After playing Baldur's Gate 3you might think you know all the characters in the game. If you're a veteran player, even the rare NPC encounters are unlikely to surprise you. After all, there are only a few campmates to recruit, and the various NPCs seem unimportant. But there is a world of characters that players never had the chance to meet.
Long before Baldur's Gate 3s companions solidified, Larian Studios experimented with a more unique companion: Helia, a halfling bard who was also a werewolf. She was not just a companion, but a fully playable Origin character.
Helia: Baldur's Gate 3's Halfling Bard Werewolf
Helia has not been officially recognized by Larian, but a deep dive into Baldur's Gate 3s files reveal her existence. Data-mined files indicate that she was surprisingly far along in development, with around 770 recorded voice lines, most of them written in the first person. That detail is particularly telling, as early versions of Baldur's Gate 3 originally presented the world from a first-person perspective, implying that Helia's Origin story was actively being built up during that development phase.
Small, quirky details enhanced her personality. Helia is said to have used “zonks” as a unit of measure, a whimsical but distinctly bard-like quirk that suggested humor survived alongside her curse. Visually, Helia never reached a finished design. There are two known datamined images:
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One shows a young but thin halfling with short, messy hair
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Another depicts an elderly armored woman wearing a horned helmet
The contradiction suggests placeholder assets rather than a settled concept. Her unfinished main model was eventually repurposed for Olodan, one of the Shadow Druids i BG3. This fate was shared by several early character models, including some that just received a complete makeover. In particular, Karlach's appearance changed dramatically during development.
Bevis Helia was deep in development
Helia's absence still reverberates throughout Baldur's Gate 3 subtly revealed through data mining. Several companions and Baldur's Gate 3 NPCs have recorded lines that reference her directly:
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Karlach asks, “Huh? Where's Helia?”
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Aunt Ethel prepared unique Vicious Mockery insults, mocking her lycanthropy and isolation.
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Astarion, during his popular blood-tasting joke, explicitly identifies her as a werewolf and wonders what she can taste like.
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Early Astarion dialogue suggests that Helia may have originally been planned as an elf before being reworked as a halfling. This was changed in a later Early Access patch.
A bard marked by the moon
Helia's characterization leaned heavily on the horror of lycanthropy rather than romanticizing it. She openly distrusted Selune and referred to the Moonmaiden with disdain, an inversion of the goddess's usual associations that reframes the divine as something threatening rather than comforting.
That worldview alone could have made her presence quietly volatile within the party, especially alongside a character like Shadowheart. Shadowheart's deep-rooted fear of wolves, later contextualized through her fragmented memories and religious conditioning, already manifests as one of her most visceral phobias. Placing a self-aware lycanthrope in close proximity to that trauma would have created immediate, uneasy friction.
What makes the dynamic particularly compelling is how their beliefs would have clashed. Shadowheart's “good path” ultimately draws her toward Selune, toward reshaping the moon as something protective rather than punitive. Helia, on the other hand, treats the moon as a manifested curse – something that reveals, condemns and transforms against one's will. Where Shadowheart learns to reclaim the lunar symbolism, Helia rejects it outright. Helia would have embodied everything Shadowheart learned to fear, and everything she would later be forced to reevaluate.
Baldur's Gate 3's most respected character is perfectly on brand
This Baldur's Gate 3 character was respected in 4,890,005 campaigns, and that fact seems perfectly fitting for their character development.
Helia & Halsin in Baldur's Gate 3 share some overlap
Despite persistent rumors or assumptions based on her full character model, Helia was not a druid. She was a Bard in BG3and her removal apparently had nothing to do with Halsin replacing her as companion (despite lingering rumors that this was the case).
Development on Helia seems to have stalled before Early Access players ever encountered Halsin, and long before fan demand elevated him to a romantic party member in Baldur's Gate 3. In fact, Helia's recorded dialogue directly references Halsin, suggesting that both characters were in the story at the same time, albeit in very different capacities. What overlapped was the location where the two could be found.
Finds Helia and Halsin at the Gobin camp
Helia was reportedly meant to be found imprisoned in the Goblin Camp, trapped in her wolf form while goblin children threw stones at her. This is an identical scenario where players find Halsin, so when Helia's story was abandoned, that story space changed. The goblin prison ended up being the site of Halsin's dramatic reveal instead. Halsin did not take Helia's role in the story; he simply inherited the moment designed to introduce a major character under duress.
Helia: The Companion We Almost Had in Baldur's Gate 3
Helia's removal stands out not just because she was cut, but because of how much of her was already there. A halfling bard werewolf Origin would have offered a radically different tonal lens on Baldur's Gate 3– one rooted in alienation, persistence, and being treated like a monster long before you ever became one. Ultimately, Helia remains one of the game's most compelling “almosts.” Her absence is a reminder of that Baldur's Gate 3s final cast represents just one version of a story that could have been even stranger, darker, and perhaps intimate.
Baldur's Gate 3
9/10
- Released
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August 3, 2023
- ESRB
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M for Adult: Blood and Gore, partial nudity, sexual content, strong language, violence
