Baldur's Gate 3 cut content includes a nod to the original RPG, as well as a surprising villainous companion

gamesradar.com:

Baldur's Gate 3 is an enormous game, with so much content it still feels like we could keep uncovering new lines of dialogue and secrets for months, if not years to come. However, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that plenty of content was cut from the final release, too, including several explorable locations, such as the first area in the original Baldur's Gate – Candlekeep.

This was revealed during a recent IGN interview with Baldur's Gate 3 director and head of Larian Studios, Swen Vincke. He doesn't reveal any details about how Candlekeep's inclusion would have tied into the story, but explains: "There was a moment where the maps were going to be smaller, and so we were going to be able to give you [a] bigger diversity of locations that you would explore."

Alongside Candlekeep, it was also planned that players would be able to visit Hell, the Gith Astral Plane, and the palace of the Githyanki queen, Vlaakith. According to Vincke, though, with this direction, "the sense of exploration wasn't really present," leading to the decision to cut "a whole bunch" of locations.

It wasn't just locations that ended up being cut out of the final release, though, as it was also revealed that one of the RPG's major villains was once planned to be recruitable. If you're yet to play Baldur's Gate 3 and don't want to find out who that is or how their recruitment would have worked, feel free to scroll away from spoiler territory now.

Drum roll, please; it was Ketheric Thorm. Vincke explains that at one point, it was planned that you'd be able to convince the villain to join the party, but it ended up being cut from Act Two "when we were stuck on it." He adds: "He was supposed to be in your camp while you were dealing with Gortash and with Orin. So he became a source of information on them, and he could trust, you could get him to his arc. You could then be convinced by him to go to his side."

It's interesting to imagine how things would have gone with these changes,