Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback D&D Alignment dialog options

Appreciated.

And dogs that would lose a fight to a cat are not dogs.

The problem with alignment in a modern game is that nobody knows what evil is anymore. There has been such a warping of morality in RL that everything has become subjective. If we ask a player to be NG for example, many of them will struggle because they won't know what that means or disagree with the developer's choice of what that means. This is exactly why the oath-breaking thing is such a problem - we can no longer mutually agree on what should constitute a breaking of the oath.

So, yes, I would love old fashioned D&D alignments, but I don't have faith that Larian would know good from evil.

I disliked good-evil (law/chaos, light/dark side, paragon/renegade, open palm / closed fist etc.) alignment mechanics in: Every. Single. Game. The one game that _almost_ managed to pull it off for me was Planescape Torment, but I very much prefer just pure choice & consequence, companions having different opinions/reactions about the PC's choices etc.

Faction allegiance "meters" are OKish. Maybe some more complex system (Disco Elysium, Pillars of Eternity comes to mind) could work - if HIDDEN. I absolutely loathe actually seeing any "alignment"/"personality" values on characters'/companions' character sheets. My least favourite element of P&P and cRPGs alike. D&D is shifting away from alignment mechanics and I say: Good riddance!

While there are some cool alignment-related mechanics (alignment having influence on skills/abilities) out there, I don't think they offset the limitations alignment poses for dialogue writing and the resulting cognitive dissonance we feel as players when our opinion about a specific choice's "alignment" differs from that of devs/writers (with P&P, you can at least argue with your DM, but when playing a computer game, you are screwed).