Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Did anyone genuinely enjoy the "Evil" Route?

Spoilers obviously but I really wanted to give it a try but it is such a chore to go through.

Literally nothing incentivizes me to do evil things... well besides doing evil just for being evil. If anything I am penalized for going down that path even though I should probably be incentivized more to be evil rather than good.
So if I am good I know that all the tieflings I help will be found in Baldur's Gate so my good actions will have longterm benefit.
Apparently if I help Mol I would also have the new thieves' guild as allies? Just so many characters and potential plotlines for Act 2 and 3 that I anticipate in seeing them resolved in the next acts.

There is also the underdark issue where the refugee fungal king wants me to betray my current employer for "rewards"... buddy I am already getting rewards, why should I clear a WHOLE city of friendlies? There are also many unrelated NPCs that will give me quests and show me interesting interactions that I would probably have to kill too. Why? Why should I do that?

It just seems to me the only people that would go down the Evil path are those that are somewhat masochistic and also psychotic. Only the insane would do bad things because it makes them feel good.
Larian needs to incentivize me to be evil.

Here are some potential ideas.
1) Give me Sazza as a companion... well more like a subservient underling. I am a True Soul afterall.
2) Give me Minthara as a companion, maybe I can bend her to my allegiance rather than the Absolute's down the road.
3) Give me a Goblin Horn to summon a goblin raiding party to aid me in difficult fights.
4) Give me thralls and minions of true soul. Like the two siblings I meet on the road, they could be interesting characters to learn more about. And who knows maybe to torment or reward as I see fit.
5) Give me the option of not killing the refugees and druids in a massive massacre. Weren't there talk of slave traders in Goblin Fortress? Give me choices! Maybe certain characters can be spared and sold, Why should I kill Mol and her buddies when I can just spare them and have them work for me!

There are a lot of options.
Maybe the evil playthrough can impact my camp look as well. It would become more savage looking, maybe I can hire Drow and Ogre merceneries. Have evil pillage and conquest questlines... something!
Honestly burning the orphanage just because it makes me so edgy is not that attractive of a choice.

Anyway that's my 2cents. I did not find the evil play through interesting at all.

Can only agree.

Evil route is terrible. I don't get how could Larian actually recommend players to try it in its current state. Either they are planning on making heavy changes, or they are completely oblivious to how terrible their writing could be sometimes

It reminds me of those memes making fun of evil D&D gameplays.

DM: "You meet the mayor, he has a quest for you"
Edgy Mc Edgidson: "I kill the mayor and make his family tell me where the gold is."
DM: *sigh "There was no gold and you just ruined this campaign"
Edgy Mc Edgidson: "Eviiiiiiiil!!!!"

In that regard I guess it captures the spirit of the source material lol

The evil path should not be the "goblin path" and since they all betray you it is hard to say if it is even in its current state. The Absolute needs more missionaries like Eodwin and his novices.



Physically cringed when I read this. I want to avoid being cynical but I worry Larian has this kind of player in mind when designing the "evil" choices. The kind that keeps asking if they can stab or rob so and such person when the DM clearly has a plan for them.



You mean autism?

I played evil (female Drow from the Lolth culture), but not insane. So all-in-all, there is not much I would do differently from my future combative good character.

* Hints about what is the Absolute, or even just the basic obvious Mind Flayer relation in your own brain, means that a sane evil character will certainly never help the Absolute! You would need 7 or lower Intelligence and Wisdom, or be insane, to join the Absolute. Most evil characters do not want to be tools or subservient puppets. Your evil companions (Laezel and Shadowheart) have their good reasons to fight Absolute pawns with all they have got.

As a Drow, whether I serve Lolth sincerely or not, any Drow controlled by the Absolute will die ... If I become an Absolute tool, I would expect others to give me a quick death.

* Halsin is better help than that loony shadow druid (she is a rather petty evil). (And, as a female Drow, I found the Tiefling girl stealing the statue an awesome and cunning kid!)

* I have nothing against the Tieflings and I would rather slaughter the goblins that are pawns of the Absolute. I don't need to help the Tieflings either, but not much point in making random enemies: what is to gain? Everything to gain destroying Absolute nutcases (or victims really, as I believe them to be basically controlled).

So other than a few side quests and extra violence, my sane evil characters will not do much differently than any violent good character. Playing a non-violent good though would be a different playthrough.

EDIT : this may come as a surprise, but I am not criticizing. Just the rationale of my somewhat evil, but not stupid, Drow. I do not mind how it is.

THIS. You should add this list to the feedback compendium, it sums up the problems with the evil path nicely.

There are evil characters you can become friend with who will show up in Baldur's Gate in the EA. Now that "clueless" goody-two-shoes also become friend with them is their problems. And how is getting a "thieves guild" as allies something a good aligned character would want? Some good aligned quest resolution will also bite you in the ass later. There is 3 quests in the EA where the apparent good action is actually helping evil already.

As for the rest, I'm sensing a pattern. Why are so many people complaining the only "evil path" in the EA is siding with the goblins in an optional quest and then asking for minions for their evil characters as an improvement?

The only none-optional quest in the EA is "removing the tadpole" and the only thing you need to finish the part available in the EA is Haslin's journal or talking to his corpse. You don't need to resolve the goblins vs Grove for that. There is also at least 4 ways to resolve goblins vs Grove that I found so far (one is a bit buggy and could use more option than it does right). I need to check out a 5th today. Only one is considered good...

Used spoiler tag just encase.


Kind of ruined the whole thing and deleted the character.

So coming from someone, who at one point was a very big fan of the Drizzt Novels, and well diverse into DnD Drow culture (under dark), i did have afew disappointments in the role i was really trying to delve into(evil loath sword Drow). i believe part of that was because they are driving the story into more of the evil route is the route of the Illithid. there is alot of respect shown for the drow from their slave races but it seems like you have to go the mind flayer route to be evil. and not be evil but cure yourself of the brain bug.

This thread is spot on. An evil playthrough is not compelling, regardless of siding with the drow/Absolute or betraying them.

Larian are clearly aware, I've gave my feedback several times now. People in this thread have already made clear the issues I have.


https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/jd1qsq/highlights_from_kevin_vanords_stream/

"They want the evil route to be viable and more complicated than just "I'm evil""

It's pretty unsatisfying presently.

I always want to play evil characters, because I really find the '' evil Sorceress '' thing to be really compelling.
And then... I play the game and I can't bring myself to lol.
I always feel terrible about it xD.

I definitely think that an issue in RPG's in general tho is that it's often just '' evil for the sake of evil ''.
I think that there is an inbetween that is more like a scoundrel, the Rogue which I played actually did have a fair bit of those choices but few were story related. Mostly it was just '' what's in it for me? ''.

+1, You are totally right; I think this is precisely why they wanted us to play evil. So feedback like this can be given in regards to that content. I feel like you nailed it.

I liked my kingmaker evil sorceress playthrough. It was fun because sometimes you would get profits and sometimes your deeds would come back to bite you in the ass. Also the way your evil advisors dealt with problems was frequently hilarious. Far better than bg2 for evil I think, i tried another playthrough a few months ago there and gave up after lots of false choices and things that should be possible to do but weren't (for all the posts that I read around here about BG3, BG2 is really bad for non hero characters imo). People who are playing the beta are saying that Wrath of the Righteous is even better for evil characters, I hope that is so

Doing an "evil" playthrough atm and honestly you really do have to actively seek it out and commit to it with zero incentives. The Absolute cult is for all purposes a group of people that have been enslaved and don't realize it not to mention they'll stab you too. It also doesn't help that none of your companions really fall into the evil path. None of them make taking the evil path fun nor do any of them really rationalize doing bad things. That's the biggest issue honestly, if you're just running around being evil for the sake of evil and doing it by yourself it's a pretty limited path.

For good, you have active allies. Evil is missing that completely. Your one potential alliance is completely cut off right after a victory too which sucked all the air out of it for me. I don't care if it's the Absolute cult or not, but give me minions. If you want to make it really interesting, let me replace the Absolute and take over the cult entirely. Kind of like a not sucky Dark Phoenix angle where you go all in on the tadpole link and powers but that means by all rights you're irrevocably linked to it and have to abandon the removal quest. Instead you have to combat it and outwit it for whatever the force is that's arresting the change process.

Another take on evil is that it's no different from a good person. Evil is good in its own eyes. Even when it's undeniably wicked and cruel it's in the service of some goal. Neutral Evil on the axis is hardest to represent. It's the truly sociopathic predator type in which case you need to create a pretense for it to make it work in a game. The scenario I described in the above paragraph might be enough for it, but it might need something extra.

Can agree with a lot of this.


Current evil plays seem rather lacking. I don't play evil as murderhobo and it kind of felt like this is the encouraged path which is sad. It could be that there is better content for it later on that we won't see in Act 1 but this is not guaranteed, hopefully they can get enough feedback and change things somewhat.

How I played two characters: