The complaint I've heard most often is that the evil path is bad because is evil is stupid -- but that's just the Forgotten Realms. The realms are setting where heroes defeat evil and, contra Darth Helmet, evil loses because evil is stupid. In this setting, people do stupid things because they fail to see hook hiding in the bait or the bait is just so tasty that one forgets about the hook.
Selling your soul to a devil = stupid. You will spend eternity in hell.
Worshiping an evil diety = stupid. You will spend eternity having your vitality sucked out by a demon-spider-goddess.
Joining an evil organization = stupid. Name an evil organization that hasn't been burned to ground in the last 100 years or so.
BG 1 & 2, killing people as lamprey faced monster = stupid. Do that often enough and your soul will be destroyed when Papa Bhaal uses you as fuel for his rebirth.
In the realms evil is always a path to self destruction, the question really becomes "why do some travel that path"? And the answer in BG3 is a lust for power.
I disagree on that point.
First, I'd say that in DnD, or perhaps just in the Forgotten Realms specifically, there is some amount of canonicity ("some sources say so"), some amount of Game Master's and players' freedom, and some amount of the writing/world building not being exactly top notch to begin with (with many things being fairly laughable in my opinion). I vaguely remember reading (probably more in commentary articles about WotC decision to gradually abandon alignments) that Good/Neutral/Evil used to be
essential properties of creatures : you don't become or stop being evil or do evil acts, you usually
are evil, and your creature sheet says so. Fortunately, such stupid writing is being phased out. I also remember reading in a source book that there are various ways to understand and interpret evil in the FR.
So I don't agree with the general statement that "in the FR, Evil = [something]". For better or worse, the FR is written by many hands, much like many of the American comic books, and every writer, GM, or video game studio has some freedom and can have their take on this and that. Notably what qualifies as being evil.
As a matter of fact, a couple of months ago, I was spending way too much time on the Forgotten Realms Wiki researching some people (half-orcs to be precise), and I was somewhat surprised by the number of them classified as evil, especially when the article about them didn't strike me as "OMG, evil, so clear". If there's any canon to accept in the FR, I feel that evil is a label that is pretty generously applied. Evil is casual.
On top of that, I'd add that my understanding of the cosmology of the FR is that Overlord Ao is only concerned by deities sticking to their portfolios and all portfolios being filled some deities. That means evil is bound to be a lasting and thriving part of the world. Evil characters aren't there just to be villains for noble heroes to vanquish and evil deities aren't there just for their evil plans to be thwarted.
Basically, and I'm realising what I'm about to write as I'm writing this conclusion : the FR does evil a lot better than Star Wars.
And I should probably add/remind : this is my view, and I feel the FR isn't a world that lends itself too well to a single canon and single interpretation.
Second, to rebound on some more specific poins
- Selling your soul to devil : ... yeah, definitely not a smart moove. Also not necessarily evil. (I'm often amazed, and I'm not saying it's necessarily good, by how the FR writers can take inspiration from a single story from our world and build a whole system out of it.)
- Worshipping an evil deity : certainly preferable to worshipping no deity. Barring Shar who apparently sometimes forgets some of her own, you definitely want to have one deity recognising you as a faithful. Many evil deities have a very respectably-sized cult. It might well be that a third of the FR mortals worship an evil deity.
- Evil organisations : depends on what we mean by burnt to the ground, but the Zhentarim seems to be well alive. If you're a good fighter, you might want to work for them as caravan guard instead of having no job. The Red Wizards seem to be doing just fine in Thay.
Anyway, I have written way too much (and still have a video to watch). I hope that didn't derail the original discussion too much. In short, my point was that the writing of evil need not be simplistic and ridiculous "because it's FR". To reconnect with (half of) the OP's topics, it would certainly be appreciated if some aspects of the writing could be improved from poor to anything better than poor. There may be too many constraints already (choices that led to animation and voice acting being produced that Larian will not want to throw away), and these currently-poor aspects might not reach excellent, but good-enough or good would be great.
