Sad isn't it. Not only was she extremely popular, but also consistently receiving substantial development throughout the entirety of Early Access with multiple additions, tweaks and revisions to make her the best she possibly could be.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Originally Posted by Baldur's Gate 3's Early Access Reveals Players Are Horny, Evil, and Frustrated by RNG
“You would be surprised at how many betrayed the Tieflings,” laughs Vincke, referring to a pair of characters you cross paths with early on. “I can see how many people slept with Minthara. That's quite large, and to get there you have to be evil. There's certainly people that have had no moral scruples.”

Those who were here and engaged back then will always know Minthara's skyrocketing popularity during Early Access. The fandom behind her was massive, passionate and vocal just about anything related to her. Why did it happen? Well because back then Larian actually had a balanced character roster. Everyone had an equal chance because there were no blatantly prioritized companions showered with 10 times more content than others, unlike today where their most overdeveloped characters like Shadowheart dominate 50% of the total player base chart due to having full development attention. It wasn't like this back then because, unlike Minthara, the entire origin cast was generally disliked by the community.

Who here remembers when the community back then barely tolerated the origin cast's Early Access personalities, believing actual good-aligned companions were coming later?

  • Shadowheart wasn't everyone's favorite cute princess as she is today; she was the complete opposite. Massively disliked for her extremely selfishly opinionated and cruel behaviors with constant snarky disapprovals towards any acts of decency to those less fortunate. Remnants of her cruel EA personality still remain in some ACT I scenes.
  • Lae'zel was the most grumpy and xenophobic Gith in existence that disliked everything and everyone, had no shame constantly repeating that in everyone's face. Her personality underwent the most changes of all the companions.
  • Gale was so incredibly mysterious to the point many believed him to be the most evil untrustworthy companion of them all, merely putting up a facade.
  • Wyll was a badass vengeance seeking fallen hero with a bad past and a temper. For whatever reason the community didn't like his fallen hero arc, so when Larian botched his writing at launch by taking away everything that made him interesting and entangled him with Karlach to be her useless sidekick he became the least liked Origin companion.
  • Astarion was 'damaged goods' personified, like a mistreated dog on crack. Extremely paranoid and intensely jumpy at any sign of empathy from the player, often lashing out of mistrust at everyone trying to treat him humanely. Getting him to open up back then felt like digging through a mountain of steel.

And then there was Minthara, just a genuine mind-controlled Lolth-Drow who unlike the origin cast was actually liked for who she was. Butchers an entire grove with us, laughs about it and then performs the hottest 69 of all time while afterwards sincerely regretting she can't spend her life together with us in Menzoberranzan. Despite not being an origin companion she captivated her audience and there was so much development going into her at the time.

Originally Posted by Baldur's Gate 3's Early Access Reveals Players Are Horny, Evil, and Frustrated by RNG
“There's been a group of people complaining about the fact that the companions are snarky and they have to have an opinion,” Vincke reveals. “But we’ve only put the ‘evil’ and the ‘neutral’ ones out there. We haven't put any of the ‘good’ characters in yet, so I think that will balance that. I didn't expect people to be that sensitive to how the companions thought of them, and the fact that we didn't put the ‘good’ characters in there,” he admits.

So what happened... why did Minthara who was genuinely loved and consistently receiving development (also the only one with a fully-developed sex scene at the time) end up as the most underdeveloped, nonfunctional and abandoned character of the entire cast?

Most people today upon seeing Minthara's state or these disingenuously presented stats come to the conclusion it's due to "lack of character's popularity"; but for retrospect Jaheira did not exist during Early Access at all, yet she does not suffer from any of the issues that Minthara suffers. Even has miniscule details covered such as having voicelines for the [Sentient Amulet] from ACT I, whereas Minthara does not.

The truth simply is that Larian abandoned her at the peak of her popularity due to their poor development management and afterwards failed to ensure their cast of characters is equally interesting with equal amounts of content due to blatant favoritism post-launch. That's why the quality and the amount of content between companions vary so drastically today, that's why Minthara, Halsin and Wyll are in the positions they're in, that's why Sarevok and Viconia are just shallow throwaway villains, that's why it took a whole year for us to get proper evil endings as the final content update, that's why the evil path is so deprived of content, quality control and development care, etc...

Poor development management back then, blatant favoritism since then.

  • Why is Minthara still broken as an Early Access character a year later when she had so much content written for her behind-the-scenes?
  • Why were Sarevok and Viconia not made companions for the evil path as direct counterparts to Jaheira and Minsc?
  • Why weren't Sazza or Nere made companions to compensate for the loss of Halsin, Wyll, Karlach, potentially Gale, potentially Minthara?
  • Why does the good path gain 9 companions, but the evil path takes away over 60 NPCs and 4 companions while giving only 1 companion that's not even functional?
  • Why do all evil characters we peacefully interact with either run off-screen or die off-screen?
  • Why does the evil path entirely feel as just a slight variation of the actual intended good path with drastically less content in it?

Originally Posted by Baldur's Gate 3's Early Access Reveals Players Are Horny, Evil, and Frustrated by RNG
“The writers have a tendency of being good and not putting in the evil options,” Vincke says. “We had to actually force them to go through everything and put in more contrasting options so that they could put the evil ones in there.” It’s all about offering the players “real” choices, he explains - a variety of options falling all across the spectrum of morality, rather than just slight variations on ‘the good one’.”