A new Baldur's Gate 3 mod restores cut dialogue where Withers gets gently bullied by a child
Baldur's Gate 3 cut content sleuth SlimX has uncovered the most important missing piece of Larian's RPG yet: A couple lines of dialogue where Tiefling refugee and budding YA novel protagonist Arabella makes fun of immortal camp moocher Withers. Not only that, but SlimX has also made a mod restoring the scene available for free on his Patreon.
Have you ever wondered why Arabella calls Withers "Bone Man?" Me either. He is a Man very self evidently made of Bones, so we're not exactly solving a riddle for the ages here. Still, Arabella's patter with Withers is a charming, unexpected bit of writing that punches above its weight in shading more depth into both characters: Withers clearly has a soft spot for children, and Arabella has no problem chopping it up with an immortal watcher. Seeing more of that relationship is certainly welcome.
After finding Arabella's dead parents but before telling her about their fate, she was supposed to have a brief back-and-forth with Withers at the party camp where she tweaks his nose and settles on the Bone Man nickname. "I am not a 'skellie,' thou shalt call me Withers," the reluctant avatar of cosmic judgement peevishly intones. "'Withers?' I'm not going to remember that! I'm calling you 'Bone Man,'" Arabella cheerfully replies.
It looks like the scene wasn't intentionally cut from the game, but is hidden by a scripting misfire that makes it so the requirements for seeing it are mutually exclusive, making it impossible to access in normal gameplay—it's similar to how Karlach's romantic daydream about Dammon is fully in the game, but can only be accessed before even meeting the blacksmith. SlimX's mod just makes it so the scripting behind the scene proceeds as intended.
This is pretty small potatoes for the YouTuber, though: SlimX has a huge back catalogue of BG3 scripting and cut content archeology that explains how some of the game's more obtuse or behind the scenes mechanics work and sheds some light on earlier versions of its story. A particularly fun bit of cut content is the Druid Grove's Oscar-worthy scammer, who feels more at home as a troll moral choice in an Obsidian game.
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