Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Evil Ending?

While I understand I'm probably not the first person to complain about ending feeling cut short and overall lackluster, I see a lot of conversation around the good ending specifically.
Sure, it's nice to give Karlach her moment, and it's very nice to imagine that eventually there will be a proper epilogue to the characters you interacted with - and not just the party members, but in general, all the people you have affected. It'd be nice.

But. But.
Can we talk how short and bland the evil ending is? I mean, lorewise, sure, you become an evil all encompassing brainlord, whatever, everyone is your thrall, nothing interesting happens.
But I'm just thinking, couldn't there be still an exciting way to spin it? I want some flesh to evil ending, you know. I want evil Astarion to end up a cool vampire lord or something like that, I want to hear how people coped or thrived, I think there can be so much more nuance to this, other than bland, Superman-style total instant brain domination. It's not cathartic, it's boring, and compared to how fun and insidious evilness can be portrayed, it's frankly not cool.

And I love playing evil characters, and I want evilness to have some depth too. Besides, game is so versatile and allows for so many options, only to amount to a simple binary choice in the end? I really hope that when ending is inevitably reworked, "evil" ending is reworked from ground up, because as it is, it just feels sad.

I totally expect people who only care about good and moral playthroughs to come at me with "but that's what you get, being evil doesn't pay off, everyone dies, the end". I get it, but I think it's merely limited by writing, and writers are the ones who decide what to write. I like options, and I think all options deserve to be satisfying.

P.S. also i want to keep Gortash alive, he's so cool, thanks <3

I understand what you mean. Even Fallout New Vegas, which had a fraction of the development time BG3 was given, presented us a little slideshow of how our deeds affected the world- good or bad.

It surprised me that we didn’t get to learn the fate of the grove after we left. It’s the most interactive part of the game, after all.

Yeah. I was shocked to realize that the evil Dark Urge ending (which is probably the "default" ending for that storyline) is exactly the same as the basic 15 seconds evil ending, with one added line.
Weirdly, this was probably the better last choice to pick. I reloaded and decided to defy Bhaal in the last second, and for that I've got the must surreal and awkwardly cut together sequence of clips. It started with people making happy and funny comments at the pier, but then (cue ominous music) a dark turn: my main char grew some evil glowing red eyes and wandered of. Cut. Cue sad music. Karlach is dying. My main decides to go with Wyll and her to Avernus. Cut to some street pictures. Finally a Marvelesque bad-ass sequence in Avernus with uplifting action music. The end.
It was a weird tonal mess that made me laugh out at how bad it was.

This game needs a Mass Effect-style, EPIC final cut scene that shows ALL the results of your decisions that happened to all characters. Maybe there are just too many permutations to make such a cut scene -- the file size, budget, dialog that has to be recorded, etc., for all permutations (hundreds, thousands?) might have made the job very difficult and expensive if not impossible.

i don't need to know if Bob made it home after i said HI to him passing on the road back in act 1 but yes the major parts please

So true, if you embraced the Spirit Eater in NWN2:MotB it had a very special set of slides, that it took an alliance of gods (who normally were at odds) to try to stop you because you became such a nuisance, but BG3? "In my name" and here roll the credits, what?!