Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Evil Path Still Needs A Lot Of Work

Am I the only one who thought that the evil options in Pillars of Eternity looked really tempted and well made?

I for one was really overwhelmed how tempting it was to take "the easy way" to power.

Sory i was going to respond to you, but them i simply forget somehow. :-/

I dare to presume that sentence was suppose to continue and say something like "evil companions that we have ... dont encourage us to follow this path."

And i agree, as i said earlier there is lot of pressure on both Tav and Player to follow certain path (help the Tieflings) ... wich also come with zero consequences for us (i think both Lae'zel and Astarion should at least concider leaving us, i mean i would not mind if there would be persuation option to keep them, but they should be pissed off at least ... Lae'zel bcs we are wasting our time instead of pushing for Creche, wich is our only vital option in her eyes ... and Astarion bcs he hates the idea that we would be helping everyone and anyone on our future path).

The problem here is that i cant quite imagine any reasonable NPC that would encourage us. :-/
I mean i can ... but they are either Drow Male, or Goblinoid, or something simmilar ...
Most reasons i usualy use as an argument for following this path and join Goblins works only for main character and when used on NPC, they would imediatly give him "potential traitor" mark on his forehead.

Well, yes ... you do get your informations when you get to the camp.
That a problem?
I mean you were quite oblivious, when you accepted this contract ... only when you enter the camp, and pray around a little you can fully understand how high stakes are here.

And about timeline, it fits to either after you either help Sazza or after you allready agreed to go find Halsin ...

Wich dont seem like and issue to me, since for powerhungry evil traitorous character, such agreement means as much as personal higiene for those Goblins.
After all, this is what being evil is (or rather can be) in my eyes ... see and opourtunity and use it.

Well, no, just no ... this asumption is wrong:

Its not explicitly said, that is true ... but once you are marked as "True Soul" the two followers are imediatly concider themself as your subordinate ... therefore you logicaly should presume that True Souls are supperior in this cult.
Also every single goblin starts to grovel, once your reveal your tadpole power to them.
Once you reach the camp, you find out there are 3 more True Souls, and they all are leaders.
Also if you listen to Gut, as she marks the followers, she litteraly tells them that they will not "hear the Absolute, since that would be too much for their weak brain ... only a True Souls are strong enough" or something like that, im only paraphrasing.

I dare to say that all informations you need are there, you just need to read the contexts.

Except they allready control Selune temple, Blighted Willage, and half of Underdark, they succesfully raided Waukeen's Rest and Tollhouse, and are threatening Druid Grove. O_o
Seems powerfull enough to me.

Especialy if you compare that to group of Tieflings and Druids that for one are trying to rip each other throat out ... and for two are hidint in their home hoping nobody will notice them.

About organisation ...
Im not sure why would you even care, what True Soul comand, they obey ... that is all organisation you need.

And about joining ...
I mean when you speak with Gut, Ragzlin and Minthara, they all presume you joined them allready ... i think this option cannot be clearer.

Yes, i agree ... and that is what i like about it.
Its not like the world is full of signs "Uncle Dror wants YOU to join the Absolute cult."

So you indeed dont seek them out (unless you are metagaming) but once you get there, no matter why ... you can be searching for Halsin, you can be brought there by Sazza, you can just search for the Nightsong (aka entrance to the Underdark for the Nightsong), or you could simply take wrong turn when you were searching for Auntie Ethel, who promised to help you.
Possibilities are endless.

Also, speaking about Sazza ...
I believe she were advertising the cult quite well.

Not sure what do you mean ...
But i believe i have seen both cases ... it all depends on how do you play.

You can either rush for Halsin and ignore others, or you can just mess around and gather intel first ... you also can totally free Halsin first and find out that he is certainly not willing to help you right now, actualy he is acting quite avoidable to be honest, take it to context with Lae'zel claiming that no druid great talent or healing skills would be able to help you ...
And voila. Yet another reason for you to try this other option is there.

Thanks.
Yup it is just assumption, even tho i would say its quite strong one supported by many unspoken but present facts ... but my point is that it should be just assumption, that is one of things i like about this most ... your character should be willing to risk it, when s/he will follow this path ... this isnt and never was ment to be path for people who want to see clear goal before they even start.

Yup, that is your advantage.
Just as Gale points out.

That is the risk of bussines.
As bodybuilders often say: No pain, no gain.

I mean we know they are controling it, since just as we do, they get special powers unrelated to their classes ... i mean, i believe that our characters should be able to figure out that some powers they are using are not standard.
So there certainly IS some power for us to take in game.

The risk of them being used by someone, or something ... yes that is certainly there, and its essential part in "outsmart someone in his own game".
You need some power character who thinks that s/he is controlling things ... otherwise there is nobody to outsmart.
So i dare to say that our characters should be counting with this option, but concidering it as "acceptable risk" (or be ready to faint away once it become unacceptable risk ).

Last point is little slipery ...
We dont even know if we will transform eventually after all ... i mean everyone presumes it (except Omeluum) but only bcs that is "standard progression" of our curent condition.
And they all admits (except Ethel, she just states she dont want to have any business with us) that our case is allready atypical, so its quite possible that same rules dont aply on us ... sometimes they even admits that they dont allready.
That is why my characters use other True Souls as "transformation indicator" ... i mean, they clearly have this tadpole longer than i do ... since i never seen them on the ship, and i dont quite believe that they would be able to create such powerbase in few days. Therefore ... while Ragzlin, Minthara, Gut and Nere are not turning, presuming that our transformation was only delayed, i should be fine.

I dont think they do ...
Its just different approach.

Like having a Tiger if your house ... you can either shoot him, or try to make a friend out of him.
One path is clearly much easier, and certainly safer.
But the other provides potential benefits the first one dont, but it certainly include some risks.
(Dont take it litteraly, its just example ...)

And i think that is intentional.
And certainly hope it will never change, since it would ruin the whole scene.

I hate to bring real religion to this topic, but there is some example i think could be used here:
My favourite religion paradox:
Do you know what is the only thing that would completely destroy religion? Proof of Gods existence.
It might seem like a nonsence, but hear me out:

Base definition of believe is that you need to have option to doubt. You dont need to doubt actively, but the option needs to be present ... if you cant doubt, you dont believe, you know.
(This concept was greatly used in Constantine)

Therefore if anyone would give you undeniable proof that God never existed ... you can easily refuse it, claiming that they probably forget, or didnt concidered something (you dont even need to specify).
BUT! (And this is a big butt!)
Once that person would give you undeniable proof of existence of God ... you can no longer believe ... and you cant even deny it, since that would be the mentioned paradox. Denying proof of existence of entity in wich existence you believe.

(yes im aware that there is multiple religions in the world, but that is irellevant, this example logicaly presume that every person would be offered proof that HIS god is or was real)

---

And the same would happen here.
Once we would have those answers present and undeniable, we would no longer "try to outsmart someone in his own shady game" ... we would instead "follow different clearly marked road to certain goal" and that would be shame.

We dont know that even in our own powers.
Same story as abowe.

Also i believe we will find out later in game, the question is whether it will not be too late to change your mind.

Nah.
I mean if you want clear path, you have it ... just help Halsin and Tieflings for your own selfish benefits and evilness of your character should be satisfied.

This path is not for "just evil" characters ...
Its more like for "intriguing, treacherous, backstabbing evil characters ... willing to risk everything, for option of their personal gain".

I disagree here.
They do have more information mo matter how much you potentialy dislike it, the only difference there is that they are not telling your straight if you ask.

Minthara say: "Godess will reward us."
Tav hear: "My tadpole will become stronger."

And that is the cool part.
Of course Tav can missinterpreting, im really looking forward to if Larian will have guts to let some of us cross point of no return.

Usualy yes.
But since you are concidered True Soul, you are litteraly starting in at least upper middle of food chain here.

Honestly, this is probably what i like most about it.
Not sure if that is bad writing, or brilliant one ... but it feels realistic and right to me that the path isnt actively appealing on us.

I mean in real cult they would also not offering themselves to us, we would either play along or being destroyed.

lot of them come down personal preference.

In real life, cults actually DO try and make themselves appealing.

They offer themselves as a solution, a temptation that promises something to its members, even if that something is as simple as peace of mind and community, or something like the chance to amass riches and power.

[...]

Oh and another problem with the game as a whole that impacts the experience of the dark path; we can't actually talk about our intentions regarding the cult with our companions. We can't ever say that we're joining them with the intent to betray them to any of our companions, we don't even get the option. Which weakens the roleplay value to me since the only differene between genuinely joining and joining to betray them is all in your head. And when the option of "join to backstab" is one of the obvious motivations you could have for joining the cult, the fact that we can't bring this up is an issue. One which ties into the lack of ability to talk about ourselves and our own characters in game, thereby solidifying the character in the world.

In BG3, the path of evil is the path of vile goblins who will make you kill a bunch of people, and then try to kill us. Perspectives are a kind of Absolute, which is not even a real goddess, but just an illusion which resembles Lolth.

Minthara and the opportunity to befriend her is the only thing that seduces in an evil way.

If she was not in the game, the option with the help of goblins would have been chosen by a maximum of 1% of the players.
While I believe in Minthara's ability to save the evil passage in SOLO because she's cool, there must be something else interesting there.

Do they actually make that offer if you play as a Drow male?

And ARE their members in important places? Again, what information do we get that suggests this cult has meaningful reach outside of this area?

They control a temple that seemed to have already been abandoned and let them just move in, they don't really control a village, they destroyed it, just like they destroyed an inn and a tollhouse, which seems to just have been a place where this one guy and maybe his family lived, from the impression I got. And I don't think we get a sense of how much of the Underdark they control until we actually get there, I at least didn't find any hints as to what they control.

As for the druid grove, that ties into a problem less with the path than with the game at large-no sense of scaling. We don't know how powerful druids are and how easy or difficult it should be for them to be threatened.

As you've pointed out, Halsin their leader got captured by them

so why should we think their ability to threaten the grove is especially noteworthy, even on top of the fact their other resistance is in the form of tired refugees.

we can't actually talk about our intentions regarding the cult with our companions. We can't ever say that we're joining them with the intent to betray them to any of our companions, we don't even get the option.

What I was saying is that we don't know how impressive their ability to massacre the druid grove actually is because we don't get a good sense of how powerful druids in this setting generally are.

We don't get a sense of scale as to how big this region actually is meant to be, and in general the sense I get is that this region is just a place people go through to get to other, more important places.

This isn't even just a problem with the cult path, but with the game as a whole, it seems allergic to giving you concrete context for the setting as a whole. That sort of thing is fine for a game like darksouls, where ferreting out information is part of the game and not knowing the full context won't generally take away your enjoyment of the game as presented. In a cRPG though, having an investment and understanding of the setting is vital to telling a good story. I'm all for players digging for more lore, but the game still needs to give us the baseline information we need to let us care about the given plot points.

If the game wants us to take the cult's superior strength over the druids as a meaningful indicator, then they should give a clear indication of how daunting a challenge druids typically are in the setting.

I grant you that we do have that map, though we don't actually see it until far into the game, probably well past the point we'd be trying to decide to back the cult or not.

And though it's wide, it's not like they're doing anything with it beyond preying on travellers.

As for the question of information, enough information is the amount of information we need to properly understand the stakes and plot points presented in the story.

I don't know what average people think of druids, I don't know anything about the gods of the setting, etc. And I'm not even just saying that. I have no idea how druids function in this setting. Should my character know what they are to begin with? Would they have met other druids before? Are druids a thing that people commonly know about? Let me give you an example I used in another forum. The tieflings we meet tell us that their town was pulled into hell. How common an occurence is that? I can obviously assume that it's unusual, but how unusual? Is it incredibly rare to the point of being unheard of? Or if I'm an adventurer, will dealing with hell and devils be something I'll face frequently even though common folk don't?

D&D is getting more mainstream and if you're getting this game then you probably know at least something about the game, but that doesn't excuse the game from giving us as players a baseline understanding of the setting. Like, Gale is from Waterdeep, and we can't ask him about what Waterdeep is like. We also can't actually ask anyone what Baldur's Gate is like. Everything is pointing us there, I can assume that it's a big city that's somewhat important, but that's it. The game isn't doing anything to actually build up Baldur's gate and make me excited to see it.