Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Join the absolute? Better reasons needed

Man, what a missed opportunity. Now we have Zevlor screaming that they are all dying for no reason on the evil path. "wE wErE jUsT aBoUt tO lEaVe!!!!"

Being evil in EA is more on the chaotic side. You really have no reason to side with the goblins as they betray you before the big fight if you are LE Okay, they throw better parties, thank you astarion.
As for the absolute? I guess power, repulsor is pretty op. She betrays you too so there is that.

I will say that siding with the other sovereign felt pretty lawful evil.

This is just act one I'm sure they'll start giving more reasons to join in the other acts.

Yup. I'll copy paste what I've said before about this. And I will keep posting about it as long as other people bring it up because I want Larian to make the changes. Pretty high priority in terms of writing changes.

I'm gonna start off by saying right off the bat, when you go back to the tieflings and go "im joining the goblins", all my companions disapproved except Astarion, and I mention this because they said we will be getting evil/neutral companions for EA and from the start of being evil the player is punished. If these so called Evil companions disagree with me, then there is a few major issues with the evil storyline, which is what I want to talk about.

Now, from the the player is abducted and had a tadpole inserted into their eye and the companions they meet are adamant about having this removed, and that's fine. But the narrative doesn't really PUSH you towards being evil and neither do these companions. Now the biggest lead you have for this is Halsin, and i would consider him to be on the "good" side, where I should side with the grove to get his help. What incentive is there for me to help the goblins? The game doesn't really do anything to push their agenda and make you want to do. A smart evil character would still help Grove and get Halsins help because they want to figure out what's going on, what the option we have now is stupid evil instead. We are never enticed with anything to go join the Absolute. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get out of helping the goblins and Minthara kill everyone. There isn't an enticing promise of answers or rewards for going down that path vs. just helping the refugees and finding Halsin to heal you from the tadpole. Right now the only reason you would help is because "fuck all these refugees and druids". Again, stupid evil IMO.

Everything up to that point in the game (being kidnapped by Illithids, all your companions explaining what the tadpoles do, and being concerned with getting healed) reinforces that we should want nothing to do with the Absolute because they violated us and will rid us of our free will if we don't get rid of the parasite. No type of evil character would want to help the goblins because we get nothing. Hell I lost Wyll after that, which is cool, and a good consequence, but that's it. I gained nothing from this it seems like. Now, I will say I'm interested in the story still. I wanna know what happens if I follow this trail, will i see Minthara again, will she be a companion or a returning side character? There is potential but just to see what could happen, but there are no rewards. You don't get any extra powers from it, nothing about healers (the priestess Gut wants to kill me bc I took the "Drow" option with sleep potion and then she goes "oh this will hurt"). I guess it was cool I had sex with her? But I mean at that night 3 of my companions were ready to sleep with me, and I lost 1 companion and gained...nothing.

Now I think the best way to fix it would be to have Minthara or someone else meet you REALLY early on and tell you, maybe entice you about the powers you can get. Have her tell you about the true souls, she shows you the power you can get if you use the tadpole, but right now there isn't anything like it. No character storywise would want to help goblins, even an evil one (smart evil one). It's kind of funny when the tiefling "Zevlor" asked me why I was doing this and i was like "uhhh....Bc Larian told me to? Whoops!" In the end, the Evil storyline for Grove vs Goblin needs more rewards and enticing. Why should my character risk dealing with them instead of looking for a healer, especially Halsin who is the best lead. Should I be doing it bc I got to bang the drow lol?

You don't even get to keep your Goblin "allies", they all turn hostile afterwards. The whole Evil thing with Goblin vs Grove is incomplete. Right now you meet her it's like "oh a true soul, lets go kill a bunch of ppl".

+1 to everything UnderworldHades said, couldn't have said it better. The thing that bothers me most is killing Halsin.... why would I do that? I'm also sad that companions do not react AT ALL when you kill Halsin. They were all about finding Halsin no matter their alignment, because he is the only real healer who coul actually help us, we believe. And yet, they just go along with the PC randomly killing him (I say randomly because it really feels random) and don't comment on it at all.

+1 i agree with most of the other points ppl here have provided in terms of better reasons to join the absolute. i also have a hard time envisioning why any of the character concepts i have in mind would be inclined to side with the parasitic tadpole attached to my brain. i wanna say astarion is the only companion who isnt totally opposed to having the tadpole given his personal issues, but i could be wrong - the tadpole gives me big time yeerk vibes from animporhs and i just dont trust it, lol

On my first playthrough, since Swen said we should play the evil route, I was trying my hardest to join the cult of the Absolute. After talking to Dror Ragzlin and Minthara, I was all set to betray the Grove. My chraracter wanted the power that the cult offered, the control over my parasite. But then I talked to Priestess Gut who tried to kill me (I don't remember being able to do anything to change her mind??). And also I saved Halsin.

At this point, what reason does my character have to ally with the Cult over Halsin??? The cult literally tried to kill me, and Halsin says he has a way to help me. The only way my character would still betray the Grove is if my character was both stupid and only cares about causing pain. I don't want to play a sadistic dumb character. Sadistic or dumb, sure. But not both...

You summed it up well, there is no incentive to side with the goblins. None at all. Also you bought up a good point I missed, apparently Larian gave us the evil companions yet most of our companions disapprove on the evil route? Hmm, something wrong there I think. Anyway, what would be best is to have a npc teach us about the tadpole, because all the npcs that deal with the tadpole are there to remove it. The vampire recommends to learn if it's possible to control it, yet there isn't an npc present for that path. It could be Minthara, but Larian dropped the ball there. Unless you just decide to use the tadpole powers despite the game constantly blasting at you that you shouldn't.

Yeah, they need to make it more appealing. The character I had who sided with them only did it because the grove was already wiped out due to the sequence of events earlier. There was no reason to not give away the location and a lot of reasons to make possible new allies. I suppose there could be some argument for Minthara being persuasive but still not a good enough reason to side with them. She and the goblin leaders need more dialogue.

1. Larian said they wanted us to play this rout, because they put a lot of work into it.
2. The point of Early Access is to give feedback on what's presented, game mechanics and the plot.
3. When the aspect that Larian want's us to test doesn't live up to people's expectation, they do as Swen asks: They go to the forum and submit feeback.

The point isn't the future of the questline, but the current state of the quest line. There's never anything tempting you to go this path. The path of evil should always come with a temptation you "can't" resist.
You can say It's not done, but it does seem this was what they wanted to present, what comes later matters little, the point of Act 1 is to set you up to want to continue your path. And I want that, but I felt I had to really really push myself into being evil, when it's the other way around that should be the "hard choice" (The dark side is always tempting, the hero rejects it)

Someone also made a good point about how anti climactic killing Halsin was too. Not a single person mentioned anything that we killed our best lead to get a healer lol.

The reactions need to be extended.



The theme of temptation is tied closely to evil. It could be reflected upon in the camp-conversations. Astarion has little reason to prefer "get rid of it" to "gain control over it". He should try to convince us that the others are mistaken.

The reasons to use the Absolute's power are very compelling right now. The free success at persuasion checks is invaluable in this game. But I don't see why not just abuse this power on the one hand and tell the absolute forces to go f themselves on the other

It obviously did not expect non true-souls with psionic abilities. Some negative consequences for using the power while not a member of the cult would reduce the size of the problem

Do you think that the side with the goblins arc was intended as an alternative for players who had already destroyed the druid grove? Probably not, but it is interesting that the scenario happened to work in your playthrough.

Nonsense. Just manipulate Chim until you get the desired result.

I taste the smell of Kirkbridian heresy
Which could be the official stance of bethesda now even though todd denied that being the case. Sotha Sils speech in ESO points toward acknowledging the head canon of Kirkbride.

Back to topic:
What do we have in summary:
More dialogue needed
Someone needs to point the player toward the alternative path
Motivation and rewards for helping the absolute lacking
The goblins turning on the player does not appear to make sense

I just realized that it's very strange that you don't get a choice in the first Goblin-grove encounter. Why aren't the mercenaries, Tieflings, Wyll and the goblins all yellow after the cut-scene. What if you just want to chill out and watch it play out, or decide that helping a goblin raiding party is your new favorite idea. If the goblins had actually attacked the party or insinuated as much in the cut-scene it would, of course, be a non issue.

So there is no real "just keep out of this" option right now?

It fits theyr profile ... if you expected gratitude and friends ... you probably didnt pay much atention. :-/

I dont get it why everything must be about rewards ...
I know that capitalism rules the world now, but think bigger for a second people.