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

That is main problem with aleigances in general ... they are just limiting.

You can see yourself as lawfull good paladin, that will protect poor villagers from bloodthirsty goblin raiders ... but from goblin perspective you are nothing but chaotic evil murderhobo (since that word is so popular around here) who kill anyone on sight.


And great thing is that, its possible.
Sadly ... for some people even that possibility alone will work like "the only way" argument.

Makes sense for whom? Just because Minthara is evil, the goblins are evil and my githyanki wizard is evil doesn't mean they all share the same point of view. That is what makes alliances between evil characters of different backgrounds so difficult to write, and this is where the writers have failed so far. When you lack a common goal, you need to bring something to the negotiating table that the other side might be interested in.

Good characters can be united in their willingness to help those in need. And my impression is that the writers thought that this means the opposite must be true; evil characters must be motivated in their willingness to rampage and murder. Minthara & Co are acting as if an evil PC would be on their side, even though they come to the negotiating table empty handed.

No idea what do you mean whom ... it makes sence in general.

We were specificly talking about that Minthara "consider themselves superior" to quote your own words ... therefore it makes sence, that she dont offer you anything.
We were specificly talking about that your character also "consider themselves superior" ... therefore s/he have no reason to bargain with Minthara.
This simply should make sence. :-/

We ofc. could argue about if Minthara simply overestimated her power, or its the basic RPG problem: "god < player". :-/
But in mine eyes ... she have on her side powers of Goddess, whole cult of fanatics, quite some conciderable army of goblins, and she herself is no strainger to battle ... you have 3 dudes (or ladies) ... from pure roleplay perspective, she have every right to feel ontop.


Never told that they should. O_o


I disagree ...
If you created character that gets to dead end, unable to cooperate with anyone, yet unable continue without them ... that is storytelling problem ... but as far as you have where to go, yet you simply refuse and demand to change course of all characters around so you can continue in way you choosed, no matter the consequences ... that is player problem.
Here, where I come from, we usualy call it "protlačit to na sílu" ... closest translation i found will probably be "forced power play".

Its simple as that ... if you as player wish to cooperate with Minthara, you need to play character that is able to cooperate with Minthara ... you specificly played character that is not able, so you probably should not (or you can ofc. that is completely up to you, but it probably would feel kinda odd).
To create world where everyone is able to cooperate with your character no matter what character you play is litteraly impossible. O_o


I think you are watching it from bad angle ...
There are two factions ... tiefling and goblins ... and you need to choose between them. Honestly i believe that Druids are there simply to add some presure to Tieflings and support the inevitability of conflict ... if Tieflings could stay as long as they need, there is simply no problem, since goblins are unable to harm them as long as they stay inside.
No good, no evil ... just two sides of one conflict.

Then your character comes in ... and since that second its all up to you ...

You play goldstar hero that will help anyone in need? You help Tieflings.
You play sadistic butthole who enjoy murder and mayhem? You help Goblins.
You play greedy bastard, who wants just profit at the expense of others? You help the one who offers more. (Tieflings right now, unless you sucess in persuation check with Minthara, asking for reward.)
You play selfish person, who dont care about anyone and anything except his own comfort? You probably dont help any side, since you dont want to expose yourself to risk.
Dunno ... any other profiles?

//edit:
It all depend on point of view ... you can also say that your lawfull good character helped goblins, since you killed their leaders that were forcing them to attack surounding settlements, and therefore alowed them to keep living in peace ... yes, you would also help Tieflings, so it dont change anyting in the end, just saying that there is multiple sides to see this whole conflict.
After all, whole point of killing goblin leaders is presume that without them, goblins will no longer attack anyone, there is no need to kill every single goblin in their camp.


Not sure who is "they" but it seem to me that both sides come to negotiation table same empty handed ...

Minthara may seem to expect player to join her ... but that have several reasons:
For one, why else should player even talk to her, if he isnt open to this option?
For two, she concider player to be True Soul ... therefore she can expect player to worship Absolute, same as herself ... and therefore their goals should be simmilar.
For three, player is not forced to be part of that raid, he is just offered that place. There are some dialogue choices (that i didnt try so far) where player can tell her, that he helped when he bring her location of groove, but raid is her job. Also, im quite sure i have read somewhere in this threat that someone missed whole raid somehow.
And last, but not least ... there is that fact that Minthara is smug b**ch that see herself as superior.

So her acting make sence to me.
This whole raid was planned long before player even show himself around, so she have whole plan prepared even without player ... all she needed was groove location. Players participation on this raid, is welcome bonus ... but its not crittical.

Nope. My PC did not come empty handed; she could offer the location of the grove and a way in, since she was a welcome visitor there. It is literally in the first few sentences you exchange with Minthara. Had she been able to raid the grove on her own, she would have done so already. Her impatience indicates that she is running out of time. Whether this is the absolute's will or Minthara's own initiative, she is currently failing in this task. As an ex-Lloth drow she should be familiar with competing for the favor of a deity and what happens to those that fall out of favor. And yet neither she nor the goblins have anything to offer in return, and the writers haven't taken this into account. Perhaps this makes sense to you, but to me it does not.

These two post highlight the issue with the evil path very well. The current goblin evil path is just a boring murder spree and doesn't make sense. You end up helping some sort of cult with characters who have tadpoles in their head. Why would you do that? Your goal is to understand whats going on, get rid of the tadpole OR learn to control it. I keep having to repeat this, the Quest log should push you to make a choice and say "Learn about the tadpole" and not "Remove the parasite" after you learned about its upsides.

There are 2 npcs you can talk to, the Hag and the Mindflayer who will tell you that something is off with your Tadpole and you are not turning into a mindflayer (yet). Consider this. Maybe once you learn this, maybe then it makes sense for the PC to not remove the tadpole. But before you obtain this information, any character whether or not ts evil or good would want to find out more about the Tadpole. And not waste time going on a murder spree that doesn't help. The Druid is your best bet at learning about the Tadpole and he is trapped by the goblins, so why would you help the goblins? This is just a stupid move and evil does not mean stupid.

The evil path needs a lot of work. It needs some npcs added that you can talk to. Npcs carry the plot, like Halsin. Mintharra may end up dying, she doesn't carry the plot. Especially because she tries to kill you.

I was enjoying the one that I had in progress, but the patch arriving on Stadia fouled that one up. I will repeat it at some point, but am recreating my lightfoot halfling rogue at the moment and he is a fine fellow not prone to evil urges, thievery yes, but not the sleeping with the enemy vibe!

I just want to chime in that even D&D roleplayers seem to get confused about what evil is and play it like some kind of chaotic psycho. The fact is you can play an evil character who is actually nice, under most circumstances, but puts his own needs first. In other words, an evil character might help the Grove out, if he thinks he'll get more out of it than helping the goblins. And thus I echo that to be interesting and to be tempted to make evil choices, the player needs some sort of incentive in place other than "I want to kill all the good people teehee."

I'd like to point out some have said "evil is not stupid" but conveniently leave out that evil is not smart either. Intelligence has nothing to do with with evil or good. Evil templates are usually method and goals. Not intelligence, wisdom, or cunning as those are augments more than anything. Easy to get that confused.

It does.
Curently at least one introspective conversation was added, where you character is thinking about his next move ... and one of options clearly says: "They will kill the tieflings, but i shall gain her thrust."


And that cult do have tadpoles, and clearly since they were not on the same ship as you were, they have it in their head longer than you ... so logicaly they either do know something about it, or you should have at least more time than they have ...
And once again logicaly ... who knows more about it ... some random druid that was watching it for few days, or someone who is living with that thing in his head for some time allready?


Not everything need to be specificly said out loud. :-/


And Lae'zel, Gale, Wyll, Halsin, Nettie.


Every character, maybe unless he have intelligence 1, wich is not possible as far as i know ... should notice that he is not turning, nor feeling any physical discomfort.
Not everything need to be said out loud once again, and your character can simply "presume" that he wil find a way to outsmart this thing ... especialy once he find out that keeping that thing carries some benefits.


It does, just not directly.


He is not your best bet ... you have limited point of view. Only one of options, nothing more.
Only one who is sugesting to try him is Nettie, and even she is not sure if he will even be able to help you.


Halsin can die aswell ... he even can die even if you decide to kill goblin leaders.
Plot does not need NPC to follow you.

I think we should first define what evil is. Ther are so many ways to go about this really...
I mean for Astarion, exterminating the goblins is not morally bad, because goblins are vermin, and I agree with him. Killing goblins is not an evil thing to do.
So we can establish that simply killing a bunch of deminhumans is not neccessarily evil. So then what is evil?
I think evil is malevolence. When you not only do the deed but derive a significant amount of satisfaction from performing it to the point that it becomes an incentive for you to keep doing it. This leads to something of a psychopathic character, but I don't think most evil people are well adjusted at all anyway.

If you give a bunch of benefits to the evil path to compel people to walk it, you are suddenly turning evil into reasonable, in fact your character becomes more reasonable then evil.

Situation: I'm infected with a disease that can kill me at anytime
The druids direct me to find an archdruid who may or may not be able to cure me
The goblins tell me they will give me a surefire way to keep control over the disease is I do their bidding.

It's completely reasonable, and thus morally defensible to side with the goblins in such a case (this is not what happens in BG3, its just an example)

Evil is also something that stems from the inside. In the situation above, we don't yet know whether you are sorry to work with the goblins but are strung along due to your circumstances or whether you revel in killing innocents in their name. This must be exposed through dialogue and that's where companions should come in and comment on your deeds, so that you can respond in different ways to express your true intentions and motivations.

An evil character would always say something along the lines of: "I don't care if others got hurt, because I got my way" or "I enjoyed harming them, it caused me great joy".

There are so many ways to define it but we have to be careful to not define it with our own prejudices and opinions. Example, for most people cannibalism would be evil. An isolated tribe who eats their dead would disagree. They may consider it an honour to be eaten after their death as it gives life back to the tribe. Members of one religion will believe those of another religion to be evil. Anything someone doesn't like or understand, they will often call evil. The silliest example of this was when I was called evil because I like pvp in certain games.


You can establish. I would disagree. I would kill them (or anyone) if they were hostile to defend myself or those I care about, but if there was an option to not do so then I would take it. I do not kill based on race but rather on actions, even my Drow characters (who I tend to play as evil) would consider some of other races more useful alive.


This may often be the case but not always. Again, this is opinion. I have met people who I would consider evil and they were very well adjusted but perhaps missing something in the brain. Consider also that many Drow are evil because they were raised to be this way and it is all they know. They do not all do what they do for satisfaction but rather for survival.


Why would this be an issue? Not all evil people do what they do because they want the evil label. If being reasonable accomplishes the desired goal then this should be fine.


This could have been an interesting path.


Evil can also be created from outside influence, not just from inside. Companions should have more dialogue options related to all large choices, being able to explain our reasoning to them would be wonderful.


Not always, but these are the stereotypical types. There are different shades of evil. Some may even regret that they had to harm others.

Actualy this is what happened in BG3 ... only with small difference.
Goblins are just minions, they have litteraly no position to offer you anything. So i presume that you were talking about goblin leaders: Minthara, Dror Ragzlin and Priestess Gut ... and those leaders do have the same disease as you, and it can kill them anytime ... yet they are completely fine, even better since they did find a way to use this disease to their advantage ...

Do you really need Game Master to show there and tell you: "Oh look, maybe if you play it right, you can overcome this disease the same way they did."
Isnt that option obvious enough? :-/

Now this is something I just can't even conceive of, unless they are sorry because they fell away from some benefit by causing harm.

Good and evil are completely subjective. Villains don't see themselves as the bad guy, they see themselves as the only one that's right. After all even things like Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing are actual and constant events and I doubt the people committing them think themselves evil, merely that they're making the hard choice. You can argue whether a sociopath or extreme narcissist can be considered inherently evil and not everyone would agree or disagree. Same goes for the nature of good, just because a billionaire donates to a charity doesn't make them good it can also be viewed simply as their method of buying their way into a good afterlife. After all how did that billionaire even earn their money, how many lives did they ruin on their way to such wealth and how much harm did they cause in the long term. You can even argue the motives behind good actions, the guy who helps out at a local shelter is doing something good, but can be doing it simply because it makes them feel good. They're doing a good action but for a completely selfish reason. Good and evil, justice and revenge are concepts created and enforced by the community not natural concepts instilled in every human being.

The stereotypical benefit would be that the people would have been more useful alive, but many evil people do care for others. Sometimes this care is what drives them to "evil" acts.


You said this much better than I could.

It is probably hard for game developers to create a proper evil path because of this. Many people want a clear definition of which path is which, often because they want to feel the positive emotions that they get from doing the "right" thing. Others are used to the old ways of writing where good and evil are obvious and good always wins, they do not like the idea of sometimes evil being right and good being wrong.. There are also many people who prefer a more realistic version of things where good and evil all have shades of grey and the decisions are harder to make. Impossible to please everyone. If you throw the option of evil in a game just to placate those who wish to play it, then it ends up feeling shallow. If the option is not there at all then it makes the game feel unrealistic and to many of us, boring and frustrating. Well done evil options give much more depth to a game and there is good potential for it to be in this one.

Good and evil can't be completely subjective, there must be an objective element to them, otherwise we would have never developed these concepts.
Philosophically speaking the good is always prior to evil, and evil is a lack of goodness, falling short of a certain standard. If good and evil were equal but opposing forces, then we could talk about full subjectivity in morality, however they are not equal or even symmatrical forces.
Evil can only exist contingent on something good, it is parasitic in nature, while good can exist on it's own and be satistactory as such. This means that even evil people want something good, but they go about it the wrong way.

I think this would naturally lead to the conclusion that the root of evil is ignorance amongst most normal people and malevolence amongst psychopaths.

Evil is consciously pursuing personal goals at cost of other living beings freedom, wellbeing and life.
Good is consciously aiming to restore, preserve and improve freedom, wellbeing and life of other living beings.

Possible delusions and fails are irrelevant. Moral is not about being smart or effective, it's about goals and aims.

I agree with you by and large.

I'm not sure, but they don't even seem to know they're sick. When I asked guts for help, she denied that she had a worm. In a sense, they are all pawns of Abslute, this is a stupid position, and I don't like it.



Also for Astarion killing anyone at all is not a evil thing. It's fun. He doesn't think murder is evil. He doesn't feel guilty, unlike Shadow.

True ... but the fact they dont know dont change anything about having that sicness, nor that is not harming them in any way. O_o
Being pawn of the Absolute is certainly kinda bad position ... but also one that canot happen to you, since unlike the others, you know what happened.