Larian sets up us with a binary choice*, one coded good and one evil.
(*Yes there is a wander off and not make a choice choice, that loses all act 1 resolution content and does not negate that in framing, content and writing this is presented to the play and plays out as a G-E binary)
The Evil path, of course it is evil, you have to attack and massacre a settlement of druids and the teefling refugees including children, who live there. Hands down evil, you get to know the children, do quests for them, they have cute dialogue.
The Good path is, the druids/teefling leaders ask you to, attack and destroy the goblin cult at the old temple. But uh, when you start exploring the old temple, Goblins are crude and coded as different and weird, cruel and unusual but wait, you go round a corner and, there are children here too, you don't get to do quests for them this time but you can talk to them and yeah, thems children.
Is there a 'Good' solution to this one, yeah while you can't get around the grove attack being a massacre, if you're careful and sneak out you can just assassinate the leadership, rescue halsin and get out but.. fail one sneak roll, step in the wrong place, turn a corner, try to sneak out the back way (where the children are) and, that no longer holds up.
And the leaders? the good side leaders, send you to do this on their own will, the bad side leaders are brain washed when the one you can rescue and 'redeem' being open that had she not been mind controlled she would not have given that order. Like sure everyone in the temple camp is evil, because that's what it says on their alignment chart, but the game does not use alignment for characters so even if you ignore, that they are just acting as they are raised to in their culture and not choosing to be 'worse' by another cultures standards, the alignment excuse doesn't hold up. Because they work for the absolute? They don't know it's a giant brain out to destroy the world, and again their leaders are literally mind controlled.
This isn't to say, game bad, or problematic, or anything along those lines just, that I think there's a conversation to be had around the framing in the playerbase, in reviews and in the general culture around the game around Good path v bad path, settlement with people who we can see ourselves in being deserving life and those coded as not like us (although maybe to some players featuring aspects of culture more alike than on the good side due to tropes origins) as it being good(tm) to cut down.
Especially when there are discussions putting moral judgements on players who take the 'Evil route' for being people who want to murder innocents when, the good side asks that of you too so to pretend like, there is a moral judgement to be made at players choosing a 'bad' option (there's not its a vidyagame) but NO equiviliant to those choosing the 'good' option when, they are functionally the same just against differently coded groups. It's cake and eat it too territory, if evil choice is 'bad' then we can't pretend good choice is so different. Both paths are mirrors of each other, both settlements, grove and temple are mirrors, with internal factions, military and economic life, children and animals, they're the same.
We have a binary choice required to receive Act 1 conclusion content and advance the story as intended, pick this side or this side, but despite the deliberate framing, it's not an evil or good choice but just, a which of these rival societies will you end and it just, might be good to remember that and not allow discussion around the game to fall into habit of seeing one path as moral and right, and the other as irredeemable, moral choices. Rather than 'neutral' choices to advance to the story from different perspectives.
