Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why even have "evil" path?

Purely by the NPC distribution alone:

as a "good" aligned hero you have Karlach and Wyll who are goodie-two-shoes and will do no wrong, you have Halsin who has a quest in act 2, you have Jaheira and Minsc

as evil, all you get is Minthara who has barely any content that is tied to her, and unlike Halsin, you need to rescue her to even get her, while Halsin is forced upon you right away.

(i don't include npcs you get to keep regardless of alignment, i.e. Lae'zel, Astarion, Shart and Gale)

There's no npc that will leave you because they don't like heroics, there's no npc that is strictly evil-aligned. This whole business with grove is the only major choice you make (unless you're a durge) and it doesn't feel like it is maintained along the plot.

So confusing, how "evil" path feels like an underdeveloped afterthought no one cares about expanding. Don't get me started on evil ending - you get 1:30 minute cutscene, "in my name" and that's it. So bland and dull compared to the good ending.

See, i just think if devs don't care to flesh it out - why even include it? Feels like a tease, tbh.

Because it's meant to make you feel empty and disappointed. It's either the hero path or punishment and neglect for being a bad girl/boy.

I really want a proper epilogue to the evil ending, but I doubt it's ever going to happen. I now see it was never a full fledged RPG where choices matter, but a moralising story for children that's supposed to teach you that you need to behave well, stop being ambitious and settle for an ordinary and modest life.

I played a ton of crpgs with evil paths, and this one is doing it the worst, because it doesn't make me feel disappointed in my choices, it makes me feel disappointed in the game.

I don't feel bad about my evil actions, because game doesn't even try to make me feel bad. It just shrugs and ends. I don't think that's good story-telling, even if it was meant to achieve that goal

When you compare it to the amount of content the good path has, the game clearly wants to tell you "it's not worth it, play differently". All you get are railroaded choices, killing off evil characters, evil characters now being changed in patches.

Instead of proper, satisfying, unique content we got more fights and carnage as a filler to keep you playing longer.

Even the neutral path is not that great. I really wanted to have Minthara in my game but because I knew I'd miss out on content and that she was broken I went for the saving the grove option, which I didn't care for. I wanted to skip that plot all together because my Tav had no interest in that squabble and worried about the worm business instead. If you're neutral you get no party and miss out on romance.

I got Minthara on good\neutral playthrough, and it's staggering how little input she has, how few situations she reacts to. She's the companion with the least content, and to romance her without killing druids, you need to fish for every bit of approval you can get.
And solution for this I expect from Larian is just to make Minthara even more good-aligned, because that seems to be their MO.

"Dark" part of the game isn't only not expanded upon, it feels like it's shrinking. Shame, I love this game, but it really feels like half of the game it was meant to be, and since everyone is cheering for it and praising it blindly, I don't expect the lacking depth to be added.

It's just very sad because a lot of EA content hinted at it, and there was just so much more intrigue and tension...

The complete lack of the alignment system in the game like we had in older games (like BG 1 & 2, ID 1 & 2, NN 1 & 2) is something I will never really understand. It could just be because back in the days, it was easier to add lot of NPCs with different alignments (or less expensive) than today or because it's a system that can be somewhat confusing to new players, but as already has been pointed out, this way the whole evil side of the game feels empty. There are no characters to join you exclusively beside Minthara, there is no big ending and also, there is no real supporting narrative to it compared to the morally good path.

It's a CRPG, not a bedtime story that should have a morale to it.

There were so many options for evil characters like Nere, Kar'niss, Sazza and such who could be used for this, but maybe it wasn't worth investing time or money. On the opposite, maybe they should have saved the money for the "evil" content and put it to good use on the "good" playthrough if they didn't care about how the "evil" path feels, but that's just me.

I played when she was not available in the good run and mourned her unnecessary death throughout my game. I'm currently on my 2nd playthrough but Minthara and her romance are crucial to it, so I have to stop at the end of act 1 and wait for patches. I also want to redo my original playthrough and start a Durge run but all of them involve Minthara in them, so I think just won't play this game anymore until she's fixed.

For now, I'm just testing new patches and getting increasingly disappointed.

I really want an expanded evil epilogue, Gortash alliance ending, Nere as a companion, siding with the cult to be a viable choice, but yeah... I can only imagine what could have been.

The reason to have it is "Illusion of choice"

If 90% of players only go good path and you make a thinly veiled choice of path then these players will think "Wow this game has such good decisions and content behind them" while never knowing about the reality that the other "Path" is basically non-existent.

There's a similar thing for the whole "Eat tadpoles" choice, where there's literally no reason not to just get free powers for free because there's no content behind the choices of eating tadpoles or staying pure besides the albino tadpole stuff.

At least for the "Good vs Evil" thing there's the excuse of "Well alignment wheel doesn't exist in 5e!" as a poor way of justifying lack of Evil actions... But overall it's just insufficient development of choices and content (Which is something that also impacts Act 3 entirely too...)

The ironic thing is the game during Early Access did not have such a clear-cut line between good and evil as it does today. Companions were not goodie two-shoes but actual realistically behaving people given their circumstances, with fascinating backstories, trust issues and own intentions.

Karlach for example was not this lovely innocent carefree walking sunshine meme she is today, but a very vengeance driven bloodthirsty fighter that wanted to make the streets of Baldur's Gate overflow with blood as she was going after Zariel.

Wyll also was not this charming heroic idealistic goodie two-shoes either, but a very hurt and hate-driven man because of what goblins did to him, as he was chasing after Mizora to save her.

So the line was almost centered for the most part and Larian did seem to want to first focus on the good side before doing the evil side, but unfortunately development was rushed and all of their personalities basically became Disney-fied as the whole focus went towards the good side.

Despite countless of feedback being sent by the community about how lackluster the immoral actions are, as of today it is evident that there is no evil side. The game's narrative is clearly intended to perform heroic actions and any deviation from them punishes the player with less and less content as there is no longterm branching content from them.

On top of that Minthara went entirely ignored, as did the evil endings too. The fact that we did not get any epilogue, even a mere artwork showing what happens after is just depressing. I wrote about it myself for a Durge ending, but I agree. A disappointing one liner and fade-to-black is such a disrespect of the player's invested time in an evil playthrough.

This, 100%. That's exactly the reason why so many things are not changed, because we have all those white knights, who defend everything they can (even stuff they sometimes complain about themselves) as soon as someones raises the question if this game deserves all the awards it won.
There are certain characters or story decisions you can't talk about without being flooded by defending answers, so why should they even try to improve said things?

This has become a huge problem, because I'm afraid that these hardcore fans lead to a certain blindness within the people who actually develop this game and this leaves less room for improvement.


I had the same feeling, the whole atmosphere in EA promised a lot of darkness, tension, oppression and such, which got mostly exchanged with way too much sexy stuff.

Every time I'm reminded of this, I'm heart-broken anew.
Why can't we have both? Why can't good aligned players push npcs to be good, while evil aligned - push them towards evil? It's more fun this way, everyone gets what they want, and npcs are deeper for it. As it is, both Wyll and Karlach feel so shallow and boring, and it sucks, because I like them on a concept level, I like their acting, but they are so milquetoast

How I wish now I played EA. I bought the game months before launch, but I didn't play it to avoid spoilers, and when I changed my mind shortly before the release, my PC broke down and I couldn't fix it on time. From what I heard earlier, Wyll was a much more interesting character than what we got. The way you describe Karlach also sounds fascinating, in comparison to what we have now. Sigh...


Agreed!


This! They bore me completely and I don't see any depth in them.

Both the Durge endings after you initially accept Bhaal are bland. Either you just get a boring ending where you take over the netherbrain, or you get an ending where you completely lose yourself and no one seems to miss you. In the end I felt like I was pushed to go back and do the resist route to get a satisfactory ending, which is kind of a bummer. I had planned on it anyway, but I was going to do a new run to get the resist endings. But after those endings, it didn't seem worth it so I just went back in my save files instead of doing another run.

Yes, and even when you resist because you might still want to be an evil shithead, just not controlled by Bhaal, you somehow are forced to feel remorse about your victims. Another example of railroading.

Wyll weirdly got better after I followed Mizora's orders and killed Karlach. He had a short but good interaction with Lae'zel about not whining about done deeds and I much preferred the interaction with him at the tiefling party. When Karlach is around, he is melancholic because of his appearance and how others see him as a devil now - which would make more sense if it wasn't a tiefling party full of refugees who during your time with them (!) experienced the same prejudice Wyll is now scared of being confronted with. When you kill Karlach for Mizora, he retreats from the party because he sees himself becoming more devilish on the inside, which makes a whole lot of more sense and makes freeing him from Mizora's pact seem more urgent. Doesn't give him more agency in his own quest, but it feels like a better starting point for his story. - And I hate that the soul coins are basically just treated as hard candy for Karlach ...

The issue I have with Wyll, is that if you kill Karlach, you can tell him it was the right thing to do, and he accepts it, seemingly. But next night, when Mizora pops up, he acts indignant and not at all happy. It's odd - even if he's not present when you confront with Karlach, and he has no way to see that she's actually nice, he still argues over her like he committed a crime - even though he shouldn't be. We just went "Hail the blade of Frontiers!" over Karlach's death just five minutes ago, and now he's like "We killed an innocent person, you tricked me!".

Besides, how does he know she's innocent. She acts nice, but surely, no one is naive enough to just decide "ah, this DEVIL-ALIGNED person who is nice and friendly is being genuine" right away?

I think most of this is just because the development was rushed and that leads to mistakes and while mistakes and inconsistencies are okay, they are not anymore if we talk about the huge amount we have in this game.

One thing I find very disappointing is that they hint and tease at a whole plotline where you would actually join forces with the Absolutists and approach the story from their perspective, embracing the idea of being a 'True Soul'. They develop this storyline somewhat well in Act 1, and to some extent in Act 2 when you infiltrate Moonrise Towers. However, by that point, the game is already railroading you into the notion that you're merely pretending to be on their side. Eventually, this entire concept is dropped, and you're locked in as an enemy of the Absolute.

It would be amazing if that plotline were fleshed out and further developed until the end of the game. After capturing the Nightsong and decimating the resistance at Last Light Inn alongside Ketheric's forces, you could infiltrate Baldur's Gate as a True Soul to undermine the city's defenses, pursue your own agenda of overthrowing the chosen ones, or even undergo a change of heart, seek redemption, and become the savior of Baldur's Gate.

Yeah, I'm personally pretty disappointed with the "evil" path or even slightly "asshole" path the game offers. We are being punished left and right for playing differenty than suggested by some... "canon" path.

We could've had Mizora instead of Wyll for evil or "asshole" playthrough, but no. All we get constantly is a middle finger and lack of companions. So I'm asking, what is the game offering at this point? Just trying out new classes? Different romances? That's the whole replayability instead letting us play a different path to experience new things? Well, the only thing we can experience in the evil path is the lack of content.

EDIT:

For example in act 1: You can't even help Kagha to take control of the grove. Hell, we can't even stand behind her when Halsin returns and punishes her. Why there are no decisions other than forced "good" in that path?

I completely agree.

I truly miss Early Access Wyll, he was fascinatingly interesting and actually carried a ton of weight along the journey. He was in fact so integrated within ACT I that I always had him with me, unlike full release where he can stay at camp and literally nothing is lost. He was essential in Early Access and was made shallow with full release.

Karlach on the other hand I have to admit, she pleasantly surprised me. I truly love Karlach as a character, but the fundamental mistake Larian did with her was tying her and Wyll together and by doing so both ended without a meaningful personal quest. Her personal quest is just two infernal irons and that's it, job done.

If they combined her Early Access personal quest motives with her full release personality, she'd be perfect and have an actual weight along the journey. As it is right now, unless the player is romancing her she also doesn't carry any essential weight along the journey. Unfortunate.


Oh definitely, Early Access Wyll was a whole other league from the full release Wyll, exceptionally well integrated with ACT I to the point he felt essential to have around.

He was the kid from the burning village and its only survivor, that's when Mizora came to him through the burning pile of ashes and how they got together, as he swore vengeance upon the wicked. That's also how he lost his eye, as Torturer Spike was the one to cut it out and during Early Access Spike even had his eye in inventory.

His personal quest involved tracking down Mizora, who was actually already in an illithid pod on the Nautiloid and abducted by the goblins after the crash to be carried off to Moonrise. The illithid pod underneath the bridge between the Grove and the Blighted Village is actually hers and Wyll even had a unique comment about smelling sulfur and then you could Insight check him to find out he's tracking Mizora.

He was so hateful and merciless towards the goblins, that he'd ruthlessly execute Fezzerk in the Blighted Village and Torturer Spike at the Goblin Camp. And in his off-time he was still trying to do good by everyone naturally, but he knew he was no hero he wanted to be. That's why I always had him with me during Early Access, he was incredibly well integrated and interesting with a lot of nuance.


Also because I read your posts about Astarion (btw I sympathize about those dreadful facial animations during his kiss, they're awful), I think you would've loved Early Access Astarion too. He was incredibly well nuanced, far more than full release, and I will never forget my certain interactions with him which I wish were in full release.

He was a very mistreated and distrustful broken person, always on edge and assuming the worst, but given time his layers would slowly come to reveal his soft genuine side. He was pretty much like an abused dog who was never shown any kindness in his life.

Back then when the whole Dreamer thing was completely different and each companion's Dreamer was unique to them, his dreams were shaped to torture him through visions of Cazador. Because of this he would be extremely uneasy each night and he'd often lash out at the player as a defense mechanism if they tried to show him kindness because he's not used to it. I'll always remember how if you tried to hug him after telling you about Cazador, he'd snap back and threaten to kill you. But then the next long rest he'd cool down and slowly start opening up.

It was a very interesting slow relationship build up that really felt like us dealing with an abuse victim and slowly earning their trust to let us in as we peel away the layers. Quite beautiful overall. Naturally most of this is still in full release, but a lot of intricate nuance he originally had was lost in translation.