If you’re not planning on creating an original player character inBaldur’s Gate 3, then your next best bet is Shadowheart. Her personal story remains intertwined with the main narrative throughout, and she’s connected to the Astral Prism, which is the crux of the entire story.
However, Shadowheart’s voice actor, Jennifer English, would prefer you not play her as an origin character, because then you’ll miss all her best dialogue.
If you’ve never played Baldur’s Gate 3 as an origin, the vast majority of voiced dialogue is cut to facilitate player choice in conversation.
You’ll Miss The Performance
In an interview withFall Damage(nice spot,GamesRadar+), English recalled some of her character’s most iconic lines. She pointed to a line you might not expect - the dialogue that Shadowheart says when you hover over her in the character creator.
“My Lady Shar tasked me with a mission of such secrecy that I surrendered great swathes of my memory to safeguard the knowledge of it,” Shadowheart says.
“It’s the idle at the beginning,” English explains. “Where you’re able to possibly play as me… but don’t do that, because then you lose loads of my conversational dialogue.”
She points to a specific line of dialogue at Moonrise Towers, where the player character can stick their hand into a pulsating Illithid orifice. Shadowheart will say, disappointedly, “You can’t just stick your hand in every strange hole you come across!”
English also talks about why she was “unsurprised” that Shadowheartwas the game’s most romanced character. She explains that John Corcoran, who wrote the character, did a phenomenal job in writing the romance, which gave her immense confidence that players would resonate with it.
She also explained that her real-life partner, Aliona Baranova, who was a performance director on Baldur’s Gate 3, would blush profusely when English delivered some of Shadowheart’s steamier lines, giving her confidence in that aspect of the character’s romance, too.
English recently appeared as Maelle in the hugely popular Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and is set to appear as the lead character Gwendolyn in Tides of Annihilation, an action-adventure from Tencent-owned studio Eclipse Glow Games.
