I'm disappointed Helia got cut from the game - especially if it was for the sake of Halsin, given how much of a mess he's ended up as.
I really do note the lack of a familiar "short folk" race in the party. I'm used to having at least one dwarf, halfling, gnome, or something of similar flavor available as a companion in basically every fantasy-based cRPG, especially those set in Pathfinder or D&D settings. It's... really odd, and a bit discordant? to not have one in BG3 - even more so that the one planned short folk companion got axed for nebulous reasons.
I've been making characters for other planned playthroughs/romance explorations in my downtime between progressing my first playthrough (the Shadow-cursed lands are very cool, but some of the fights there just take it out of me by the end), and one of these is a halfling sorcerer who I planned to romance Karlach with. I love her!! It's quite fun to play as a short folk race, and brings me a similar joy as when I play my dwarves or gnome in WoW. I'm always an elf fan at heart, but shorter races such as these are bread-and-butter to fantasy as much as elves and humans are.
It feels kind of meh that they've been passed over in the companion department, especially in favor of more "traditionally attractive" tall races. Honestly, Lae'zel is the only unusual-looking companion we have - and even she's noticeably more "attractive" in some ways than NPC githyanki tend to be. It's just very odd, and doesn't help the feeling some people have brought up about "sex selling" with BG3's marketing and focus.
