Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Illithid Powers!!

I will certainly hope so. It would cheapen the plot so much if there are no repercussions. Questing for power must always come at a cost.

And frankly, I love this idea. "I'm a holy paladin on my righteous Quest! As a servant of Torm I swear that no evil shall....Oh. Wow. Well. Double Crit chance does smell tasty...Maybe just this one."

I think the assumption that the pro 'pole course will be a superior experience to the anti 'pole choices is coming from putting too much weight on Swen's comments about incentivizing those choices. He didn't say there was more or less content or attention to the anti-pole path, just that the pro-pole parth existed.

I love this quote if his from something I saw in the last couple of weeks: "there's no good-path and no evil-path, just choices"

I think a lot of unlikely conclusions and predictions are coming from this assumption.

If there were no real advantages to be gained from the tadpole, the theme of seductive power may fall flat.

I mean, the fact that the tadpole has a whole progression system attatched to it is another bit of evidence that the anti-tadpole path is gonna have less content. And to be honest, I remain quite skeptical of Swen's big claims about how morally complex this game will be. Talk about no good path or evil path, but when one resolution to a quest is slaughtering innocent regufees and the other is slaughtering the cult that wants to kill those refugees, there's definitely a good and evil path.

We don't know that. Possibly, you get locked into a number of endings at some point. Using the tadpole could exclude content as well. Both the endgame and various quests. Even endings to companions' storylines, if they leave early enough because of your actions.

You can also kill Zevlor and the tieflings by Khaga's orders or kill Khaga and the druids for Zevlor wich is more of a grey area. That being said I agree I don't expect many shades of gray.



I agree, most people seem to think that ''evil'' path just has more of everything while I think going that path is going to take away a lot of content from you and it's going to prevent you from meeting or interacting with a lot of characters and prevent you from traversing cecrtain scenarios/situations.

Yeah, I can't speak to the rest of the game from personal experience, yet, but it's absolutely clear that for Act 1 the good and evil "choices" actually form two mutually exclusive paths and saying anything else about it is sheer sophistry.

If evil is more interesting and engaging, why play good?

Because good is more satisfying? Isn't that like good being more interesting and engaging?

I can't shake the feeling that this all sounds like an argument to eat the cake while still having the cake.

so are you arguing that a good playthrough is intrinsically satisfying, and an evil playthrough is not, and needs extra mechanics to make it satisfying?

Why do I have the persistent feeling that playing as the Dark Urge will lead to some accident that will land me on Minthara's side... After all, I almost provoked a fight in the tiefling camp even in the EA.

I know my character won't trust the Ilithid powers. Question is... if the dark urges (which he might try to resist... on occasions) will push him more towards the tadpoles or whether the Dark Urge power is unrelated to them.

Possible act 1 paths:
Support Grove
Support tieflings
Support druids
Support gobbos

Can you not just proceed to the Underdark and Grimforge without choosing any of those?

You'd be down 1-2 companions (Halsin/Minthara for sure and maybe Wyll still).

Edit: Come to think of it, Larian may make your party react if you take no action. You might need to convince Gale to stay

You definitely can, which on a side note implies that nothing that happens in those locations matters THAT much to the overall narrative.

If you break the tadpoles hold on Nere doesn’t he Tell you to tell Minthara? Could that indicate a path you can recruit Minthara without slaughtering the grove?

You'd be missing out on a bunch of experience and loot, as well a number of companion interactions, so your relationships with companions would be very neutral.

The only reason you'd want to is that you're dead set on remaining neutral in others' conflicts, or you're speed-running

for sure, gameplay wise it doesn't make much sense, but I always like to try to 'break' the game and do things the devs didn't expect. I'm curious to see just how big the main story is if you know exactly what is required and what isn't. This is all off-topic though, sorry OP!

I'm not making an argument. Rather, trying to understand the argument being made.

Which to me sounds like:

"I'm upset because they are making the evil path more entertaining than the good path."

"Why does that upset you?"

"Because I want to play the good path."

"Why do you want to play the good path?"

"Because I find it more entertaining."

"I see. You're upset that they're making the evil path more entertaining because you find the good path more entertaining."

--that's what I mean about eating cake and still having cake.

In other words where is the sacrifice for making the good decision? The argument I'm hearing is that there shouldn't be a sacrifice.

Just like, where is the sacrifice in eating cake? Nowhere, because the cake is still there even after being eaten. No sacrifice.

*

Bobby plays evil.

Sally plays good.

They both look exactly the same at the end of the game. Same stats, items, power, everything. Except Bobby fell for temptation every time and always chose to take power over anything else. It's a wasteland out there in Bobby's game. He made tons of sacrifices for all the power he got.

Sally didn't give in. She didn't fall for temptation.

And for all those decisions? Same result.

What the heck was the point of Bobby taking the temptation? What did he get out of it?

All it is is wanting the best of both worlds. Far as I can figure.

Well, you started with a strawman with "I'm upset because they are making the evil path more entertaining than the good path." so we're off to a bad start.

The argument people are making is closer to "An evil playthrough has entirely additional mechanics/systems that the good playthrough doesn't."

So how does the conversation continue if that is the first statement?

I don't know about the rest of the game and I haven't played Grymforge but I haven't felt like I was being rewarded more on ''evil'' playthroughs. That being said one of the ''allures'' of walking the evil path on ANY game is getting more rewards from quests, stronger gear or getting more benefit from situations in general (on some games the way to balance the good path is getting more exp when you're altruistic and don't ask for rewards etc).

This is not a new concept, you get exclusive stuff when you go evil but the same is true for the opposite alignment, that's where part of the replayability comes from.

Who thinks if you take every possible Illithid power you're only going to get rewarded and if you don't use any you're just going to get less content? I think the chances of that happening are very close to 0.

What I think is some people for whatever reason are only able to play good characters and good playthroughs and they're complaining because the ''evil'' path looks interesting and they won't be able to play it, meaning they're going to miss a ton of BG3 content. But thats a ''you'' issue, it's like going to an all you can eat buffet but the only thing you can eat is white bread with butter and you complain that there's too much of the other food and not enough bread.

Let's start making that singular, not plural ''1 additional mechanic'', lets add that is actually not an exclusive mechanic, you can interact with said mechanic and still be good (Wyll has made a pact with a devil and everybody thinks he is a ''good'' character, while most people would agree making a pact with a devil is not something good).
Interacting with that mechanic extensively might end up killing people you don't want dead, giving you permanent debuffs, killing you at the end of the game, making the tadpole mind control you to do things you don't want and/or preventing you to fully control some dialogue options...nobody knows.

What we do know for a fact (since the devs have said so) is that going that route will add benefits but it will also punish you. Will that punishment offset the benefits? Nobody knows and on top of that, it is ''mostly'' a subjective thing, some people might think the punishment is far greater while other people might think the opposite.

That extra "mechanic" is the one that offers power for sacrifice. It's not just a purely "evil" mechanic because it's the mechanic you must resist to call yourself good. But really what you are saying is precisely what JandK pointed out...you want access to the power upgrades of the evil path without sacrifice and consequence. You call it a mechanic while he called it a cake in his analogy...for the purposes of the game it is the same thing. You want access to the power upgrades that come from embracing a darker path without the sacrifice it requires so that you can have a meaningless good path where there is no consequence for giving in to temptation.