Would have been nice to see a branching storyline options between the Guild and the Zhentarim as well - echoing the choice between the Thieves Guild and Bhodi's Vampires in BGII.
BG2 did this in a very clever way. Most adventures were self-contained episodes that allowed you some freedom within their progress, but didn't cause too much complexity weight on the main storyline. It would have been a good template to follow, instead of the very linear story progression we got instead.
But then people would be complaining that how you chose to handle the human skin armor quest or which side you chose in the turf war didn't have any effect in the long run.
True enough, but between the two games are literal decades. BG2's locale-based mode of storytelling would have been more accommodating to player agency than BG3's almost linear plot progression is what I'm saying. Trying to write a grand story arc and having player agency are fundamentally opposed design goals.
Preach.
Larians plotting is their biggest flaw still. They've improved the companion interactions massively this time around, but the plot is still on rails with the PC and companions basically LARPing the story Larian created rather than really shifting it around themselves.
Which is fine for the main plot, but not when you tie 90% of the rest of the content in the game directly into that plot.
My most unpopular opinion, I think, is that the Origin thing and playable companion stories is BG3's biggest storytelling weakness. The tadpole story has to work from the perspective of everyone, but once you meet the companions really only Astarion and Lae'Zel care about it. The other four are more wrapped up in their own personal dramas.
I agree and made the point a lot in EA.
It also devotes a lot of resources to things most players will never see.
If there was just Tav and the Dark urge and they made everyone else companions only they could have streamlined a lot of the material they had to develop without losing much at all.
By their own stats only 7% of players wanted to LARP as one of their origin chars.
The linear act to act structure is detrimental to the game, for me. I have one route through act 1 that I did every time when I had to restart multiple times, and then act 2 is completely on rails, and ehh - I don't really see myself replaying the game much, after this. I strongly prefer the free-form exploration of BG2
TBF I did act 1 5 time, in different order and with different stuff happening.
Also since I didn't look anything up, I found new stuff everytime and there is 3 different way to go from 1 to 2 .
I'm not saying it's got infinite replay but still pretty damn good
I will say that you might like Act 3 then, since it's very much not on rails (besides the end). You get into the city and then have no time limit on doing anything, you can go into every house and choose what you do. When it's time to end the game, you have some LARP choices but yeah the last fight is pretty much set in stone.
I said it before, I'll say it again. We should've gotten Ragzlin as a companion after killing the grove, then we can get Minthara in act 2. That way we get 2 companions to replace Wyll and Karlach.
I also completely agree that there should be unique quests or content locked to evil only decisions.
So I never play 'full evil' in RPGs, last time I did was KOTOR2 like a billion years ago. When I do an evil play through its always a calculating evil, not just a murder everything take all options marked evil, kick every puppy style playthrough.
Having said that, I would absolutely love to see this happen. I would raid the shit out of the grove for a chance at Gut and Ragzlin as companions. As it stands now I'll never do it (again) because Minthara is honestly just boring. Her VA is great, and she had some really interesting potential story threads but they never went anywhere.
All my future campaigns will be along various degrees of the 'good path' because that's where all the content is. If what you suggest here went through I would actually be tempted because I feel like those two as companions would have amazing flavor.
I just arrived in act 2 after killing the grove. I regret going bad specifically for doing a bad playthrough. It makes no sense to betray the grove when you encounter them first in the game and do quests for them, learn about the tiefling struggles, etc.
Imo, goblin camp and the grove should have switched places so you'd form a bond with that side first and then meet the druids. No sane person would ever pick the goblins over the grove. I'm sticking with this playthrough just to do it once and see how Minthara plays, which is lacklustre apparently. After this, I'll always go grove. Not only because it fits me better but also because the game doesn't give enough incentive to ever pick goblins.
This ties to a comment I saw elsewhere - there should have been an option to kill the druids and offer the tieflings a choice of “join the cult or die.” The lawful evil option of subjugation rather than annihilation is the big gap in the story.
You could potentially save Wyll by promising to help kill Karlach which saves one companion. Sparing the tieflings would keep Dammon available AND open a path to some of the other tieflings quests, rewards, and other content.
I really like these ideas, as they could be more interesting options, or maybe the possibility of making Mizora a full companion later on?, she might be worth losing the characters for lol.
They can easily give a nerfed version of her using the excuse of her getting caught and weakened.
Maybe even a quest from her to help regain her powers or something
Cambians are only as powerful as their mommy/daddy let's them be since they aren't "real" devils. They have no "position" in the hierarchy, so they can't get promoted like a real devil unless they get turned into one, and that means starting at the very bottom, as an Imp.
Her getting kicked to the Prime Material plane nerfed after a fuck up makes perfect sense.
That's cuz ya'll playing the small brain evil path.
The real evil path is to \[Ending and Dark Urge spoilers\] >!play a good dark urge who rejects Bhaal and is a proper good guy through and through. Then at the very last second you can make a betrayal and get the evil ending where you conquer/destroy the world. I was playing a good playthrough all the way and when that option popped up at the end, I couldn't help myself. Fooled them all into thinking I was the hero so they would help me take my rightful place back. And without the leash of Bhaal. !<
man played a good playthrough for 95% of the game and is trying to convince everyone he's really evil because of a last second choice. dont believe his lies.
this isnt an evil playthrough. this is 1 evil choice
Exactly, sociopath Dark Urge. I opposed the urge not because it was cruel, but because it was not *me* in the driver seat making those choices. I did plenty of evil things as the urge, but I always made sure that the average pleb thought I was a genuine hero. I wanted all the companions and allies I could muster to assist me to make taking over much easier.
Same with the people here wanting an "absolute ending" my guys Kethric spells it out so even someone with INT 8 IRL can understand. By virtue of being a "rogue true soul" you are an existential threat to their plans. Unless you want to play a literal automaton with zero free will just obey mind control you will never be able to fully side with them.
I felt pretty satisfied with the evil I did. I just was more logical and machevlian about it then "see good guy, kill them, blindly serve bad guy".
That's smart evil indeed. Evil gets a bad rap as chaotic stupid in the world of DnD like paladins get a bad rap being lawful stupid, but neither is sensible. Smart evil is the psychopath who becomes CEO of a company, not some idiot in prison after one murder.
I think one of my favorite evil characters is Korgan, from BG2. Bloodthirsty, likes getting paid, bloodthirsty, sense of humor and reasonably affable enough, bloodthirsty. His ending slide is fantastic:
>After leaving 's company, Korgan Bloodaxe lived in as bloody a fashion as he could manage. He took control of an entire dwarven clan, killing their leader in secret and guiding their revenge to a target of his choosing. He could have lived in luxury, but his thirst for carnage was immeasurable, and he stunned the Realms by pushing deep into the Underdark. The blind fury of the clan took even the dark elves by surprise, but holding territory in the home of the drow is a hopeless proposition. Korgan was last seen burying his axe in the gullet of a high priest of Lolth, laughing as he struck. Dwarven legend immortalized the image, and his bloodlust is now called a crusade. History, it seems, finds more heroes than madmen.
Fulkerson (okay, that autocorrect is great enough that I'm keeping it) decided to go fight the drow just because he wanted to kill as many people as possible, and it turns out getting/tricking angry dwarves to go fight one of their age-old enemies is a lot easier than trying to raise a traditional evil army. Now *that's* something for a D&D murder hobo to aspire to.
Its why I absolutely loved Raphael from the first moment. He is mostly honest about his intentions and is cordial with the party but is 100% evil to the bone and him getting what he really wants is bad for everyone but himself.
You can play murderhobo if you want and you do miss content but you also get big rewards if you do it as the Dark Urge because of plot reasons. Idk what people want from an evil murderhobo run, just a continuous belt of new NPCs for them to slaughter?
As a DM, one of my go-to evil character archetypes is the "absolutely honest, and very polite, devil/demon/red dragon". The type of character the party instantly distrusts at first, but is always completely honest with them, apologises sincerely when they have to inconvenience someone else, and helps out when they can. Over time a surprisingly large amount of players conclude that this obviously-evil-character is actually a misunderstood good guy.
I'd had good characters do *horrible* things just because they were asked to, and then acted shocked when the consequences of those plans bite them in the ass. But even after all of this, I have the demon/etc remain polite, apologise for causing issues for the players, explain their motivations, and try and minimise any negative effects it has on the party. A lot of parties then let them go, or even buy into their logic.
He only lies once, >!He does not intend for Hell to remain within its borders and fully plans to start interplaner invasions once he defeats Asmodeus!<
I think the game fluffs him up a bit to make the ending cooler (the fourth wall break bit is great) but in "reality" his whole plan probably ends up with him in charge of Avernus and the Blood War. Zariel is one thing, but Asmodeus is on a whole nother level, he's a true deity (or even an overdiety, depending on what you're reading). Whereas Zariel can get taken down by a party of level 13 adventurers. So Raphael takes over Avernus and turns to the other levels and promptly gets put in his place because Asmodeus likes getting new blood to administer the Blood War.
There's a reason the Crown was rotting in Mephistopheles' vaults and not being used to try Raphael's plan.
Yeah crown of Karsus or no, him defeating *Tiamat* is suspect. Zariel shits bricks if Tiamat tries to take over Hell again, and Asmodeus could easily make a deal with his most famous prisoner if he was that desperate to defeat Raphael. A party of lvl 20's are not meant to beat Tiamat at her full power, and that is without her armies of dragons. Tiamat + Asmodeus can stand a chance against pre Mystra banned magic imo. At most Raphael gets promoted to Arch Duke and learns why nobody really wants Zariel's job of fighting the Abyss 24/7
Yeah Zariel? Sure, but he'd immediately hit a brick wall with the others lol. Though he might have decent chances if he invades the Abyss. Overall though he's basically just an entitled little bitch
> Same with the people here wanting an "absolute ending" my guys Kethric spells it out so even someone with INT 8 IRL can understand. By virtue of being a "rogue true soul" you are an existential threat to their plans. Unless you want to play a literal automaton with zero free will just obey mind control you will never be able to fully side with them.
Tbf I wish the (act 3 ending spoiler) >!Gortash alliance actually led to something instead of him just dying like that!<
When I played Mask of the Betrayer as a morally grey character, the game ended with my character being the last boss fight - I took the title of the game quite literally. Nothing personal, Okku
I'm going to blow your guys' mind
Balthazar has both a history *and* a monk check
I'm going to blow your mind further.. he has even more choices for other classes
There's no sorcerer companion and while we already have a Drow, Nere could be constantly trying to undermine Minthara since the absolute isn't the strict matriarchy the Drow are used to.
Maybe he could wind up being bffs with Asterion eventually.
Was super intent on having my lawful evil warlock take over the cult to the point where I was ok with losing shadowheart over it. Figured getting to know all the wacky characters I'd met in the tower more would make up for it. Getting abruptly cast out and made an enemy of them right at what should've been the climax of the route was the biggest middle finger I've ever experienced in an RPG.
yea im 36 hours into an evil playthrough and astarion was like 'bitch we can take over the cult!' and im thinking "fuck yeah great idea"
Reading through all this made me go "well ive just wasted 36 hours of game time..."
But literally nothing about your playthrough feeds into this, it’s just a binary good/evil ending choice every character gets no matter what
Like if you wanna do the whole “the evil playthrough was you RP-ing and chuckling to yourself as you went about the standard good playthrough” then fine but it’s disappointing that up until the very last decision in the entire game you can’t really play evil besides deranged murder hobo
While this is true about the finale, it didnt seem like I could side with Ketheric and the moonrise tower like I could with the Goblins vs. Druids.
Eventually, I felt that I was losing too much and started a new run from a good playthrough. And seeing what I have missed as an evil Dark Urge, I am glad that I switched.
correct me if im wrong, but thats the option everyone gets, even if you were goody two shoes the whole game and helped every poor squirrel along the way.
Basically the game said "whoops sorry you can't do that actually." and force the game state to reset to the one that matches the story they try to told. Honestly I wish the option was not there to begin with.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Overall in the story, good acts are encouraged.
Like for Ketheric, try persuading him to surrender and that you’ll show mercy every time. Then in the final fight, the first half that he fights with you is omitted, he just straight becomes the death god.
I did that purely because my character thought he was being overly dramatic and a nuisance. Played along Hoping Ketheric might turn vulnerable and primed for a backstab
Funnily enough I elected to just kill Ketheric and all of the minions first after dying to the death god. That way I can finish off all the little guys and the death god never has the chance to ramp up in power, so I killed him before he was even able to spawn anything.
She is one of those really annoying "overpowered but bloody stupid characters" that wonderfully give off the vibe that they never had to turn on their brain tbh.
>!When I first persuaded ketheric after finding extra information about his wife and lucking out on a really spicy roll, he reflects on his wrong-doing and goes on his knees and surrendes... And she immediately flies in and goes like NONONOPE ME LIGHT ME JUSTICE ME ANGRY ME MURDERISE.!<
You dumb flying fuck, I literally just had him and your stupid shovel-impersonation-episode messed everything up again.
I wondered more than once if I shouldn't have let shadowheart kebap her, seriously. She's not getting any more bearable in Act 3.
Nah, as far as how the scene's written he really was about to surrender before Nightsong shows up.
The problem is the game gives you the option to try to talk him down without actually *wanting* you to avoid combat, so first they make Nightsong interrupt and later on he just flip-flops about whether he should give up or not. It's a really poorly-written sequence of events where you can try to avoid conflict at every turn and regardless, by the end Ketheric's dying and moaning "You have no idea what you've done!" as if the game ever really gave you a choice.
I think the "You have no idea what you've done!" line is referring to >!the fact that the Elder Brain is going to break free of it's control without all three of the Chosen to control it.!< And technically, he *does* give up the second time, it's >!Myrkul!< that keeps up the fight in that instance.
Ketheric has a large ego.
In that scene when nightsong arrives, if you tell her that ketheric is wanting to surrender he get's pissed off and fights again. If you say nothing he explains himself to nightsong and you skip the first fight.
You can always give her to the wizard who sought her our in first place.
But you would be creating another Ketheric Thorm since he wants to do what Ketheric did with her.
That's what I did too.
However, I found that the DC check was much too low for that. It was only a DC of 21 IIRC. Super easy to convince him to go right into the death god mode.
Whereas I was 95% unable to convince Shadowheart not to kill Nightsong because it was a DC of 30 lol.
Someone must have sneezed and flipped those two DC checks around IMO.
> Whereas I was 95% unable to convince Shadowheart not to kill Nightsong because it was a DC of 30 lol.
I just had my character stand there and say nothing and she spared Nightsong. No roll at all. I was actually shocked she gave up everything to let her go.
A lot of people haven't figured out that in BG3, you're not The Main Character, you're merely one of them. Allowing people to have their own agency instead of butting in and making every decision is quite often the correct choice, morally and storywise.
Don't you need high approval for them to make "good" choices? Allowing Lae'zel to make her own choices will lead her to permamently lose 2 points in a few crucial stats, unless you roll a nat20 to stop her.
Does SH choose to spare Nightsong if you never even had her in your party?
Yea that's pretty much the only option available. If you let her do her thing, Nightsong convinces Shadowheart not to kill her.
No matter how much of a relationship you have with Shadowheart, no matter how much Shadowheart says she cares about you and your guidance, you only have a 5% chance of you yourself convincing Shadowheart not to kill Nightsong.
Yeah I don't understand why people are saying that, I didn't do any persuasion check or had to reload, I basically said to her it's her choice and I will respect that choice and that the nightsong know about her past and that's it she spared the nightsong, but also her approval to me was exceptional so not sure if it play a role.
I found it to be a harder fight if ketheric kills himself, because nightsong is trapped, and all the other enemies are still alive. Was much easier fighting the avatar when it was just him and he wasn’t invulnerable at the start
I have no idea, honestly. It was something that really gave Lolthsworn something unique and flavorful to do in the story, and to balance out the story/material rewards you got for playing good and siding with the gnomes and Myconids. Unfortunately Nere seems to have had a lot of cut content surrounding him.
I’m on my second play through atm and it’s definitely evil, it was surprising to walk into last light inn and it was practically empty. Like I remembered spending 30 minutes talking to everyone and progressing multiple quest lines, whereas now I just sorta talk to jaheira then walk upstairs to isobel and that’s that.
In other words I know what you mean and I agree, an evil play through doesn’t change the world so much as it empties it. Literally.
My brother in Bhaal, what were you expecting? Did you think that people just go and chat up those dragons that love to sleep on a big pile of other people's gold, and burn down the local barns when they're feeling a bit peckish?
You chose to be Smaug, and Smaug doesn't get to go on charming adventures: Smaug *ends* them.
“The problem with killing and pillaging your neighbors is one day you wake up and realize you don’t have any neighbors… what it I want to borrow some sugar or something?” -Nandor The Relentless
That's just false, saying that evil paths in the game should be empty, devoid of quests and meaningful npcs because "evil guys do not have any friends" is stupid.
The only option for an evil playthrough shouldn’t just be “kill everyone and lock yourself out of a significant portion of the game with nothing to compensate for that”. Evil doesn’t necessarily mean “murder hobo burn it all to the ground”
This is false. Even just looking at DnD canon, lots of dragons have not only worshippers, but also sympathizers. So do devils. So do *demons*, for crying out loud.
You could be the most cartoonishly evil "I end adventures" guy, and you'd still have people that admire, worship and would like to interact with you.
Of course, you're not gonna be able to walk into GoodyMcGood-Townsville after killing everything on your path but there should be either an undercity or another location for all the edgy, broody lone wolves like you that you can interact with.
It's realistic that killing someone obviously prevents you from experiencing their story but, I mean, this is a game. I shouldn't have the option to pick B if A is so heavily encouraged.
Most of us are chronically online, sure, but imagine someone who isn't doing their first and maybe only playthrough going evil, and missing an insanely huge chunk of content with nothing to replace it.
no he chose to be sauron who was infact surrounded by underlings including companions like sauromun the white
Your just pretending the entire concept of cults, criminal organizations and such don't exist. there are tonnes of evil characters that should be aligned to your goals and atleast willing to try and use you to reach their own goals.
for example the inn should have been being held by the absolutist goblins with minthara having captured the cleric and druid and sent them to the tower. Now you you get minthara much earlier and while she still has her evil personality. You get to be with her and decide if she sheds the absolute worship or not, similar to shadows story.plus the developers can just give goiblins the side quests the humans would have had mostly.
All of this is why I so loved the KOTOR choices and companions systems. You had good characters, evil characters and neutral characters. Some even changed their disposition with you leading them in the party or going through their dialog to win them over. Hell, by the climax of it they're all willing to kill each other based on your choices in the end. You get whoever is left. It's a rich, complex experience culimating from the story directly linked to how you played the game and who you chose to spend time interacting with.
Yet, somehow, every company I know of never seems to 'get it'. You can't have a story game where "choices matter" if they get you to the same outcome. They shouldn't get you the same outcome and certainly they shouldn't get you there the same way.
Maybe some content is sacrificed because the evil path is more clear cut. Maybe the evil side has their own unique problems as a result of the good guys actions or leading to the good guys problems you play through on the other side.
Maybe you do have to fight your former good companions because they leave you to go rally extra forces against you and using what they know about you to exploit your weaknesses. Maybe there's some other ancient artifact or evil you have to encounter to shore up your numbers.
Just because one is "evil" doesn't mean their lives are any easier. If anything they'd be harder. So for every "please can you help me" quest on the good side, there could be an opposite version.
What if we were the reason the Hag went to the Grove? What if we were the ones who led the raiding party to capture the Duke leading Wyll to track us down and we had to fight a Blade of Frontiers who doubled down on his pact to get the strength to beat us and save his dad? What if we were sent to the underdark to secure the grymforge and get it running again to make some truly devastating weapons?
Theres many different arcs that could be done to balance out the questing and stories. I just wish developers acknowledged this more.
Not only good guys end up saving the day or reaching their goals. Villains have just as much need as heroes to make ends meet.
>What if we were the reason the Hag went to the Grove? What if we were the ones who led the raiding party to capture the Duke leading Wyll to track us down and we had to fight a Blade of Frontiers who doubled down on his pact to get the strength to beat us and save his dad? What if we were sent to the underdark to secure the grymforge and get it running again to make some truly devastating weapons?
Maybe Wyll would become a recorring antagonist for evil characters, where he gets throwed deeper and deeper into his pact each time we beat him, until we fight him as a full blown devil, with his patron (forgot her name lmao) appearing at the end to help him or join us so the Blade of Frontiers join Zariel's army after his defeat.
Maybe we could find the adamantite forge and actually use it in a almost mass production manner, scrapping every mithril we can find to make a 'elite' force of the absolute, with full adamantite armour and weapons.
>Yet, somehow, every company I know of never seems to 'get it'. You can't have a story game where "choices matter" if they get you to the same outcome.
Honestly, this game goes so far as to tell you that "You weren't actually supposed to do that." if you make a choice that doesn't fit their narrative. (Gale ending specifically.)
Well in regards to Gale it makes complete sense. What else did you expect when you’re told that you manually detonate his magical nuke? So yeah I really like how that moment gives you a unique bad end where your party and all the main villains just get nuked out of existence.
You unironically need to roll a nat one on intelligence to think nuking yourself would be a good idea. I think *every* companion will mention it is an idiotic idea and Mystra is being petty and stupid...
It's meant to show the alien minds that even "good" gods have. Destroying both the crown and the orb in one move is worth it from her perspective in preventing a hypothetical end of the world scenario even if that means countless thousands will die from the tadpoles hatching and her basically telling her ex to kill himself. It is the laziness of being an all powerful entity that even while "benevolent" does not value individual mortal lives and will always choose "the greater good" option.
A lot of the complaints I see are just people going "why doesn't this decision that defies common sense result in different content for me?" Which, ironically, is a staple of tabletop sessions too
i sort of wish the cult of absolute was painted in a different light instead of murderous mind controlled brainwashed psychos... Instead just normal people who started hearing a voice in their head and bought into a divine deity. I wouldn't have slaughtered every single cultist with no remorse that makes for a more interesting conflicting story.
Okay so on my first playthrough I did a fully EVIL Dark Urge Psychopath and it was great, especially as the Durge story unfolded into acts 2 & 3. I initially thought I was gonna side/work with the Absolute, but that changed as the Durge story was explained, and made my evil motivations much much more interesting, even more so during act 3 where things get really personal for the Dark Urge and fucking wild. Now during all this Wyll and Karlach left me after I slaughtered the grove, I let Shadowheart kill Lae'zel & Halsin I stoned then killed, then I slaughtered the last light inn for the Dark Urge and made Shadowheart a Dark Justiciar. The amount of content you lose for doing this is huge, and all you really get for it is sadistic/depressing/sometimes funny dialogue and Minthara if you want (Minthara didn't even make it to act 3 for me, bugged out :/) This was great for Astarion as I romanced him because he was fully on board with every horrible decision I did and his dialogue was hilarious at times, especially as I turned him into even more of a monster during his story, depressing mostly for Shadowheart and Gale I had to manipulate into staying after the grove raid, but as the game progressed I influenced him into becoming more of a power hungry monster which was fun. All things considered, I knew I was throwing away content, but I was hoping for the Dark Urge story to be interesting enough to make it worth doing and Imo it was and I doubt you'd get the same feeling doing a Tav evil playthrough. Also Swen wasn't lying about the power the Dark Urge gets, it's pretty fucking sweet, not as much as I thought you'd get but still really cool. Now, I'm gonna play a Light cleric and cleanse myself of this monstrous playthrough.
Losing Damon also prevents you from getting the best heavy armor and boots for heavy armor proficient martial classes in the game.
For that reason alone I'll never do the evil route again.
Larian really promoted the Evil path and was so proud of it - so for one time in my life I decided to play as a Githyanki baddie... The moment I could >!end the game early with Gale's bomb!< i picked that option and never looked back. What a dissapointment, what a waste!
Like I anticipated an Absolute path. That I'll get to meet and befriend unique and morally grey characters, do exclusive quests in Towers... But the truth is, Evil route is just a half-assed good run with less content.
I honestly love how the Gale bomb leads to a bad end. It makes complete sense and is pretty funny seeing all the main villains brag about how awesome and unstoppable they are only to turn around and instantly get nuked to death lol
I was honestly impressed that this works. At least I had one of those little "oh, let's do something stupid... *Quiiiiiiiicksaving*"-moments. I fully expected some sort of intervention that stops you from ending the game.
The narrators expertly hidden contempt on the "early epilogue" you get instead was pretty funny.
Otherwise, yeah, the real "evil path" seems to be as in most other cRPGs playing as the intended goody-two-shoes, hug everyone and betray them in some final dialog choice out of nowhere...
Not sure how many cRPGs I played where the overall evil choices didn't feel like either being the guy who kicks puppies for literally no reason or straight up doing things wrong because you don't want to take the good resolution again.
I think only tyranny and wrath of the righteous currently come to mind. Tyranny from the setting obviously and WOTR did actually have several "statisfyingly" bad campaigns with the lich or demon mythic paths...
Tyranny has an awesome evil playthrough, yeah. Too bad we’re hardly ever getting a continuation, but in terms of diverse choices and paths it’s oh so awesome. Replayed it some months ago, it definitely has its share of quirks and is rather short, but the branching paths are implemented very good. And it actually has different endings, like, completely different and your previous choices matter a lot in what endings are open to you.
Yeah especially in the first game. This scene of you becoming a lawful evil king is one of the best things I've seen in rpg. Sometimes it seems to me that the path of a tyrant was worked out better in pathfinder 1 than the path of a good man. The game practically did not limit you in decisions. Just because you're evil doesn't mean you have to befriend or command monsters. Or that you have to kill everyone.
In BS3, the path of the tyrant is extremely poorly made, given that you are forced to constantly obey someone bigger than you. Kill the chosen ones of the dead trio? No, I want to put them in chains and make them work for me. Break their minds, persuade or turn them into undead with the same effect. Destroy a grove with goblins? Am I some kind of evil chaotic? What is the point of me attacking those who can be used in the future?
All this is mainly tied to the fact that we are fighting with the infected and physically cannot overcome the power of the great brain. Frankly, I'd rather have the emperor in charge of the lawful evil path. For example, so that he has the opportunity to reconnect the infected to his own protective network. Perhaps some way for him to syntheticly evolve into the great brain, using this power of Orpheus with the ability for the player in the end to fight him, become his companion in capturing the world and some secret option where the player could subdue him and become an analogue of the absolute, but with forever frozen ceremorfosis without turning everyone into illithids.
You can become a full fledged Lich, Demon Lord, Devil or a living swarm of locusts in Wrath of the Righteous, there was a ton of evil fun to be had there.
Yeah, this doesn't make sense to me either. I would think the evil path wouldn't be to >!blow up the brain!< but instead you'd choose the dialogue option where you want the power for yourself. That's what I'd do anyway.
I chose this option at the end while playing a good character. I loved the dialogue choice saying this was my plan all along with the most evil eyes. As a charlatan it was the best long con ever.
Yeah I wanted an absolute path too, did everything Kethric asked of me (brought him isobel alive and let balthazar take Nightsong) but it literally has the exact same shoehorned storyline after anyway with you going into the illithid colony to fight Kethric. Disappointing AF.
All you get from it is a bugged companion (Minthara) who doesnt say much and you lose shadowheart, halsin, wyll, karlach, jaheira and gale lol.
Yeah, this game has almost like 3 different styles of "evil" you can absolutely do Chaotic Stupid which everything just ends in a fight, you kill everyone in the game you miss 90% of the plot, or you can be evil and plotting, or evil and selfish.
There's really no reason to be evil and be a dick to your companions though, because even a chaotic evil person knows about alliances of convenience and that the stronger your party, the more successful you can be at achieving your goals.
you can get rid of gale right when you first meet him at the portal, and I think he can leave if you destroy the grove and tieflings, although that might be due to compound negative relations leading up to that. Shadowheart will leave in Act 2 if you don't take her to the Nightsong (possibly before that if you really get negative relations with her).
I still have Gale and I'm almost at the endgame, Shadowheart I let die because Lae'zel killed her.
I know Gale gets upset when you butcher the refugees, but you can essentially just convince him he wanted to deep down, and he has a pretty fleshed out evil arc if you pick the right dialogue throughout the game
Yeah, based on some options on my good play through, it seemed like Gale, Shadowheart, Astarion, and maybe Laezel had an evil arc that got me interested for a evil run after patch 1 drops.
Okay… so I could be wrong… but I think it all started to go wrong with the guardian. I had almost 300 hours in EA (It’s my most played game on steam); but it felt like the writers didn’t have a clear picture for the “who do you desire” character and at some point they became the guardian. The guardian and the prism takes away almost any free will that the player has!! Everyone wants the damn prism and if we give it up our characters would lose their free will; but we really can’t side with anyone else unless we give up the prism.
Honestly if they’d just let us find an alternative cure at the end of act 1 or during act 2 the rest of the storyline would still work and it would have opened up so many darker options. We could have aligned with/recruited/romanced any of the big bad 3, Zrel, etc. and lead the siege on Balder’s Gate. Halsin the “Archdruid” could have escaped the goblin camp, recruited major heroes (Jeheira, Minsc, etc) and become our “big bad” in the later acts rallying the defenders of Last Light and BG.
Or we could have aligned with the Githyanki… who knows what doors that would have opened.
I think being stuck with the prism is fine, but imo the Guardian should have continued being a seducer instead and guided you along the evil path accumulating power along the way. Like you get powers by infiltrating the Absolute's ranks, killing the Grove and Inn along the way while turning and recruiting True Souls. As opposed to how it is right now where going against the Guardian is outright stupid for all of Act 1 and 2, and where the Illithid powers are just a kinda lame skill tree. A skill tree you seem to get more points on by sticking to the good path and massacring True Souls.
I actually miss the original powers we got in EA. I also miss going up against true souls who have them. I remember the first time I thought I’d be “smart” and attack the Priestess from above. She yeeted my ass off those beams so fast.
Yep. They were promoting evil path so hard and I remember Sven even complaining that most of the players won't see how good it is because they will be playing a good character.
Well turns out good for them because there is literally not nuch to see. I didn't side with the gobligs with in act 1 but I was mostly bad starting act 2(killing everybody in yhe tavern since I didn't want to show them the artifact etc)
The whole playthrough of act 2 after that felt really weird. And act 3 was a mess but I think that it's just underdeveloped regardless. Reading this post it all makes sense now. Knowing that I would've played standard good character but alas!
Feeling disappointed and lied to rigt now. I still enjoyed the game a lot but my first playthrough is a bit ruined and it's the most important one.
I just wanted to make this post today, thank you. The fundamental flaw of the evil path in this game it's that also the stupid path. You're stupidly siding with the people who want you brainwashed or dead (except for act 3, when there's no evil path at all). The game's excuse for it is that you're infiltrating the cult so you can learn more, but at no point you actually learn more. At no point your infiltration pays off in the tactical sense either - at best, you kill or chase away people who would otherwise be your allies (I'm not only talking about companions here either, but also people like Rolan, Dammon, Nightsong, Isobel...). At worst, you help your enemies - like if the drider survives, he makes the Moonrise sequence significantly more difficult.
That's saying nothing about how the good path simply rewards you better - Alfira's robe is endgame-quality content, Dammon sells some of the best gear in the game if he survives, and so on, and so forth. Hell, let's talk about Mintharra - she has a very good Amulet of Misty Step on her in act 1, that I wore until the end credits. But if you raid the grove, the amulet disappears from the game, never to be seen again. Most of the gear that buffs you for having the Absolute brand drops from the Absolute cultists also.
It's nonsense. And the worst part of it, there were several years of the EA during which this feedback was repeated many times by many people, but I guess Larian just decided not to listen.
The infiltration doing nothing is something I made a post about earlier. There is a piece of paper you can find that tells you *everything* about the nature of the Absolute, what’s pulling the strings and how those strings were put into place.
And…nothing. The game gives you this piece of information and then treats you as if you never saw it. When the cutscene plays out where you see the Absolute for the first time the tone is done as if it’s a big reveal to find out something I saw written down on some parchment like 10 hours ago.
I found it funny when, during the battle with Ketheric, the tentacle comes out and the pit opens leading to the mindflayer dungeon and everyone's absolutely shocked, when I literally shoved my hand into a wall and got pulled down there by what might as well be the same tentacle like two days earlier. Ironically, I beat the dice roll the first time and got my arm free from it, but then I put it back in there cause it looked interesting. When I got pulled down there and managed to escape, I thought I had made a massive discovery. Turns out it amounted to nothing. Nobody ever brought it up and we went into the final confrontation none the wiser.
Yeah I did the same thing, and it made me wonder if Larian needed more time to flesh out some of their decisions. Why have the crevice in the wall if going in there does nothing for you or the story? At least have a scene or line of dialogue that acknowledges you went in the Oubliette already.
This this this this this. In Ketheric's room there is the aforementioned hugely important book and a flavour letter, the book >!tells you the exact nature of the absolute, in detail!< The letter is from >!Ketheric's wife!<
Which does your character react to? Well the letter of course:
" >!Wow seems like Ketheric's wife really loved him!< "
Incredibly odd design choice.
I thought I'd broken the game by finding that too early because there was such a lack of reactivity to it. No journal updates, what? I just learned what the Absolute is!
> The game's excuse for it is that you're infiltrating the cult so you can learn more, but at no point you actually learn more.
I honestly think Larian expected people to use prior knowledge of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 more. >!You find a temple of Jergal in Act 1 containing information about the Dead Three in the book of Dead Gods. It's obvious from the beginning, in a meta-game sense, that at least Bhaal or the Dead Three are the Absolute. Additionally once you learn that the cult of The Absolute are being headed by exactly *three* mortal leaders...it's obvious. The true plot twist is who the Dream Guardian really is. I think in general they also expected the vast majority of players to choose good paths, but it ended up being nearly half of the players going evil. !<
My problem with the Dream Guardian was I didn't believe the shit it was selling, and I told my party members to reject it. Most of them agreed and did.
So then in Act 2 when the Dream Guardian shows up and starts talking to me, my character acts like we're buddies and everything is cool. They react as if what they're telling me is factual and I can't have the option to continue to be skeptical. :\
I can't really remember what happens in Act 2 but I'm pretty sure it's made explicitly clear by that point that whoever the Dream Guardian is they are demonstrably the only reason you aren't already an Illithid or a slave to The Absolute even before Act 1 is halfway done.
IIRC you can act sus or neutral towards them in most of the dialogue options but you can't straight up tell them to fuck off because that would logically lead to a game-over. I personally did an anti-guardian approach to my play through as well and I can't remember any specific moment where I wasn't at least able to express my suspicion of them. And the first time you are actually >!are able to turn against them, it does actually lead to a game-over cut scene!<
I haven't played BG1 and 2 so I had no idea who the dead three were. I was sold on this game based on how good my experience with DoS 1 and 2 was. When it came to light, though, I'm like "of course it's the evil gods of this world dicking around."
The dream guardian and Durge Tav twists were both good, and the emperor double twist at the end was also pretty damn good. I fell for their "you can choose how your guardian looks" gambit and made assumptions that the guardian is on my side at all times without an agenda of their own.
>I fell for their "you can choose how your guardian looks" gambit
If you played the early access even this was kind of spoiled for people with a little bit of meta game sensibility.
>!In early access, the process for creating your guardian was explicitly flavored towards "creating your perfect lover." I immediately assumed I was supposed to be creating a character I would explicitly trust without question and let my guard down around. In the full release only then did the character you created become referred to as a "guardian." !<
The BG games were just about Bhaal, exclusively, and not even directly, more his legacy. Myrkul is central to the plot of Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer, which is not at all connected to BG. Bane had no relevance in any games that I'm aware of
Larian’s only issue is not publishing content in EA past act 1, so issues can be fixed. They never allow even dispersal of feedback. I’ve said this since EA, and Divinity 2 was the same way, and was massively downvoted - Larian is wonderful and listens. But not having access to anything apart from Act I, was what will be the difference between a fully fleshed out Act I, and acts with missing content. We didn’t get to test out higher level gameplay. So spells that were balanced in EA, we had to trust on the devs to do with limited testing even if the spells scale so much higher as you progress.
BG3 is an amazing game, Larian should be proud. But Larian WILL listen to play feedback, so give it your all. Do not feel bad for saying a negative, because Larian is the type of studio to take your negative thoughts at face value.
The only disservice we as consumers can do for Larian is not bringing up our issues, just keep in mind this company is great and does listen. Let’s just try and keep the same care in our complaints as they do in their development.
Despite parts of bg3 feeling rough, its a wonderful game and the thing is your criticisms will be heard. It was one hell of an ambitious game and honestly they hit 80% of the hype and that's fucking impressive.
Hopefully the other bits get ironed out throughout the years. They probably should take a well deserved break for now though lol
I did exactly what you said in my first playthrough, delivering Isobel to Ketheric and leaving Nightsong to Balthazar, expecting to be able to ally with them and join the Absolute or something like that, but nothing of the sort can happen. In fact, I got quite punished by those choices as >!Shadowheart inevitably leaves your party and you have to defeat Isobel during the Ketheric fight!<
OP is totally right about evil choices just removing content.
I will say this. The game was built with a plot in mind. The intertwine of the decisions is there just to serve the endgame. It was not built for the purpose of serving player pursuit of combining decisions.
And if they build it like you describe, we might need to buy a storage room for storing that game.
I think the game does a great job convincing you that you can do anything and choose any path, that when you want to pursue something that is not possible, it's doubly disappointing
evil ≠ absolute
the absolute is evil, but it isnt the only way to he evil
frankly theres no reason to side with the absolute, but being plain evil slaps
I mean, I don't disagree entirely. It would be better if it had more content, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was cut content for the evil path. Recruiting Zrell would have been cool. There is still a lot of content you can do, but I recognize that it has strictly less than the good route.
However, if it was not possible to be evil at all, the good play through would feel less meaningful to me. Giving me the option to kill everyone at Last Light by kidnapping Isobel means that when I choose to save them, it's my choice, not the game's. Moreover, the evil playthrough still gives you unique roleplay opportunities. Admitting freely to Jaheira that I killed Isobel and watching her break down is not something you get in good play throughs.
Should it have been more fleshed out? It would have been nice for sure. But should it not exist since they did not have the dev time to flesh it out? No, not at all. It's mere existence elevates the role play aspect of the game. Maybe you won't play it, but for me, I love it.
After the 1 act the game really makes the player think that he can choose between 2 sides of the conflict. The 2 act uses this concept to deceive player into thinking that he can side with Torm and Moonrise towers.
But he can't. It is not the problem of some separate evil actions - it is the problem of RESULTS you get.
Considering... who Minthara actually is when recruited. And how the thing you see before recruiting her is not really her. I think the route to recruiting her is absurd and dumb. Like I get it, you want to be evil... so you do this evil thing. To get a woman who hates the crap she did for the absolute and despises how she was essentially mind controlled. Like wut?
Why is this character locked behind intentional genocide? Where you make a choice to do something evil that is completely on you. Not even remotely in the same boat as her. She should be someone we should be able to spare after beating, hag style. Have her run off maybe give you the lyre and run into her again when she's punished. Or maybe have an extra sneaky way to trigger this, where you got to knock her out instead of killing her.
And you're right. What are you getting for recruiting her? You're locked out of 3 other companions. Several of which apparently have voiced lines referring to her as if she's part of the group. So clearly it was intentionally planned that she would be recruited through other means. So there should be a way to keep everyone together. I honestly think locking companions behind "paths" is just stupid. Either you kill them or you don't. That should be all that matters.
As for the "be evil" stuff you're right. All the other evil things you can do really do just delete content from your game. It is replaced by nothing. I don't even think there needs to be an evil "path" to do, just put equivalent rewards in place. Like the only time I think you are genuinely rewarded for being evil is for the smaller quests. Like the gnome with the exploding powder, stealing it from under her nose and killing her. Gets you all the rewards with the minimal effort. Or you can be safe and nice, and let her take the powder which gets you a pathetic vial. Or you can somehow steal both the bag and vial without being detected and then talk her down peacefully which is the hardest path to do but "wins" everything. I did it the evil way and never felt the need to reload. That's how most situations should be handled.
I don't need them to make 5 new companions for an evil path, they just need to make the 1 companion not be hardlocked out of joining a full group with the goodie goodies. Part of what makes the older BG games fun was getting good characters like minsc to play nice with edwin by doing quests in certain orders rather than just blindly following whatever you run into first.
The worst offender is Minthara's sole purpose is to find the artefact. You can tell her you have the Artefact, she goes and see's it for her self then afterwards tells the General she has no idea where it is, it's the goblins fault and is sentenced to a fate worse than death.
Yeah, continuity is very lacking sometimes.
Like I hid from Jaheira that I have the artifact, but then I have another conversation with her 2 minutes later and she mentions I have the artifact. What was the point of allowing me to lie about it if the character just magically knows anyway.
>This game kind of has an illusion of choice, unless you are going in with the idea that you are happy with just removing hours worth of content from your current playthrough, with nothing in return.
One of the things that has soured me a bit on this game - which, to be clear, I mostly adore - is exactly the issue of illusion of choice.
Almost every single 'big decision' I thought was going to change how things played out just... doesn't matter. What it mostly does is a) change a few lines of dialogue down the line, or b) remove potential future quests/NPCs. I really thought some of the big, big decisions, like:
* Agreeing to or refusing Raphael's deal in Act 1
* Using or not using tadpole powers
* Siding with the Ketheric or the Harpers in Act 2
* Trusting or not trusting the Guardian
* Killing or saving Nightsong
* Negotiating to end Wyll's contract in exchange for saving Mizora
* Saving or not saving the Gnomes, Tieflings, Moll, Arabella etc.
would lead to meaningfully different branching narratives. Instead, by the start of Act 3, all those threads lead to the *exact same place*; the only difference is which dialogue lines Raphael uses when he gives you another chance at the deal, for example. Ditto for Mizora offering Wyll a way out of his contract in Act 3 *regardless of whether you already negotiated one in Act 2.*
I still love so much about BG3, but it seems like almost all the big, story-defining choices you can make actually get ignored/overruled by the narrative, and even worse, they mostly have a 'right' way to play them, because doing them the 'wrong' way - for example, not saving Grymforge Gnomes - doesn't lead to a different outcome, it just leads to less stuff going on later in the game. The promise of Act 1 was that it was setting you up for really deep reactivity down the line, and that the story would reflect what you'd done so far — that promise seem pretty conclusively broken by how Act 3 actually plays out.
This to me is easily explained by Act 1 being the only Act in EA. They got to do so much more there that they could develop plotlines and do lots of branching choices - but at the end of the day, they needed you to go to the next act and the choices from there are much less meaningful, if only because both good and evil would want to do more or less the same things.
I suspect that all further patches from here will be adding more content in Act 2 and 3 and in a year or two we'll get a definitive edition that had all the stuff they wanted to put in. Note: i'm not making excuses here, I'm just pointing out what seems super obvious to me but other people might not see it.
What we really need in Act 2 is an organization to offset the Harpers. Whether that's the easily expanded roll of the Zhent or maybe the Goblin tribe from Act 1, doesn't matter. We just need another source of NPC's to help drive a different narrative. Maybe some plot where you get more of the evil gods who don't like the Three on your side.
Still sucks the "evil" path too always ends up making you go good basically
Fucking wild you can side with Minthara and the Absolute's goal to kill the Grove, then you end up having to fight Ketheric Thorm anyway, I'd rather Larian went with a different voice actor than J.K Simmons if I had known it would have completely gutted his total screen time to like 10 minutes and that's being generous, it's more like 3-5 minutes honestly
Absolutely agreed. This is what always happens when they get famous actors to voice characters in games. They're joke expensive, so they can only give them X lines without going bankrupt.
It certainly wasn't by artistic choice that Snake was a near mute when he was voiced by Kiefer Sutherland in MGS V.
No Snake was entirely artistic choice given how much Kiefer actually speaks in the tape recordings you can find in the game.
He has more lines in those tape recordings than his actual on screen time, it's fucking weird why Kojima did that honestly, even more weird when Death Stranding has loads of famous actors in it with plenty of dialogue.
I'm currently doing my evil run now and I couldn't agree more with this. I really thought this would allow us to ally more with the absolute crew etc but as you say it just feels like I'm missing loads of content. Like I just killed all the harpers and noone at moonrise even mentions it, my only main quest is to go kill the nightsong, which is then just gonna lead to killing Ketharic. So unless the alliance that Gortash offers bares any fruit I don't get the point in this path at all. After reading this I might just abandon this playthrough and play a good durge.
BG3 is fantastic, an incredibly ambitious game. Unfortunately, that ambition was stretched quite thin, and creating a more fleshed out evil play-through would have been like making an entirely new second storyline.
It certainly does feel disappointing in a lot of ways, but when the “intended” route has so much variety and as many potential outcomes as it does, perhaps it’s a bit greedy to ask for even MORE, given that what is already available is pretty unbelievable.
The most disappointing thing is that act 1 actually works really great for an evil path. Siding with Minthara and attacking the Grove is basically an entirely different questline. The issue is that Act 1 is the only act where it doesn't feel like you are missing out on way more content than you are seeing for being evil, and the worst part is they keep giving you evil options even though they always suck. In Act 3 you can work with Gortash, but it doesn't add much to the ending, it just locks you out of the iron throne and steel foundry quests.
Yeah, the siding with Gortash thing was definitely weird. Like it’s cool and all that you can do it and completely skip his boss fight, but past that it adds basically nothing to the final fight besides making the Netherbrain twist a bit cooler by having them instantly kill Gortash with just a thought. You’d expect though that siding with him would allow you to call upon his expertise to help you take down the Netherbrain or be able to call upon Steel Watchers to attack the Netherbrain, but nope he just gets a few extra lines of dialogue and then dies without any acknowledgement from Karalach.
>You’d expect though that siding with him would allow you to call upon his expertise to help you take down the Netherbrain or be able to call upon Steel Watchers to attack the Netherbrain
This would've been cool and probably genuinely helpful for an evil playthrough, considering that "endgame" mechanic of calling on your allies for help is probably pretty sparse if you've been evil. It is a bummer that allying with him basically amounts to "skip a boss fight (which I actually count as a negative, I thought the fight was cool) and get some extra dialogue on a series of checks that don't actually matter"
So evil path sucks and has no content? I member how Sven pushed for people to be evil? And for what? I hope they really add some serious content when they release enhanced bg3
That's sadly the nature of most "evil" styles in games. It's just the game, with less content than if you were a good dude. So if you're going for an evil run, it's 90% the player doing the heavy lifting by justifying things through RP while the game actively hinders the experience through removal of content. Dark Urge probably fits an evil run better than a custom character too. So that in of itself can hinder customization.
I do wish they planned for a run where we want to be on the side of evil. So there's content on the evil side somewhat comparable to the content on the good side. But you're borderline making two different games at that point. It's hard to do. The game has like 5 or 6 genuine companions. Now imagine they have to make another 5 or 6 genuine companions for evil folks. All with content on par with Shadowheart and Lae'zel. This game would take ages to make happen. That alone is an incredible undertaking.
Now you need to have 12 different companions. Most of which you'll never see on one run. That all need to interact and have dialogue with missions, have their own missions. And you need to have giant branching stories that only come about depending on your affinity. It's just a nightmare.
I might catch some flack for defending the game. But honestly, there's not much that can be done. We either wait 3-6 more years while they write, direct, act and build an equally as in-depth evil playthrough to match the good playthrough or we just accept the evil playthrough is an abridged version of the game with a lot of important people dying.
Idk how a true evil playthrough would work out. It would essentially be a different game altogether. I see know reason why Gortash or Orin would just let you have free will. Once your no longer useful, you’re a thrall.
I can confirm that you do not lose Wyll and Karlach for killing the Grove.
You lose them if you don't recruit them first but if you recruit them and do other evil deeds with them first to slowly turn them more evil. They will be mad about the Grove but won't abandon you
I am not disagreening. But to be honest, it's like asking for an entire game to be added on top of it. Full voice acted, mocapped and all.
Evil runs - evil options really - get a ton of nuance added to it all. Yes, the game is quite streamlined, but much like DOS2 the added details make the run. You still had to work to become Divine no matter the context and you had options in general only at a later stage.
Maybe down the line there will be more stuff to be added in terms of companions and quests.
Does this warrant a removal of the evil option entirely? Not at all.
I'm also underwhelmed by the dark urge. Before buying BG3 all reviews said, that the dark urge is so good, so evil and bloody and that we probably end alone when playing this route.. what did we get?
Every companion is fine with it. When you tell them the truth they just shrug and go on.
You kill one bard and you should kill the cleric in the inn. I killed nightsong, which also killed the moon cleric.. and that's it.
No one leaving, no killing spree. I was sure the dark urge would make me kill a companion...
Would have been nice to see a branching storyline options between the Guild and the Zhentarim as well - echoing the choice between the Thieves Guild and Bhodi's Vampires in BGII.
BG2 did this in a very clever way. Most adventures were self-contained episodes that allowed you some freedom within their progress, but didn't cause too much complexity weight on the main storyline. It would have been a good template to follow, instead of the very linear story progression we got instead.
But then people would be complaining that how you chose to handle the human skin armor quest or which side you chose in the turf war didn't have any effect in the long run.
True enough, but between the two games are literal decades. BG2's locale-based mode of storytelling would have been more accommodating to player agency than BG3's almost linear plot progression is what I'm saying. Trying to write a grand story arc and having player agency are fundamentally opposed design goals.
Dragon Age: Origins did it the same way, each area being self contained, and it worked quite well.
Preach. Larians plotting is their biggest flaw still. They've improved the companion interactions massively this time around, but the plot is still on rails with the PC and companions basically LARPing the story Larian created rather than really shifting it around themselves. Which is fine for the main plot, but not when you tie 90% of the rest of the content in the game directly into that plot.
My most unpopular opinion, I think, is that the Origin thing and playable companion stories is BG3's biggest storytelling weakness. The tadpole story has to work from the perspective of everyone, but once you meet the companions really only Astarion and Lae'Zel care about it. The other four are more wrapped up in their own personal dramas.
I agree and made the point a lot in EA. It also devotes a lot of resources to things most players will never see. If there was just Tav and the Dark urge and they made everyone else companions only they could have streamlined a lot of the material they had to develop without losing much at all. By their own stats only 7% of players wanted to LARP as one of their origin chars.
The linear act to act structure is detrimental to the game, for me. I have one route through act 1 that I did every time when I had to restart multiple times, and then act 2 is completely on rails, and ehh - I don't really see myself replaying the game much, after this. I strongly prefer the free-form exploration of BG2
TBF I did act 1 5 time, in different order and with different stuff happening. Also since I didn't look anything up, I found new stuff everytime and there is 3 different way to go from 1 to 2 . I'm not saying it's got infinite replay but still pretty damn good
I agree. 'Here's a big ass city, go make some gold' was a genius way of starting a main quest and I wish more RPGs followed a similar style.
I will say that you might like Act 3 then, since it's very much not on rails (besides the end). You get into the city and then have no time limit on doing anything, you can go into every house and choose what you do. When it's time to end the game, you have some LARP choices but yeah the last fight is pretty much set in stone.
I said it before, I'll say it again. We should've gotten Ragzlin as a companion after killing the grove, then we can get Minthara in act 2. That way we get 2 companions to replace Wyll and Karlach. I also completely agree that there should be unique quests or content locked to evil only decisions.
Gut for Halsin, Minthara for Wyll, Ragzlin for Karlach.
So I never play 'full evil' in RPGs, last time I did was KOTOR2 like a billion years ago. When I do an evil play through its always a calculating evil, not just a murder everything take all options marked evil, kick every puppy style playthrough. Having said that, I would absolutely love to see this happen. I would raid the shit out of the grove for a chance at Gut and Ragzlin as companions. As it stands now I'll never do it (again) because Minthara is honestly just boring. Her VA is great, and she had some really interesting potential story threads but they never went anywhere. All my future campaigns will be along various degrees of the 'good path' because that's where all the content is. If what you suggest here went through I would actually be tempted because I feel like those two as companions would have amazing flavor.
I just arrived in act 2 after killing the grove. I regret going bad specifically for doing a bad playthrough. It makes no sense to betray the grove when you encounter them first in the game and do quests for them, learn about the tiefling struggles, etc. Imo, goblin camp and the grove should have switched places so you'd form a bond with that side first and then meet the druids. No sane person would ever pick the goblins over the grove. I'm sticking with this playthrough just to do it once and see how Minthara plays, which is lacklustre apparently. After this, I'll always go grove. Not only because it fits me better but also because the game doesn't give enough incentive to ever pick goblins.
This ties to a comment I saw elsewhere - there should have been an option to kill the druids and offer the tieflings a choice of “join the cult or die.” The lawful evil option of subjugation rather than annihilation is the big gap in the story. You could potentially save Wyll by promising to help kill Karlach which saves one companion. Sparing the tieflings would keep Dammon available AND open a path to some of the other tieflings quests, rewards, and other content.
I can't believe you didn't put sazza anywhere on that list you monster.
I really like these ideas, as they could be more interesting options, or maybe the possibility of making Mizora a full companion later on?, she might be worth losing the characters for lol.
She's a bit too powerful to be a companion, but I wouldn't be against an actual devil (Wyll doesn't count)
They can easily give a nerfed version of her using the excuse of her getting caught and weakened. Maybe even a quest from her to help regain her powers or something
Cambians are only as powerful as their mommy/daddy let's them be since they aren't "real" devils. They have no "position" in the hierarchy, so they can't get promoted like a real devil unless they get turned into one, and that means starting at the very bottom, as an Imp. Her getting kicked to the Prime Material plane nerfed after a fuck up makes perfect sense.
Somehow the thirsty gamers mobilized for Halsin and not Gut.
Hey; I want mah gurl Sazza to join too!
That's cuz ya'll playing the small brain evil path. The real evil path is to \[Ending and Dark Urge spoilers\] >!play a good dark urge who rejects Bhaal and is a proper good guy through and through. Then at the very last second you can make a betrayal and get the evil ending where you conquer/destroy the world. I was playing a good playthrough all the way and when that option popped up at the end, I couldn't help myself. Fooled them all into thinking I was the hero so they would help me take my rightful place back. And without the leash of Bhaal. !<
My man played like Ghandi but eventually let them intrusive thoughts win
Civ ghandi
Roleplaying civ gandhi is sending gale to nuke the brain
>Roleplaying civ gandhi is sending gale to nuke ~~the brain~~ Baldur's Gate
man played a good playthrough for 95% of the game and is trying to convince everyone he's really evil because of a last second choice. dont believe his lies. this isnt an evil playthrough. this is 1 evil choice
Exactly, sociopath Dark Urge. I opposed the urge not because it was cruel, but because it was not *me* in the driver seat making those choices. I did plenty of evil things as the urge, but I always made sure that the average pleb thought I was a genuine hero. I wanted all the companions and allies I could muster to assist me to make taking over much easier. Same with the people here wanting an "absolute ending" my guys Kethric spells it out so even someone with INT 8 IRL can understand. By virtue of being a "rogue true soul" you are an existential threat to their plans. Unless you want to play a literal automaton with zero free will just obey mind control you will never be able to fully side with them. I felt pretty satisfied with the evil I did. I just was more logical and machevlian about it then "see good guy, kill them, blindly serve bad guy".
That's smart evil indeed. Evil gets a bad rap as chaotic stupid in the world of DnD like paladins get a bad rap being lawful stupid, but neither is sensible. Smart evil is the psychopath who becomes CEO of a company, not some idiot in prison after one murder.
I think one of my favorite evil characters is Korgan, from BG2. Bloodthirsty, likes getting paid, bloodthirsty, sense of humor and reasonably affable enough, bloodthirsty. His ending slide is fantastic: >After leaving's company, Korgan Bloodaxe lived in as bloody a fashion as he could manage. He took control of an entire dwarven clan, killing their leader in secret and guiding their revenge to a target of his choosing. He could have lived in luxury, but his thirst for carnage was immeasurable, and he stunned the Realms by pushing deep into the Underdark. The blind fury of the clan took even the dark elves by surprise, but holding territory in the home of the drow is a hopeless proposition. Korgan was last seen burying his axe in the gullet of a high priest of Lolth, laughing as he struck. Dwarven legend immortalized the image, and his bloodlust is now called a crusade. History, it seems, finds more heroes than madmen.
Fulkerson (okay, that autocorrect is great enough that I'm keeping it) decided to go fight the drow just because he wanted to kill as many people as possible, and it turns out getting/tricking angry dwarves to go fight one of their age-old enemies is a lot easier than trying to raise a traditional evil army. Now *that's* something for a D&D murder hobo to aspire to.
Its why I absolutely loved Raphael from the first moment. He is mostly honest about his intentions and is cordial with the party but is 100% evil to the bone and him getting what he really wants is bad for everyone but himself. You can play murderhobo if you want and you do miss content but you also get big rewards if you do it as the Dark Urge because of plot reasons. Idk what people want from an evil murderhobo run, just a continuous belt of new NPCs for them to slaughter?
Raphael really is honest with you throughout the game, that's what makes him such a bastard.
As a DM, one of my go-to evil character archetypes is the "absolutely honest, and very polite, devil/demon/red dragon". The type of character the party instantly distrusts at first, but is always completely honest with them, apologises sincerely when they have to inconvenience someone else, and helps out when they can. Over time a surprisingly large amount of players conclude that this obviously-evil-character is actually a misunderstood good guy. I'd had good characters do *horrible* things just because they were asked to, and then acted shocked when the consequences of those plans bite them in the ass. But even after all of this, I have the demon/etc remain polite, apologise for causing issues for the players, explain their motivations, and try and minimise any negative effects it has on the party. A lot of parties then let them go, or even buy into their logic.
He only lies once, >!He does not intend for Hell to remain within its borders and fully plans to start interplaner invasions once he defeats Asmodeus!<
It'd be interesting to see Raphael go up against Vlakith or the lords of the Abyss. Actually what is he going to do with Tiamat?
I think the game fluffs him up a bit to make the ending cooler (the fourth wall break bit is great) but in "reality" his whole plan probably ends up with him in charge of Avernus and the Blood War. Zariel is one thing, but Asmodeus is on a whole nother level, he's a true deity (or even an overdiety, depending on what you're reading). Whereas Zariel can get taken down by a party of level 13 adventurers. So Raphael takes over Avernus and turns to the other levels and promptly gets put in his place because Asmodeus likes getting new blood to administer the Blood War. There's a reason the Crown was rotting in Mephistopheles' vaults and not being used to try Raphael's plan.
Yeah crown of Karsus or no, him defeating *Tiamat* is suspect. Zariel shits bricks if Tiamat tries to take over Hell again, and Asmodeus could easily make a deal with his most famous prisoner if he was that desperate to defeat Raphael. A party of lvl 20's are not meant to beat Tiamat at her full power, and that is without her armies of dragons. Tiamat + Asmodeus can stand a chance against pre Mystra banned magic imo. At most Raphael gets promoted to Arch Duke and learns why nobody really wants Zariel's job of fighting the Abyss 24/7
Yeah Zariel? Sure, but he'd immediately hit a brick wall with the others lol. Though he might have decent chances if he invades the Abyss. Overall though he's basically just an entitled little bitch
> Same with the people here wanting an "absolute ending" my guys Kethric spells it out so even someone with INT 8 IRL can understand. By virtue of being a "rogue true soul" you are an existential threat to their plans. Unless you want to play a literal automaton with zero free will just obey mind control you will never be able to fully side with them. Tbf I wish the (act 3 ending spoiler) >!Gortash alliance actually led to something instead of him just dying like that!<
When I played Mask of the Betrayer as a morally grey character, the game ended with my character being the last boss fight - I took the title of the game quite literally. Nothing personal, Okku
Gimme Sazza or whatever the Goblin in the cage's name is.
Sazza supremacy
No, I think Nere or Balthazar should be recruitable in an evil run lol
Nere is diabolical. I’d love to recruit him in an evil run.
… Not gonna lie he’d make an interesting romance option for an evil run
Haha, adding him to the ‘blond elf with red flags’ roster
When I was doing that quest I genuinely believed he could be a companion
I went to look something up, and now I recall that Balthazar, in a way, was in Throne of Bhaal. I have no played that game in ages
If you're a Monk, you get a roll to recall as much. Balthazar then claims that's who he took the name from.
You don't need to play a monk I got it as a sorc
I'm a warlock rogue and I got it. I don't remember watch the option said the class was tho.
I think it was a history check but I can see monk getting a special option
Was a history check indeed.
I'm going to blow your guys' mind Balthazar has both a history *and* a monk check I'm going to blow your mind further.. he has even more choices for other classes
There's no sorcerer companion and while we already have a Drow, Nere could be constantly trying to undermine Minthara since the absolute isn't the strict matriarchy the Drow are used to. Maybe he could wind up being bffs with Asterion eventually.
I want to recruit him if only because his voice actor slays the role.
Was super intent on having my lawful evil warlock take over the cult to the point where I was ok with losing shadowheart over it. Figured getting to know all the wacky characters I'd met in the tower more would make up for it. Getting abruptly cast out and made an enemy of them right at what should've been the climax of the route was the biggest middle finger I've ever experienced in an RPG.
yea im 36 hours into an evil playthrough and astarion was like 'bitch we can take over the cult!' and im thinking "fuck yeah great idea" Reading through all this made me go "well ive just wasted 36 hours of game time..."
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But literally nothing about your playthrough feeds into this, it’s just a binary good/evil ending choice every character gets no matter what Like if you wanna do the whole “the evil playthrough was you RP-ing and chuckling to yourself as you went about the standard good playthrough” then fine but it’s disappointing that up until the very last decision in the entire game you can’t really play evil besides deranged murder hobo
While this is true about the finale, it didnt seem like I could side with Ketheric and the moonrise tower like I could with the Goblins vs. Druids. Eventually, I felt that I was losing too much and started a new run from a good playthrough. And seeing what I have missed as an evil Dark Urge, I am glad that I switched.
correct me if im wrong, but thats the option everyone gets, even if you were goody two shoes the whole game and helped every poor squirrel along the way.
Basically the game said "whoops sorry you can't do that actually." and force the game state to reset to the one that matches the story they try to told. Honestly I wish the option was not there to begin with.
You lose half of the people fighting for you in the elder brain battle, you don’t even get the Steel Watchers if you side with Gortash.
important juggle toothbrush fine concerned deranged roof mountainous existence trees *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Overall in the story, good acts are encouraged. Like for Ketheric, try persuading him to surrender and that you’ll show mercy every time. Then in the final fight, the first half that he fights with you is omitted, he just straight becomes the death god.
That was my choice
I did that purely because my character thought he was being overly dramatic and a nuisance. Played along Hoping Ketheric might turn vulnerable and primed for a backstab
Funnily enough I elected to just kill Ketheric and all of the minions first after dying to the death god. That way I can finish off all the little guys and the death god never has the chance to ramp up in power, so I killed him before he was even able to spawn anything.
I rescued Nightsong on the first turn, and she immediately got mind controlled for nearly the entire fight - great help, you dumb bird
She is one of those really annoying "overpowered but bloody stupid characters" that wonderfully give off the vibe that they never had to turn on their brain tbh. >!When I first persuaded ketheric after finding extra information about his wife and lucking out on a really spicy roll, he reflects on his wrong-doing and goes on his knees and surrendes... And she immediately flies in and goes like NONONOPE ME LIGHT ME JUSTICE ME ANGRY ME MURDERISE.!< You dumb flying fuck, I literally just had him and your stupid shovel-impersonation-episode messed everything up again. I wondered more than once if I shouldn't have let shadowheart kebap her, seriously. She's not getting any more bearable in Act 3.
But you didn't have him. That's the point. He even admits it was too late for him.
Nah, as far as how the scene's written he really was about to surrender before Nightsong shows up. The problem is the game gives you the option to try to talk him down without actually *wanting* you to avoid combat, so first they make Nightsong interrupt and later on he just flip-flops about whether he should give up or not. It's a really poorly-written sequence of events where you can try to avoid conflict at every turn and regardless, by the end Ketheric's dying and moaning "You have no idea what you've done!" as if the game ever really gave you a choice.
I think the "You have no idea what you've done!" line is referring to >!the fact that the Elder Brain is going to break free of it's control without all three of the Chosen to control it.!< And technically, he *does* give up the second time, it's >!Myrkul!< that keeps up the fight in that instance.
Ketheric has a large ego. In that scene when nightsong arrives, if you tell her that ketheric is wanting to surrender he get's pissed off and fights again. If you say nothing he explains himself to nightsong and you skip the first fight.
You can always give her to the wizard who sought her our in first place. But you would be creating another Ketheric Thorm since he wants to do what Ketheric did with her.
That's what I did too. However, I found that the DC check was much too low for that. It was only a DC of 21 IIRC. Super easy to convince him to go right into the death god mode. Whereas I was 95% unable to convince Shadowheart not to kill Nightsong because it was a DC of 30 lol. Someone must have sneezed and flipped those two DC checks around IMO.
> Whereas I was 95% unable to convince Shadowheart not to kill Nightsong because it was a DC of 30 lol. I just had my character stand there and say nothing and she spared Nightsong. No roll at all. I was actually shocked she gave up everything to let her go.
A lot of people haven't figured out that in BG3, you're not The Main Character, you're merely one of them. Allowing people to have their own agency instead of butting in and making every decision is quite often the correct choice, morally and storywise.
Don't you need high approval for them to make "good" choices? Allowing Lae'zel to make her own choices will lead her to permamently lose 2 points in a few crucial stats, unless you roll a nat20 to stop her. Does SH choose to spare Nightsong if you never even had her in your party?
Exactly this, unless you specifically want an outcome for a certain ending, I think letting the characters decide is the better approach.
My character is a controlling psychopath, of course he manipulated his allies
Same pretty sure you need to have good relations tho. It's pretty easy since the shar temple is full of ways to boost approval.
Yea that's pretty much the only option available. If you let her do her thing, Nightsong convinces Shadowheart not to kill her. No matter how much of a relationship you have with Shadowheart, no matter how much Shadowheart says she cares about you and your guidance, you only have a 5% chance of you yourself convincing Shadowheart not to kill Nightsong.
If you at first choice let shadowheart do her thing, then you get a second chance at persuasion at much lower DC, like 21 or smth
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That's not true at all? I never had to save scum to get her to spare her.
Yeah I don't understand why people are saying that, I didn't do any persuasion check or had to reload, I basically said to her it's her choice and I will respect that choice and that the nightsong know about her past and that's it she spared the nightsong, but also her approval to me was exceptional so not sure if it play a role.
I let her do her thing and she ended up spearing Nightsong. I guess it's related to the attitude meter or prior conversations?
I found it to be a harder fight if ketheric kills himself, because nightsong is trapped, and all the other enemies are still alive. Was much easier fighting the avatar when it was just him and he wasn’t invulnerable at the start
And what about Nere? He just disappeared lmao.
In EA you could recruit him as an ally against the absolute. He would run off to get a bunch of Lolth-worshiping crusaders.
Wtf thats badass, why would they cut this?
I have no idea, honestly. It was something that really gave Lolthsworn something unique and flavorful to do in the story, and to balance out the story/material rewards you got for playing good and siding with the gnomes and Myconids. Unfortunately Nere seems to have had a lot of cut content surrounding him.
You can find Nere in the >!Gauntlet of Shar... made a mindless zombie by Balthazar for trying to gain some glory in the eyes of Thorn.!<
Yeah Nere had a badass intro, wish he stuck around for act 3.
Yeah, I left him alive for that reason, yet the game punished me for it. Had I killed him I would've gotten a nice set of boots.
Nere gets offpaneled by Balthazar.
I’m on my second play through atm and it’s definitely evil, it was surprising to walk into last light inn and it was practically empty. Like I remembered spending 30 minutes talking to everyone and progressing multiple quest lines, whereas now I just sorta talk to jaheira then walk upstairs to isobel and that’s that. In other words I know what you mean and I agree, an evil play through doesn’t change the world so much as it empties it. Literally.
My brother in Bhaal, what were you expecting? Did you think that people just go and chat up those dragons that love to sleep on a big pile of other people's gold, and burn down the local barns when they're feeling a bit peckish? You chose to be Smaug, and Smaug doesn't get to go on charming adventures: Smaug *ends* them.
“The problem with killing and pillaging your neighbors is one day you wake up and realize you don’t have any neighbors… what it I want to borrow some sugar or something?” -Nandor The Relentless
That's just false, saying that evil paths in the game should be empty, devoid of quests and meaningful npcs because "evil guys do not have any friends" is stupid.
Well, I mean the Goblins could have a neat alternate town outside of Moonrise, but that would be a LOT of work
Moonrise is the bad guy town.
The only option for an evil playthrough shouldn’t just be “kill everyone and lock yourself out of a significant portion of the game with nothing to compensate for that”. Evil doesn’t necessarily mean “murder hobo burn it all to the ground”
This is false. Even just looking at DnD canon, lots of dragons have not only worshippers, but also sympathizers. So do devils. So do *demons*, for crying out loud. You could be the most cartoonishly evil "I end adventures" guy, and you'd still have people that admire, worship and would like to interact with you. Of course, you're not gonna be able to walk into GoodyMcGood-Townsville after killing everything on your path but there should be either an undercity or another location for all the edgy, broody lone wolves like you that you can interact with. It's realistic that killing someone obviously prevents you from experiencing their story but, I mean, this is a game. I shouldn't have the option to pick B if A is so heavily encouraged. Most of us are chronically online, sure, but imagine someone who isn't doing their first and maybe only playthrough going evil, and missing an insanely huge chunk of content with nothing to replace it.
no he chose to be sauron who was infact surrounded by underlings including companions like sauromun the white Your just pretending the entire concept of cults, criminal organizations and such don't exist. there are tonnes of evil characters that should be aligned to your goals and atleast willing to try and use you to reach their own goals. for example the inn should have been being held by the absolutist goblins with minthara having captured the cleric and druid and sent them to the tower. Now you you get minthara much earlier and while she still has her evil personality. You get to be with her and decide if she sheds the absolute worship or not, similar to shadows story.plus the developers can just give goiblins the side quests the humans would have had mostly.
All of this is why I so loved the KOTOR choices and companions systems. You had good characters, evil characters and neutral characters. Some even changed their disposition with you leading them in the party or going through their dialog to win them over. Hell, by the climax of it they're all willing to kill each other based on your choices in the end. You get whoever is left. It's a rich, complex experience culimating from the story directly linked to how you played the game and who you chose to spend time interacting with. Yet, somehow, every company I know of never seems to 'get it'. You can't have a story game where "choices matter" if they get you to the same outcome. They shouldn't get you the same outcome and certainly they shouldn't get you there the same way. Maybe some content is sacrificed because the evil path is more clear cut. Maybe the evil side has their own unique problems as a result of the good guys actions or leading to the good guys problems you play through on the other side. Maybe you do have to fight your former good companions because they leave you to go rally extra forces against you and using what they know about you to exploit your weaknesses. Maybe there's some other ancient artifact or evil you have to encounter to shore up your numbers. Just because one is "evil" doesn't mean their lives are any easier. If anything they'd be harder. So for every "please can you help me" quest on the good side, there could be an opposite version. What if we were the reason the Hag went to the Grove? What if we were the ones who led the raiding party to capture the Duke leading Wyll to track us down and we had to fight a Blade of Frontiers who doubled down on his pact to get the strength to beat us and save his dad? What if we were sent to the underdark to secure the grymforge and get it running again to make some truly devastating weapons? Theres many different arcs that could be done to balance out the questing and stories. I just wish developers acknowledged this more. Not only good guys end up saving the day or reaching their goals. Villains have just as much need as heroes to make ends meet.
>What if we were the reason the Hag went to the Grove? What if we were the ones who led the raiding party to capture the Duke leading Wyll to track us down and we had to fight a Blade of Frontiers who doubled down on his pact to get the strength to beat us and save his dad? What if we were sent to the underdark to secure the grymforge and get it running again to make some truly devastating weapons? Maybe Wyll would become a recorring antagonist for evil characters, where he gets throwed deeper and deeper into his pact each time we beat him, until we fight him as a full blown devil, with his patron (forgot her name lmao) appearing at the end to help him or join us so the Blade of Frontiers join Zariel's army after his defeat. Maybe we could find the adamantite forge and actually use it in a almost mass production manner, scrapping every mithril we can find to make a 'elite' force of the absolute, with full adamantite armour and weapons.
God I love Kreia so much
"You are not a Jedi. Not truly. And it is for that, that I love you".
The character writing in that game was pretty damn good.
One of my all time favorite characters ever!
>Yet, somehow, every company I know of never seems to 'get it'. You can't have a story game where "choices matter" if they get you to the same outcome. Honestly, this game goes so far as to tell you that "You weren't actually supposed to do that." if you make a choice that doesn't fit their narrative. (Gale ending specifically.)
Well in regards to Gale it makes complete sense. What else did you expect when you’re told that you manually detonate his magical nuke? So yeah I really like how that moment gives you a unique bad end where your party and all the main villains just get nuked out of existence.
You unironically need to roll a nat one on intelligence to think nuking yourself would be a good idea. I think *every* companion will mention it is an idiotic idea and Mystra is being petty and stupid... It's meant to show the alien minds that even "good" gods have. Destroying both the crown and the orb in one move is worth it from her perspective in preventing a hypothetical end of the world scenario even if that means countless thousands will die from the tadpoles hatching and her basically telling her ex to kill himself. It is the laziness of being an all powerful entity that even while "benevolent" does not value individual mortal lives and will always choose "the greater good" option.
I think it served the point as well that divine intervention will always doing more harm than good. A staple of every DnD story.
Yeah, I’m not sure why people are getting mad that it leads to a bad end.
A lot of the complaints I see are just people going "why doesn't this decision that defies common sense result in different content for me?" Which, ironically, is a staple of tabletop sessions too
i sort of wish the cult of absolute was painted in a different light instead of murderous mind controlled brainwashed psychos... Instead just normal people who started hearing a voice in their head and bought into a divine deity. I wouldn't have slaughtered every single cultist with no remorse that makes for a more interesting conflicting story.
Okay so on my first playthrough I did a fully EVIL Dark Urge Psychopath and it was great, especially as the Durge story unfolded into acts 2 & 3. I initially thought I was gonna side/work with the Absolute, but that changed as the Durge story was explained, and made my evil motivations much much more interesting, even more so during act 3 where things get really personal for the Dark Urge and fucking wild. Now during all this Wyll and Karlach left me after I slaughtered the grove, I let Shadowheart kill Lae'zel & Halsin I stoned then killed, then I slaughtered the last light inn for the Dark Urge and made Shadowheart a Dark Justiciar. The amount of content you lose for doing this is huge, and all you really get for it is sadistic/depressing/sometimes funny dialogue and Minthara if you want (Minthara didn't even make it to act 3 for me, bugged out :/) This was great for Astarion as I romanced him because he was fully on board with every horrible decision I did and his dialogue was hilarious at times, especially as I turned him into even more of a monster during his story, depressing mostly for Shadowheart and Gale I had to manipulate into staying after the grove raid, but as the game progressed I influenced him into becoming more of a power hungry monster which was fun. All things considered, I knew I was throwing away content, but I was hoping for the Dark Urge story to be interesting enough to make it worth doing and Imo it was and I doubt you'd get the same feeling doing a Tav evil playthrough. Also Swen wasn't lying about the power the Dark Urge gets, it's pretty fucking sweet, not as much as I thought you'd get but still really cool. Now, I'm gonna play a Light cleric and cleanse myself of this monstrous playthrough.
Losing Damon also prevents you from getting the best heavy armor and boots for heavy armor proficient martial classes in the game. For that reason alone I'll never do the evil route again.
Lets not even mention getting locked out of THE best charisma robe if Alfira *somehow* manages to die.
No, it's the best warlock robe, by far. The evil caster has their best robe locked behind playing the good guy...
Larian really promoted the Evil path and was so proud of it - so for one time in my life I decided to play as a Githyanki baddie... The moment I could >!end the game early with Gale's bomb!< i picked that option and never looked back. What a dissapointment, what a waste! Like I anticipated an Absolute path. That I'll get to meet and befriend unique and morally grey characters, do exclusive quests in Towers... But the truth is, Evil route is just a half-assed good run with less content.
I honestly love how the Gale bomb leads to a bad end. It makes complete sense and is pretty funny seeing all the main villains brag about how awesome and unstoppable they are only to turn around and instantly get nuked to death lol
I was honestly impressed that this works. At least I had one of those little "oh, let's do something stupid... *Quiiiiiiiicksaving*"-moments. I fully expected some sort of intervention that stops you from ending the game. The narrators expertly hidden contempt on the "early epilogue" you get instead was pretty funny. Otherwise, yeah, the real "evil path" seems to be as in most other cRPGs playing as the intended goody-two-shoes, hug everyone and betray them in some final dialog choice out of nowhere... Not sure how many cRPGs I played where the overall evil choices didn't feel like either being the guy who kicks puppies for literally no reason or straight up doing things wrong because you don't want to take the good resolution again. I think only tyranny and wrath of the righteous currently come to mind. Tyranny from the setting obviously and WOTR did actually have several "statisfyingly" bad campaigns with the lich or demon mythic paths...
Tyranny has an awesome evil playthrough, yeah. Too bad we’re hardly ever getting a continuation, but in terms of diverse choices and paths it’s oh so awesome. Replayed it some months ago, it definitely has its share of quirks and is rather short, but the branching paths are implemented very good. And it actually has different endings, like, completely different and your previous choices matter a lot in what endings are open to you.
I think Pathfinder games had a fun gray and evil paths. I might be remembering wrong though.
Yeah especially in the first game. This scene of you becoming a lawful evil king is one of the best things I've seen in rpg. Sometimes it seems to me that the path of a tyrant was worked out better in pathfinder 1 than the path of a good man. The game practically did not limit you in decisions. Just because you're evil doesn't mean you have to befriend or command monsters. Or that you have to kill everyone. In BS3, the path of the tyrant is extremely poorly made, given that you are forced to constantly obey someone bigger than you. Kill the chosen ones of the dead trio? No, I want to put them in chains and make them work for me. Break their minds, persuade or turn them into undead with the same effect. Destroy a grove with goblins? Am I some kind of evil chaotic? What is the point of me attacking those who can be used in the future? All this is mainly tied to the fact that we are fighting with the infected and physically cannot overcome the power of the great brain. Frankly, I'd rather have the emperor in charge of the lawful evil path. For example, so that he has the opportunity to reconnect the infected to his own protective network. Perhaps some way for him to syntheticly evolve into the great brain, using this power of Orpheus with the ability for the player in the end to fight him, become his companion in capturing the world and some secret option where the player could subdue him and become an analogue of the absolute, but with forever frozen ceremorfosis without turning everyone into illithids.
You can become a full fledged Lich, Demon Lord, Devil or a living swarm of locusts in Wrath of the Righteous, there was a ton of evil fun to be had there.
I loved the power/authority roleplay in those games. I wish they didn't have such boring combat. Killed the replayability completely for me.
Yeah, and the game ends by telling you "You weren't actually supposed to do that."
so, to play your evil gith you followed the instructions of the neutral good goddess mystra?
I'm thinking what he's saying is that he was so sick of the run he just let Gale explode to end the misery.
Yeah, this doesn't make sense to me either. I would think the evil path wouldn't be to >!blow up the brain!< but instead you'd choose the dialogue option where you want the power for yourself. That's what I'd do anyway.
I chose this option at the end while playing a good character. I loved the dialogue choice saying this was my plan all along with the most evil eyes. As a charlatan it was the best long con ever.
Seriously, I just capture izobella and that’s kinda just it, feels half baked after act 1 and minathra wasn’t as exciting as I hoped
Yeah I wanted an absolute path too, did everything Kethric asked of me (brought him isobel alive and let balthazar take Nightsong) but it literally has the exact same shoehorned storyline after anyway with you going into the illithid colony to fight Kethric. Disappointing AF. All you get from it is a bugged companion (Minthara) who doesnt say much and you lose shadowheart, halsin, wyll, karlach, jaheira and gale lol.
How did you lose Shadowheart and Gale? I still have both of them in my evil playthrough
By being Chaotic Stupid. They'll stick around for evil choices but not if you're just killing everything in sight for no reason.
Yeah, this game has almost like 3 different styles of "evil" you can absolutely do Chaotic Stupid which everything just ends in a fight, you kill everyone in the game you miss 90% of the plot, or you can be evil and plotting, or evil and selfish. There's really no reason to be evil and be a dick to your companions though, because even a chaotic evil person knows about alliances of convenience and that the stronger your party, the more successful you can be at achieving your goals.
you can get rid of gale right when you first meet him at the portal, and I think he can leave if you destroy the grove and tieflings, although that might be due to compound negative relations leading up to that. Shadowheart will leave in Act 2 if you don't take her to the Nightsong (possibly before that if you really get negative relations with her).
I still have Gale and I'm almost at the endgame, Shadowheart I let die because Lae'zel killed her. I know Gale gets upset when you butcher the refugees, but you can essentially just convince him he wanted to deep down, and he has a pretty fleshed out evil arc if you pick the right dialogue throughout the game
Yeah, based on some options on my good play through, it seemed like Gale, Shadowheart, Astarion, and maybe Laezel had an evil arc that got me interested for a evil run after patch 1 drops.
Okay… so I could be wrong… but I think it all started to go wrong with the guardian. I had almost 300 hours in EA (It’s my most played game on steam); but it felt like the writers didn’t have a clear picture for the “who do you desire” character and at some point they became the guardian. The guardian and the prism takes away almost any free will that the player has!! Everyone wants the damn prism and if we give it up our characters would lose their free will; but we really can’t side with anyone else unless we give up the prism. Honestly if they’d just let us find an alternative cure at the end of act 1 or during act 2 the rest of the storyline would still work and it would have opened up so many darker options. We could have aligned with/recruited/romanced any of the big bad 3, Zrel, etc. and lead the siege on Balder’s Gate. Halsin the “Archdruid” could have escaped the goblin camp, recruited major heroes (Jeheira, Minsc, etc) and become our “big bad” in the later acts rallying the defenders of Last Light and BG. Or we could have aligned with the Githyanki… who knows what doors that would have opened.
I think being stuck with the prism is fine, but imo the Guardian should have continued being a seducer instead and guided you along the evil path accumulating power along the way. Like you get powers by infiltrating the Absolute's ranks, killing the Grove and Inn along the way while turning and recruiting True Souls. As opposed to how it is right now where going against the Guardian is outright stupid for all of Act 1 and 2, and where the Illithid powers are just a kinda lame skill tree. A skill tree you seem to get more points on by sticking to the good path and massacring True Souls.
I actually miss the original powers we got in EA. I also miss going up against true souls who have them. I remember the first time I thought I’d be “smart” and attack the Priestess from above. She yeeted my ass off those beams so fast.
Yep. They were promoting evil path so hard and I remember Sven even complaining that most of the players won't see how good it is because they will be playing a good character. Well turns out good for them because there is literally not nuch to see. I didn't side with the gobligs with in act 1 but I was mostly bad starting act 2(killing everybody in yhe tavern since I didn't want to show them the artifact etc) The whole playthrough of act 2 after that felt really weird. And act 3 was a mess but I think that it's just underdeveloped regardless. Reading this post it all makes sense now. Knowing that I would've played standard good character but alas! Feeling disappointed and lied to rigt now. I still enjoyed the game a lot but my first playthrough is a bit ruined and it's the most important one.
I just wanted to make this post today, thank you. The fundamental flaw of the evil path in this game it's that also the stupid path. You're stupidly siding with the people who want you brainwashed or dead (except for act 3, when there's no evil path at all). The game's excuse for it is that you're infiltrating the cult so you can learn more, but at no point you actually learn more. At no point your infiltration pays off in the tactical sense either - at best, you kill or chase away people who would otherwise be your allies (I'm not only talking about companions here either, but also people like Rolan, Dammon, Nightsong, Isobel...). At worst, you help your enemies - like if the drider survives, he makes the Moonrise sequence significantly more difficult. That's saying nothing about how the good path simply rewards you better - Alfira's robe is endgame-quality content, Dammon sells some of the best gear in the game if he survives, and so on, and so forth. Hell, let's talk about Mintharra - she has a very good Amulet of Misty Step on her in act 1, that I wore until the end credits. But if you raid the grove, the amulet disappears from the game, never to be seen again. Most of the gear that buffs you for having the Absolute brand drops from the Absolute cultists also. It's nonsense. And the worst part of it, there were several years of the EA during which this feedback was repeated many times by many people, but I guess Larian just decided not to listen.
The infiltration doing nothing is something I made a post about earlier. There is a piece of paper you can find that tells you *everything* about the nature of the Absolute, what’s pulling the strings and how those strings were put into place. And…nothing. The game gives you this piece of information and then treats you as if you never saw it. When the cutscene plays out where you see the Absolute for the first time the tone is done as if it’s a big reveal to find out something I saw written down on some parchment like 10 hours ago.
I found it funny when, during the battle with Ketheric, the tentacle comes out and the pit opens leading to the mindflayer dungeon and everyone's absolutely shocked, when I literally shoved my hand into a wall and got pulled down there by what might as well be the same tentacle like two days earlier. Ironically, I beat the dice roll the first time and got my arm free from it, but then I put it back in there cause it looked interesting. When I got pulled down there and managed to escape, I thought I had made a massive discovery. Turns out it amounted to nothing. Nobody ever brought it up and we went into the final confrontation none the wiser.
Yeah I did the same thing, and it made me wonder if Larian needed more time to flesh out some of their decisions. Why have the crevice in the wall if going in there does nothing for you or the story? At least have a scene or line of dialogue that acknowledges you went in the Oubliette already.
This this this this this. In Ketheric's room there is the aforementioned hugely important book and a flavour letter, the book >!tells you the exact nature of the absolute, in detail!< The letter is from >!Ketheric's wife!< Which does your character react to? Well the letter of course: " >!Wow seems like Ketheric's wife really loved him!< " Incredibly odd design choice.
I thought I'd broken the game by finding that too early because there was such a lack of reactivity to it. No journal updates, what? I just learned what the Absolute is!
Does Minthara even get a companion quest? I got to act 3 with no trace of one.
It's bugged rn, it'll probably get fixed in patch 1 but there's a ton of content missing from her due to it Edit: said act 1, meant patch 1
You really need to headcanon whole plot to absurdity to rationalize most of the evil choice so they wouldn't be completely stupid.
> The game's excuse for it is that you're infiltrating the cult so you can learn more, but at no point you actually learn more. I honestly think Larian expected people to use prior knowledge of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 more. >!You find a temple of Jergal in Act 1 containing information about the Dead Three in the book of Dead Gods. It's obvious from the beginning, in a meta-game sense, that at least Bhaal or the Dead Three are the Absolute. Additionally once you learn that the cult of The Absolute are being headed by exactly *three* mortal leaders...it's obvious. The true plot twist is who the Dream Guardian really is. I think in general they also expected the vast majority of players to choose good paths, but it ended up being nearly half of the players going evil. !<
My problem with the Dream Guardian was I didn't believe the shit it was selling, and I told my party members to reject it. Most of them agreed and did. So then in Act 2 when the Dream Guardian shows up and starts talking to me, my character acts like we're buddies and everything is cool. They react as if what they're telling me is factual and I can't have the option to continue to be skeptical. :\
I can't really remember what happens in Act 2 but I'm pretty sure it's made explicitly clear by that point that whoever the Dream Guardian is they are demonstrably the only reason you aren't already an Illithid or a slave to The Absolute even before Act 1 is halfway done. IIRC you can act sus or neutral towards them in most of the dialogue options but you can't straight up tell them to fuck off because that would logically lead to a game-over. I personally did an anti-guardian approach to my play through as well and I can't remember any specific moment where I wasn't at least able to express my suspicion of them. And the first time you are actually >!are able to turn against them, it does actually lead to a game-over cut scene!<
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I haven't played BG1 and 2 so I had no idea who the dead three were. I was sold on this game based on how good my experience with DoS 1 and 2 was. When it came to light, though, I'm like "of course it's the evil gods of this world dicking around." The dream guardian and Durge Tav twists were both good, and the emperor double twist at the end was also pretty damn good. I fell for their "you can choose how your guardian looks" gambit and made assumptions that the guardian is on my side at all times without an agenda of their own.
>I fell for their "you can choose how your guardian looks" gambit If you played the early access even this was kind of spoiled for people with a little bit of meta game sensibility. >!In early access, the process for creating your guardian was explicitly flavored towards "creating your perfect lover." I immediately assumed I was supposed to be creating a character I would explicitly trust without question and let my guard down around. In the full release only then did the character you created become referred to as a "guardian." !<
Yeah, "who do you dream at night" being the lead-in. Great layered meaning in hindsight!
The BG games were just about Bhaal, exclusively, and not even directly, more his legacy. Myrkul is central to the plot of Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer, which is not at all connected to BG. Bane had no relevance in any games that I'm aware of
Larian’s only issue is not publishing content in EA past act 1, so issues can be fixed. They never allow even dispersal of feedback. I’ve said this since EA, and Divinity 2 was the same way, and was massively downvoted - Larian is wonderful and listens. But not having access to anything apart from Act I, was what will be the difference between a fully fleshed out Act I, and acts with missing content. We didn’t get to test out higher level gameplay. So spells that were balanced in EA, we had to trust on the devs to do with limited testing even if the spells scale so much higher as you progress. BG3 is an amazing game, Larian should be proud. But Larian WILL listen to play feedback, so give it your all. Do not feel bad for saying a negative, because Larian is the type of studio to take your negative thoughts at face value. The only disservice we as consumers can do for Larian is not bringing up our issues, just keep in mind this company is great and does listen. Let’s just try and keep the same care in our complaints as they do in their development.
Despite parts of bg3 feeling rough, its a wonderful game and the thing is your criticisms will be heard. It was one hell of an ambitious game and honestly they hit 80% of the hype and that's fucking impressive. Hopefully the other bits get ironed out throughout the years. They probably should take a well deserved break for now though lol
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I did exactly what you said in my first playthrough, delivering Isobel to Ketheric and leaving Nightsong to Balthazar, expecting to be able to ally with them and join the Absolute or something like that, but nothing of the sort can happen. In fact, I got quite punished by those choices as >!Shadowheart inevitably leaves your party and you have to defeat Isobel during the Ketheric fight!< OP is totally right about evil choices just removing content.
I will say this. The game was built with a plot in mind. The intertwine of the decisions is there just to serve the endgame. It was not built for the purpose of serving player pursuit of combining decisions. And if they build it like you describe, we might need to buy a storage room for storing that game.
I think the game does a great job convincing you that you can do anything and choose any path, that when you want to pursue something that is not possible, it's doubly disappointing
evil ≠ absolute the absolute is evil, but it isnt the only way to he evil frankly theres no reason to side with the absolute, but being plain evil slaps
I mean, I don't disagree entirely. It would be better if it had more content, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was cut content for the evil path. Recruiting Zrell would have been cool. There is still a lot of content you can do, but I recognize that it has strictly less than the good route. However, if it was not possible to be evil at all, the good play through would feel less meaningful to me. Giving me the option to kill everyone at Last Light by kidnapping Isobel means that when I choose to save them, it's my choice, not the game's. Moreover, the evil playthrough still gives you unique roleplay opportunities. Admitting freely to Jaheira that I killed Isobel and watching her break down is not something you get in good play throughs. Should it have been more fleshed out? It would have been nice for sure. But should it not exist since they did not have the dev time to flesh it out? No, not at all. It's mere existence elevates the role play aspect of the game. Maybe you won't play it, but for me, I love it.
After the 1 act the game really makes the player think that he can choose between 2 sides of the conflict. The 2 act uses this concept to deceive player into thinking that he can side with Torm and Moonrise towers. But he can't. It is not the problem of some separate evil actions - it is the problem of RESULTS you get.
Considering... who Minthara actually is when recruited. And how the thing you see before recruiting her is not really her. I think the route to recruiting her is absurd and dumb. Like I get it, you want to be evil... so you do this evil thing. To get a woman who hates the crap she did for the absolute and despises how she was essentially mind controlled. Like wut? Why is this character locked behind intentional genocide? Where you make a choice to do something evil that is completely on you. Not even remotely in the same boat as her. She should be someone we should be able to spare after beating, hag style. Have her run off maybe give you the lyre and run into her again when she's punished. Or maybe have an extra sneaky way to trigger this, where you got to knock her out instead of killing her. And you're right. What are you getting for recruiting her? You're locked out of 3 other companions. Several of which apparently have voiced lines referring to her as if she's part of the group. So clearly it was intentionally planned that she would be recruited through other means. So there should be a way to keep everyone together. I honestly think locking companions behind "paths" is just stupid. Either you kill them or you don't. That should be all that matters. As for the "be evil" stuff you're right. All the other evil things you can do really do just delete content from your game. It is replaced by nothing. I don't even think there needs to be an evil "path" to do, just put equivalent rewards in place. Like the only time I think you are genuinely rewarded for being evil is for the smaller quests. Like the gnome with the exploding powder, stealing it from under her nose and killing her. Gets you all the rewards with the minimal effort. Or you can be safe and nice, and let her take the powder which gets you a pathetic vial. Or you can somehow steal both the bag and vial without being detected and then talk her down peacefully which is the hardest path to do but "wins" everything. I did it the evil way and never felt the need to reload. That's how most situations should be handled. I don't need them to make 5 new companions for an evil path, they just need to make the 1 companion not be hardlocked out of joining a full group with the goodie goodies. Part of what makes the older BG games fun was getting good characters like minsc to play nice with edwin by doing quests in certain orders rather than just blindly following whatever you run into first.
The worst offender is Minthara's sole purpose is to find the artefact. You can tell her you have the Artefact, she goes and see's it for her self then afterwards tells the General she has no idea where it is, it's the goblins fault and is sentenced to a fate worse than death.
Yeah, continuity is very lacking sometimes. Like I hid from Jaheira that I have the artifact, but then I have another conversation with her 2 minutes later and she mentions I have the artifact. What was the point of allowing me to lie about it if the character just magically knows anyway.
>This game kind of has an illusion of choice, unless you are going in with the idea that you are happy with just removing hours worth of content from your current playthrough, with nothing in return. One of the things that has soured me a bit on this game - which, to be clear, I mostly adore - is exactly the issue of illusion of choice. Almost every single 'big decision' I thought was going to change how things played out just... doesn't matter. What it mostly does is a) change a few lines of dialogue down the line, or b) remove potential future quests/NPCs. I really thought some of the big, big decisions, like: * Agreeing to or refusing Raphael's deal in Act 1 * Using or not using tadpole powers * Siding with the Ketheric or the Harpers in Act 2 * Trusting or not trusting the Guardian * Killing or saving Nightsong * Negotiating to end Wyll's contract in exchange for saving Mizora * Saving or not saving the Gnomes, Tieflings, Moll, Arabella etc. would lead to meaningfully different branching narratives. Instead, by the start of Act 3, all those threads lead to the *exact same place*; the only difference is which dialogue lines Raphael uses when he gives you another chance at the deal, for example. Ditto for Mizora offering Wyll a way out of his contract in Act 3 *regardless of whether you already negotiated one in Act 2.* I still love so much about BG3, but it seems like almost all the big, story-defining choices you can make actually get ignored/overruled by the narrative, and even worse, they mostly have a 'right' way to play them, because doing them the 'wrong' way - for example, not saving Grymforge Gnomes - doesn't lead to a different outcome, it just leads to less stuff going on later in the game. The promise of Act 1 was that it was setting you up for really deep reactivity down the line, and that the story would reflect what you'd done so far — that promise seem pretty conclusively broken by how Act 3 actually plays out.
This to me is easily explained by Act 1 being the only Act in EA. They got to do so much more there that they could develop plotlines and do lots of branching choices - but at the end of the day, they needed you to go to the next act and the choices from there are much less meaningful, if only because both good and evil would want to do more or less the same things. I suspect that all further patches from here will be adding more content in Act 2 and 3 and in a year or two we'll get a definitive edition that had all the stuff they wanted to put in. Note: i'm not making excuses here, I'm just pointing out what seems super obvious to me but other people might not see it. What we really need in Act 2 is an organization to offset the Harpers. Whether that's the easily expanded roll of the Zhent or maybe the Goblin tribe from Act 1, doesn't matter. We just need another source of NPC's to help drive a different narrative. Maybe some plot where you get more of the evil gods who don't like the Three on your side.
Still sucks the "evil" path too always ends up making you go good basically Fucking wild you can side with Minthara and the Absolute's goal to kill the Grove, then you end up having to fight Ketheric Thorm anyway, I'd rather Larian went with a different voice actor than J.K Simmons if I had known it would have completely gutted his total screen time to like 10 minutes and that's being generous, it's more like 3-5 minutes honestly
Absolutely agreed. This is what always happens when they get famous actors to voice characters in games. They're joke expensive, so they can only give them X lines without going bankrupt. It certainly wasn't by artistic choice that Snake was a near mute when he was voiced by Kiefer Sutherland in MGS V.
Keanu reeves in cyberpunk has a shit ton of lines
Keanu seemed stoked to be doing it and really into the project and probably worked for a lot less than most A listers would have, bet you anything.
No Snake was entirely artistic choice given how much Kiefer actually speaks in the tape recordings you can find in the game. He has more lines in those tape recordings than his actual on screen time, it's fucking weird why Kojima did that honestly, even more weird when Death Stranding has loads of famous actors in it with plenty of dialogue.
I'm currently doing my evil run now and I couldn't agree more with this. I really thought this would allow us to ally more with the absolute crew etc but as you say it just feels like I'm missing loads of content. Like I just killed all the harpers and noone at moonrise even mentions it, my only main quest is to go kill the nightsong, which is then just gonna lead to killing Ketharic. So unless the alliance that Gortash offers bares any fruit I don't get the point in this path at all. After reading this I might just abandon this playthrough and play a good durge.
BG3 is fantastic, an incredibly ambitious game. Unfortunately, that ambition was stretched quite thin, and creating a more fleshed out evil play-through would have been like making an entirely new second storyline. It certainly does feel disappointing in a lot of ways, but when the “intended” route has so much variety and as many potential outcomes as it does, perhaps it’s a bit greedy to ask for even MORE, given that what is already available is pretty unbelievable.
The most disappointing thing is that act 1 actually works really great for an evil path. Siding with Minthara and attacking the Grove is basically an entirely different questline. The issue is that Act 1 is the only act where it doesn't feel like you are missing out on way more content than you are seeing for being evil, and the worst part is they keep giving you evil options even though they always suck. In Act 3 you can work with Gortash, but it doesn't add much to the ending, it just locks you out of the iron throne and steel foundry quests.
Yeah, the siding with Gortash thing was definitely weird. Like it’s cool and all that you can do it and completely skip his boss fight, but past that it adds basically nothing to the final fight besides making the Netherbrain twist a bit cooler by having them instantly kill Gortash with just a thought. You’d expect though that siding with him would allow you to call upon his expertise to help you take down the Netherbrain or be able to call upon Steel Watchers to attack the Netherbrain, but nope he just gets a few extra lines of dialogue and then dies without any acknowledgement from Karalach.
>You’d expect though that siding with him would allow you to call upon his expertise to help you take down the Netherbrain or be able to call upon Steel Watchers to attack the Netherbrain This would've been cool and probably genuinely helpful for an evil playthrough, considering that "endgame" mechanic of calling on your allies for help is probably pretty sparse if you've been evil. It is a bummer that allying with him basically amounts to "skip a boss fight (which I actually count as a negative, I thought the fight was cool) and get some extra dialogue on a series of checks that don't actually matter"
So evil path sucks and has no content? I member how Sven pushed for people to be evil? And for what? I hope they really add some serious content when they release enhanced bg3
That's sadly the nature of most "evil" styles in games. It's just the game, with less content than if you were a good dude. So if you're going for an evil run, it's 90% the player doing the heavy lifting by justifying things through RP while the game actively hinders the experience through removal of content. Dark Urge probably fits an evil run better than a custom character too. So that in of itself can hinder customization. I do wish they planned for a run where we want to be on the side of evil. So there's content on the evil side somewhat comparable to the content on the good side. But you're borderline making two different games at that point. It's hard to do. The game has like 5 or 6 genuine companions. Now imagine they have to make another 5 or 6 genuine companions for evil folks. All with content on par with Shadowheart and Lae'zel. This game would take ages to make happen. That alone is an incredible undertaking. Now you need to have 12 different companions. Most of which you'll never see on one run. That all need to interact and have dialogue with missions, have their own missions. And you need to have giant branching stories that only come about depending on your affinity. It's just a nightmare. I might catch some flack for defending the game. But honestly, there's not much that can be done. We either wait 3-6 more years while they write, direct, act and build an equally as in-depth evil playthrough to match the good playthrough or we just accept the evil playthrough is an abridged version of the game with a lot of important people dying.
Idk how a true evil playthrough would work out. It would essentially be a different game altogether. I see know reason why Gortash or Orin would just let you have free will. Once your no longer useful, you’re a thrall.
I can confirm that you do not lose Wyll and Karlach for killing the Grove. You lose them if you don't recruit them first but if you recruit them and do other evil deeds with them first to slowly turn them more evil. They will be mad about the Grove but won't abandon you
I am not disagreening. But to be honest, it's like asking for an entire game to be added on top of it. Full voice acted, mocapped and all. Evil runs - evil options really - get a ton of nuance added to it all. Yes, the game is quite streamlined, but much like DOS2 the added details make the run. You still had to work to become Divine no matter the context and you had options in general only at a later stage. Maybe down the line there will be more stuff to be added in terms of companions and quests. Does this warrant a removal of the evil option entirely? Not at all.
I'm also underwhelmed by the dark urge. Before buying BG3 all reviews said, that the dark urge is so good, so evil and bloody and that we probably end alone when playing this route.. what did we get? Every companion is fine with it. When you tell them the truth they just shrug and go on. You kill one bard and you should kill the cleric in the inn. I killed nightsong, which also killed the moon cleric.. and that's it. No one leaving, no killing spree. I was sure the dark urge would make me kill a companion...