Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why play evil?

I have played evil characters before in CRPGS but sadly it is rarely satisfying or believable. I hope BG3 will change this, I am really looking forward playing as the Dark Urge, starting out as someone who tries to hold back at first but then completely loses it and begins to revel in it. One of the few games where I enjoyed playing an absolute asshole, to the point that it became my canon playthrough was Dragon Age Origins. I played an ambitious elf mage who made pacts with demons, used his companions as stepping stones and always picked the side of those that offered him better rewards or power. Ended up chosing the dark ritual ending with Morrigan (who REALLY loved my asshole mage lmao), killed Leliana, had Alistair executed and Logain as my ally.
Too bad Dragon Age as a series went to shit right after Origins and none of that had any real consequences in the crappy games that followed

This said, in regular playthroughs (and by that I mean those in which I am not roleplaying a horrible person) I tend to adapt my moral choices to the situation. Some characters just DESERVE to met a gruesome end and I can see even an otherwise good aligned character becoming really cruel under specific circumstances. So, having the option to be evil is always a good thing in my book because you can use it to spice up a goody-two-shoes playthrough.

This might be a bit late as it looks like we've already moved on, but just in case anyone is tempted to return to it, let's leave the off-topic moral philosophy which was threatening to derail this thread which was specifically about motivations for evil runs. I think we all can understand that question well enough to have a good discussion about it without needing to settle the questions of what evil is or whether we should we be realist or relativist about it.

An evil character can have as many motivations as a good character, even noble ones, the only difference is in how they achieve an objective.

They will have less compunctions about doing unsavory or even violent things and they are not going to waste time helping Sally find her lost Bunny rabbit.

A psychotic character is going to have unstable motivations, which could swing wildly all over the place, but we are talking CE with the added mental health issue as well.

A character aligned to an evil Cult or God will have at their core the need to belong and feel safe. They will do evil things for the Cult because their fear of being alone/unsafe will compel them to.

In the case we are in we are faced with both a choice and a motivation.

We can choose to 1) control the Tadpole or 2) we can choose to rid ourselves of it.

Evil will choose the first option as often as the second, and good will almost entirely stick to the second option, and I don't know why they would choose the first.

Again, the theory holds that Evil has the greater range and flexibility.

I disagree with most of what you said, but I feel constrained to stating only that, given Red Queens warning.

Play the game and have fun. Help others if you want. Or don't and be the evil-ness you want to be. But the most important part is again - play the game and have fun.

Not exactly. The Unfettered types have more flexibility and can do evil as well as good, but being Unfettered does not equal evil.

Which brings home the point that as a rule, people are not good or evil, only their actions are. If your disposition were actually towards evil as others' disposition is towards good, you'd be as constrained as them, but that's very rarely the case.

That is relevant for the games btw. I like to experiment with different ways of being Unfettered, but the games rarely give me a reasonable motivation to do the more evil things. For instance, I have a character planned who feels unconstrained about using illithid powers from a viewpoint of morality, but she cares very much about not losing control of herself, and not becoming a mental slave to the Absolute, whoever that is. So that plan for a character who does evil stuff for illithid powers is out of the window. It's like that in most games. Most storylines impose additional costs for doing the evil things, rather than letting the players reap the reward of an evil action with no downside except running afoul of local law enforcement (which wouldn't even apply in this case).

Okay I let an intrusive thought win:

Do you think as an Evil Durge you can grab Boo from Minsc and just kill him in front of him? Would you do it as an evil character?

You're treading on some mighty thin ice, there, bub.... You're really awakening the Dark Urge, here....

Edit: Actually, that should, just like the Mind Flayer sequence in the crashed Nautikloid, end in Death. You tried, but the Butt Kicking Good Urge lopped your head off.

Why play an evil path? Cause I'm in my villain era of gaming

On a less joking note, I'm just tired of not having the choice to play counter to what a game might be expecting. I like having the option to behave a certain way in games. Especially since I've gotten into games lately that really let you approach things differently versus railroading you towards saving the day. Game will let you go off the beaten path just a little bit but not too much because the game doesn't really want you RPing like that. I'm not interesting in stories with those limitations lately.
Over the past year, pretty much every RPG I've played a character that was super chaotic (leaving NPCs concerned about/afraid of what they'd do next) or a really selfish one that didn't do anything that didn't serve their needs. I've been having so much fun doing this!

For me personally, being the "stereotypical" hero in games is overrated right now. I just want to watch the game worlds burn lol

BG3 Narrator: You hold the little hamster by the neck. It squirms and squeals, trying to bite you, but its little teeth cannot pierce your armor.

1. *Let Boo go.*
2. Calm down! I'm just looking!
3. [Strength] Squeeze as hard as you can.

I think an evil protagonist can be well done in RPGs, but it's often not. Usually you just have the option of 'pet the kitten' or 'kick it to death' ala something like the simplistic morality systems of a Bioware RPG. Games that do this well often don't gamify morality (no good or evil points). The Pathfinder video games for example, with the first you can be a harsh ruler of your barony, trying to make an 'orderly' realm. The second game even better, you can slip into dark powers, like Lichdom, as a way to battle the existential danger of the demon threat, which the games dialogue options support until you make that last choice over the edge. Tyranny is another RPG that executes evil characters that don't feel too mustache twirling.

I personally found the justification for siding with Minthara and the Goblins kind of thin in EA. I guess the Dark Urge kind of solves some of this (why do you want to massacre refugees? Because you have an urge to kill), but I'm hoping there's more emphasis on *why* beyond just murder for murder's sake. Although there does seem to be a good amount of reason for evil/mercenary Tavs to side against them (Lolth-sworn Tav might see punishing Minthara and Nere as traitors to Lolth more important), so maybe this isn't such a bad idea so long as you have the dialogue options to express you didn't do it to 'save the day.'

ROFLOL

Edit:

Minc: Oooo. Oooohooo, YOU are a smart one! I understand now! You did what youd did just to get me mad! Mad enough to Purge that Urge! You are as smart as Boo, sometimes.

Hopefully "Purging that Urge" in this context involves a boot so far up the butt it decapitates you.

"Butts shall be liberally kicked in good measure."

LOL, aren't we nerds.

Love that I can hear the voices as I read these.

I think something that all those games have in common is that they are all to some degree or another, very much ABOUT being able to be evil. With the exception of Kingmaker, being able to play a properly evil character is very important to the experience of the game. In most rpgs you do have a central story that you have to get to. And there's only so much flexibility you can give in interacting with that story until the story itself falls apart. And those stories typically are made under the assumption that the player is going to be pursuing a good goal. Saving things, stopping another evil, etc. So evil paths are included out of obligation as much as anything else. Often really evil, selfish people wouldn't have much motivation to pursue the story in the way the devs have created it. And you can say "well the devs should do more to accomodate evil choices and make them complex and satisfying" but the thing is, that's not the story they want to tell or are trying to tell. And more often than not trying to accomodate more evil would lead to both sides being diluted.

Now where Tyranny and WotR differ is that providing deep evil paths were, from the beginning, a design goal as important as making quality good paths. The evil paths are part of the story that require a lot of focus and effort. And even in Kingmaker, the story there lends itself to evil very well - after all at the core of it, you're trying to attain power and authority. The constraints of the story there are that you always have to be working to keep control of your barony, which isn't something that will conflict with a lot of evil characters, so evil choices are easier to make work. So my thesis is that unless the point of the game is tied in with being evil, then the evil path just istn't going to be as fleshed out in most games.

Oh personally I feel if the developer can't make the 'evil path' compelling/narratively satisfying in the parameters they set out for the game, they shouldn't include one and use what they otherwise would've allocated towards the mustache twirling path to make the 'main narrative path' more engaging and increase the feeling that your choices mattered in it. I just like it when the paths in a game are well written and don't fit awkwardly within the larger narrative. Luckily BG3 seems to be trying to make the evil paths feel deeper and less arbitrary.

Good and Evil are subjective, as much as we decive ourselves they are not.

Survival in itself is amoral. It lies above morality, since to be a moral judge you first need to survive.

What is a life worth? Whose life? The answer may be worthless and priceless, both at the same time. Entire books have been written on the subject, but in the context of the game, the problem with "evil" is how it is written. The writers often approach the situation thinking "what the most evil thing I can I can do? What evil option can I add here?"
Instead they should be adding sensible options, since all action, weather they are perceived as evil of good, follow a logic of their own and make sense within their own framework.
People you might label "evil2 do not think they are evil. Their actions makes perfect moral/logical sense to them. In fact, they might consider you evil.
This is nuance that is often lost in writing.

I reiterate …

To have deeper philosophical meaning. To remind yourself that world is not black and white, good and evil.
It short: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Or, having good intentions - doesn't necessary means helping, or even not doing harm. Likewise harsh egotistical approach doesn't necessary means that endgoal will bring harm and disaster to others.

Funny thing, Gary Gigax himself strongly disagreed with TSR (after he already left it) that evil alignment should even be allowed for players. D&D from the start was strongly inspired by pure heroic fantasy writers like Michle Moorcock. Yet community loved it, and TSR just rolled with it.
Same worked with Star Wars. To nowadays Lucas is on fence with SW fans who adore characters like Palpatine, Darth Vader and Boba Fett (before Disney utterly ruined him in recent show). And again, it just worked. In Clone Wars they had quite a few episodes, showing that evil characters can be far more helpful, and actually doing something good. While some Jedi, been blinded with their own righteousness could bring a great harm.