Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion A companion named Helia who did not make it into the game

Players have been data-mining and discovered a companion not integrated into the game.

A cute halfling lady named Helia.
She is also a bard and has a, shall we say, dark gift.

This all sounds excellent and very interesting. Especially if she could change at night.

So that has a lot of potential for an exciting companion. A story I would love to experience and a bardess in the group, as you know, never hurts

What do you think about this and do you wish Larian could bring us this companion nicely with depth into the game? Maybe for Christmas as a surprise?

I can't have enough of BG3 and would like to see a lot more content over the years either way

She didn't look "cute' when I look at her.
Tall supremacy though.

She was probably dropped because either not enough time or just didn't have what it took to be a companion; I say that but then Halsin made it, but I think it's just writers pet.

Hellia was probably scrapped for Halsin ( character that the majority of people including his fans don't like lol)

Also, just waiting for Fylimar to pop up in this thread.

I'm not sure how early she was scraped. If it was too early, there could be characters who are in the game because she isn't other than Halsin. There was another one who didn't make it in, I believe. They could have been intended act 3 companions instead of Jaheira and Minsk. Just as an example. They could even have had too much story in the upper city to be salvageable. I would be making random guesses

I would've loved to romance her with the Astarion Origin, considering that they both have similar dark gifts.

There she is

I made a Helia thread a while ago, but it has moved down to page 3 or 4 now.
I would have loved for Helia to stay a companion, she sounded great.
And seeing the complain thread about Halsin getting longer and longer, maybe keeping her would have been the better idea.
Generally I think, the companion cast could have been more diverse, currently we have mostly elves, humans and in betweens, with one gith and one tiefling sprinkled in.
And how can you see halfling werewolf bard and not be interested?

Of course keeping her would have been better, if she was indeed scrapped for Halsin. She would have been designed as companion from the start and the main problem with Halsin is that he was not and only got tacked on at the end because people thirsted for Halsin, so he was made into a sex doll.

If Helia was going to be an origin character then its not Halsin that replaced her, it was Karlach.

No, Karlach was planend from the beginning. We will probably never know, who replaced whom, but Karlach was already planend, when Helia lines were still datamined by people like Chubblot

I hope Larian at least learns from this:
Fanservice is bad - go with the original plan, and don't let popular requests or whatever is "in" right now change that

How are you so sure?

I'm guessing you meant to quote Fylimars other post.

Karlach, Jaheira and Minscs lines and involvement in the story were datamined long before we found out about Helia so its not as likely that they were the ones that replaced her. Also Halsin wasn't meant to be a comp, people ended up putting two and two together and voilà.

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Thank you - yeah, that is, what I wanted to point out too.

Helia was in the beginning the archdruid of the grove (there was a concept picture of an older halfling lady back then), then Halsin was introduced and she was changed to bard companion.

I will say that a halfling werewolf does sound weird, I even made a comment back in EA that I can't imagine taking that too serious, saying something among the lines of calling her a werechihuahua, which I still sort of stand by, but still, better than Halsin.
Preferably I'd want a werewolf companion to be one of the larger races, Goliath or Firbolg...

I think, we have enough larger races - and Helia sounds awesome. Halflings are one of the iconic fantasy races.

I don't mind smaller races, just that one being a werewolf is kinda goofy.
I'd much rather have a firbolg werewolf over Halsin, that's for sure.

Note; Cynical stance incoming: She was cut and replaced because Larian don't believe that short race characters can or should be treated as anything other than jokes and sources of cheap laughs and mockery. They could not bring themselves to handle her with the same respect and care they were showing their other origins, or to take her or her story seriously, and so assumed that no-one else would care, just as they didn't, if they dropped her in favour of yet another freaking elf, because in their eyes such a change was 100% improvement and upgrade with no loss. Just look at all of their public facing media where halflings are mentioned: at every turn, in every interview where it comes up, they treat them as laughing stock or crack jokes derisively about them, they've left them with abominable caricatures of models, unimproved since day one, and their support footage for 'halflings' during their break down interview on each of the races was footage of a dwarf, which they didn't know or care enough to get right.

So, if they were going to cut or replace anyone in favour of a fan thirst request, it was always going to be the halfling.


Why not? I'd be interested to hear you articulate this. Why, exactly, would you not feel like treating such a character with the same degree of respect or gravity (however much or little that may be for you; I'm not judging that) as any other?

I heard that there was dialogue that mention that she was originally a gnome at some point.

I would love it if they add her as a DLC. Can we start a petition?

As I've said, a mini werewolf is just kinda funny, I think, what's it gonna do, bite my shoes?
I joke a bit but it's sort of going that direction.