Developers rally to defend Larian against Baldur’s Gate 3 "cut content" fallout

rockpapershotgun.com:

Over the past week, dataminers have been rifling through Baldur's Gate 3's code and have discovered a dragon's hoard of alleged "cut content". It's hard to specify what they've unearthed without accidentally sounding the Major Spoilers trumpet and initiating Armageddon, but the supposed buried offerings include additional areas, swathes of dialogue, storylines, cutscenes, characters, romance opportunities and even deities. Given just how much Larian's gargantuan RPG gives you to play with, I am kind of thankful for a generous amount of stuff being "left out" - certainly, I don't need any more romanceable NPCs, I'm already fending them off with a broomhandle. But the news has gone down badly with a few players, and especially those who feel the game's overall quality takes a dive in acts 2 and 3.

Developers have come to Larian's defence, amongst them David Gaider, former Baldur's Gate 2 and Dragon Age writer, who is nowadays creative director of Summerfall Games, creator of the very earwormy STRAY GODs: The Roleplaying Musical. "Not surprised to hear of the amount of stuff apparently cut from BG3," Gaider wrote on Twix. "BG2 had a mountain of stuff cut over its development, some early and some even after lots of work had gone into it... almost every game does. Every DA game did. Heck, even Stray Gods had some considerable cuts."

Gaider had a few Top Tips for conversations about game cuts. "1. If it was cut late, it probably wasn't working - technically or conceptually or both. 2. A lot of cuts were early enough it was never "real" to start with. 3. Most cuts can't be resurrected. It'd be easier to start over, tbh."

But what if the game materials in question still exist in the game's files, another Twitter user