Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Patch 7 Closed Beta Discussion

My overall reaction & feedback after seeing all the extended evil cutscene(s) for Dark Urge and Tav;

Naturally after the original lackluster 2 minute end-cutscene (where our main character merely sits on the throne before the game fades-to-black) it feels great to now have an extended 6 minute end-cutscene where they actually do something before it fades-to-black. The bar was already set so abysmally low that literally anything will look great compared to that, so sure it's nice to have it extended by 6 more minutes (which should've been in-game since launch, not a year later).

However these extended end-cutscenes for the evil playthrough are merely the equivalent of the good playthrough's end-cutscenes at the dock during launch ("Yay the Absolute is dead, nice job everybody... GG, ROLL CREDITS!"). They were not satisfying conclusions for the good story back then and they certainly are not satisfying conclusions for the evil story today regardless of how visually impressive they are.

Where's our evil epilogue? Where's our actual evil aftermath? Where's our satisfying ending where we get to see what our power accomplishes on a grander scale? Where is our evil post-credit scene with the Dead Three taunting Withers instead?



As someone who became a mega fan of yours by blindly buying into BG3's Early Access due to your true artistic passion and immediately afterwards bought DOS2 and DOS1 as well because I wanted even more of that passion (all 3 becoming one of my favorite games ever); it is absolutely saddening to see how drastically your evil stories have degraded (both in writing and care) since Divinity Original Sin II, which as a kickstarter game with a far lesser budget had a satisfying evil story with fully developed endings that offered equal epilogue content and throughout the story had interesting evil choices with interesting outcomes spanning throughout all acts and especially the epilogue.



With characters like Lady Vengeance, Windego and the God-King, Voidwoken and Fane, Saheila and Sebille, Sadha and The Red Prince, Adramahlihk and Lohse. Even entire locations such as Fort Joy, Reaper's Coast, Arx and the entire world. We went from DOS2's long-spanning evil choices resulting in fates far worse than death with an epilogue showing just how miserable everyone and the entire world is after it's doomed, to BG3 comically mimicking Doctor Evil from Austin Powers every chance it gets with its evil choices immediately killing off any evil branching story in its infancy to preserve budget;

You die! He dies! They die! EVIL!


To properly conclude the evil story with proper epilogues you should've been drawing inspiration from the amazingly portrayed Vlaakith's throne room ending scene for Ascended Lae'zel or Cursed Dark Urge's epilogue ending, which splendidly shows just how evil truly brings ruin to people and eternally condemns them to fates worse than death. And from that inspiration came up with an equally eerily, dark and messed up epilogue to properly conclude an evil playthrough by showing the miserable state of the world with our companions instead suffering dreadful fates worse than death as they're ruled by our main character who became a God (just like Divinity Original Sin 2 had its epilogue showing a dead miserable world and our companions if one sided with the God-King). Because when the evil journey is already the most unsatisfactory content-deprived experience where any potentially branching story immediately gets killed off in its infancy, at the very least ensure the ending is so fascinatingly well concluded to make all that waste of time and effort worth it.

This also could've been a chance to bring Gortash back; to have an actual ending with him, to surprise your audience who are investing their time into a significantly underdeveloped evil playthrough. "Hey remember Gortash, that amazing character voiced by Jason Isaacs? Yeah he now has an actual ending and Bane shows up in it. GO WILD GUYS!". But no... as always just frantically kill off everyone tied to the evil journey the instant they start to display any interesting branching story on the evil path. You had Gortash as a villain right till the very end and chose to kill him off. What a waste.

Was hoping for an actual quality conclusion to the evil story that respects player agency (like the good playthrough does with its revisions, an epilogue and a post-credit scene) and had these extended cutscenes been merely a part of upcoming content updates to ensure the evil playthrough is brought up to par with the good playthrough then I would not be so critical. But intentionally ignoring the evil playthrough since Early Access and then years later merely extending its lackluster cliffhanger cutscene in such a poorly rushed way as the final content update... sorry.

Far too little and way too late.



These extended evil cutscenes as they stand are ultimately the final nail in a coffin that shows just how uncared-for and poorly thought-out the evil journey in BG3 is from start to finish where every potentially branching evil story is immediately killed off in its infancy in order to save budget, cutting off all its branches at every corner before they even had a chance to grow. I won't even bother amusing the idea that taking control of the Absolute could have been used for good. To rebuild or create a better world by getting rid of evils such as Vlaakith, Zariel or Lolth, something that Minthara implies with her own good ambitions on the good path. An actual pragmatic would use the Netherbrain as a tool to help or improve reality and we could have been the next Gortash.

And so at the journey's end the only thing I can truly praise is the visual quality and cinematography of these extended cutscenes as they've accomplished visual badassery of epic proportions with their unique outcomes, was incredibly impressed with them. Truly well done. It's just a shame it's nothing more than fancy cliffhanger eye candy to quickly wrap things up in the most uncaring way, which ironically completely killed my interest for a Patch 7 evil playthrough when it should've done the complete opposite.

I'd rather have a well written evil story with no cutscenes (like DOS2), than epic cutscenes with a poorly written evil story (like BG3). At least with the original cliffhanger I was able to headcanon a satisfying proper ending for my Dark Urge and Minthara.