Baldur’s Gate 3’s transition from early access to full release included a ton of tweaks and changes as Larian perfected the massive RPG. Naturally, this means that certain parts and plans will not remain in the final version. If you find yourself yearning for any of them after playing them for the first time or hearing about them, a new mod may be right around the corner. It’s also pretty cool if you want to get more out of BG3.
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This mod, “Early Access Scenes Restored”, comes from modding masters HyperspaceTowel, who have been working on restoring parts of early access Baldur’s Gate 3 for some time now. This latest work is the culmination of all that effort, offering restored “deleted scenes, encounters, and NPCs” all at once.
According to the modder, there are “over 100 conversations and over 1,000 lines of audio dialogue” so far, with plans to add more in the future. That consists of things like chatting with returning Early Access characters, camp chat, and your companions’ reactions to the various things you’re working on. HyperspaceTowel explains that most of these returned bits were “nearly 1:1 ports” reviving early access scenes with minor tweaks to the camera and dialogue, but some had to be “built from the ground up based on found scraps.”
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As an example of the latter, modders point to the shell-collecting kid Lotan, whose reconstructed chat is shown in the video above. Other returning NPCs and chat you can expect to encounter include Nerella, a wannabe music box seller, a smitten fisherman, Shadowheart, who issues an ultimatum, and Gail, channeling her best Nigella Lawson while raving about deer stew.
HyperspaceTowel has chosen to stick with including parts of Early Access BG3 that fit into the final version of the game. This means things like early Will and Karlach, as well as some romance scenes featuring Gale and the former, will go into separate mods, separating out the non-can stuff. They also chose to keep the newly restored quest surrounding whether to eat hermit crabs separate. In this case, the main reason may be that the file you are restoring from is very old and some dialogs are missing audio files.
If you’re wondering what these restored Early Access encounters will add to your next BG3 playthrough, the good news is that the main restoration mod doesn’t appear to require any other framework mods to work. However, you should always start a new run once installed to avoid abandoning it in the middle of a playthrough you plan to complete.
