Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion Seems like lots of people want a darker or more evil game, but is that an accurate sampling?

To preface this, I have well over 2000 hours in BG3 alone, 5.5 runs. I've played pretty much every top tier CRPG available.
I just don't enjoy evil runs. I play video games because life is dark and challenging enough; I want to lose myself in a space where I can look forward to a happy ending, or at the very least a bittersweet one. Misery and relentless darkness just hold no joy. I like being the scrappy hero who romances Morrigan and Shadowheart, who gets a kick out of redemption arcs and not abusing the weak.
We see in forums and social media people asking all of the time for darker games or more evil play-throughs, or more misleading and anxiety ridden choices. From the proliferation of these posts, it is easy to think that it is a majority of players asking for this, but my suspicion is that it is far from the truth.
People who loved BG3 or DOS2 don't complain about the game being not dark enough, they talk about what they liked; the particular facets that made them happy, and usually those aspects are the ones that make the game fun, or rewarding, or uplifting. Indeed, most of the Embrace Durge runs I have read regret or at the very least struggled with the choices and consequences of said choices. I don't believe I have read a single person reporting they would do another Embrace Durge or evil run because their last run just wasn't dark enough, or they really enjoyed it. Most of the posts I have read are the opposite; the poster or commenters say their run was not enjoyable, with the clear implication they would not do it again.
People who post about wanting darker runs or more evil choices are complaining. People who are happy with BG3, who think Larian did an exemplary job balancing darkness and light, aren't going to tend to post complaints. They are going to post congratulatory and positive experiences, which are far less memorable *because people doing good things and enjoying doing good things is common*. We are the majority. People who want evil games are, in my suspicion, merely a very vocal minority, and I'd be willing to bet a small minority as well.
I just hope Larian uses what people actually played; the roles, the 'alignments', the romances, the alliances, as the basis for balancing Divinity, rather than listening to the squeaky wheels. BG3 is about as dark as I would want any game to get, in all honesty.
If people want more fleshed out evil run options, fine, but just don't make the entire world darker and more miserable for the majority of us who want games that let us experience joy and an aspect of being a hero in a real life where being a hero is ever more challenging and rare.
I would be willing to bet that for every player who makes more than one dark run, there are 100 who are absolutely doing Embrace Hero runs.
In short, Larian, I hope we can look forward to saving the weak, winning over the girl (or guy), and feeling like the hero for the all too short hours we are able to spend in the worlds you create for us.

Neither do I. But that's because most "Evil Runs" are done terribly.

There's no nuance or any tangible believability. It's just "Haha, be a jerk and murder everyone because you're a stupid jerk who's a jerk and stupid"


Ironically, Grimdark settings play into this.

Happy endings and redemption arcs hit harder when the world they're taking place in is dark and overbearing.

Meaning these things happening are exceptional, not the de facto result.

This is one of the main draws to Grimdark. The world sucks. Everything is horrible. Yet, if you try hard enough, you can find that glimmer of hope and push on for a good ending.

It's not just Hello Kitty where everything is nice and comforting and nothing bad can ever happen. So anything good happening doesn't feel rewarding.


Debatable.

Grimdark gets a pretty big following as a genre. Like, the entire Warhammer IP is based on it and that's one of the largest in the world. Not to mention popular IP's such as Witcher or Game of Thrones.

Also, a lot of people asking for these things are frustrated in the complete lack of representation. Both in terms of IP's that include these themes, but also games within a series trending away from them (For example, Dragon Age: Origins was Grimdark. But as the series went on it left it behind more and more)


I've seen people who loved DOS2 complain about it not being dark enough.

Though DOS2 is plenty dark in of itself. There's quite a lot of awful things happening in that game. I mean, you start off in a camp of slaves. With a crazy torture chamber underground (That features countless body parts strewn about the place, as well as a mound of them on the other side of its sewage pipe) guarded by a bunch of people who have been mutilated and lobotomised. Even as you go to leave the island, you face sentries of people mutilated so horrifically they shoot death lasers out of their face at you.

Even after that, when you start learning Sourcery, the whole thing is you rip the soul out of people to fuel it.

Baldur's Gate (And D&D as a whole) isn't quite as dark as Divinity. It has its moments, especially with plenty of racism and otherworldly horrors. But generally it's more chill given its basis being in providing a generic fantasy setting for people to make their own stories in. Unlike other TTRPG's that do create a Grimdark setting (Like Vampire: The Masquerade, Cyberpunk, Blades in the Dark, Witcher, Dark Heresy etc)


The issue with this is that many people didn't play "Evil" route in BG3 because BG3's evil route was so bad.

Which is the problem with this sort of data, it's heavily influenced by confirmation bias.

The good route was more fleshed out and supported, ergo, more people played it.

Even then, having actual "Evil" routes makes for better "Good" routes. As decisions about trying to be a hero are less obvious and straightforward. There will be more nuance in how you choose what to do because it will not just be half-arsed comically evil option vs blatantly beneficial heroic option. You'll have more shades of grey where things aren't so clear cut as well as things like "Evil" options that are legitimately enticing without being obviously wrong.

That said, Larian themselves advocate doing stuff because they want the stuff there rather than focusing only on popularity. This is why they like to add non-Human/Elf races despite Human/Elf being by far the most popular choices.


The thing is... Divinity already IS a dark and miserable world.

That's how it has been portrayed across its games. Especially Original Sin, which very much revolves around the Grimdark aspects of the setting.

People advocating for the new Divinity to be dark are wanting more of what has been established, rather than the brighter and more hopeful nature of BG3. Or the watering down that many other series are afflicted by because modern studios are too afraid to maintain the Grimdark settings that made their worlds interesting.

This doesn't mean you can't be a hero and every ending has to be bad (A la Cyberpunk 2077). It just means that the overall world is one where hardship and suffering is commonplace. You can still rise up to be a hero and make a difference, with such actions having far more impact due to the dark nature of the setting.

I totally agree. Video games is be far most enjoyment and entertainment for me. Yes, darkness in games and movies can make pretty engaging stories, but if made without any humor or light in the tunnel most people just think it is depressing. Even an "all-black" world like Vampire: Bloodlines (original) have a lot of humor to balance it. For many it is a big difference between playing a righteous hero in a dark world and an evil menace that tortures and kills innocent kids and animals. But of course, the setting is important, whack-a-mole had a rather gruesome concept but was a big hit. More realistic depictions may be different. I remember in BG3, mass kill goblins in isometric view is just fine, but some of the (more realistic rendered) cutscenes (Dame Aylin in particular) always give me shivers of discomfort.

Some 15 years ago I read some discussion on Gamasutra, an discussion forum for game developers. It was there said something like "they were always told to make "dark story paths", but then it always turned out that 90% of the game runs where played on the "good paths".

To use similar amounts of development resources for different "good" and "evil" paths would in the end be a big waste. Too few would appreciate it. By default most people want "to do the right thing", at least in a game that feels emotional engaging.

Why do you think talk about wanting darker game means that players want to be more evil? Most players want to be a hero, but in a darker world. If anything that makes it feel much more heroic. Compare to something like Mass Effect Andromeda, where almost entire game was so lighthearted that it did not feel that meaningful or impactful to be a hero like it felt in previous Mass Effect games.

Think Divinity Original Sin 2, which is darker setting than BG3. Player was still a hero in it, and it actually felt less dark than BG3, but that is largely due to how it was represented and less advanced graphics and cinematics. New game will likely have little less whimsical characters like Sir Lora, and it will have more advanced graphics and cinematics making representation feel much more impactful, but story itself might only be little darker than before. Larian also does not want it to be all nihilistic and it will have their usual humor, and you can still be a hero and save it all, which i think everyone including Larian expects most players to do.


But i also hope that evil runs are done a lot better than before, they have often been lacking even in Larian games. That is also big reason why many don't do evil playtroughs, they are too often just asshole simulators rather than something interesting.

Interesting, and good points all. From the threads I've seen, yes, there are negative critiques of the playability of evil runs in terms of completeness and content, but still, even with BG3 being a gold standard for character interactivity and depth of story, Larian made an evil run that was so unpleasant that it left people with miserable experiences; not because there wasn't enough content, but because the story was too good. Yes, no argument from the perspective of some there was not enough evil content and noticeable segments of the game were left out during evil runs, but nonetheless, there was enough there to make players sad they did an evil run because of the darkness of the choices they made. There was a conversation on that big conversation posting website with an entire thread calling the decisions 'torturous' among other adjectives, with players finishing the game quickly because they didn't want to give up but wanted out.
My root concern is that Larian will make a game so dark and evil tinted that it will fail to be enjoyable. I mean, even the 'good' endings in BG3 weren't really happy endings, they were bittersweet at best, and to get something resembling a 'happy' ending with even one companion or character had to be carefully planned. I think it's arguable Gale was literally the only companion in BG3 (have not played origin Gale to be fair) who had anything resembling a decent life afterwards that didn't require relatively meticulously planned decision structures.
BG3 was as dark as I'd want to get in playing a game, and I definitely think I'm in the vast majority. I mean, it's Larian's game and they have a vision, who the fsck am I to tell them how to run their game design right? Just some schmoe who shelled out $60 for BG3 and others.

Ayup. I just hope Larian doesn't give in to the would-be-sadists and grimdark sycophants then make a game unpleasant for the other 95% of people to play.

My last two runs of BG3 were simply to get as much of a happy life as possible for as many people as possible, simply because in my head I had identified with a lot of the companions and was as you say, emotionally engaged with the characters.

So, yeah, here's to hoping we have a solid challenging game that we can complete with a sense of joy for the personalities with whom we spend hundreds or thousands of hours in the game.

In all the P&P-RPGs I've played, committing evil was heavily sanctioned. Whether your character gets turned into a vampire, falls to the Dark Side of the Force, or otherwise joins Team Evil full time, the official rules usually say: Character gets to be an NPC. My group has been ignoring this rule ever since. Not that we're into Grimdark much, but we were experimental and later enjoyed a lot of 'bad does good' campaigns where this rule was simply in the way. But, there are some things to consider. At the table, be it physical or virtual, other players aren't necessarily happy about having an actively evil character in the group. It's not the neutral evil thief or chaotic evil monster that joined a party and accepted that the powerful good guys call the shots. Now imagine having a Dark Urge, Sith Marauder or lycanthrope in your group wanting to take the lead, and being a potential harm to your own character. If you're making it a solo thing, the most important thing to consider is that such a character will probably not follow usual campaign lines. They won't go after the orcs raiding the village, but instead use the situation to gain power, plunder the abandoned villages and/or blame the orcs for the little murder spree. If you allow such a character and want to please both camps, you have to plan two intertwined campaigns instead of one. You will also have to allow the evil character to break the campaign world and twist things to their own ends, which is why evil endings are hardly ever canonical. The kingdom liberated is a happy ending you can build on, but to what individual ends did the evil PC manipulate the events? A follow-up campaign would thus have to have multiple starting points, if you really wanted to treat the evil campaign equally. So, unless the evil run is the actual focus of a game, that's why they're probably always a bit undercooked when compared to the good run and explains why there are so many complaints.

Really it just depends on how the evil is portrayed and its scope.

Evil is more about selfishness than cruelty.

Like, people LOVE Astarion (To the point of excess) and he's an actively evil character. His entire concern is purely his own wellbeing and power.

He's not comically cruel, he will go along with a goody-two-shoes party and even help save Tieflings. Since he's evil, not stupid. Tagging along with a group of powerful individuals serves his own purpose, which is to deal with the mortal peril that is the tadpole in his brain.

This all goes to highlight the major issue with how evil routes are written vs actually decently written evil characters and companions.

What players get is "Murderhobo Supreme" the route, where all choices are about being the biggest jerk in existence and causing suffering for no reason other than "Because you can". Meanwhile actually decently written evil characters are relatable, reasonable and smart enough to go along with things they don't necessarily agree with in order to fulfil their long term goals (Another example is Gortash. He's evil af. But he played nice to get to his standing within Baldur's Gate for the power it gives him)

This divide is why evil routes often feel undercooked and get complained about. As they almost always boil down to just being cruel for no reason. When you see plenty of well written evil characters who aren't that, whom embody the more nuanced aspects of an evil character.

A proper evil route can have a lot of parallels with a good route, it can even have morally grey aspects that are hard to discern from good routes.

For example, a player can find themselves obtaining a powerful artefact. They then are given a choice. They can use the powerful artefact to gain power (Evil) but this power could be used immediately to help a lot of people (Good) with maybe consequences down the line (It might be cursed, it could have a price for the power, it can you actively look for more artefacts to boost your power etc all things that could be evil in nature). Or they can give the powerful artefact to a group of people who would seal it away (Good) at the cost of not being able to help those people who are in immediate peril (Evil) but there won't be any nasty consequences from utilising said artefact (Leading to an overall good outcome).

It's one of the annoying aspects of writing in regards to becoming a Vampire or Lich. They are always unanimously written as evil... But like, what if someone became one of these things to use the power exclusively to help others?

Like, Alucard from Castlevania is a vampire and the son of Dracula, but he isn't evil and instead uses his vampiric gifts to fight the forces of evil (Including his father, Dracula himself). Heck, even Dracula wasn't completely evil in Castlevania, he preserved human knowledge and even shared it with a woman who was interested (But he went full evil as a crash out to her being executed because people are idiots).

You also have Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer who, due to the curse giving him his humanity back, actively helped Buffy to deal with the monsters and threats (And eventually got his own spin-off show where he did it more independently)

Heck, the entirety of DOS2 is you being morally grey. You perform evil acts (Devouring people's souls) but only as a means to ultimately save the world. You become a hero, despite the fact that you've been committing atrocities through most of the game (The entire game if you've been min-maxing experience gains on the island)

Having both is not a contradictory, they don't need to give in to anything. In many RPGs you can already be incredibly evil, expanding on that won't take away anything from anywhere else, it is simply a choice you never have to pick. It would be different if these games would have little or no choices.

The idea of evil runs has been around forever and I really dont see how one could make them work.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for example has a very strong feature of playing evil, however if you do it, you will be asked to kick puppies a lot.

Thats just stupid.

Darth Vader for example may wipe out planets, torture an important prisoner personally, or endanger a prisoners life and health by freezing them in carbonite.

But Vader wouldnt run around kicking puppies. That would simply be beneath him. He wouldnt waste time with that.

And thats really the best try at an evil walkthrough that I know of. In any game that has primarily a good run.

The core problem of evil runs is that an actually evil person will not be busy with "how can I be more evil today". Evil people will go after their goals, except their goals are evil.

I really think if you want to play an evil game, you have to design the whole game around this concept. Making a by default heroic game and trying to convert it into a game that one can also play as evil assumes too much that good and evil are the same. Which they are not.

The irony is of course that in roleplaying games, the joke among roleplayers that all PCs are neutral evil: always optimizing the loot and other beneficials they can get, with not the slighest concern from people not in their party. So the hero of Baldurs Gate is actually already as evil as it gets. He just doesnt publically admit to it.

Btw it would also be a very interesting experiment to make a game in which when you play good you dont get much loot, only the nice outcomes for everybody else. But if you play evil you get tons of great loot, just everyone else has to suffer.

To be honest, BG3 could have quite easily set up evil runs quite well.

If the Illithid powers were tied to evil route (Which it already has a precedent for given that the Absolutists are continually going on about granting the faithful gifts), you'd get your reason to be evil and follow the evil people, as they grant you power through the Illithid powers.

Then you can follow Astarion's evil plan of taking control of the Absolute.

Thus, the whole game doesn't have to be designed around it. Both evil and good paths follow a singular storyline (Look for ways to get rid of the tadpole > Find out about the Absolute > Deal with the 3 > Deal with Brainy McBrainface)

You just have the 2 different methods of going about it.

Evil path would get you a bunch of extra powers that are cool and useful. While the good path would get you more allies that could be helpful.

Both prepare you for the final confrontation in separate ways and you get a tangible difference in gameplay for picking one path over the other.

It's just that Larian decided to scrap any actually interesting use of the tadpoles because not enough people were using them in EA and thus we get this stupid system that has 0 downsides or consequences (Besides the icky black veins for T2 powers) being utilised by everyone who likes to min-max and is equally available regardless of the route you're on.

That's all it really takes to incorporate evil routes. Just a separate path of actions and an alternate motive for going through the same storyline. Throw in some extra goodies like bonus powers and sick loot to entice people towards evil (Also opening up morally grey heroes who opt for that extra power so they can use it for good).

It doesn't take a lot to facilitate evil and good routes in games. Which is why it's so disappointing that it's fumbled so hard. Both in terms of it hardly ever being implemented, but when it is the evil route is exclusively "Kicking puppies" and "Burning down orphanages" choices with no reason beyond "Because it's evil".

That's exactly what I mean, an evil character like Astarion will work well in groups or with a "good" playthru, since they will still work towards a common goal with the group or towards the "good" ending and accept being the hero. The issue is more the kind of evil that makes its own plans, so that the campaign events become nothing but the backdrop to their own schemes. This can be a murder hobo, but also the kind of slow plotter who wants to bring down the old order and grab power. The tadpole scenario allowed for a broader range of alignments to fight towards a common goal, but with your "normal" campaign, an actively evil character would increasingly become the main villain. Not causing the goblin attacks, those just came in handy, but using the goblin attacks and an own false flag operation against their border keep to discredit the mountain guards and rise as a warlord. Or maybe they want to subjugate the area for their cult or get rid of human presence in the mountains. Of course, there are synergies - the dragon who drove those goblins out of their homelands is no longer a boss fight, but a potential ally - but you'll have to create different opposition and hopefully have a resourceful player who can surprise you. It's a different campaign. That's all fine if you know it beforehand, but having to write a game without knowing what exactly an individual villain may do, is really tricky.

The literal same issue applies to heroes.

Yet no-one has ever had concerns over heroes being shoehorned into a particular story and specific "Good" actions.

Like, Mass Effect 3's "Good" ending is wiping out the Reapers. What if someone was the kind of good where they wanted to make peace with the Reapers?

Same exact situation.


Well, yes. That's literally what the "Enslave the Absolute" ending is.

It's the whole premise of Astarion's plan to do so. Become the big bad villains because you took control over the Absolute in place of the 3.

I don't get what this has to do with anything.



No it isn't. The campaign is still the same, with the same opposition.

The 3. The brain. That is the opposition and the campaign as a whole.

Doesn't matter what you do, evil or good (A good character can run around and ignore all the Tieflings and Goblins too). The opposition and campaign is exactly the same.

Even if you ally with one of the 3, the other 2 remain opposition (As well as the Brain itself)


It's literally no different to writing for a hero.

Heroes could potentially do many things. But they're written for doing one thing.

If anything, it's EASIER to write for evil because of the very nature of free will allows someone to create a murderhobo route themselves. Like, even if none of the actual story requires it, nothing stops a player (On any route) from just outright murdering all the NPC's they come across. Meaning you get 2 types of evil route for the price of one. (Unlike good route where there's no innate "Good" action you can perform irregardless of writing, the only good actions are ones explicitly written in)

I have more than 3000 hrs of BG3 play (EA included) and I don't know how many new games I started, but I don't think I managed to finish any PT entirely "good". BG3 really tests you and annoys you into doing evil things, and I suppose my natural allignment is chaotic in the sense that after a whle "enough is enough we need to teach these idiots a lesson" becomes unavoidable.

I'm talking about the citizen's reactions like, you save them from the Shahuagin. They all thank you so much. Then you see a fish-head lying on the pavement and take it. The citizens don't want this. And that makes me angry and I wack the idiot who wants to prevent me from taking MY fish-head. Then flaming fists show up and it becomes a massacre. Then things calm down. All the Shahuagin are dead. A bunch of flaming fists and civilians are dead too, but I have my fish-head. Have I done evil, I wonder ?

The worst thing I remember was in Act 1 : I set up the trap for Minthara, planning to save the grove. Zevlor and the tieflings on the wall all welcome the party warmly, telling me how much they rely on us to win this fight that would doom them all. Then I talk to Guex and he gets hostile. Because earlier I disapproved of Mol's thieving activities and putting the other children in danger. So Mol had spread rumours about us, and Guex now left us only one option : "attack". The game left us no other choices to persuade or intimidate him to stop this folly. So we had to attack him and all the other tieflings that had just celebrated our return bacame hostile also. And so I had to change my plans, fight and kill all the tieflings and let Minthara and the goblins enter.

Another one is the druid that is knocked out in the cave under the grove. I rescued him but he was a real ahole afterwards. So since then I just kill him while he's unconscious. I consider it a "blow of mercy" to put him out of his suffering, though it is probably evil.

So BG3, not possible to avoid evil 100% for me.