Hi Nikjima!! Wanted to express how much I absolutely adore your modding work and you're doing the devil's work by bringing so much more of Raphael to us
I randomly started thinking of the cut content of Raphael/HoH in bg3 and I figured you would be the expert on this. I'm wondering if you know of any summary/list of all of the contents that didn't make it to the released game? As far as I know there's the wedding chapel in the upper city, the belly button line, and him begging Mephistopheles for help. Did I miss any more of it??
Thanks a lot and once again I appreciate you and your creations!!!
Thank you so much! That's so lovely of you to say! 🥰 I'm glad you like my work so much!
Brace yourself, for this is a long-ass post of all the things I can recall off the top of my head that were cut, but are still in the files somewhere, beyond those mentioned. I have spent a lot of time over the years poring over the game files in search of any scrap of Raphael content.
Also, beware the kneeples.
1. There's the long rest scene where Raphael would show up at your camp one night to reveal your companions' secrets (Vampire, living bomb, Shar worshipper, etc), which only exists as a very rough draft of a dialogue document, no proper dialogue, recorded audio or actual cutscene. It's named CAMP_Monitor_AvD_RevealPartySecrets and includes Raphael saying "Hey, wake up I've got something important to tell you." Which is hilarious to me.
"Hey, Astarion's a vampire. Goodnight" *EXPLOSION*
The below is literally all of it.
2. Also in a similar state, there's an early draft of an epilogue scene where if you'd signed the contract he would show up at the party and request the player hands the crown over (which shows remarkable patience, waiting 6 months before ever asking).
He'd offer to provide 'entertainment' if we gave it to him ("But be it me to thwart your gluttony. Fulfill your end of the bargin, give me the crown, and you can continue your merry celebration. I can even provide some further entertainment if you ask nicely.")
It opens with the line "Tisk tisk. You've been incredibly naughty. Do you really think I've forgotten?" Which is actually illegal in 28 countries. 🥵
Alas, it's just a draft dialogue, I could find no recorded audio or actual cutscene info. It's named EPI_Epilogue_Raphael (as opposed to the current orange box of hatred epilogue scene called END_GameFinale_RaphaelCrownUpdate).
3. There's another area, much like the Chaphael, called RaphaelPunished, which would presumably have been where the 'Mephistopheles thanks us and eats him' cutscene that was removed [link to interview with Swen discussing it] took place. It's just a big, unfinished hellscape, no attached dialogue or cutscene info, much like the Chaphael.
There's also a NPC referred to as Placeholder_MephistophelesHelper, which is a tiefling with Rolan's face. I couldn't find any dialogue or other info attached to him, but I presume he was tied to said cut scene.
SlimX mentions the Area and the NPC in their video [here].
There's also some trigger points (which are basically where things will spawn in or cutscenes will occur) bundled in a group named 'RaphaelCommuppance' which I also believe was tied to it. It includes references to Raphael, the player, and big Meph himself. Gods and Monsters is the name of a cluster of epilogue scenes, such as the Withers and Raphael crown update, so my guess is it would have played as an alternative to the crown update if poor pookie was slaughtered.
4. There's a messenger for Raphael that was in Rivington (presumably replaced by Korrilla), a tiefling in common clothes that would greet you with "You're here in one piece. We knew you would make it. My employer has an invitation you won't want to turn down." then slip the player a note (which is also still in the files) from Raphael himself, inviting them to meet him in Sharess' Caress. Signed 'R' and everything, swoon.
SlimX also covers this NPC (and recreates the cutscene) in their video [here].
5. There are also 8 different Raphael/HoH narrator dialogues for the Scrying Orb in The Devil's Fee, depending on if he's alive/dead/you gave your body to Haarlep, not just the default two. They're currently untriggerable ingame and I haven't been able to figure out how to enable them.
6. There's a few lines of a spell named 'Diabolical Ally' that has the description 'Summon the crafty devil Raphael to fight alongside you.' which would indicate that Raphael would have been a summonable ally at some point. However the character reference attached to the summon (UUID 1f01da1b-06a9-4b04-a83e-4d6854ea9e1a) doesn't exist, so there's no way of knowing which form of Raphael it would have been.
Interestingly, the entry name (which is not the name displayed ingame, but the one used in the code when assigning the spell) is Target_LOW_DiabolicalThrall. Target is the type of spell (you target someone or somewhere and cast it), LOW means it was created to exist in the Lower City.
Perhaps we'd have been able to cast it to summon a diabolical thrall in Raphael's form to aid us? Maybe it was Haarlep? Perhaps we'd have been able to make Raphael himself our thrall. We'll likely never know.
7. There's a second male cambion bodytype, the B body, which is slightly bulkier than the one used ingame for all male cambions (A body). The mesh of it lines up perfectly with the neck of Raphael's cambion head, which does not actually line up with the regular cambion body beneath his doublet. Ya boi is walking around decapitated, all my mods where you can see his neck have a custom head I made that correctly fits the vanilla cambion body neck.
I have my suspicion the B body is the body used in EA, as I've seen images of him from very early EA with noticeably larger hands and a broader build. The second body, as it exists ingame, is only a mesh and does not have a working texture, if you overlay the A body texture onto it, it's just a whole mess, nipples on the knees and all sorts. It also doesn't have the gap on the back for the wings the A body has, and has a different shaped gap for the tail.
8. And finally, there's some additional dialogue if you either lost the hammer, or didn't sign the contract, poked around in the HoH, set off his alarm, don't kill him, then go to the Astral plane and refuse the Emperor, where he scolds you for poking around his home before he offers you the final deal or returns the hammer to you. Currently unobtainable in vanilla as once Raphael is alerted you must fight him before you can leave the HoH and he must die, no more deals, it's over.
I recall seeing someone post a clip of it on Tumblr, but I can't find the post at the moment, it's possibly available via use of the debug book or similar mods that would let you trigger the alarm then teleport out anyway. If I can find the post I'll add a link here.
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. As you can see they're mainly massively incomplete so not something I can easily mod back in like ol' Bellybutton or his EA boots. Fun to think about the 'what if's' though. Well, except the 'punished' one, not a fan of that one myself, glad it got cut.
Whew! That was a lot of typing and screenshotting. Hope this was interesting for you! Thanks again for the kind words and the ask!
Settle in everyone, this is going to be a long one.
So a couple of days ago, I saw a massive anti-HP (the character) rant that really irritated me that I wanted to address.
Before I do, let's address the transphobic in the room. Rowling. Transphobia is detestable, and not wanting to support the series while that directly benefits and enriches her is a super valid stance. Also my personal stance, we support the trans people in this house!
Now that that's out of the way.
"Harry Potter, jock from a wealthy family" or something to that effect.
Regardless of how big his bank account is, remember how Harry was brought up? And by whom?
The Dursleys. The magic-hating child-abusers. Who forced Harry to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs for eleven years. Who gave him Dudley's things secondhand. His mother's sister was so unwilling to spend a dime on him that she was dyeing some of Dudley's old things gray to use as Harry's school uniform.
His cousin Dudley, who delighted in tormenting him, and whose gang joined him in beating up Harry whenever Dudley felt bored enough that he wanted to beat him up for fun.
Is this the upbringing of a "rich jock"? He never used much of his wealth in the Muggle world and even in his school years he seems to know the importance of restraint, and sharing (in book one, he's delighted to be able to share with Ron, and in book four he gives the Twins a thousand galleons without a second thought). Dudley was the one who got thirty-six presents on his birthday and threw a fit coz it was less than what he'd got the previous year. Harry got a used tissue for Christmas. He was the one so not expecting any gifts at all that his best friend's mother packed him a hand-knitted sweater for him, and made his day.
Jock? He played the loneliest position in the Quidditch team. The Chasers and Keepers work together as a team, and the Beaters too, but Seekers are ignored by everyone--including the team--until it becomes apparent that they've spotted something.
Harry was quite popular when he joined the school, but that popularity mostly manifested as people pointing at his scar and whispering about him. Most made him uncomfortable. He only ever had a few friends he was comfortable with.
There were long periods when he was in fact an outcast. That time he lost fifty points for the thing with the dragon, or the time when the Ministry and the Newspapers had turned the entire Wizarding world against him. The time his name came out of the Goblet of Fire, all Houses except Gryffindor treated him like shit, and even the Gryffindors, while they were cheering for him, weren't paying much mind when he was saying that he didn't do it, or that he needed support. That one time, even Ron didn't stay by his side. He was all alone but for Hermione.
The only time he fit the bill of the jock was in book six, when he was too obsessed with what Malfoy was doing to give a damn about his newfound popularity. That was also when he chose the company of outcasts like Neville and Luna over popular hangers-on.
Yes, there are legit reasons to hate the character; he has a massive hero complex. He routinely gets his friends into trouble because of it. He has a very narrow and myopic perspective because of which he doesn't notice much outside of his mystery-hunter track (there was a time when I could illustrate that point better, but it's been a decade and more since I read the last book. I wanted to better read up before talking about this, but I can't bring myself to binge-read like I used to)
Regarding the sillier names like Pansy Parkinson, and mean descriptions
In addition, when the series began, it started as a children's series, hence the Roald Dahl-like non-villain bad guys of the early part, and the "hate-me-I'm-nasty" names they were given. The Dursleys. Dudley Dursley aka Dudders. "Pansy Parkinson". Everyone was more caricature than character. That's how they are in children's books.
Many people are also described in a way to make the reader immediately dislike them. Malfoy is pale, with a pointy chin. Snape is an oily man with a large beaked nose and greasy hair. Rita Skeeter has a mannish jaw. Umbridge has a face like a toad. All of this is again in keeping with the Roald Dahl theme. Whether it's Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Mike Teavee, Violet Beauregarde or their mannerisms and descriptions make readers feel an instant dislike for them.
When the series became more... Mature, those caricatures can start finding their critics. Never mind that such caricatures and worse can be found in thousands of other works, like Superhero comics for instance. Yes, no one names their children "Pansy" but Slytherin was an allegory for white supremacist type people. Back in those days, JK wanted them to be hated without reserve, much as she wanted bigotry and racism to be (irony, considering where she stands today).
Death of the Author
In the text there is no real transphobia that I can remember, other than that description of Rita having a "mannish jaw" (I admit that I haven't read it in ages, but I am still certain of this). Once the material is out in print, everyone is free to interpret it as they choose. Whenever JK comes out with clarifications or retcons or something--as she is known to do anyway--it's still more of her headcanon than in-world truth. If there is no outright mention of something in the text, then it doesn't matter what meaning the author intended to convey. What matters is what each reader makes of it. In the case of Harry Potter, the enemy are clearly folks obsessed with blood purity: Purebloods.
Lazy names
I'm going to speak specifically about the Indian names here: Parvati and Padma Patil.
While India is a large country and the name is more common in certain regions than others, I had heard that Patel/Patil surname is quite common in Britain. And really in Indian cinema the most common girls' names are Priya (Big Bang Theory as well) or Pooja, many girls in this side of the screen have goddess names. Like "Parvati". Many people also keep the same first letter for names for twins, or even in families (for instance, my parents, sister, and I, all have names starting with "A"), so "Padma" is a nice choice of name. And really, Padma and Parvati Patil are much better names than "Khan Noonien Singh" (now there's a lazy name).
Everyone insists that Star Trek's Khan is supposed to be of Indian origin, but with a name like that and an actor with a Mexican accent... I don't really think so. It was because of this silly character generation that I didn't particularly mind him being played by the very white Benedict Cumberbatch.
But the Patil twins. Them I can feel that connection to.
Races of the main cast
Now this might be something contentious, so I apologise for that in advance.
No one cares what Harry is, though since Petunia is noted as being pale, and Lily has red hair, the unknown factor is James Potter. Was he black? That would make Harry biracial at best.
Ron is written as a freckled boy with red hair, and all Weasleys share that look.
As for Hermione... She is the poster child of the blood-purity bigotry bias. When reading her, people are supposed to understand that the prejudice against her is certainly her Muggle-born origin; not her skin color, not her nationality, not her sexual orientation. Which is why I feel it's necessary that she stand out as less as possible in those other ways. For this reason I think that it was a good idea to portray her as white.
Here are characters who are specifically noted as black: Dean Thomas, Michael Corner (both of whom were Ginny's boyfriends), Kingsley Shacklebolt, Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet, Lee Jordan, Blaise Zabini (who's noted as being very handsome, and quite popular). Aside from these we have a few token people of Indian and Chinese origin. Speaking again as an Indian, I don't really mind. This is a British story set in a mid-nineties British school only accepting students from the British Isles. It makes sense to me if there are few Indians.
What does all of this translate to? There are legit reasons to hate both the character and the series. So don't make stuff up, especially if you're ignoring the text to do it. Don't confuse the author and their work, even if you have resolved not to buy that work and thereby support her.
