After spending years in early access prior to release, Baldur’s Gate 3 has a tonne of cut content. The game’s original tutorial is gone, multiple items and spells were removed, and hundreds of lines of dialogue were deleted from the game.
While modders have brought back many cut items from the game’s early access period, one modder has revived over 1,000 voiced lines of dialogue from the game’s pre-release state for new players to experience in the game’s PC version.
With the game still selling gangbusters after the reveal of Larian’s upcoming Divinity game, there are a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3 players who never experienced the game’s early access period. While BG3 definitely isn’t strapped for lines of dialogue—the game is absolutely massive—it’s always nice to hear more of your favourite characters in game.
Released on Nexus Mods by HyperspaceTowel, the Early Access Scenes mod “injects content into the game that [in their opinion] still fits into the full release story”. This means that some scenes, such as Early Access versions of Karlach and Wyll are not restored, but there are returning scenes that don’t conflict with the released version of the game.
The mod boasts that there’s over “100 conversations and more than 1,000 lines of voiced dialogue back from the dead”. While it may not include Astarion’s Nightmare or other scenes that “no longer fit neatly in the game”, the huge mod brings a lot of party chatter back to the game that makes the group feel more intertwined than in the released version.
For example, the mod restores lines of Gale and Wyll flirting with Shadowheart, responses for every character when graverobbing the Dank Crypt, and over a hundred more interactions. While there is only a “small amount of content for Karlach and Wyll”, the mod adds a lot of companion reactivity that was either cut or unfinished on release.
Alongside the restored content, the mod brings brand new cutscenes to the game using cut or spliced lines. That’s right, even with cut dialogue that was not recorded, the modder isn’t using any AI tools, but instead cutting up existing words and phrases from throughout the game to reconstruct those sequences.
The modder also has future plans to expand the mod in the future. This includes more reactivity for Wyll and Karlach, additional voiced dialogue for Tav (the player character), and Thralls on the Nautiloid. Nevertheless, it’s already an extensive mod that gives players a lot of additional content if they want it.
While Larian has left Baldur’s Gate 3 to focus on Divinity, fans are still hard at work modding the game into a game that will last forever. There are two massive custom campaigns in the works: Path to Menzoberranzan and Mad Mage’s Domain—two mods which aim to bring new stories, characters and more to the already-huge CRPG.
Additionally, there are countless smaller-but-still-impressive mods. For example, one mod that released just a few days ago brings “Ambient AI” to the game, allowing the party to act independently of player commands for a more life-like experience. Whatever the case, the BG3 community is also working on something phenomenal.
