Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Did anyone genuinely enjoy the "Evil" Route?

I'd argue that the "end result" of the first third is much more relevant to evil playthroughs than the full story ending. Typically, "evil" should have immediate benefits but long-term detriments. (e.g., You kill someone for their stuff. Great, you got their stuff! But now the town is after you and you either have to bribe guards, leave town, or get arrested. Or: evil overlord amasses power takes over the country. But eventually, inevitably, heroes come to kill the evil overlord)

In BG3 Act 1: The evil route should result in you having gotten significant power. Evil is tempting for this reason! Characters don't just decide "hey, I'm going to be evil now." Characters make evil choices because they are selfish and the evil choices benefit them at the expense of others!

But, the current ending of the evil act is "You killed a bunch of tieflings and druids, basically acting as our servant/murderhobo, and then you get betrayed" (I didn't play this "evil route" so I might be mistaken)

tl;dr. Any evil route should have immediate or at least easily apparent benefits. The "evil route" in BG3 act 1 has basically no benefits that your PC would know of.

Yeah me too which is why perhaps I missed a truer path towards playing the Evil side.

Though there seems to be (understandably) a difference of opionion as to what Evil actually means.

I would have to be off the charts bat shit crazy to want EVERYONE dead, so for me this just doesn't work in any kind of meaningful scenario. But I think actually enough people in here agree that at least at the start of the game the concept of an evil playthrough doesn't really present itself.

1 - Unless a character willingly WANTS to turn into a Mindflayer, our immediate and ONLY purpose is to resolve the tadpole issue and being Evil we are willing to do whatever it takes.

2 - Agree that depending on your particular flavour of Evil that may or may not include taking particular companions along, and disposing of the others in any means you feel comfortable with in order to further drive your current agenda.

3 - Agree also that the Druids are Neutral themselves and true neutrality is a little tricky to pull off, so it's not surprising that they feel more Good leaning as a whole, or at least in so far as IF I was playing Good I would at least look to sort the issues out.

4 - Regarding what I know vs Character... Well I do know it and I know as a character even enough come the end credits of EA to say that choosing Evil feels unfulfilling and even darn right un-rewarding. Specifically on the Tadpole though, no I don't know but the information fed to me until someone tells me otherwise (happened to be Halsin for me) was that I was in danger of becoming a Mindflayer, so anything dream wise or power wise coming from the Mindflayer I am going to inherently distrust. Now Sure, a power craving being might well take the risk, but the flavour of what is Evil argument works both ways. No way I am letting myself be controlled.

As far as I am concerned it doesn't matter though as all discussion here is hopefully fruitful for the Larian Devs who can themselves decide what to do with it.

I stand firmly in the camp of I could see a form of Evil working here, but given the various forms of what it means to be Evil, there isn't currently enough here to entice MY form of Evil. Though that playing Drow, killing the Grove and having sex amongst the destruction wasn't too shabby an example, just seems too much of a hassle.

Clearly not to everyone.
I allready told you, multiple times even ... its ok to agree on disagree ... we can have different opinions, its not a crime (at last not here, dunno where you are from).


And we all (yes, that means me included) are providing it.


I dont think you are right, since you dont know even aˇ10% part of story ... but hey, if you want to condemn a person you don't know for something you don't really know about, I won't stop you.
As for mine qualities ... i will not judge that, since that is more like up to others ... no one ever complained tho. O_o
And i bet that the fact you dont want to play with me i shall survive somehow.


I like emoji ... dont you? They can help to add tone to the text.


Chaotic evil is usualy as stupid as chaotic good ... i cant help the feeling that it have something to do with that chaotic part.


Correct me if im wrong, but should not smart evil try to not being recognized as evil? O_o


Quite, yes.


Well ...
No, I'd say this is not the case.
I'm quite taken aback by where you actually get the idea that a person who repeatedly and directly admits that he thinks before choosing which option would suit his character the most, thinks back how else it could be used to justify the option he likes best. .
That sounds like the complete opposite to me.


Yes, I did, in one case ... as I repeatedly admitted.
So i gues there is no need to suggestin anything. O_o


In that case, you probably didn't read it very carefully.
I'm not saying that there are crowds of us ... rather (as I said before) it's more of a stubborn fight with five people on one side and five to ten on the other.

Or rewarding ... depends on your perspective.


You'd (am i using it right?) not argue ... since i would agree with you, im just saying that Act1 isnt yet complete.


Typically ... yes.


That part i dont kinda agree on ...
Every character you create is suppose to have Alignment ... they sadly abandoned this system now, since they want us to explore more "grey" areas ...
But when you had Alignment ... your character didnt ever "just decided to being evil from now" ... they usualy allready were. Why? That is up to you.


You are partialy ... its a bit more complex.
I recomend to at last try it.


Here i disagree completely ...
Yes, most evil character will need to see some benefit, yes players (especialy bad roleplayers, no offence, I don't mean anyone specific) do like to have benefits ...
But if your character is sadistic asshole, who just enjoy to torture others ... he dont need any motivation to torture others, its rewarding for him just for the pleasure.


That is for sure.


Well i presume its just the option to kill anyone (wich i see as good thing) taken to quite extreme. :-/
But im personaly quite happy that option is presented in the game. Its bold move.

How is Alfira dying and Volo being put in a cage rewarding. Is killing origin characters when you meet them rewarding? It locks you out of all of their quests. The game even stresses that you made an "evil" decision by rubbing it in your face in the first two cases.

I take killing the Goblins or everyone at the Druid Grove as par for the course.
Better for me would be if after witnessing specific events I kill the Druids and offer up their grove to the Tieflings to stay at, because the Druids are a ptential thorn in my side should I side with the Drow, Tielfings however could be swayed at a later date, especially by me if I have provided them shelter.
I.e. more devious manipulation please Larian.

I agree, I think the evil playthrough is really half baked and we should have more options like taking leadership of the goblins or demonstrating the absolute as a false God to Minthara. Even for evil stuff in CRPGs it's incredibly brutal and simply not a choice most people will pick. To me it's a lot like in PST
it certainly is an option, and options to do bad things should exist in CRPGs however the evil path in BG3 has so little motivation, logic, or reason. It only makes sense for a player who really really wants to murder children and druids.

So deep! You can kill every NPC in the game! Wow what a well thought out mechanic

lol probably? I'm pretty bad at grammar

I plan on it! I'm currently stuck on wiping at the grove whose multiple small combats are taking soooo long. I just need to push my way through them


Oh for sure. If you're playing as a sadistic evil (chaotic evil) then the murders themselves are the reward! I'm just saying that other (Lawful and neutral) evil characters don't really have a reason to follow Larian's evil path rn. So I guess saying that "any evil path should..." was incorrect of me. I think we're in agreement here ^_^

What is the feedback value of a comment like this? If you want to vent use twitter or something.

Ragnarok is pretending this mechanic is not just a means to lock yourself out of content. I think Abits was referring to it as such too. We shouldn't be having an argument where we all want more deep permutations on the evil path and one person is like "but if you roleplay as liking the path is becomes well thought out!".

Instead of easily robbing every merchant blind and breaking the economy in the process, I hope the game will present more moral dilemmas and temptations.

Right on. If this mechanic doesn't serve the story in any meaningful way, it's useless. Bg1-2 also had the option to kill every thing you see. Never heard of someone using it because the alternative (actually experiencing the story) was better. If killing everything is your (and by "your" I'm talking to ser RagnarokCzD) idea of good storytelling we can't find any common ground for discussion.

I was wondering if a failsafe state existed for not interacting with the Tieflings and Goblins at all, turns out there is none. So the argument of there being some kind of neutral third path is now void.

I tried that as well. There is no way to avoid the initial fight in the grove. I tried to avoid everything else (meaning I left immediately after the battle was over without entering the grove) but I kinda broke the game.

I've just rolled a Seldarine drow Ranger (yeah I know - but in my defense there's a hairstyle I really love in Alana's mod and my Wizard was half elf).

So with no particular wish to do good we set off to druid grove:
- told Zevlor to feck off

- asked around where the f*** is the healer - were told to check out Nettie

- met Kahga - told her to quit prattling about tieflings cause again couldn't care less, rolled persuade just because it never suceeds but it somehow did and we even saved Arabella

- checked out Nettie and intimidated her not to poison us -learned Halsin actually knows something about tadpoles and judging by his diaries a lot of other stuff so as Astarion put it "with that merry song in our hearts" we set off to find him

- met Ethel - told her everything - you know for fun as Astarion suggested

- met Sazza - couldn't really care if she gets shot, certainly not putting my life on the line there, complimented Arka on her shot

- met True soul Edowin, told those two imbeciles we we're from the ship as we wanted to learn their motives having said they're looking for us and they didn't really look as they could have presented a threat, proceeded to kill them

- befriended goblins, checked out Gut who didn't even know about tadpoles, tried to poison me and then attacked, proceeded to kill her

- found Minthara who again is totally clueless about the tadpole AND a Lolth drow (or is she still?) so definitely not going to bow to a Lolth drow - proceeded to kill her too!

- found Halsin (everyone was mentioning bear - Rath for one and we're not stupid) and as we've already killed two out of three leaders and you know we were already IN THE CAMP (didn't even have to walk anywhere) plus he said he'd help we proceeded to kill Razglin too

- well Astarion then suggested it'd be fun if we just killed them all, so we did

Now are we actually good? I was going for chaotic neutral but whole my motivations may differ the end result is the same as with my good aligned wizard.

Because while I may be CN/E I'm certainly not chaotic stupid which would be required of me to cooperate with that drivel of Absolute, which I know for a fact are out to get us and are totally oblivious of any tadpoles, so what help can I possibly expect of them?

On the other side I've got a renowned healer, whom I've just stumbled upon in the camp and who I know for a fact studied the tadpole, only asking me to kill that one person?

What do I stand to gain in the first scenario?

You get to kill stuff 😉🤣😜😉🤣😜😉

Lol honestly your adventures reminds me of this skit.
[video:youtube]https://youtu.be/GPUgjy-Pn-4[/video]

Hey but I got to kill stuff (possibly even more "stuff" than if I went to Druid Grove) plus (don't judge) I find it EXTREMELY satisfying to blow up the ones in the courtyard.

Agreed on that with Astarion at camp party before you know "letting the dogs out" 🤫🤷

Amazingly, if you kill the goblin leaders autonomously and help the Tieflings indirectly without ever meeting them, you should be counted in the "good" stastistic. The end result is literally the only thing that matters lol