Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The Forbidden fruit is sweet? Question to fans of the RPG genre

I have such a situation.
In any game, if I hear that there are some assholes acting in an organized manner and are my enemies by default, I really want to join them.

Fallout III - The Enclave

The Elder Scrolls - Necromancer Guild, Mannimarco (all parts of the series). In Oblivion, I wanted to go through the game on the side of the mythical dawn, or to join the Black Wood Company instead of the fighters guild. This is not about the fact that I do not have enough evil quests, when it comes to good - the same thing! Shivering Isles, I wanted to become a priest of order and stop Sheogorath, and when completing the quests of the Dark Brotherhood, I had thoughts about betraying / destroying the brotherhood and spare some of the victims whom I did not want to kill, but the game did not give such a choice.

Mass Effect 3 - Cerberus and The Illusive Man side

The only example of an absolute antagonist that did not make me want to work with him is Arl Rendon Howe from Dragon Age Origin, he is very nasty and I killed him with great pleasure. But Loghain Mac Tir was taken to the party.

I can go on. I'm curious if you have similar feelings? The perfect RPG game is a game in which you don't feel like you can't do something that you would like to do. I hope that BG3 will be a game with complete freedom in good, neutral and evil decisions. Shadow Druids for example, why not make friends with them.

I've never felt those urges while playing a video game, no. Playing evil quests just ruins my fun and those quests are always wasted on me.

What I want is something like that "chaotic good", feeling the rebel while working for good. Which explains why so many people play Imperial Jedi who favor the light. Robin hood, Grey Mauser, Elric, etc.

Villians have more complex motivations than heroes and good villians can be seductive but joining the villian? Nope, had any appeal for me.

If you played The Elder Scrolls, then you almost certainly passed the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood. All passed, simply because the developers added these quests to the game. In these quests, I really wanted to become a "good guy", hand over the thieves and murderers to justice, spare all the victims ... But this choice was not there either

In BG2 i really wanted to kill Imoen but couldn't so you're on to something lol.

But jokes aside i think the most important part is for the antagonist's motives to be clearly defined.
If his actions make sense ( in the lore he's in) and he has a goal to achieve then he's a good antagonist.

He is the most important part since he's the motives for your actions. Now whether you agree with him or hate him really doesn't matter that much.

Didn't play Mass effect or Fallout so can't compare.

But not to look too far BG3 mindflayers are the example of how you should do it and what to avoid at the same time
1: They are facing extinction and need to kidnap people to keep existing. Ok?
2: Ceramorphosis process is faster than usual, they are clearly doing something they didn't do before. The absolute is somehow related to this. Ok?

As of now they are a threat, we have to save ourselves and possibly stop them. We know roughly what they want to achieve. So it covers the above.

But why are they borderline retarded exactly? Can we explain that? Did we HAVE to fly over BG to kidnap those guys? Couldn't it be done like in a more " discrete" way? Somewhere in a forest? Even if we needed someone in particular can we track him and kidnap him WITHOUT an army of dragon raiders chasing us? If we have to run away can we NOT go through...hell?! Like that was his GPS preset? Go to BG3 ACT 1 or GO TO HELL. Like he literally had two options and clicked the wrong button.

No. Really. Like the guy driving the ship was a morron xD. He crashed the last nauthaloid we know of cause he can't drive hence why BG3. Like daaaaamn.

That's the kind of things I hate when it comes to antagonists. I'm sure he could have planned around NOT crashing his last ship. And if it wasn't the last one then still, that's how it is presented to us. I think this kind of moments should be avoided. Regardless of what we discover I will keep the first impression. The driver was drunk. That's why our heroes are alive.

I have joined Thieves Guilds and Dark Brotherhood mainly for the cool gear for my bastard Khajiit. Very pragmatic of me, Shadowheart would have approved.

Sometimes its nice to let the demon wander.... I usually always play the goodguy/girl and make the goody two shoes choices. I'm doing it in BG3 right now. But I agree, its a much broader and interesting journey if you can explore more than just good/bad. I briefly considered joining the Goblins and Drow. A bit of chaos and blood letting does the soul good but I could not in the end. They are too cruel, to happy to destroy..... I prefer a subtler darkness. I sometimes feel like Granny Weatherwax..Pissed that I'm essentially goodhearted. Really annoys me.

From what I can remember in the games I've played that provide that choice, I've never liked an enemy so much that I wanted them on my side.

No one mentioned Tyranny, this is the RPG which has done evil right.

Can't you hand the grove to the shadow druids?

No, if we help the Shadow Druids deal with the tieflings, they just become aggressive and that's it. No party with Kagha and elves, no thanks, no dialogues and a new quest. The illusion of choice

Amazing, thank you. Made my night.

The main groups I would want to join would be the Forsworn in Skyrim and the Forged in FO4 (ok maybe this had more to do with my first sight of Raider power armour ) I also like coming up with reasons a character would join a group that they should hate. Had a female Legion character in FO:NV and an Altmer Stormcloak in Skyrim. Think I had an elf save Loghain in Dragon Age but can't remember why. Never really liked Cerberus in Mass Effect. Would have been happy to help Aria run Omega with some modifications though.

My problem is that games do not allow me to take the path I would choose. Often the bad side is written in a manner to be only that. The Institute in FO4 could have been the best option to benefit everyone. Raiders could have been put to good use as well. The game did not allow certain choices to be made to enable this.

I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone. By the way, in Fallout 4 I got the ending for the Institute! There you can join them.
I do not consider them evil, this is the only chance for humanity. In New Vegas I helped Mister Robert House.
I didn't get what I wanted (Enclave side) only in Fallout 3, and didn't play Fallout 2 for the same reason - the inability to help the Enclave. The scene with the destruction of Megaton by a nuclear bomb "just for fun, evil for evil" is the worst idea for playing a villain of all that I have seen in a video games

I usually don't want to join the "evil" factions, because usually, to me, they just seem like assholes for no reason. Like, if they have a good premise that I can get behind, then yeah. But when it's just, like, a bunch of psychopaths who want to see the world burn, for no good reason, I don't see the appeal. I do like any kind of thieves' guild, or even assassin's guild.

If a game can give me a good reason for why my character would even consider joining an enemy/villianous faction, I'm down to at least try it. Most games, however, are not good at this. Either by not being able to write a three dimensional villian or not making their quests actually interesting.
Like in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The game is so heavily stacked in favor of you to play as an elven mage who romanced Solas when it comes to writing, it almost feels noncanonical if you don't go down that route. Playing that game with a templar sympathizing character is incredibly boring, and I only did like half a playthrough of it.

Any enemies can give such a desire, as long as they are not completely idiots and well written. Or, if they did not do something very bad to the protagonist. Or, if they are not a Mind Flayer who wants to enslave us and nothing else

Like, a lot of antagonist motivation in most games comes down to, "I want more power. ALL the power." And that doesn't interest me at all.

But if you have a group of "bad guys" who are fighting for what they believe is a cause, that can be very interesting.

I generally don't play evil in most games.

In Skyrim the only faction I would have loved to join were the Forsworn, but that's because they're human barbarians. The same goes for the Fallout games with the Raiders. Yes, I love barbarian cultures that much (as long as they're human).

I did join the Thieves' Guild in all TES games though, but I don't consider them to be evil. Selfish? Sure. But that isn't necessary evil.

I didn't consider the Institute evil but it seemed Bethesda decided to write them that way. There was so much they could have done to help people. I agree about the Megaton bomb entirely, that was yet another case of stupid evil that seems to be so prevalent in games.


This seems to be a common issue in games and I agree with you. In books I can often sympathize with the villain because they are well written and I can get into their head to understand them, in games they are most times presented as just another obstacle to remove.


Haha, people just don't understand when I try to explain to them why I like these factions. Have always been fascinated with tribal and barbarian cultures.