Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Collaboration with Larian and OwlCat studio for the path of evil

I would like to suggest that Larian hire OwlCat (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous) as contractors to help with the narrative, writing the path of evil and evil companions, which in BG3 was criticized by many players.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has one of the best evil character RPG experiences I've ever played. This game has the same target audience as BG3, the Pathfinder theme has received over 70 pages of positive reviews on this forum.

Baldurs Gate 3 is positioned as a dark fantasy, and everyone expected the evil passage to be very interesting. Yes, Larian has a great Minthara character, but we also need interesting features and variety. It would be interesting to involve Owl Cat as contractors to help with the narrative in BG3.

I think that's overselling it. Half the player character evil choices are really just being an edgy asshole for the sake of being an edgy asshole.

The evil companions, however, have turned out to be the most compelling characters I've seen in any RPG. Astarion wishes he was written with even half the depth that Daeran has.

I'll do it for you: they're all cannibals now. You're welcome.

This part of that argument makes me smile every single time i see it ...
I mean it up to us, players, to give our character a personality and motivation to do things ... and if we fail to do that, and yet we follow certain path "for the same of" ... we simply failed in our own work.

But i get it, its easier to blame.

Are all of Owlcats characters voice and motion capture acted?

It's only about the narrative component, I don't think that if Larian hires them for consulting, it will be an overpricing. By the way, the path of goodness it Pathfinder is also excellent.

Dragon Age Inquisition had a huge budget and super visualization, but shitty narrators who screwed it up - there is no normal companion, romances, and real Choice in the game. Larian does better than BioWare, but there is nothing wrong with collaborating with other teams on their strengths to create AAA games.

Tyranny should have had a good path.

Or perhaps just scrap the whole thing, hire Bethesda to provide a nice moddble engine, hire a rockstar for visual polish and lavish animations, Tactical Adventures to faithfully adapt DND 5e, and hire Obsidian to write and design the campaign.

Oh HELL no. Pathfinder has the worst "evil path writing" in history. It's LITERALLY crammed with evil conversation "gems" like: "I don't like you. Die!"
I wrote more elaborate and complex sentences with greater underlying intent than that when I was five years old.

Don't all the NPCs in Pathfinder have a set alignment that you can see the second you look at their character sheet?

I mean it's somewhat subjective but as an avid reader of all the books I have always been impressed with Larian's writing. I have particularly enjoyed the decision not to display character alignment and to let us suss out who we are dealing with. It leaves it more open for other parties such as Wolfheart and Harbs Narbs to do critical analysis of the work to try to determine motives.

I also enjoyed Owlcats writing to a certain extent but I also found it to be inconsistent at times. Sometimes good, almost prosaic writing and other times a bit too much exposition and morally simplistic.

Anyway, it would be super weird for Larian to outsource writing to a competitor, especially given how tight lipped they have been on plot and plot points.

And there is a long thread on the owlcat forums on the issues with the writing on the evil paths in WotR. Personally I've found the evil narrative lacking in both games.

It's almost like some posters don't realize that players may play more than one game, despite their evidently playing more than one game, eh?

Yeah, I agree with others that have pointed out the Evil paths/choices of WoTR aren't fantastic. In general, I didn't really like the alignment-based choices/dialogue writing in WoTR - don't get me started on the treatment of Lawfulness in that game.

I think as the genre where you have the most decision freedom and actual choice and consequences, CRPGs have historically flubbed the "Evil" or "Alternative Philosophy" paths. While I think the writing on those paths can definitely be improved, some of it is just unfortunately financial viability - a properly written and constructed "alternative path" game usually requires full on story branching and alternative content (because Good is usually the default) - and that just isn't well awarded in this industry. RPGs already get the worst content-to-profit ratio of most genres in the industry (just due to how demanded CRPG consumers are). I.e. a RPG loaded with 100+ hours of content charges just as much as a recycled COD shooter with a 6 hour campaign, and is often outsold.

With that said, a recent example that did Evil well for me is Tyranny. That game sort of circumvented the budget problem I spoke of above by making being evil the default path. However, it's also done very convincingly because of how brilliantly oppressive the setting was - acting evil was easy in Tyranny, because that was just doing your job, following orders. That kind of setting induced evil will be hard to replicate in more traditional games like BG3, because heroism is usually the default. However, I think there is a lesson in that for Larian to take from. I really think that the immoral path should feel easier or more enticing - which it really isn't right now in BG3. With temptation being such a central theme to BG3, I really want it be explored and implemented better into the game.

Not really no, in spite of what the game advertised itself as.

I think considering rpg story progression as seperate “paths” is a problem. I find RPG infinitely more interesting when we get to make moment to moment decisions, and weighting implications and consequences of each decision, rather then choosing a pre-made “path”. If there are factions to ally with, it should be the result of actions and values of our PC, not the other way around (I want to be good/bad therefore I do what good/bad faction makes me do).

Obviously, our perspectives on this differ - however, I'd like to hear your reasoning on this front too. I thought the game did a great job in steering you towards immoral deeds without ever pushing you towards being a "muahahaha"-style evil overlord. I thought it was particularly brilliant by offering you ample opportunities to justify rather immoral actions by "good intentions" - which is the brand of evil I find the most intriguing and most relatable.


This is a good point - defining moral choices as "paths" can be very restrictive and implies a level of linearity and "handcraftedness" which I don't think is the way to go either. I like the idea that various decisions and moments in the game organically forms the "path" your character has taken. I think the older Fallout games have done a decent job letting you treat various decisions within their own microcosms to form a larger picture, however, I'd like to see that system improved on further with the technology and knowhows we have today.

However, a common pitfall I've noticed in games structured around moment-to-moment choice and consequences is that the worlds can become too player-centric in that the game world lacks life or momentum of its own, and exists only as a set of philosophical scenario for the players to play-out and generate the ending slides they want. It's not unavoidable though, with careful writing and planning.

Sort of. But that's not particularly relevant.
If nothing else, because it doesn't really tell you that much about their personality in the end.

Well neither of them are Mask of the Betrayer, that's for sure.

I am helpful, am I not?

4 DIFFERENT Chaotic Evil character in Pathfinder.

One of them is a generally positive character (compared to the rest of the demon lords) who can become chaotically neutral depending on the player's actions (Nocticula)

One of them hides his identity (Camellia)

Another very ambiguous person who is sympathized with even by good characters in the end (Areelu Vorlesh)

And only Swarm who walks this "classic" chaotic evil where you need to kill everything that moves, and both the goddess and the demon lord try to stop the protagonist.

And the Demon mythic is also a kind of Chaotic Evil, but the "good" chaotic evil. We even have demonic friends, power in the Midnight Islands, and Nocticula who appreciated the loyalty and rewarded them at their true worth.

Honestly, I don't think the "evil" path is that bad in BG3. You can literally be as good or bad as you want without dialogue options being labeled or tagged as "Evil", "Good", "Chaotic", etc.

There are many nuances to both good and evil, as someone else pointed out somewhere, I can't remember where.

I help Mayrina then murder her just because she's annoying or flippant and pissing me off. That's evil.

Or is it? Was she being a good person? Was saving her really the right thing to do? She was GOING TO SACRIFICE HER BABY TO A HAG!!! She was responsible for her brothers' deaths, because they came after her to save her from the hag and were murdered because of it. Did she even show remorse for that? Nope. She showed no remorse for anything. She was super selfish the whole time, only caring about how her husband was dead. She didn't even care about her baby.

But murder is bad. Right? That's evil. Yes? But what if by not killing her she goes on to become a hag or evil witch and she goes around killing or kidnapping children and sacrificing them on an altar to try to resurrect her dead husband? Was it evil to let her live or would it be evil to kill her for her crimes? She's pregnant too! So killing her is killing the baby also. Wouldn't that be evil? Doesn't the child deserve a chance at life?

In just this one situation, moral choices are up for debate, but ultimately there is, in just this one situation, a moral choice that can be made for good or evil. There are situations like this throughout the entire game right now.

So I don't think they need to rewrite it or need outside help to fix it. I think they just need to tweak it a bit. Add a few more options to make it better for both good and evil.

For good, I'd like an option to help Mayrina further and help redeem her and encourage her to move on and be a good mom.

For evil, I'd love an option to offer to purchase her child from her. "Once the child is born, I'll take him/her," you say. Then, later in the game, she approaches you when you get to Baldur's. She gives you her baby, and you can sell the child to slavers or maybe to one of Ethel's Coven Sisters to appease them for having killed Ethel so they won't continue to come after you and try to get their revenge on you. Or maybe you can use the child for something else... something even more evil and diabolical. (I'm not a fan, of course, of evil playthroughs, but my point is that options like this are all it takes to turn kinda sorta evil into true evil.)

So no. It doesn't need a total overhaul. It just needs a few more dialogue options and paths.