if they knew this???" obviously enough to scare them into lying so they could preserve their sales... stop defending bad behavior and have some self-respect.

I’m not defending anything. My entire point thoughout this thread has simply been- how reliable is the information in this list that’s been posted around the internet? Where are the sources? What was actually found?

What Sven said about the upper city was clearly wrong. At least misleading if not outright false. If there ever was an upper city zone explorable before the very end, I have a very hard time believing it was cut two week before launch. So maybe it wasn’t developed in the first place? Do we actually have anything concrete to go on besides what Sven said?