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

I have to disagree. Definitions of good and evil do not change over time because good and evil do not change over time.


I'm not really sure where you're going with this. If you're simply pointing out that in modern times situations operate in "gray areas" I would agree. Societies that live in worlds where dragons, hags, demons, devils, and other soul sucking creatures exist do not operate in these "gray areas" unless dealing with other humans or more "neutral" creatures. The way classic RPG's define the the sections and subsections of your alignment are still largely applicable to any RPG that gets made. Most characters, creatures, or monstrosities fall within the...

Lawfull Good
Neutral Good
Chaotic Good
Lawfull Neutral
True Neutral
Chaotic Neutral
Lawfull Evil
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Evil

...alignment types applied to pretty much any story driven RPG. And that literally encompasses pretty much every designed character or creature. I mean, we could debate the philosophies of it but all actions and morality can be displayed within that alignment spectrum. For example hags like the one in BG3 (you know which Auntie I refer to) are Chaotic Evil. There is literally no "gray area" in her morality. If she is cooperative it's so she can do you some evil. Perhaps there are benefits to allow her to do evil. But she's doing evil.

I think what it sounds like is that you want your character in an RPG to have good incentives or societal pressure to perform evil within the game. Which if that's the case, I might agree since having situations like that is congruent with how morality typically works so seeing it displayed in an RPG narrative is not only fine it should be encouraged. In the real world doing hateful things does have benefits from time to time so in an RPG there should be reasons and purposes for doing those things as well.


It will highly depend on the scenario/game where you're roleplaying. I think people can be pushed into doing evil by external forces. You can still do evil things and have empathy, but typically the most extreme cases of evil (Chaotic Evil as it were) doesn't typically require you to lack empathy so much as it requires you to enjoy causing catastrophe or chaos. Much like a pyromaniac can't help but be fascinated and addicted to starting and watching fires, a person can be fascinated with how much control and power they have at ruining other peoples environment/life.

Nature vs. Nurture can be debated all day but people always still fall all over the alignment spectrum. But you can't make a great fantasy RPG without at least dabbling in good and evil.

The greater topic is player expectations. If you're playing a heroic fantasy game, developers will generally assume you want to play some sort of fantasy hero along the known tropes. Since we're talking about good vs. evil stories, I'm coming from the assumption that the described scenario isn't a random encounter, but the beginning of a campaign written without a specific group of individual players in mind, like a game company would have to produce. This is what makes it tricky. Of course, if both heroes and villains are only passing through, you need to come up with some adventure hook to involve them. I'm assuming some generally benevolent force is in power, not able to protect the farms on the border. After getting the players involved, the usual way of narrating a 'good' campaign would be investigating where the goblins came from, why they attacked and how to stop it from happening again. This doesn't mean there can't be plot twists, but it's a classical backdrop that would work for both hack'n'slay and political drama. Especially when playing with alignments, hero players in heroic fantasy are much more likely to work with the existing good or neutral-aligned structures (in 2e, paladins would risk forever losing their class abilites and become regular fighters if they didn't), like the local noble who hired them, while evil will be forced into either a submissive or a disruptive role. If you don't keep this in mind, these disruptions will lead to interruptions, because you hadn't planned for an unexpected outcome of a scenario. At a gaming table this will, in the best case, lead to improvisation and lots of documenting and re-planning work afterwards. In the worst case, the game has to be stopped. As a player in video games you would either hit brick walls with your actions or suffer from a lack of immersion because the system can't cope with them and has weird NPC reactions or triggers not working. Yes, the player of a good-aligned character can surprise you as well, but their goals will still resonate with the good outcome, instead of a number of potential individual "evil" goals.

In a broader context, it's also not really a question of harsh good vs. evil morale. It's about preparing for disruptive players. In Shadowrun, you essentially play throwaway agents working for corporations against other corporations. You break in, steal, betray, kill the guards and hopefully escape with the loot. But still, most players will follow the middle of the road = meet the guy, accept the job, break in, get double-crossed, survive against all odds, escape with the booty and get the Karma points. If you sell it to the guy who double-crossed you, or kill him to sell it to the competitor, or blackmail the company you stole it from - those are variants of the same playthrough. A player toxic shaman, however, would just use the stolen key cards to get onto the compound, but would then abandon the run to sabotage the waste processing of the compound which causes an environmental catastrophe in the area, drastically increasing the player shaman's powers, but laying waste to your carefully designed setting. Instead of worrying about police response times in case of PCs triggering the alarm, you now have an ecological disaster scenario at hand, with many NPCs rushing home to save loved ones or being evacuated. And you can't move on to adventure two, because the players never stole the loot.

...and that's what I'm reading from a lot of the negative feedback for evil playthroughs. Players expecting they could commit a very specific sort of evil, like burning the mill with Barcus attached, or whatever, and then get disappointed because the game wouldn't have it. I wanted to blow up the loos for grease mephits and extra-loot, but not even smokepowder barrels did any damage. There are complaints about cutscenes or NPC feedback not acknowledging certain deeds or said deeds not having the expected repercussions. There are similar gaps for the Githyanki playthrough where you're sometimes treated like a human Tav, since being a second full Githyanki would have required an entire additional variant story arc with cutscenes, NPCs reacting differently, and potentially even more endings. You won't hear the player of Joey Tav complaining, because they got their heroic tale.

Then the last problem is that the official continuity of a franchise will probably canonise the "good" ending if they continue the story, meaning any disruptive actions are erased from memory, leading to more disappointment.

What I'm taking from this is that it's not actually a majority of players preferring darker settings, but a vocal minority of players who like the disruptive style and often get disappointed, because it's hard to prepare for such players if you don't personally know them. It's not about not seeing enough blood and gore, it's about being able to take a lanceboard and playing a different game on it.

I see what you're saying here. While this can be common on tabletop I feel like it happens less in videogames. Most RPG's simply don't have the systems in place to track all the freedom they give the player. Most RPG's don't give the player that much freedom outside of character creation. With the exception of some games like old school Elder Scrolls and now BG3 there really aren't enough RPG's that give you so many options to direct the story and choose meaningful answers.

I guess since the pickings are so rare I get excited just to see so much depth in what IS available to do in the game.


I honestly think this is a problem with making a sequel to any game with multiple endings. The endings to Stellar Blade for example were so vastly different that I'm quite curious how they're going to even make a sequel. In terms of RPG's with multiple endings I've always found that the best sequels are the ones with a new cast that takes place many years into the future where events from the first game can be referenced without directly spelling out what may or may have not occurred in the first game so it doesn't break the players head canon.

I can think of a few games that have done this well, but I honestly think that's the best way to handle it.

From what I've read, and my own personal take on evil playthroughs, it's less that you aren't a specific sort of evil, but more than the specific sort of evil that actually gets implemented is bad.

Most evil routes that games use are focused around the "Chaotic Stupid Murderhobo" type of evil.

Where it's all about doing heinous things for no reason. There's no logic behind the actions, it's just "Here, kick these puppies because kicking puppies is evil and you're evil right?"

Contrast this to good routes, where helping others has the logic of they will help you in return. You save Halsin and he joins your party. You help the kids and Mol helps you out later. You do quests for literally anyone and they give you a reward in return.

This is not just your everyday stupid either, this is advanced stupid because of the fact that "Evil" is more about personal gain than cruelty. The very core of evil is all your actions are preceded by the question "What's in it for me?"

Even ostensibly cruel acts are all about personal gain. Lord Vader will force choke a guy to death. Why? Because he leads through fear. His position as Sith Lord is entirely based around others being kept in line and not wanting to try to usurp him, so cruel acts like killing some random nobody is a tool to secure his position. He's not choking the guy to death just for the heck of it, he's not doing it because he gets sadistic glee from it, he's doing it because the person is not worth anything to him alive while killing him furthers his own goals.

Meanwhile in BG3:

"Hey, go torture Liam!"

"Why? What for?"

"To find the location of the Grove!"

"But I already know the location of the Grove. I literally can't be here without finding it because the game shoehorns its discovery into a bottleneck that cannot be bypassed without exploits"

"... Torture him anyway!"

We can go further into this rabbit hole of stupidity in terms of evil route design by factoring in the freedom that players are granted in modern games. That being, you can make your OWN murderhobo path by killing NPC's without the story mandating you to do so. With the ability to initiate attacks on NPC's, combined with no stupid things like essential tags making everyone noteworthy immortal. You very much can just kill bunches of NPC's if you wish (Which can have innate story consequences by said NPC's not returning later into the game)

Thus, why would you make the actual story path one of being a murderhobo when you can access that kind of route by default using the already built in game systems (Like, you can even do it while following the "Good" route too).

Then even deeper into the rabbit hole, we get to the nitty gritty of what an "Evil" character would actually do. Given that evil is predominantly about personal gain... This leads to a lot of the cases, where in a game a choice between good and evil is presented, the evil character would take the good option because that leads to more personal gain (Quest rewards, experience gains, more allies to aid them, trust with a group people etc).

Like, take the Goblins vs Tieflings scenario. Upfront you're told that Halsin knows about the tadpoles. Your goal at the time is to deal with the tadpoles. Ergo, an evil character would want to rescue Halsin to find out more information about the tadpoles, as that is in their best interest.

But the actual "Evil" route has you go ally with the goblins and kill the Tieflings. Why? Some rambling about being a "True Soul" and at least 1 act of being betrayed. Will you gain anything from this alliance? Minthara suggests maybe power? (Though in a meta gaming view that "Power" being offered is just some tadpoles you'd otherwise have looted off the corpses of Minthara, Gut and Ragzlin)

Only, when you free Halsin, he says he cannot cure you, but that infiltrating Moonrise towers is your best bet to find out what is special about the tadpoles and possibly find a cure. So that shifts the objective. Now, passage to Moonrise Towers is priority. Halsin can't help you much with that (just warn you about the shadow curse) but Minthara can not only get you there, but also offer you credentials to be accepted. So an evil character could then switch loyalties, killing Halsin who is no longer needed and side with Minthara.