Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General About the "evil" path.

I'm speaking for myself and myself alone about my own experience with the major bad choice in the game; based on the story details, story reasons and story events that lack a proper build up in relation to story decisions.

So it is a YOU problem if you think I'm talking for you. I'm not.

Plenty of people also find the bad playthrough lackluster... but I don't speak for them nor do I speak for you nor do I care whether you agree or disagree with it. I'm talking about my own experience and my own reasons addressed towards nobody specific, for why this particular path in the story is lackluster due to the lack of reasons I've mentioned.


And you will keep waiting because I'm done with your condescending way of talking.

Well, it follows manichean rules, there was no argue about that, but that doesn't mean there is no way to change your alignment. There are ways to do it prescribed by rules, either voluntarily or being forced to by the DM. You can't state that you are lawful good in alignment, act like you are chaotic evil, and expect your DM to allow this dissonance - you would most likely be switched to a chaotic neutral at best. BUT there is also a possibility that your DM WILL tolerate it, if you explain your actions from another angle. Therefore the alignment system is just a simplified ruleset to help the players understand the world and build their character, not a set of restrictive rules that keep you within boundaries.

Therefore, I don't need to find another game to suit my needs, because DnD gives me everything I wish in terms of roleplay and world interactivity (ofc having a great DM friend helps a lot as well). BG3 also suits me just fine as it is, with a lot of combinations of actions/counteractions to play with.

Sorry to interrupt your discussion, but I think your post did hold at least some premise of 'spitting facts' with phrasing like "it is a badly written encounter", "this doesn't make sense", well, that type of comment. Well, Rag tried to oppose those facts, coming from another angle, I assume no condescending tone was intended, just another perspective. I can't know for granted though and I don't want you to feel bad about anything. I suggest we just listen to each other and get excited about things we haven't yet considered, and there will be no fighting or grudges

Typically, statements from an individual sharing their opinions on something, such as "it is a badly written encounter" has a certain level of implied subjectivity to them. We all do it all the time, I say a movie is bad on the regular. That means I didn't enjoy it, it didn't meet my preferences for what makes a good movie - It isn't a factual statement of a movie being objectively and undeniably bad and that anyone thinking otherwise is wrong.

No worries and no need to apologize.

The thing is a vast amount of people have an issue with Minthara's bad path in the game as there are plenty of threads on Steam Discussions/Reddit/Larian Forums pointing out the same shortcomings that are being pointed out here. And I personally agree with these people because I also felt the same disappointment when I first saw Minthara's path, which is why you will notice I usually start my posts with "for me" to imply it's a personal experience.

To me personally the bad path is terribly disappointing because of how badly introduced it is with no proper build up and no meaningful encore. It's just a shallow mass-murder choice without substance that is presented as soon as Minthara is met. That is my experience with it based on the story elements present currently, which I'm simply sharing here along with my reasons and explanations as to why it feels lackluster.

And if someone disagrees with that, it is completely fine by me and feel free to. It's what a discussion is for after all. But I am not fine when someone literally latches and starts ripping into a post so extensively and acting condescending while doing it, implying things about me and such. I personally do not appreciate that and won't be a part of personal back and forths.

Opinions are welcome and everything written here are just that, opinions. And I'm interested in reading opinions trying to put their points across in cohesively written paragraphs, but not as personal back and forths with an abysmal amount of quotations.

Oh yeah i forgot about Volo, that will screw us when party gets to Baldurs gate or any other big settlement. Not to mention depending how much Volo knows, that could also tip off the cult too, screwing up any infiltration attemp.

Thats not true ...
Yes, Nettie is puting lot of weight on this side of scales, but she also desperately need you to find Halsin ... so her words are hardly without personal interest.
And next to her we have ... what? O_o

This is straight forward lie ...
From Edowin you find out only that the Absolute wants the weapon ... and that the weapon was on Nautiloid that fell from the sky.
Nothing more.

Not even a word about *you* specifically. :-/

Feels kinda funny when you counter the same false argument more than three times per page.

Anyway ... no, *they* dont know ...
But *someone* in that cult do ... and that is your target.
You simply play long game here ... its not like any other path would lead you straight to the easy solution ... is it?
Even Halsin gets angry when you point out that you hoped for something more than distant prehaps.

Nettie got through serious character development to get this reasonable ...
Back in the days, she also first tryed to kill us ... and only then, we got option to persuate her to heal us and help. I liked her more this way.

Also why would Gut even help you? O_o
Goblins are trecherous little bastards ... as you can see.

Again, not true ... this is purely your interpretation, hardly anything else.

Is it tho?
You say that based on what exactly?

That Minthara *said* that the Absolute demands your life?
Well if you listens to her carefuly, anything she do is "demanded by the Absolute" even tho if such action is direct oposite from what "the Absolute demanded" litteraly ten seconds ago.
> Even from that alone you can easily understands that this is just the way Minthara speaks ... and think. As every good written fanatic, she simply presumes that anything she do, that isnt stopped by Goddess hand, was actualy her will.

What does that mean then, that the Absolute "demanded" our demise?
Dunno ... maybe just like other Goblin leaders, she simply dont want competition on her position ... but is smarter than Ragzlin, who basicaly admits it as the only one of them.

Halsin and single Gnome are just chilling in your camp ...
I have no idea of any Alliance with Myconids ...

This is hardly fair question ...

In Druid Grove you are meere traveler, adventurer, some random dude who just happened to be there ... and whole Grove is filled with people who have lots of problems, not many posessions, and great need for some help ... their supplies are running thin (wich is strange, but w/e), their society is divided and causing power struggle.

In Goblin camp, you are True Soul, basicaly their leader ... how can any lowly goblin as anything from you? Especialy if you play Drow, they barely even dare to look at you! And to put it into the perspecive even futher their bellies are full, they just finished sucesfull raid and are celebrating, their leadership is strong and united ... what would they even need from you?

Also ... if you wish to count quests ... how many did you get from druids?
Not Tieflings ... Druids!
If i count corectly ... that would beeeee ... 1 > find Halsin ... and you allready wanted to do that when you approached them, so basicaly none.

What was so major or investigative about it?
Go there > loot box > return. :-/

Hardly anything more than saving Sazza ...
Wich, btw, in the last patch get reward you dont get any else way. :P

Well ... Minthara certainly said you will meet her again (if you didnt kill her obviously) ...
It seems fair to presume other Goblin leaders will be there aswell.

Chubblot also made some interesting datamining in his last video.

Give me one example besides Paleoak. -_-

Why would they give you anything ... and i mean storywise ...
You claim you are agent of the Absolute, therefore doing her will is your reward.
(Also Minthara can be persuated to pay you ... just for accuracy. )

As for the loot ... you can kill them both and loot it all even if you pick Evil route ...
So, hardly any difference i would say.
Also, "loot" cant logicaly be your deciding argument, since your character dont know what s/he will loot ...

Depending on your deffinition of "help" ...
Also as far as i know, nobody mentioned that they want her to "help" you ... most people picking Evil route wants to "use" her ... there is important difference.

Nah, you merely trade one romance for another.
You loose Wyll tho ... personaly i see that as benefit. :-/

This is another straight lie ...

For one, Halsin is most certainly NOT your "most promising lead" ...
For two, you can easily get same information he would give you from his corpse ...
For three, even if you cant talk with dead, its written in his journal ...

Personaly i fail to see why should our character care what will some second grade storyteller and notorious liar saying about him.

I’d also agree that "it is a badly written encounter" and "this doesn't make sense" are just figures of speech – there should be no need for a disclaimer to point out they shouldn’t be taken literally. I wasn’t going to chime in, but this is becoming a familiar and tedious problem across the entire online world.

Not that it’s ever going to stop, but it’s at least cathartic to write about it.

I’m getting some unpleasant déjà vu, too, just reading the topic’s title (where have we heard this before?) and the slow build up to that tired war of attrition that is the never-ending ‘I quote you, you quote me’ ping-pong that keeps going until someone eventually caves. But since everyone now seems to be clear we’re all just delivering our two cents and not the law on what is and what isn’t, I’d also like to repeat what I said before about disliking the Minthara ‘evil’ path for similar reasons to those already raised.

The notion of a ‘good’ or ‘evil’ path doesn’t work for me – a quality writer doesn’t view the world in such simple terms, and should be able to take everyone’s side, equally, and not weigh in with their own trite view of what’s good and what isn’t. No sentient being is so stupid as to think they’re ‘evil’. That kind of thing is best left to the realm of cartoon villains.

It’s worrying, frankly, that the good/evil paths are so cartoonish-ly pronounced in this game, each so vividly sign-posted that they might as well be good and evil tags in the dialogue. With Minthara’s speech, there’s no question about the direction in which you’re heading, and so it’s no wonder the data says it’s the least trodden road, because if there’s no mystery, there’s no intrigue – aka boring.

It looks like this will be the template, however, for all good/evil paths going forward – with a huge chunk of resources going towards ‘unique’ yet uninspired ‘evil’ paths that probably most won’t want to play, at least on the first run.

I see plenty of excuses going round stating the player should ‘fill in the gaps’ themselves – or head-canon the whole evil route. That only enforces the fact that it’s lazy writing – and yes, that’s a figure of speech, not a fact.

Tbf, I have to head-canon the entire experience at this point: the ‘evil’ path is just more on-the-nose with the narrative heavy-handedness. I enjoy the combat and did enjoy the graphics before the Patch 8 disaster, but I’m guessing that’ll only get me halfway through Act 2 before I quit. Then again, I quit most games early these days if they’re not firing on all cylinders, in all areas, so nothing new there.
Graphics: 8/10 (patch 7) 5/10 (Patch 8). Combat: 8/10. Story: 5/10.

Well said

I agree that the good and evil paths in this game are very clearly signposted and the evil path is quite cartoonish in a lot of ways, but I want to disagree with your assertion that a quality writer doesn't weigh in with their own view of what's good or evil. Unless they're writing about facts, an author's view of right and wrong implicitly colors any work. And there are always good guys and bad guys. I mean, look at lord of the rings, the well from which modern fantasy sprung. The villain is literally called the Dark Lord and their base is called Mount Doom. Sauron and his forces are as on the nose evil as it gets. In Mass Effect, Cerberus are clearly meant to be vilanous to some degree, even if they're on you're side in the second game. Villains are clear and present in Shakespeare's works, the list goes on. Sure, you can understand the villains, you can sympathize with them, but more often than not, it's clear who the heroes and villains are simple because in a story we're following the heroes. It's very rare that we're really supposed to wonder if the protagonist is morally in the wrong broadly. If they are in the wrong, then usually part of their development is realizing this fact and changing.

But that's in general. If you're talking about just in RPGs like this, that is a bit different and a more neutral approach can be affected. But even then, just because they believe they're the hero of their own story doesn't mean anyone else is going to agree with them.I look at Pillars of Eternity for an example. Spoilers incomoning for the game.


Another great example is Dragon Age, with the the mage-templar conflict and the treatment of elves. The games, particularly 2, do try to show the best and worst of both sides, and present each side's best cases. But even when presented objectively, the Templar order is fundamentally cruel and inhumane regardless of the best intentions of their best members. And not all their members are even close to best intentions. And where elves are concerned, there are times you can side with the humans against them, but the game never shys away from making it clear you are siding with racists against an already oppressed class of people.

Could you point me towards some?

Since i would say that i watch simmilar topics quite close, and i have never seen such suggestion. O_o
Unless it was outside the forum, there i watch nothing.

The point I’d been trying to make in that particular post was that, in a game with a finite number of possible paths written, one consequence of the game not allowing me to register my motivations or whether I’m saying something honestly or not is that I am left worried about whether the game is actually going to continue to let me roleplay the way I want or whether I’m going to end up butting my head against the limits of the script. If, on the other hand, the game lets me register my motivations and intentions then it builds my confidence that the writers have considered that possibility and have written satisfying content for a character with those motivations and lets me make better-informed decisions about how to proceed.

For example, when agreeing with Minthara to attack the grove, the game doesn’t give me any indication that it’s going to be possible to then get to the grove before her and prep, or even that it won’t just then automatically treat my character as hostile to the tieflings. But by giving me a “[Deception] Yes, I’ll help you” option the game could indicate to me that I’ll have further choices to make later and can still side with the tieflings after all (as well as giving me the more intangible satisfaction of having my intentions recognised by the game and Minthara a fair chance to realise my insincerity). I’d have been more likely in some earlier playthroughs to have at least have initially supported her if the game had signposted more clearly that it would be possible to betray her before the attack.

In that case the consequences become obvious quite quickly and Larian *had* created at least some of the additional nuance I’d hoped for. But in the full game, when it could take tens of hours for the consequences of selecting options to emerge, it’s asking me to take a lot on trust that the game will cater later for me to have not meant something I’d said much earlier or for me to have done something for a reason that it didn’t let me register at the time.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a counterargument to this point, and I can understand if you and others might prefer to avoid what I guess could be seen as hand-holding. I’m only saying that my personal preference is for more feedback than Larian are currently giving on what we’re *really* doing when we select certain options and what future options that might open up or close down.

Better ways to convey character motivations is a drum I'll beat in any thread it comes up.

Dont she litteraly tells you that she and her army will wait for your signal?
That most cruicial part of her plan is that you will infiltrate the camp, and open the gate? O_o

Well, that would suck ...
Personaly im not a fan of that when NPCs get informations straight from DM, bcs they have no other way to find out ...

Few curently presented examples:
- You kill Ragzlin > whole goblin camp is hostile ... even if you do it inside "silence" and no alarm is raised.
- You decide to attack Kagha > all Druids are fighting Tieflings ... how did they learned what is happening in Kagha's cave? No idea.
- You attack any member of that Zariel "paladins" band > all of them are attacking. Again, no matter if you use Silence, no matter if you also use darkness or do that behind closed doors ... somehow they all are conected.

Two notes:

1) Thats not how [Deception] works ...
[Deception] is used when you are telling somebody a thing they dont believe ... and roll represents chance that they will believe you, or not ...
Here, same as when Nettie demands you to swear you will drink the poison ...
Minthara have no reason to disbelieve you ... therefore you are not [Decieving] her, even if you lie ... you say exactly what she wants to hear.

Also you just told her position of her target, and she WILL attack it, no matter what ...
If you will betray her, she will deal with you ...

2) Try to bring Wyll with you.
I believe you get what you want.

Like I said, I’m hanging up my internet ‘war of attrition’ card. So bear that in mind should you decide to read the below, because I’m not trying to pick a fight.


You have your philosophy on what authors should be doing – I have mine, and I strongly disagree with your assumption that a good author allows their views to colour the work. That’s the definition of contrivance. Stream-of-consciousness is ‘higher order thinking’: that’s when the author lets the subconscious write the story for them. Entirely possible depending on the talent. Otherwise you’re just getting an essay dressed up as fiction.

I quoted The Wire and The Sopronos before as perfect examples of unbiased narrative – or as near as it gets. They aren’t fantasy, but they are stories. Cyberpunk and The Witcher 2/3 are also good examples, if we’re to take games, since everyone, including the protagonists, are some shade of grey.

The stories you quote are not stories I would ‘rate’. The Lord of Rings is popular, but that doesn’t mean it’s good (again, my opinion). I read the books and saw the films: it’s too black and white, but then it’s also a children’s book, so it’s not a valid example, IMO, given that BG3 has a ‘mature’ rating, hence is pitched at adults not children. Couldn’t stand the Dragon Age games, never played ME.

I don’t agree about Shakespeare – Shylock? – and never saw any of the characters as black and white.


Well, I’m not saying you’re wrong – I’m saying I disagree strongly again. Almost all of the characters in The Wire and The Sopranos are morally ambiguous, and that’s what makes the writing challenging and interesting. No one in ‘real life’ is perfectly good or evil either, and a talented author will have observed this and will draw on this fact to produce what they call ‘complex characters’ (no black and white).

All of John Banville’s characters – and he’s a Man Booker winner – are morally ambiguous, shades of grey. You never know who to trust. And if we’re to return to pop culture, even GOT, from what I’ve seen of it, features roughly 90% morally ambiguous characters, with the biggest bores (John Snow) being the cliché heroic types.

You know the John Banville guy I mentioned? He had a good one about this guy who tried to trip him once about his brilliantly scathing review of Iain McEwan's Saturday. The guy didn't address the review, he just addressed what he perceived to be a technical error Banville made about tennis. The quote from Banville is 'Summoned, one shuffles guiltily into the realm of trivia.'

Your patterns are pretty obvious at this point, so I’ll keep this as mechanical and reductionist as I can.

Both:


And:

= player has to invent an intelligent narrative reason for taking the evil path because the writers couldn’t devise one naturally.

No.

I see ... i was expecting as much ...
Cant help the feeling that you are basicaly asking for Railroading.

But one more question:
Since you concider making decisions as your character, based on accessible information to be ... well, what you said ...
How do YOU decide?
Or even more precisely, how do your characters decide what to do next?

In Kagha case for example ...
She send you to offer Zevlor your skills as hired sword, to protect them on their way, Zevlor tells you that his people would die on road ... and Kagha needs to be "removed" ...
How do you decide what to do next?

I would really like to know especialy IF you decide to futher investigate Kagha ...
What "narrative reason" is there?

@Konmehn Since you don't want to have an argument about this, I'm going to let the subject as a whole go. I will just say that my opinion isn't about what authors SHOULD do, it's about what I believe happens inevitably. It's my position that excising authorial opinion isn't a requirement for a story to be good. The stories you describe are absolutely great, and they deserve to be recognised as such (I assume. I've honetly never even heard of John Banville). And that moral complexity is a large part of why that is. I just don't think that having characters the audience can identify as more morally right is a flaw.

About the evil path in general, I've seen numerous evil paths in games, and while I've never been one to take them and enjoy them, I've usually been able to see why someone woudl feel motivated to pursue them, both in and out of character. BG3 is genuinely the first I've looked at a route like that and not been able to easily understand why someone would take it. Rag has presented his argument repeatedly, but it just feels like genuinely bad, incomplete writing in a way I have honestly never encountered in a video game.

The question was also a ‘figure of speech’ – aka, not to be taken as a literal question. The mechanical translation would be: ‘Refer to my quote about the author John Banville in the previous post. I am now about to tell a brief story about him to back up my assertion that by zoning in on minor technical details of a critique/post (rather than the high level point of the critique/post itself), constructive debate is jettisoned in favour of nit-pickery for the sake of one-upmanship and derailment’. But nobody speaks/writes like that in general, and hasn’t this been the issue from the start where you are reading everything people write with unconditional literal-mindedness?

That question is also a ‘figure of speech’ – it’s rhetorical.


If that’s what you call character development, subtle build up to big narrative events (lets kill everyone in the grove) and interesting plot development outside of the well-worn fantasy clichés of ‘the dark one (Absolute) will give us immense power!’ I believe she even says something almost exactly along those lines. Let’s find it again because I quoted it the last time this cropped up, too:

‘Tell me what you know. The Absolute will reward us with such power if we find this place.’

Every six year old who writes their first fantasy short story has a similar line somewhere about ‘let’s go kill because the dark one will make us magnificent, muhahahahaha!’


Well, we’re in agreement there.


On this, we simply have different tastes. These are not the kind of stories I could ever enjoy, but that’s life and entertainment for you. There’s no right and no wrong as to the definition of ‘enjoyment’.

yes having Will in your party when you start the fight \ raid at the grove is a fun option ... ok its a little dum of you but I am glad they gave the choice
imo attacking the giff patrol first with Laezel taking their side is the hardest fight in the game so that takes the dum move award