Put yourself in the role of an evil character. You crash on the beach, meet some people you are tolerating because it's necessary to survive. You get to this sappy grove full of annoying Leave it to Beaver tieflings and even more annoying paranoid druids. You meet Nettie who really doesn't offer any solutions except drink a poison and die. You meet a goblin in a cage who tells you she'll introduce you to her leaders, and you learn that they may have all the answers to your problems. Halsin MIGHT help you, but the cult actually KNOWS what's happening. If you help the cult, YOU might get to know too.
All you have to do is help Minthara butcher a bunch of people who you find annoying anyway.
And then, as time goes by, you begin to discover that there are some serious benefits to accepting the tadpole powers, AND you might actually not transform into a mind flayer. Someone, the Absolute, has found a way to control ceremorphosis. If you learn how she did it, YOU could control it and harness those powers, and your dream lover is actually promising you such things... And more.
Sure. Seems like an obvious setup and you'll probably be used and tossed into a heap, but if you think you're clever enough to outsmart the Absolute and her minions, you can play along with their game until the time is right to stab them in the back.
I think the issue with the evil path is that players aren't really feeling this. It's there, but the red flags are too obvious. It's like Shadowheart being a Sharran. It's too obvious. So players feel like they aren't really tempted to be evil. They have to force themselves to do it in order to experience it.
That's why I'm a total advocate for Larian creating more circumstances where players have to make seriously tough choices. Do I use the tadpole powers to accomplish this seemingly very important thing here, or do I avoid the powers and let that thing go even if it could be a detriment to me? And serious lures for evil characters. Do I use the tadpole powers to gain this really powerful spell/magic item, or let it go and live without it? But more than just using tadpole powers, we need more serious motivations for a lot of things. Do I kill Nettie so I can acquire this really awesome Drow weapon she found on his corpse? Do I join the cult and slaughter the druids because I discovered that Kagha has some sort of Intel on the Absolute and she's not sharing... Or maybe Zevlor has said Intel and if I help the Shadow Druids I might be able to kill Zevlor and take said Intel from his cold, dead hands?
That's what I think people are trying to get at here.
