Made for Patch 7 (I was working on this for Patch 6, though! But I can't guarantee it'll work if you're still running Patch 6 atm. I incorporated the new Patch 7 changes into it!)

The randomized emotion system in this game will be the death of me.

HI. THIS TOOK SO MUCH WORK, BUT IT'S DONE!!!

...And by "this," I mean I made a fully custom cutscene, editing the BG3 dialog files on the XML level. Holy $#!%!!!! Even I'm in shock a little!!!!

It's all XML, which you can read more about on the mod page for A New Voice In Town—a mod adding a new voiced custom NPC to Emerald Grove, to accompany all the guides and other sample mods I've made breaking down the BG3 dialog system.

If you'd like to do stuff like make cutscenes, or add characters to the world like I did, you can find a ton of information on how to do so there!

...Now, let's talk about the cutscene itself.


This mod is the first in a series of mods by Aimryax and I, dedicated to adding more content for Wyll—the Wyll Cinematic Universe, or WCU.

This is Brightest Star, a mod adding a new romance scene for Wyll in Act 3. It has voice lines, brings back his early access cuddle animation, and allows you to comfort him after a key story moment. Available for all races and bodytypes! ***Spoilers ahead!!!***


To trigger the scene, you need to do the following things:

• Be partnered with Wyll
• Break his pact with Mizora (the scene currently won't trigger if he's in an eternal pact with her!)
• Talk to him in the docks camp at night, and select the option, "Are you alright, Wyll? You've been through a lot - I'm here, whatever you need."
• The scene should play after this!!
  

You can watch a video of it here:

The scene is currently locked to the dock camp, but I will be updating that later. This is because the camera angles I configured are extremely specific to the dock camp, and I haven't made a new cinematic for the Elfsong yet 😅 Like I said, this mod took a lot of work! This work included:

• Setting up entirely new dialog files for the scene
• Editing vanilla voice lines and adding them to the game (Wyll's second line is already a line from the game, just with his expressions altered, but I edited his initial stuttering "I—" from one of his existing lines. I also extracted a couple EA lines I'm planning on adding in the future. They're already in his voicebank!)
• Using the expression system to add lipsync for that inital "I—" voice line (I used an open-mouthed expression rig timed to match the line)
• I had to manually edit everything from expressions, to character positions, to camera angles, and camera motion via XML. This required trial-and-error tweaking numbers in the XML to get the camera angles I wanted—with the game fighting me the over it the whole time, mind you. (This particular file wasn't handling transforms well and I'm not sure why.)
• I added music to the scene (I used the choral version of The Power, which is a variation of the song used during Wyll's Act 2 romance scene. It's also used during the funeral for the Avenge the Drowned quest—Aimryax was the one who found it!!)
• Adding the music required setting up a new resource referencing the song as a sound effect (you can also set it up as cinematic music, which is different from overworld music, apparently 😅)
• I also needed to add a resource for the dock camp music, so the cutscene could return to the right music when going back to camp.
• I set up a new SceneTrigger to take the scene to the Elfsong rooftop (I explained how to do this in my dialog timeline sample mods!)
• I also set up a custom Atmosphere resource for the part of the scene on the Elfsong rooftop, changing the environment effects, lighting, and color grading.
• I brought back Wyll's Early Access romance scene cuddle animations for the scene, too!
  

...All of this is to say, this entire project was a massive labor of love. And I do feel like I'm losing my mind for having made this this way, but I'm so proud of everything that went into it too, on both my and Aimryax's part. Aimryax helped with picking lines and storyboarding for the scene, mod testing, and he took screenshots, made gifs for the mod page and Tumblr, too!!!

This mod is still a work in progress—although I do actually think it's pretty polished as-is!!! We've got more planned for this scene though, so be on the lookout for that 👀

Future plans include adding dialog options, more lines and animations, including Wyll's "I'm used to being the hero—not so used to needing one" lines from Early Access, refining the Early Access animation a bit, adding unique options for Origin characters, as well as adding support for the Elfsong etc. And I'd like to look at Osiris scripting to make the scene a true camp night! Right now you need to trigger it from his regular InParty dialog, but I would like to change that in the future.

Installation instructions:

Install via BG3 Mod Manager, and make sure the mod is in your mod load order!

The mod overrides the following file, so it can link to the cutscene:

//Data/Mods/GustavDev/Story/DialogsBinary/Companions/Wyll_InParty2.lsf

This means that it will conflict with any mods editing this same file. However! The way I set up the cutscene actually makes dialog edits easier to make compatible. Permissions to the assets for this mod are closed, but I'd be happy to work on compatibility patches for it.

Known Issues:

• There's some clipping in the Early Access cuddle animation; I'm going to do my best to correct that in time.
• The mod currently doesn't account for Karlach's engine upgrades. This isn't necessarily a problem, she can play out the regular scene just fine, but it might be a bit immersion-breaking if she hasn't gotten her second upgrade.
• Textures might load a bit slowly in the Elfsong roof part of the scene; unfortunately I think this is a vanilla game issue, and not something I can do much about.
• This scene is not meant to be skipped through or freecamed before the cuddle on the roof of the Elfsong! Skipping through the scene might result in improperly positioned characters. This is just, a quirk of how cutscenes work (you're skipping over where the position changes would've happened in the dialog timeline) And the freecam thing is due to the fact I really struggled with character positioning with this scene, for reasons I haven't quite figured out yet. I had to cheat a bit and hide the characters at different points.
• None of these are really game or scene breaking issues, but still important to be aware of.
  

...And that's about all for now! Take care, and give Wyll some cuddles for us, okay?

-- 💖🖤  <3  🤍💚  --

Mods Used In Previews:

• Terpsichore - Wyll Edits
• Clay's Custom Companions - Dancer Edition
• Wyll's Devil Form
• Wyll's Eye Colour Restored
• Vanilla (And NPCs) Hair Mixer
• Kay's Hair Extensions
• And a personal Tav mesh edit + camp clothes for Aimryax's character Ra'ed, made by Clayspace
  

A note about the WCU mod series:

As mentioned before, this mod is the first of a planned series of mods by Aimryax and I—Wyll Cinematic Universe (WCU). It's a project that was made for two reasons, explained in this statement from both of us:

The first reason is out of love for Wyll, as a wonderful character with a compelling narrative and a tender romance.

The second, however, is a consequence of Larian's mistreatment and disregard of Wyll. Wyll has the least amount of content out of the six origins, amounting to roughly eight hours, second to Karlach, who has ten, and in contrast to Astarion, who has twelve hours’ worth of content. Not only is the disregard evident in the content disparity, but what was done after release. The game has been out for over a year, but this content disparity hasn't been addressed in any significant way, and Wyll continues to suffer major bugs, from missing captions in his Act 3 party banter, to improperly flagged companion reactions to his quest, and more. And Patch 7, while promising to address the bugs and add more for him, did very little to actually address the content disparity and the issues that affect him.

Ulder Ravengard doesn't acknowledge the player's relationship when romancing Wyll. You couldn't kiss Wyll in the epilogue without a mod when romancing him until Patch 7, and even now the option only exists on a single ending path for him. There are typos in some of Wyll's questline dialog options, and some of his scenes can be very hard to trigger because of improper flagging. And, most seriously, in our opinon: Wyll is denied of his catharsis from his abuser, the main theme of the game, and is denied a chance to be comforted by the player at any point of the game. Not only that, but the player is often actively encouraged to be cruel towards him.

This project dedicates itself to Wyll as a result of this mistreatment, and all ideas and efforts will be exclusive to Wyll only, as WCU aims to give Wyll the same amount of content as other origins.

For cutscene mods: We do not grant permission to model swap Wyll in his custom cutscenes for WCU. If one wishes to create custom cutscenes for their character of choice, refer to the tutorial here. Otherwise, using this mod for any character that is not Wyll is forbidden.