#been seeing a disturbing trend with bg3 posts lately

[shadowshrike]

Datamines do not show intent in a meaningful fashion. Development is a non-linear process.

Sometimes you create a file in advance because you're preparing a whole file structure at once for something that gets changed a week later and forget to clean it up.

Sometimes you make a note for another team in a file, only for the team to make major adjustments while they're working on it without changing those notes because everyone who needs to know about the change already does.

Sometimes you record a bunch of extra stuff, not because it's part of some grand plan for the story, but because it's on a giant list of potential "generic" or fallback lines and you want to get the recordings done in as few sessions as possible.

Sometimes a team member creates something that doesn't seem used in the final product and no one remembers why it was created in the first place, but you leave it in because removing it might break something.

Sometimes you sneak in a snarky comment, weird placeholders, or a goofy test as a bit of harmless fun while working, but only because you expected no one would ever see it outside of your peers.

A person on the internet who says what canon 'was intended' from datamines is the same energy as looking at a pile of breadcrumbs on a table and saying you know exactly what sandwiches were eaten there.

It's fun to speculate. To get insight into a part of games that are purposefully opaque because they didn't make it into the final product. But there's a huge difference between imagining the possibilities for entertainment and deciding you know what happened in rooms you were never in.

#rant post #been seeing a disturbing trend with bg3 posts lately #where people decide datamines are more 'real' than canon #or people freak out about stuff thats in the code #plz dont do this #context is important #and none of us have it #also cut content is rarely 'real' anyway #it is good fodder for fics and art but bad to harass developers or other fans about #responsible sharing and consumption of datamines is important