Improved BG3 Dialogue: Convince Shadowheart to Spare the Nightsong

Spoiler warning for Act 2 of Baldur’s Gate 3!

So, there I am: we’ve just killed the necromancer standing in our way, and Shadowheart is ready to fulfill her duty to Shar, her evil goddess, and kill the Nightsong. The only problems are that the Nightsong is actually an innocent Aasimar woman and that it’s heavily implied killing her would have bad consequences.

That’s why, when the game presents me with these dialogue options:

1. *Trust Shadowheart - do not interfere.*

2. Do as you must.

3. Is this truly what you want?

4. Choose your own way Shadowheart. You cannot allow your goddess to control you.

5. Please, Shadowheart. Don't do this.

I pick “Please, Shadowheart. Don’t do this.”

To my complete surprise, my Shadowheart - who I am romancing and have max approval with - hears this relatively mild plea for mercy and decides that this means war.

Shadowheart: “If I have to step over your corpse to fulfil (sic) what Lady Shar asks of me, so be it. Your choice.”

Before I know it, I’m fighting a permanently hostile Shadowheart while feeling equal parts baffled and frustrated.

I briefly checked online and found that Reddit is equally upset about this dialogue. 

Jokkitch echoes the feelings of many players: “Im at the point of being ‘out of the game’ I’m so frustrated that saying: “Please don’t do this” is guaranteed to make shadowheart hostile. Makes NO sense.” 

Commercial_Treacle39 puts it succinctly: “It's the worst dialogue tree I've experienced thus far.”

So, as a game writer, I decided to try to improve it!

I first used Twine to completely recreate the original dialogue tree, and then made my (hopefully) improved version.

My approach was to leave the dialogue of other characters alone and focus solely on changing the dialogue options for the player. This makes my solution very easy to implement while still tackling the root of the problem: the original dialogue tree requires the player to implicitly condone murder before being allowed to talk Shadowheart out of it. My redesign’s dialogue options give agency back to the player by giving them clear and fun options to get to the outcome they want. My goal was to make this climactic moment in the story feel as epic as it should be, no matter the ending you choose.

Two final points to mention are that:

1) In my game, we got the Spear of Night 

and

2) I'd earned enough "Nightsong Points" by helping Shadowheart be sceptical of Shar earlier in the story, so left to her own devices she always spares the Nightsong

I’d love to hear what you think, and also if you have your own pet peeve dialogue trees that you wish someone would redesign!

Here's a visual representation of the dialogue tree in Twine:

Created by Alex Laney with Twine