Maybe she was removed when they realized this is BG3 and not The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Who would want to camp with that crew? And with The Mummy hanging around to rez you.
Sooo, we can have the vampire spawn, the tiefling with the hell machine, the guy with the magic bomb in the chest and the warlock turned demon, but we draw the line with a werewolf? Not very likely. It seems more likely she was scratched for Halsin and Minthara and that makes me sad. By all means have those two in, but have Helia there too. We have enough elves and humans and 'normal' sized companions, we could do with a bit more variety in that department, not to mention one of the iconic fantasy races.
To be fair, there is no shortage of gnomes, dwarfs and little people in general throughout the game though. We don't have any half orc companion, or dragonborne either, but we can create and play one. Even not recruitable you have interaction with characters such as Mol and Hope that represent the short people well I suppose?
We as players crave more content. More content is always nice, but sometimes things get scratched in the creative process in favor of other things.
Mol is a tiefling child - not the same. And inetracting with dwarves, halflings and gnomes isn't the same as having a party member of those races. We have elves, humans and in-betweens in abundance and di get yet another elf and a drow.
Plus Helia sounds like a great concept. As fa as I know, neither Halsin nor Minthara have much storyline in act 3 (I mean, Halsin certainly does not and Minthara I don't recruit, because I prefer the tieflings alive), so why not a halfling werewolf bard trying to come to terms with her condition - alongside, not instead.
