Of All Baldur’s Gate 3’s Companion Quests, Shadowheart’s Hit Me Hardest

This feature contains major plot spoilers for Shadowheart’s companion quest in Baldur’s Gate 3

My Game of the Year is Baldur’s Gate 3. Despite completing it, I still find myself going back for more. I had an interesting first experience playing a CRPG with my paladin, and I had my Dark Urge friend along as well. I’ve built some great memories with the game already, but of all the story highpoints that stuck out to me, I’ll never forget Shadowheart’s personal quest.

She’s closed off when you first meet her. She values her privacy, and I respected that. Even though the game wants you to pry, I didn’t. After playing BioWare games for so many years (which Baldur’s Gate 3 is unabashedly influenced by), I knew she would eventually open up to me.

A Tentative Start

First, Shadowheart reveals that she’s a follower of Shar, a goddess who is, in my opinion, one of the most vindictive in the game world’s lore. Throughout the story, you constantly come across letters and books from people who turned to her and ended up in terrible situations. At one point, I stumbled upon a tale of two lovers, who looked to Shar for guidance in their romantic endeavors, only to both end up dead. You can find accompanying rings, True Love’s Caress and True Love’s Embrace in cursed areas, with one of them laying discarded near one of the lover’s remains.

Shadowheart, you learn, is a devout Sharran. She fervently pursued Shar’s will with unwavering duty, holding a strong animosity towards Selûne and her followers. She received extensive training in subterfuge, including stealth, manipulation, disguises, and torture from a young age.

Taking Shadowheart through the Temple of Shar was a fascinating experience. She has quite a few things to say here, and she either volunteers to give her blood to progress through the temple, or takes to steadfast prayers to harden herself for what’s to come.

The Shadows Begin To Lift

When you visit the Temple of Shar, you can convince Shadowheart to spare Dame Aylin, the daughter of the goddess Selune. If you succeed, she opts to hurl the spear into the depths of the Shadowfell. Now considered an Enemy of Shar, Aylin informs Shadowheart that her parents were abducted by Sharran cultists and are still alive, held captive in the cloister. In this scenario, you must confront your former “family.”

Later on in camp, you find out that Shadowheart was being manipulated by Shar. During her youth as a Sharran initiate, Shadowheart had doubts about her faith and mentors, as noted by Mother Superior Viconia. She received orders to occasionally torture her own parents and relinquished her memory to Shar to ensure she wouldn’t remember the traumatic memories. A painful mark on her hand links her to her parents’ suffering, causing agony when she strayed from her faith.

Witnessing Shadowheart finally release her pent-up emotions and cry was both challenging and profoundly validating.

I began to establish a deep bond with her. Maybe it’s because my journey with family hasn’t been too dissimilar. In the past year, I had the opportunity to meet my biological father for the first time at the age of 40 (same age as Shadowheart). The journey to Washington, DC to meet him felt like a personal mission, aimed at uncovering the missing pieces of my past, particularly those elusive memories from my infancy and the initial few years of my life that had always felt curiously absent in my recollections.

Discovering something important about yourself later in life feels like entering a new level in a video game, and it can trigger a sense of insecurity about your belonging in that unfamiliar terrain. As I navigated that uncharted territory that was my childhood, the fear of not fitting into my dad’s life lingered.

Shadowheart’s quest turned my worst nightmare into reality when, at the age of 40, she finally discovered her loving parents within the House of Grief, where her personal journey unfolded. In a cruel twist of fate, Shar presented Shadowheart with an impossible choice: to continue living for Shar’s purposes while her parents remained alive, or to break free and let her parents die. During these critical moments, I remained silent, allowing Shadowheart to make her own choice, and she ultimately decided to release her parents.

It hit me hard, and my friend patiently listened as I laid out my fears and how Shadowheart’s narrative eerily mirrors that intense fear of losing something that you’ve only just gained in your life, especially when it’s someone as important as a parent.

Even though it was my character Serenity asking her “What next?” near the end of her personal quest, it really resonated. After all, what do you do if you feel you’re about to lose a loved one? She answered: “We carry on. It’s all we can do.” She asked for time alone, to contemplate in a familiar place that she can’t remember, but knows she was once there.

In a poignant moment following the events with her parents, I shared a heartfelt connection with Shadowheart. Witnessing her, a character shrouded in shadows, finally release her pent-up emotions and cry was both challenging and profoundly validating.