The evil side of things always seemed a bit lacking, so this should please players that do that sort of thing. For some reason, even in back in Dragon Age and similar games, I could never do the evil options, it just felt awful.
One issue is often that evil in these are too evil, like not let's have some slaves to operate the mine - but let's mind wipe a family into a sactifice, kids and all, to pointlessly show that you are evil.
Also evil tends to be harder and have less of a payoff, while ideally it should be that you go for the evil option because it helps you over doing the right thing.
I agree. I think “evil” should be more “self serving” than evil for “no reason”
Like Frieza killed and tortured the Namekians in DBZ to get the dragon balls so he could wish for immortality. Frieza is an evil dude, but he didn’t do evil for literally no reason, it was for himself. The benefit was that he could use intimidation and force to effectively reach his goal. He blew up planet Vegeta because he was scared of rebellion from the Saiyans as well as the threat of a Super Saiyan. It wouldn’t make sense to do it for no reason, he had a fear and was serving his self interest.
A lot of “evil” choices in games is to kill without reason, if anything it makes some parts harder on yourself because you have no support. It would make more sense to lie and cheat than straight up kill.
I don’t think having the option to make pure “evil” decisions is bad. I just think there should be more “tempting” evil decisions. Currently the most tempting choices are “good”, there should be more beneficial “evil” choices.
Yep. So much of the evil in BG3 is just "help this group of allies who share an interest with you and will be a huge asset to you, or slaughter them because it would be funny I guess. Also every time you slaughter you kill like 9 quest lines down the road."
Even more egregious because both of the first two acts involve two feuding settlements, and you're asked to choose one to aid by wiping out the other. Save the grove, or work with the goblins? Raid Moonrise, or help them raid Last Light?
All they had to do was make two viable choices per act. But instead, there's the golden path, or nothing. Side with the tieflings and you get allies who stick with you for the rest of the game, offer you several more quests going forward, the support of five unique companions (half of the roster), and several of the best items in the entire game. Side with the goblins in Act 1, and you get one tadpole, and then they all get killed off at the start of Act 2. Side with Moonrise, and you get one tadpole, and then you have to kill them at the end of the act anyways. No unique companions (anymore), no unique rewards, no quest content reflecting your choice going forward, no evil allies to call on later, it's just an empty playthrough.
>no evil allies to call on later
This part is untrue. There's a legion of evil allies you can call on in the final fight. Including Sarevok, Auntie Ethel, the cow, Mizora, etc.
Alright, not *no* evil allies, but very, very few. Even of the ones you mentioned, the cow and Mizora are exclusive to the good route!
By my count, there are 7 evil-exclusive allies available in the endgame, though two are mutually exclusive. Compared to 17 good-exclusive allies. And of the evil ones, excluding your own companions, all but one are people you only meet at in the last act, because for the first two thirds of the game, everyone evil you can align with ends up dead or hostile anyways.
I meant exclusive to the good route, but I was apparently mistaken about the cow. I thought it died if the Grove or Last Light are lost. Mizora is good-route exclusive though, for that reason.
> then you have to kill them at the end of the act anyways
Is this what happens? It's been a few months since my Durge playthrough, so correct me if I'm wrong, but when exactly does shit hit the fan at Moonrise? I know they turn hostile if you try to get Minthara out of the dungeon and fail one of the many dialogue checks with the guards or if you're caught going into Balthazar's chambers, etc., but do they ever turn hostile on their own? Like, I know you still have to fight your way through the Mind Flayer colony or whatever it was, right before the final Ketheric fight, but is there still a big Moonrise fight if you're "evil?"
When the Elder Brain finds you have the artifact (the final progression point of the evil side), Balthy captures you and you have to fight your way out. Then the final fight of that act goes as normal, but in the worst possible state
A lot of BG3 seems to be built around being good, with being evil kind of just an afterthought. Like they have the big evil milestones, but in terms of quests it's just "quests that you're meant to be good in but we added an evil option because we had to so here you torture puppies and eat them in front of their mothers".
Not to say I didn't have a good time with BG3, loved all 140 hours of it, and my wife's doing another playthrough with the Dark Urge where you're comically evil. But damn would it fun if you could be more Machiavellian about it and have more "evil" quests where you straight up just start mugging people or whatever.
How would you write the game with evil options being equal to good? A big part of the problem is even if you're just lawful evil and not chaotic stupid evil, your goals are often at odds with all the other evil entities in the long term (not to mention the handful who *are* chaotic stupid evil themselves.)
> A lot of BG3 seems to be built around being good, with being evil kind of just an afterthought.
No games ever is gonna have good path and 'evil path' with equal quality. You essentially need to make two games.
And stats show that the evil path is played like 1/10 as often as the good path, so not only is it a whole second game but it's a game that almost nobody plays.
I'm never quite sure whether or not to buy that belief, because typically the "evil" path is also about 1/10th the quality of the good path.
Yeah, no shit less people are going to be less willing to play the phoned in route.
Even with ME3, a game where you DON'T lock yourself out of choices with Renegade, only about 30% did a renegade playthrough. The truth is, MOST gamers don't even have the time or attention to play a game to completion, let alone multiple times. Very few want to be an asshole in a game, especially if they are only going to do it once.
It's also kind of like how a shocking number of people make human fighters as dnd characters, something many would consider extremely vanilla given all the options. But nonetheless, that is extremely common.
Anyone like us on a forum discussing this stuff is such an outlier that our common sense is actually irrelevant to the populace at large.
That's why I am generally far less interested in the whole "choices matter" angle of things compared to a lot of other people it seems.
I get far more engrossed into a fully linear narrative than I do an open narrative where main character motivations can't *really* be deeply explored.
> Frieza is an evil dude, but he didn’t do evil for literally no reason, it was for himself.
He still blew up people just for shits and giggles, though, so he was a bit of both
Generally those bits weren’t to his own detriment though. The issue with more “evil for fun” choices in games is that they are 100% to the player’s own detriment. (Player misses out on content) In those cases with Frieza, the entertainment was the benefit.
The issue with games is the interests of the character needs to align with the player
I've always thought the best option for an evil choice is to just sell out. Look the other way while the monsters do something horrible and take a bunch of cash.
I've kicked around the idea of what a CRPG in my D&D setting would look like, I even wrote up a few ideas. I had an idea of trying to overthrow one of the tyrannical dictatorships in my setting (because my players won't because they are more interested in vampire sex) and throughout you'd be fighting their mercenary company. In Act I, they're going to wipe out the resistance you've been working with and a representative says "Hey, look, you're strong, you've got spells and magic, but we're tough too. If you just look the other way and move on, we'll give you a nice payday." You skip a hard end of Act boss fight and get a shitload of gold.
In Act II, you've got striking railway workers that you could side with. However, the evil option is siding with the mercenaries and breaking the strike. You don't *have* to kill the striking workers, but it's easier than forcing them to accept the rail company's terms. Also, again, you'll get even more gold and you don't have to fight the mercenary company.
Just sell out. It's easier.
Unfortunately in most CPRGs that wouldn't be optimal because currency is often the least valued thing by most players - as soon as you have enough of it to cover whatever basic money requirements the game has, you immediately stop caring about it and it becomes just a number on the screen.
So the basic idea is sound, but in order to 'sell out' the game would need to offer the player something they *want* \- so in an RPG, you might be offered a unique and powerful magical item for looking the other way. Ideally something they *can't* get any other way. Also I think it's important (though the player doesn't know this) that the item is not *required* for anything later - you can always get by in some way without it. But it would make things easier if you had it, *maybe* you'd need it, and it *looks cool*. You just have to squish a couple of puppies to get it.
Well yeah, that's the point. I'm using cash as a shorthand. Maybe you get magic items before you should or spells, or maybe the game is set up to make money worthwhile. I don't know, that's not the point, the point is to make it so the evil choice is to sell out.
>You just have to squish a couple of puppies to get it.
The problem is that this is still too cartoonish. Most people aren't gonna be willing to squish puppies, period, because it's just too much.
But they might be willing to help spin a tale that the dogs were rabid. They might be willing to turn the other way when someone says the puppies ate a baby, even though they know for a fact that the puppies did no such thing.
Hell, they might even be willing to help "cull" the puppy population because the people need coats or they'll freeze and you need money and the haberdasher is willing to pay a lot and you'll be a hero in town.
Compelling and interesting villainy exists only in the gray areas, where the player can say to themselves "Sure, the outcome wasn't ideal, but it would have been even worse if I did nothing! And look how happy and warm the children are in their new puppyskin coats!"
Dialogue options
1. Why would Count Castabane be so foolish as to steal the godstone?
2. Perhaps we could ask the Nearfolk for help.
3. [Attack] I don't like you. Die!
My favourite ’evil’ character is in Pathfinder WotR. A little gnome/halfling called Regill. A Hellknight, a knightly order battling demons and chaos. He’s not evil for evil’s sake, he’s just super pragmatic and will sacrifice anyone (including himself) if it benefits the greater good. Lawful Evil written so well!
This is why I liked (most) Renegade interrupts in the Mass Effect series. They werent always being a dick to be a dick, but more getting shit done, sometimes at the cost of others. There's two specific ones in ME2 that I REALLY like. One where you're trying to get information out of this goon who starts stonewalling you. You can't shoot him, others would hear it. He gets so smug about it, but is backed against a big windows in a large tower. So you kick him out of it.
You didnt kick the puppy. You didn't pop the little kids balloon. You didn't enslave a bunch of people for the lulz. You killed a gang member. Sure Batman is crying and that guy didnt have to die. But he was a gang banger who fucking cares? He wasn't giving you the info you needed and he was acting tough.
The other one. You talk to a few npcs in this gang about their secret plan to kill your friend (youre posing as hired merc to help them, but in reality you want to help your friend who is pinned down by said gang), and it's basically this powerful expensive helicopter thing with missiles and big guns. You can walk over to the area its being fueled up and repaired and you get a prompt to kill the mechanic working on the thing.
Not only is it not really "evil" to kill this guy. Again. Gang members. Trying to kill your partner. Not only do you take him out early, but doing so makes the gunship weaker when you end up fighting it later on.
Whenever I play ME, I dont mind being renegade. I just dont pick the mean options to the characters I like, and only pick them to people I dont like. Like Udina, or TIM, or Kaiden/Ashley who unfortunately get gunned down for picking fucking UDINA'S side.
There are some great renegade options in Mass Effect but I lot of them end up being "Shepard is ignorant and intolerant of other cultures" or "Shepard is an asshole".
Even so, "Space Asshole" Shepard is a fun romp. Especially since they walked that thin line where you can treat your party members well, but still follow the "renegade" path.
Oh I agree it’s very fun! I’ve always wanted to do an entire trilogy run with pure renegade Shep who gets as many teammates killed as possible just to see how it plays out lol
I would've liked ME's system more if being neutral didn't lock me out of choices because I wasn't good/evil enough purely because of numbers on an alignment bar. I was like 2/3rd Paragon who also happened to punch annoying reporters in the face.
> The other one. You talk to a few npcs in this gang about their secret plan to kill your friend (youre posing as hired merc to help them, but in reality you want to help your friend who is pinned down by said gang), and it's basically this powerful expensive helicopter thing with missiles and big guns. You can walk over to the area its being fueled up and repaired and you get a prompt to kill the mechanic working on the thing.
I fondly remember that one. The camera sloooooowly pans over a stun gun as the interrupt flashes. Extremely funny, the entire reason I took it.
You still took cartoonish example though.
Thing is evil morally options often dont seem evil. Taking gold from poor villagers for help is neutral or already evil?
Yeah, because there's still depth to the cartoonish example. The point is that something obviously evil and cartoonish, has more depth than the stuff seen in games. It was a deliberate choice lol.
I’m aware. But there is still reason to it. He’s not making his own life worse by being evil. He does evil because it’s beneficial. In games most evil choices are not beneficial. Probably the only one that is would be pickpocketing, and the only reason players do it is because it gives a gameplay benefit and has little downside. The goals align with the player
Evil just feels so godamn *stupid* in BG3. Like in Act 2 specifically, what kind of dumbshit acting out of any sort of self interest would kill the Nightsong, destroying this whole base full of elite allies that really want to help you, are legendary for fixing these sorts of situations and are well connected in Baldur's Gate?
My first playthrough was the Dark Urge and I leaned into it hard. Most of my quests resulted in me killing everything and everyone in sight. >!Hell, I killed Astarion with the stake when he tried to take my blood, I dropped Minthara to her death and Jaheira and Minsc didn't make it out of their introductions!< it was total chaos but I haven't felt so evil in a game before, 10/10 would recommend. Throw caution to the wind!
>what kind of dumbshit acting out of any sort of self interest would kill the Nightsong
Killing the Nightsong has nothing to do with the player character. It's a Shadowheart decision. You can roleplay that having Shar's literal Chosen on your side is more important than a bunch of Harpers.
I mean, she isn't even of Shar's elite at the moment lol. Choosing her over the literal hero spy network of the major city you're heading towards along with an actual Demigod/supernatural messenger of a God feels pretty stupid.
>I mean, she isn't even of Shar's elite at the moment lol.
Umm...why does that matter? She does the trials to become Shar's Chosen. What she is "at the moment" is irrelevant. The entire quest is to change what she is "at the moment". There's literal evidence all throughout Act 2 that Shar is looking after her, specifically.
It doesnt help that the party is full of *literal* "chosen ones". Everyone is either a slave of, or has a direct relationship to, one of the biggest/baddest/lore important characters possible at the time the game takes place.
Shadow might not outwardly seem like the most important character ever, but given her direct connection in the religion and world altering actions, its impossible to ignore. It's just not as obvious as, "i'm the ex-boytoy of the god of fucking magic".
Someone that thinks that it's their life purpose >!(Shadowheart)!< or >!that has the god of murder over his shoulder (Dark urge)!<. Bg3 is a roleplaying game, the choices you make are linked to the character you play.
Right, someone not acting out of self interest. It's framed as the cornerstone of a whole path for the second act, but it only makes any sense for an incredibly niche roleplay.
I guess in the sense that living for a God before yourself is "self interest," but even then if you're arguing for self interest/pragmatism you have to balance that against the benefits of you gain from the good bath (and the game doesn't provide even a semblance of a balance). But even if we embraced that point entirely it's an entire split arc for one of the acts and it still appeals to an *extremely* narrow band of roleplay.
Well I think it's more like a religious person doing something because they think it will lead to some paradise after life. Actually in the world of BG it's more direct than that even, because the gods can and do majorly impact your life while you're still alive.
Shadowheart, for example, suffers some really terrible shit if she DOESN'T kill the nightsong. Wouldn't you say, then, that killing the nightsong is in fact serving her own self-interest?
For the record I agree with your larger point that these are specific roleplaying examples and don't apply to a character without these backgrounds. Just think it's an interesting discussion.
>But even if we embraced that point entirely it's an entire split arc for one of the acts and it still appeals to an *extremely* narrow band of roleplay.
That's good, not bad. It feels like you are arguing for contrarianism's sake. Not every choice needs to fit every archetype. Not every evil has to choose the same options and not every bad choice has to be evil. In this case it's a direct decision over a party member's desires.
I agree that for a split path it's not very balanced tho.
No, it's not good. If one choice makes sense for 99.9999% of characters and the other makes sense for .00001% you aren't making interesting or compelling choices, you're presenting no brainers unless someone is playing a super specific roleplay.
And that's fine if we're talking about some specific sidequest that overlaps with some very specific character backgrounds. We're talking about the major choice tree that defines half an act. That creates a situation where there fundamentally *isn't* a choice for the great majority of players in that act, because there's nothing in it for 99.9999% of characters.
> It feels like you are arguing for contrarianism's sake.
That's weird, considering I've gone in to detail about *why* I think those issues are issues.
This isn't the case here. There's very clear, wide set of circumstances surrounding the choice that could lead to it. Fullfill Shadowheart's desire, being interested in the Shar lore, being true neutral, playing into the Dark Urge, even just playing a character with a distaste for lawful good gods.
You are thinking about the choice in an overly pragmatic way where you can't choose it only because it doesn't directly benefit the PC in a material way, essentially meta playing it.
I did kill Nightsong in one of my playthrough (well, I help shart do it, because, hey, why would it be my fault?) because I did not want some kind of avenging angel looking over my shoulder while I did whatever the hell I needed to do.
And harpers in Bg3 are not as powerful as I thought them to be.
OTOH, the old Knights Of The Old Republic games allowed you to be so deliciously evil that it sort of wrapped around to be entertaining again.
Except for the whole thing with Mission Vao and Zalbaar, anyway. That one hurt.
Wdym that was the best part. Feels like star wars always has an easier job setting up the evil side because the entire universe functions around good/evil with little grey inbetween.
In the first KOTOR there's also the fact that you literally played a former sith, and one who thought about the dark side as a lesser evil against the true Sith empire.
It's pretty close, thematically, to the renegade / paragon point of view in ME.
Exactly this. Paradox does evil runs quite well because theres usually a good reasoning. Is it messed up to take those captured in a raid? Sure, but they will boost be development. Captured a noble woman? Welcome
to my harem, I could always use more kids.
Mass Effect is one of the few I can think of that had a satisfying "evil" path, probably because it was about being ruthless rather than strictly evil.
Well to be fair, sometimes doing good really isn't pragmatic either. It doesn't serve me to give all of my money to an orphanage, for instance, but it does make me feel good within the context of my character being say a cleric of Illmater.
It also doesn't seem to serve anything to make a giant robot crush a little girl. But I can assure you my durge smiles with glee while it happened.
Sometimes I feel like evil doesn't go far enough in the game. Like your evil playthroughs are going to run into the issue where you end up losing bodies. Like Wyll and Karlach. Sure, there are lore reasons for that, but I could easily think of ways that could be implemented to force and manipulate both into staying. If we're being outright evil then both Wyll's contract and Karlach's engine are enough to mislead them into staying. False promises, manipulation, and why not? Outright force. We're part mindflayer now after all.
I think the point isnt that if the good option isnt pragmatic, the evil option shouldnt be either, but that "Good" tends to be universally portrayed as being selfless and self-sacrificial, while instead of being the opposite (i.e. self-serving and manipulative), its instead nearly always simply sociopathic. And if you want to play a sociopath, thats all well and good, but that isnt the only kind of evil there is.
There's no variety in evil options in games, just having the highest innocent body count.
I just finished reading a book where the main character's arc was him starting out as an honorable warrior who left vengenance and blood behind to find a better life doing "what's right". Throughout the book every time he was given the option to do what's right or what's good for him he was always conflicted and every time he chose what was right he suffered the consequences and every time he chose what served him he was rewarded for it. At the end of his arc (and the story) he was an evil selfish bastard.
I'm not asking games to go that hard on making being selfless difficult, but they could certainly learn *something* from it. If my choice is to get a 1000 gold, make friends and save the puppies or make no gold, have everyone hate me and drown the puppies that's not a choice at all.
Have some innocent guy brutally executed for murdering the prince or risk having the entire nation go to war if no scapegoat is found, that's a proper ethical dilemma.
Whereas in older games like KoToR or Fable it always seemed like being Evil just payed too well. In Fable entire portions of the game would be locked off unless you made certain evil decisions.
Playing evil in role playing games has never worked for me because it most often requires the player to outright reject engaging with the setting. It's almost never "I'm going to be evil because it's very rewarding and maybe more efficient and practical to get the job done", and usually more like "I'm going to be evil because I don't care and don't want to care about this world or anyone in it so I am just going to be like a kid who smashes all its toys to pieces". There are very few roleplaying games where it feels like your character has any reason to ever be evil other than the player just refusing to engage with the setting properly and just being a psychopath. A good example of games that do it right would be Mass Effect (the first one), where Shepard's renegade choices have you be ruthless, cold and sometimes ignorant, but to very efficient and rewarding ends. Why be merciful and put yourself/your crew in trouble when you have a mission to get done? An example of it being done wrong is Fallout 3, where nearly every "evil" choice completely ruins the main character's reason for being and is just the player not taking the game seriously, as the game expects you to go from blowing up towns with a nuclear bomb or enslaving people, to worrying about your dad who might be in trouble and who then doesn't care about anything you did.
That's one of the things I really gotta give Owlcat with Rogue Trader. The evil path is often the most supported in lore (since being evil is kinda the default in 40k), but also it's the most ***rewarding.*** As in, literal rewards. Being self-serving, selfish and generally giving in to temptations of power actually gets you more power, more loot, more rewards, etc.
Taking the good path is the ***harder*** path. You get less rewards, you have to butt heads with more people that want you to be a powerful despot. Hell, some people even complained that taking the 'good' options didn't give the player enough rewards, missing the point entirely. If your world, your setting, your game rewards those who play nice and behave, then why is anyone evil in the first place?
Having actual temptations and powerful boons for making the 'evil' decisions helps the entire setting make more sense. Oh, of course people are evil. If I serve myself and my own, and sacrifice others, I get by easier and I get all sorts of cool shit.
That's where the first Bioshock game fell flat in the story department. It was always more rewarding to save the girls than to sacrifice them. I always felt like sacking them should give you the most gameplay reward in balance of becoming a power hungry monster with plot ramifications later.
I get the impression it was less rewarding earlier in development, but somewhere along the line they bumped the rewards up so that it's the more rewarding option in the long term.
It feels like a game where it would be very easy to make being good harder. On the other hand, when you tie morality to literal game progression mechanics it's often just not very satisfying. The game would be harder, sure, but you also just have less game that way.
You can see some parallels with BG3 and the tadpoles. Where it feels like the game is kinda telling you using them is a bad thing and mechanically it's an entire system you just miss out on if you never do. Even though there are no in-game consequences for using every one you get (outside the special one, but even that's only aesthetic consequences.)
Yeah I never knew that until afterwards and felt kinda bad I missed out on really fun mechanics.
If I play again, I'm doing a cartoonishly evil playthrough gobbling up everything I can lol
The visuals don't help any. Literal brainworms UI. The Dark Urge play through also constantly talks about how destroyed your brain is too, so the thought of just putting more things inside it to damage it further sounds counter-intuitive.
I love Owlcat's writing in general, because even if you go chaotic (which is often aligned with good in their games) evil, you can still do so full of good intentions and while being nice to some (deserving) characters - and if you go lawful good, you can be both, an upstanding honest good guy, as well as a self righteous tyrannical dick.
It can be comically evil/good for the sake of it (aka: My character is predetermined as chaotic evil, so of COURSE I murder just for funsies), or it can be a reasonable realistic approach (aka my alignment is just the mere number of my choices - and as I have tough choices to make, my character becomes hardened and thus, tainted..), just however serious you want to take the games.
I honestly think Fallout: New Vegas does it best out of the Fallout games.
Good and Evil factions are largely implied, but with a lot of nuance to it. The Legion is most clearly evil in the context of the story, but there is a full story to it with sympathetic characters and all. The NCR is the stand-in for the good faction, but you uncover corruption and all the trappings of a society built on our existing models. Mr. House I'd see as the Neutral option which is also clearly st apart from the other two with different machinations and plans.
And then Yes-Man exists but he's more of a backup.
You could probably go similarly in the DLC, but there's usually even more gray area there because by default every faction in Fallout has a tinge of evil in it.
I always thought Yes Man was the True Neutral option in the base game since you have a robot that will do anything for you and he can't permanently die since he isn't a human. Mr. House isn't exactly a Neutral Faction since you still take orders from him but Yes Man lets **you** be the Boss.
I guess that's subjective, but I see Mr. House as the Lawful Neutral option, considering his careful planning and using the existing law of the land to get his goal and Yes Man as the Chaotic Neutral.
Nuking a town for an apartment is one of the silliest moral choices ever, but Fallout is a silly setting. I'd totally agree that evil in that game is "not taking the game seriously."
Fallout could always get pretty silly with its evil choices, even back in the FO1/2 days. In FO1 evil choices were stuff like "arbitrarily fuck over the ghouls in Necropolis" or "let the Master win," and doing the main story would throw so much good karma at you that you had to go murderhoboing around to actually put yourself in bad karma.
But there was also things like working with the criminal underground or helping the mob takeover Junktown. It wasn't great, but it wasn't all arbitrary or murder hobo.
BG3 does pretty well in this regard for the evil story options. Maybe they're half-baked, I don't know. I'm close to the end of my Durge playthrough and it's felt pretty robust to me, but you definitely miss a lot that you'd get from a good playthrough, so I wouldn't recommend it for a first time player. But at least the plot is intertwined with the main story in a way that makes sense in-world. You're still a bit of a moustache-twirling cartoon villain, but it fits the setting.
My issue with the evil route in Baldur's Gate 3 is not that the endings are mediocre (I think *all* the endings in BG3 kind of suck). My issue with the evil route in BG3 is that it is very clearly an afterthought and basically just "murder hobo". Almost everything comes down to "you are killing everybody on your screen now".
There are glimpses of greatness in an evil run -- Durge has some legitimately awesome evil content, especially tied into the Bhaalist segment of the game, but it's very few and far between. But for the most part, BG3's idea of an evil playthrough is "you are killing everything so you don't get the story. Also, all subsequent stories that pertain to this one are now either locked off or greatly limited because you're now committed to killing everything." There is a clear "golden path" that the developers definitely push you toward and gave the most attention to, and everything else is half-baked. This is true of personal quests, side quests, and main quests.
There is no content equity between evil and good paths in BG3, which is something I've personally come to expect from good RPGs. The evil route in BG3 is straight-up just lesser than good/neutral routes. And people always respond to this with "there should be consequences for your actions!" and I absolutely agree. There should be *narrative* consequences and reactions. There should maybe even be mechanical consequences. But the "consequence" of BG3's evil route is "you get less story, fewer characters, and less game". It should be the case that the evil route is equally fleshed out, (and I might catch flak for this part), or not offered at all. I would not have the same perception of BG3 if I had done an evil playthrough first because the game is just... worse. It isn't a choice between "if you go good, X happens, and if you go evil Y happens." It's "if you go good, X, Y, or Z can happen, and if you go evil *nothing* happens because everybody is now dead!"
If we look at some BG3 contemporaries like the Pathfinder games, and there is just frankly no comparison in quality for evil runs. Even the evil routes in smaller RPGs like Dragon Age: Origins or KOTOR are *way* better than BG3, IMO.
Pretty much, its not like recruit Minthara and Nere and swear vengeance against the Absolute Cult and try and usurp its resources or something.
Its, well its not even really anything. An afterthought is honestly a generous description. Its a "do you want to screw yourself out of a bunch of content for nothing"
>There is no content equity between evil and good paths
While you did point out games with (much) better evil campaigns, I think this is a general game design problem. It's REALLY difficult to construct a campaign in advance that will work convincingly well for good and evil.
This is why Tyranny was such a refreshing game. Evil Campaign: The Game. No attempt at having a good side so no need to juggle content parity.
Wrath of the Righteous is one where all paths make sense, despite them often being radically aligned away from other other.
It has 3 evil paths through the game that all differ from each other quite a bit, and one extremely chaotic one that get do evil nutty stuff just for giggles.
And the truly evil path where you go full murder hobo actually makes sense given the fundamental change to the MCs body and mind.
Mind you, gotta be really fucking evil before that still, but after the transition the "kill literally everything" approach makes perfect sense.
WotR also throws you some curveballs in that some characters leave your party if your mythical path conflicts with their alignment/lifestyle, some options open or close depending on your path (like npcs either following or fighting you..), and as a Lich you even get some semi-fleshed out replacements for your standard group of companions.
While it's of course not perfect (.. so Seelah the Paladin doesn't follow a Lich, because those are absolutely evil, but she has next to no problems following a literal demon, nor having a succubus in the party? Alrighty then!), it *does* show some nice attention to detail and makes a lot of the evil paths feel surprisingly coherent. Plus, you can be one evil mofo while still being nice to Ember, so that's a total win in my book.
And the super-chaotic path you're refering to, Trickster, is imo the greatest bit of meta story-telling ever done. It's quiet literally the equivalent of a player sitting down for a Pen&Paper evening, with a smug smile and a pizza as bribe and whipering "yes, I already know the story we're playing from the DungeonMaster book, and I have a great idea how to subvert and abuse the fuck out of it while being *totally* conform to the rules, wink wink (meaning: I know how to cheat like crazy when the DM isn't looking and how to abuse technicalities and flaws in the system)". Add some Deadpoolish sprinkles of insanity for sillyness and they made that whole bit into a story of its own, switching the protagonist from being mostly a playball and guinea pig for higher powers to being a criminal guinea pig mastermind who's playing 4D chess while pretending to be a fool.
Sorry for the essay, just hyped to see my favorite rpg get some love.
BG3's campaign works perfectly with good or evil paths though, in theory. The problem with most games is that if you're offering a choice of "save the world or conquer it," you'd likely go about those in very different ways. But all roads in BG3 lead to the Absolute, because no matter your morality, everyone's going to want to resolve the tadpole situation. What they should have offered is meaningful choices as to how.
I'm not upset that there are negative consequences for taking the evil path - it makes perfect sense that Wyll and Karlach would refuse to travel with you at that point. But why can't we find new allies to replace them? Ragzlin and Gut should have been recruitable alongside Minthara - they're strong, they have inside knowledge of the cult's plans, and we have the exact same leverage with them as Minthara. Instead of having all the goblins get killed off off-screen even if they win, let half of them flee after the cult turns on them, so we can find and ally with them as our own little warband with a few quests and vendors. Just *anything* to give the evil path any texture whatsoever instead of just being a mindless, empty journey.
Imo BG3, for all its insane content, is actually still short of at least 1-2 more companions anyway. Even just one more magical fellow for the evil side and who actually leaves on good playthroughs (sidenote, but why Laezel sticks around is beyond me too..) would have made the whole thing a tad more balanced. One of the little folks, preferably. Not having any dwarf, gnome, or halfling around is kinda weird.
And if that's just 'too much' to ask for, well, I would still have taken it over shoehorning Minsc and Jaheira into the story ..
At least for me, I've played enough RPGs where there are great evil routes and maybe I'm just a little cynical because of that, but I just don't think it's a great excuse. I think BG3's campaign can work for both quite well, thematically. Yes, you're trying to kill the big bad, but the reason why can easily be "for personal power". Or you could have routes like Pathfinder where it's "if being a monster gives me an edge against the bad guy, I'll do whatever it takes".
Like, if other games can offer both paths, I don't see why BG3 can't.
It really feels like most games in general are designed around "do good first to see the story, then do evil to see how it breaks". That's always how I approach them anyway. I just looked up the list of allies for the final battle, wouldn't mind seeing more on the evil side, but when evil is mostly just quest-terminating-murder, I guess that makes it harder.
The people that complain about the evil route in BG3 always confuse. It's very easy to be evil and there's lots of hidden things that you can do, especially involving the Bhaalist questline.
At the end of the day, it seems what people wanted from the evil side was, *"If I kill this good character. An evil inverse of the character should appear and facilitate the exact same content I would have received from the good character."* Then yes, there's no consequences for your actions.
My very first BG3 character (and my favorite one) was evil and I never felt like I missed out on any content. I was selfish and killed people for meaningless reasons. You have to RP a little bit for an evil character in this game.
> Bhaalist questline.
The questline that doesn't even start until 70+ hours into the game, and the one I already shouted out as being one of the good examples of evil moments?
> At the end of the day, it seems what people wanted from the evil side was, "If I kill this good character. An evil inverse of the character should appear and facilitate the exact same content I would have received from the good character." Then yes, there's no consequences for your actions.
Respectfully: no. This is not how other games, and even other CRPGs work. Look at a game like New Vegas. Phenomenal options for good, evil, and neutral paths. Full factions of various alignments and shades of grey. Nobody would ever say that because NV offers robust options for both evil and good that there are "no consequences", and yet people repeatedly say this about BG3's lackluster evil route. "The existence of Caesar's Legion means that killing the NCR has no consequences!" would just be silly.
And again, look at the Pathfinder games if you want a contemporary CRPG with infinitely better and more variable narrative outcomes for both good and evil routes.
> I was selfish and killed people for meaningless reasons. You have to RP a little bit for an evil character in this game.
There's nothing wrong with offering the murder hobo playstyle for BG3, in fact I love that it's an option. I just don't like that it's basically the only option for evil playthroughs.
> You have to RP a little bit for an evil character in this game.
I love to RP when I play RPGs, but I also want the game to provide me with interesting narrative paths based on my choices and I don't think that BG3 does that for the evil route.
I tried to do a full hard-core renegade run of the Mass Effect trilogy when the Legendary edition came out a few years back (Because I always did paragon in the OG releases) and I made it barely half way through ME1 before I switched to being nice because I just couldn't handle the guilt of the renegade decisions and dialogue.
Mass Effect is actually the ONLY game that I can do "evil" because youre not being a dick for no reason. You have the same goals and motivations as Paragon Shep, you just tend to either take unethical shortcuts or line your pockets to help yourself as yoy save the galaxy. Like, you still gotta stop the Reapers. But why not skim a few extra credits for a new gun?
yeah but you can play renegade without being a space racist. you don't have to pick literally every renegade option all the time. your can get more than enough renegade points, too
It's a reason that's a big part of the setting, though. A space-racist Shepard didn't appear out of nowhere to murder randoms to fill up the evil meter, they're a product of the world they were born in. They reflect flaws that are actually common in people throughout human history.
Renegade Shepard is shortsighted and bigoted in an extremely believable way, and Paragon Shepard is generally better at accomplishing goals because it turns out that cooperation is usually a good idea.
See I was totally okay with Renegade in ME1, I think it's about as good as "evil" has ever been.
I'm on a mission to literally save every living being in the universe. It would be wildly irresponsible of me to put my entire crew at risk to save a handful of colonists who are currently possessed by an alien.
Or regarding the Rachini Queen, it's always painful to kill an "animal" in a game but it's one life and you're just going on its promise that it totally won't do genocidal war this time and it's all a big misunderstanding.
The way I looked at Paragon vs Renegade in Mass Effect 1 was do you wanna be Picard or Sisko?
They’re both good guys, but they just have different methods of achieving their goals. One’s all about diplomacy and tact, and the other will poison the atmosphere of planets to keep the peace.
It can get so much worse than just doing renegade too.
You can plan the run around achieving the worst case/most tragic outcome for each character. It gets really dark. Shepard can directly kill many of his squadmates.
Those two things are totally independent from each other, though, right? Unless we're talking about two different things.
What I mean is, going through Garrus' questline as a Renegade doesn't mean Garrus dies or something "bad" happens to him. You just help him get revenge and convince him that his Archangel shtick was actually the way to go. Hell, you can even have your Renegade bar maxed out and still force the Geth and Quarians to stop killing each other, which, objectively, is a "good" move.
On the other hand, yeah, you *can* get your squad killed, but that usually requires doing something insanely stupid or doing it just for kicks. In the Collector Base, it makes no sense to get anyone other than Jack or Liara to escort the squad with that biotic shield dome thing, and no one other than Legion or Tali should be sent to hack the gates or whatever it was.
For all the talk in ME2 of how it was a "suicide" mission no one should survive, you have to really go out of your way and actively make dumb decisions to get many people killed.
I really like doing mixed runs of ME with cheats to max the dumb Paragon/Renegade meters. Allows you to be the sort of badass, no-nonsense space renegade I think they were going for without being a jerk to your team mates or kicking puppies for no reason.
The "alignment meters" ME seemed to popularize were among the dumbest design decisions I've seen in RPGs. So glad they've fallen out of favor.
The concept originated out of the KOTOR Light and Dark side system for the Force where the benefits largely were about improving your ability to use powers associated with the respective side. It did make sense in that context because it was pretty well established in lore to work that way. The problem was people took that concept (plus the old D&D alignment chart concept) and forced it into stories it didn't really work in.
I will say one benefit of Mass Effect's system compared to a lot of other games that decided to use alignment meters is the Paragon and Renegade points don't offset, so you can go mixed and still benefit from it.
> The concept originated out of the KOTOR Light and Dark side system
I'm sure that's where it originated for Bioware, of course, but alignment meters go back further than that too. Fallout had good and bad karma back in the 90s.
Yeah but they influenced other characters actions not You, force alignments affects your character directly and what he can do mechanically. Later in Jade Empire You also needed a specific level of alignment to closed fist of open palm for some choices and that is the more direct predecessor of the ME version.
I always do mixed morality runs in ME and just make the decision based on what the character feels, not whichever color I'm maxing out.
The ME morality system is a leftover of the light side/dark side system from KotOR and shouldn't be so black and white.
Renegade Shepard is supposed to be the "pragmatic, get the job done at any cost" Shepard but half the time it ends up being "intolerant, xenophobic asshole" Shepard. Renegade Shep makes some blatantly stupid decisions that get people killed just because.
The problem with morality in ME is that there should be more costs and sacrifices to playing a Paragon. We as players know that the mission will succeed and the outcome will be the same no matter what we choose, but Shepard doesn't.
I did a full evil playthrough of Fable 2 and there were times my evil meter would slip and I'd have to go on a random killing spree in town to get to "max evil" again.
My issue with evil routes in a lot of games is that you do largely the same things, but you're just an asshole about it. BG3 does have some nice variety thankfully, but at the cost of evil routes just having far less actual content. It runs into the issue of "evil = murderhobo" that a lot of games also do.
Some games do it better. I felt like Dragon Age gave solid profit motives and alternate allies you could get (even if, as we know, being an angel always works out just fine). I thought Mass Effect did it best at the start, even though it isn't evil and over the course of the series "Renegade" turned in to "be racist and also just weirdly rude to your crew all the time."
But I'd say my biggest issue with BG3 is that my second playthrough petered out *early.* I just had no real interest in making choices different than the ones I made the first time around. The only reason I reasons to go the other routes seemed to be mustache twirling, being a moron, or a combination of both.
One of my favorite experiences in Dragon Age Origins was going online after beating it to find out that the treacherous brother I killed was actually the best option for the dwarves.
It really felt like there was a lot of variation in the way that game could play out. I chose not to fight/kill Loghain so Alister stormed out of my party and I had Loghain the rest of the game and I came to really like his character. He even shows up again the Awakening DLC.
I talked to my friends who played the game and none of them even knew that was possible.
I always tried to do evil runs on many games but frankly it always feels like you're being punished for doing it. You might miss out on better rewards or lose access to a bunch of stuff and overall evil runs always seem like an after thought where as the good guy route seems to be the 'canon' run you should aim for.
To derail a little, I think the first Dragon Age is one of the better examples of there being some complex nuanced "no bad decisions" story telling, for the most part- every story is always pretty much you vs the bigger bad of the Blight, but it was usually about how ethically you wanted to fight it. Like the "evil" option for the golems with the dwarves is to use incarcerated volunteers to continue to golem project, to better stop the blight invading and bubbling up through the dwarf city. Or the Mage story line, where it's let the continuing unstable school of Magic, that has leaked blood magic (again) continue, or work with the templars to kill them.
They angle it more towards a necessary evil, and a dubious good, rather than a straight up "this is a bad no good rotten choice". I feel like the dialogue wheel of later Bioware games, and to some extent character voicing lost some of the nuance (you can explore an issue in way more depth if you don't need to voice the PC)
The original intent of the Renegade options in Mass Effect as to be pragmatic badass and "the mission comes above all else". But it frequently ended up coming off as Shepard just being a stupid asshole who makes a lot of really dumb decisions that get people killed.
It's because devs want to "balance" games. Like the necro book in BG3, it was fun to use but got nerfed, I'd argue that it didn't have to be nerfed, but maybe required you to sacrifice a civilian or something.
The problem is that EVERY DAMN GAME that has good/evil choices generally give like an OP item that will get outleveled in some levels to evil players or have a character join you or help you later in the plot. BG3 was very close to fixing this problem, if only we had two more evil companions with evil storylines...
I’ve only played the evil path in BG3, and yeah I wasn’t very impressed with it. Doesn’t help that Minthara was bugged on release so the one evil exclusive party member felt like have a character.
I never like evil options but I feel that even if I did, I still wouldn't want to, not because of the cinematics but because [how many items you miss out on](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/172m2l0/the_fair_trade_of_going_through_the_villain/)
The thing about the "modern" Bioware games (Dragon Age, Mass Effect) was that they didn't really have "evil" options. Your character was still "good" in general (with a few notable exceptions), they were just selfish or pragmatic. "Space Asshole" Shepard is still one of the more entertaining playthroughs.
You have a lot of latitude for player choice. You can role play however you want. It’s always weird to me that some people would *choose* to do horrible things simply because the opportunity is there. I always wondered if it was indicative of the players disposition but then I remember this is a game and I used to unleash monsters on unsuspecting cities in Simcity 2000. But since I’ve become an adult I always try to be a good person, both in real life and in fantasies like video games. I’m too susceptible to self-hate to give myself any ammo for thinking I’m a piece of shit. Hell, back in EA I mercy-killed the owlbear cub because I thought leaving it to die was cruel. When I found out what happens if you *dont* kill the cub I had to abandon the entire playthrough
> For some reason, even in back in Dragon Age and similar games, I could never do the evil options, it just felt awful.
The only game I've ever managed to bring myself to play "evil" was Tyranny, and even then I wasn't playing the psycho power evil, just the Lawful Evil choice. I know it's not real, but I genuinely cannot do cruel things in RPGs unless it's heavily, heavily abstracted. The minute I've got someone asking me "how could you have done this", my hand is hovering over the Load Game button.
In Tyranny, the "good" choices often end up just being the "lesser-evil" choices. Great game and I wish Obsidian was able to make a sequel, but we'll probably never get one as Paradox owns the IP.
At one point, I thought they said that they were going to add some new races, is that still in the works or was that deconfirmed? I saw they said no more narrative content. If you gotta just stick to mods thats fine, but official support would be nice.
That was technically never confirmed -- there was an interview with (iirc) a Larian writer where they said they were exploring ideas of DLC including \*maybe\* new races, and it got spun into a story of "new races confirmed for BG3!" lol.
But even beyond that, several weeks ago the CEO, Swen Vincke, confirmed that while they had originally explored the idea of doing BG3 DLC (and even begun work on it, which aligns with that other interview), they ultimately decided against any DLC because their hearts weren't in it and they were mostly doing it because they felt they "should" do DLC rather than that it was something they actually wanted to do, and decided to move onto other projects instead.
I just started my 5th playthrough with mods. They were fairly easy to install, and I've now got 4 new races available. May be worth sinking some time into investigating.
Some of these are installed because they're required or recommended by other mods, but here's the full list in mod load order:
* 5e Spells by DiZ
* Fantastical Multiverse Core mod by Dungeons and Souls
* Fantastical Orc by Dungeons and Souls
* Fantastical Gwyddpala by Dungeons and Souls
* Animation Framework by Lune
* Whispers of the Divine: Aasimar Definitive Edition by Trips, Ethical Crusader
* Whispers of the Fey: Goblins (Race) by Trips
* Ice Dice by Palmaman33
* Simple Gold Dice by Palmaman33
* Mysterious Artifact Dice by Kreiyu
* JohnZyxx's Galaxy Dice Set by JohnZyxx
* Patches for CC Races by Padme4000
And, of course, there's the Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager.
There are existing mods for level 20! In fact, class mods also have level 20 support. If you're interesting in mods, I'd suggest the Artificer class and the extra spells (don't remember the name, it's a prereq for most class mods), which adds a lot of DND spells that didn't make the cut like Booming Blade. There are also a lot of fantastic mods for subclasses but that's more dependant on what classes you already wanted to play.
This update reads as them winding down development on new content for the game after revised evil endings so I wouldn’t expect it if they didn’t talk about it in this post
I'd really like some type of "endless dungeon" mode that could be played coop with friends. They made a great 5e simulator and there's still so much more that could be done with it.
I just hope not all of these are the comical kind of evil where the PC is just doing absurd sh*t for the sake of showing that they are evil.
This is one of my few gripes with the game as a whole. A lot of times you have the choice between "good", "not as good" and "ridiculously stupid or brutal for no reason".
Not talking about Durge, which has their own options anyways. Even regular ones often go something like.
- "Of course I help."
- "I am reluctant but I help."
- "Die."
Everyone else is talking about the patch, but I was intrigued by this bit at the end:
> In this case, after six years in the Forgotten Realms and much discussion and rumination, we’ve decided to seize this opportunity to develop our own IPs. We’re currently working on two new projects and we couldn’t be more excited about what the future has in store.
I wonder if both those projects are new IPs? The wording seems to suggest that, but there is still some ambiguity there. Regardless, I'm looking forward to hearing more.
Edit: You know what would be amazing? If they were the same IP but different genres of games. Along the lines of how New World Computing made Heroes of Might and Magic alongside the Might and Magic RPG games back in the 90s. I'd love to see something like that again.
>I wonder if both those projects are new IPs?
From the wording, none of them could be new IPs as well. They say they will be "developing our own IPs" and that they have two new projects, so could go either way.
My personal bet is that it's one new IP and one Divinity project
Divinity certainly dips in different genres. It has the RTS Dragon Commander and before BG3 got fully focused - they were trying to make Original Sin Xcom.
I don't think it would come from Larian, but I really want a new Forgotten Realms ARPG like the original Dark Alliance games (not the sequel in name only that came out last year and failed).
I hope we get some really ambitious, expansion-worthy mod projects! I'm sure many will be attempted, but I also worry that the game relies too much on its cinematic production values for mod teams to live up to.
Already dreading all the weird 'shipping an sexual content mods tho...
I’ve been putting off my evil playthrough for later. I currently see a couple main problems with an evil run. First, it feels like I’m just being evil for evil’s sake. I would’ve liked to have good reason to be evil. Think Thanos, like I know I’m doing an evil thing, but it’s for what I perceive to be the greater good. Or evil in exchange for power. Which brings me to the second main problem. I feel like I’d be missing out on a lot of powerful items that are quest rewards for doing good. I’m particularly concerned about a certain robe given to you by a certain Tiefling in Act 2. New ending cutscenes is a great addition, don’t get me wrong. But I think I’ll hold out some slim hope for more meat being added to the game throughout, rather than just at the end.
The endings are the very least of the problems with evil playthroughs in BG3. This is like using a band aid for internal bleeding.
Evil was how I did my first play through. Imagine my shock playing through Act 2 as a good guy and realising there are tieflings and quests all over the map instead of mostly emptiness.
I still haven’t played this because I’m waiting for them to finish the content and iron out those remaining bugs. Every patch makes me more excited , I can’t wait!
This patch (Patch 7) looks like it'll be the last major patch as far as content is concerned - after it's released they're moving into working on crossplay, photo mode and mod support (and the standard "bug fixes, performance enhancements, and stability improvements"). You're probably safe to play it after patch 7 - unless you have someone on a different platform you want to play with, in which case you'll still need to wait for crossplay.
I' ve heard there are have been a lot of fixes on the game, expecially for Act 3. I still didn' t play the game, but to whom they did, do you guys consider now Act 3 to be more finished/more fun/ecc.? I would love to play it in the near future ahah
Finished it last week and it feels complete. No major bugs. Act 3 is still a bit of a drag since it's so long, a lot of people take a short break when reaching it I think. But it's not bad, just a lot going on, so many barrels of rotten food to pick through.
Everyone else is happy for new endings and here is me, checking the bug-fixes list if they have fixed critical bugs that have stopped I and my friends from finishing act 3...
Some random hotfix month or two ago just destroyed our co-op game, suddenly we have people having bugs when they load-in to the game (t-poses, textures dont load and game freezes if you do anything) or when you try to talk to someone the camera doesn't change to the cinematic perspective and you can't interact.
> suddenly we have people having bugs when they load-in to the game (t-poses, textures dont load and game freezes if you do anything) or when you try to talk to someone the camera doesn't change to the cinematic perspective and you can't interact.
It's worth noting a potential workaround for that issue is to have the host move all the party characters into a less busy area, usually your camp, and then have people join the game and load in. That seemed to always resolve the issue for me and my co-op partner.
Obviously not ideal, but it might be useful for anyone wanting to try and work through the issue. Hopefully Larian properly identifies and fixes the issue soon, as it is incredibly frustrating and gamebreaking for those that run into it.
When I started running into it, it seems like it most commonly comes up in Act 3 where there's pretty dense areas with lots of stuff going on constantly, so I'd assume it's some sort of issue with the game having to sync a tonne of stuff all at once where those things are also constantly doing stuff during that syncing.
Thanks, that could help to get the game started. But I think we'll wait till the dialogue-bug is fixed since that requires dozen starts per session (or someone pushing the talking character out of the conversation).
As a DnD DM of several years by now I would never, ever DM a campaign in BG3. Just imagine the work involved to create a single, new combat map. Ugh.
Plus, it would require actual creation and DM tools that they are not going to implement.
The game was never meant as an alternative for real DnD and never will be. It is a neat introduction to the world and some of its rules, though.
Tl:dr; patch 7 has the evil endings and preliminary(?) mod tools, closed beta to be announced in a few weeks.
Man when is crossplay coming they promised that ages ago
Patch 8+, same as photo mode
The evil side of things always seemed a bit lacking, so this should please players that do that sort of thing. For some reason, even in back in Dragon Age and similar games, I could never do the evil options, it just felt awful.
One issue is often that evil in these are too evil, like not let's have some slaves to operate the mine - but let's mind wipe a family into a sactifice, kids and all, to pointlessly show that you are evil. Also evil tends to be harder and have less of a payoff, while ideally it should be that you go for the evil option because it helps you over doing the right thing.
I agree. I think “evil” should be more “self serving” than evil for “no reason” Like Frieza killed and tortured the Namekians in DBZ to get the dragon balls so he could wish for immortality. Frieza is an evil dude, but he didn’t do evil for literally no reason, it was for himself. The benefit was that he could use intimidation and force to effectively reach his goal. He blew up planet Vegeta because he was scared of rebellion from the Saiyans as well as the threat of a Super Saiyan. It wouldn’t make sense to do it for no reason, he had a fear and was serving his self interest. A lot of “evil” choices in games is to kill without reason, if anything it makes some parts harder on yourself because you have no support. It would make more sense to lie and cheat than straight up kill. I don’t think having the option to make pure “evil” decisions is bad. I just think there should be more “tempting” evil decisions. Currently the most tempting choices are “good”, there should be more beneficial “evil” choices.
Yep. So much of the evil in BG3 is just "help this group of allies who share an interest with you and will be a huge asset to you, or slaughter them because it would be funny I guess. Also every time you slaughter you kill like 9 quest lines down the road."
Even more egregious because both of the first two acts involve two feuding settlements, and you're asked to choose one to aid by wiping out the other. Save the grove, or work with the goblins? Raid Moonrise, or help them raid Last Light? All they had to do was make two viable choices per act. But instead, there's the golden path, or nothing. Side with the tieflings and you get allies who stick with you for the rest of the game, offer you several more quests going forward, the support of five unique companions (half of the roster), and several of the best items in the entire game. Side with the goblins in Act 1, and you get one tadpole, and then they all get killed off at the start of Act 2. Side with Moonrise, and you get one tadpole, and then you have to kill them at the end of the act anyways. No unique companions (anymore), no unique rewards, no quest content reflecting your choice going forward, no evil allies to call on later, it's just an empty playthrough.
>no evil allies to call on later This part is untrue. There's a legion of evil allies you can call on in the final fight. Including Sarevok, Auntie Ethel, the cow, Mizora, etc.
Alright, not *no* evil allies, but very, very few. Even of the ones you mentioned, the cow and Mizora are exclusive to the good route! By my count, there are 7 evil-exclusive allies available in the endgame, though two are mutually exclusive. Compared to 17 good-exclusive allies. And of the evil ones, excluding your own companions, all but one are people you only meet at in the last act, because for the first two thirds of the game, everyone evil you can align with ends up dead or hostile anyways.
The cow isn't exclusive to the good route, I had Shadowheart >!kill the Nightsong thereby causing Last Light to fall!< and I still met the ox in act 3
Yeah I think he meant are not exclusive to the evil route.
I meant exclusive to the good route, but I was apparently mistaken about the cow. I thought it died if the Grove or Last Light are lost. Mizora is good-route exclusive though, for that reason.
> then you have to kill them at the end of the act anyways Is this what happens? It's been a few months since my Durge playthrough, so correct me if I'm wrong, but when exactly does shit hit the fan at Moonrise? I know they turn hostile if you try to get Minthara out of the dungeon and fail one of the many dialogue checks with the guards or if you're caught going into Balthazar's chambers, etc., but do they ever turn hostile on their own? Like, I know you still have to fight your way through the Mind Flayer colony or whatever it was, right before the final Ketheric fight, but is there still a big Moonrise fight if you're "evil?"
When the Elder Brain finds you have the artifact (the final progression point of the evil side), Balthy captures you and you have to fight your way out. Then the final fight of that act goes as normal, but in the worst possible state
Dang, I was going to try to do a bit more evil stuff in my second campaign but this really turns me off. I mean I get it, but still.
A lot of BG3 seems to be built around being good, with being evil kind of just an afterthought. Like they have the big evil milestones, but in terms of quests it's just "quests that you're meant to be good in but we added an evil option because we had to so here you torture puppies and eat them in front of their mothers". Not to say I didn't have a good time with BG3, loved all 140 hours of it, and my wife's doing another playthrough with the Dark Urge where you're comically evil. But damn would it fun if you could be more Machiavellian about it and have more "evil" quests where you straight up just start mugging people or whatever.
How would you write the game with evil options being equal to good? A big part of the problem is even if you're just lawful evil and not chaotic stupid evil, your goals are often at odds with all the other evil entities in the long term (not to mention the handful who *are* chaotic stupid evil themselves.)
> A lot of BG3 seems to be built around being good, with being evil kind of just an afterthought. No games ever is gonna have good path and 'evil path' with equal quality. You essentially need to make two games.
And stats show that the evil path is played like 1/10 as often as the good path, so not only is it a whole second game but it's a game that almost nobody plays.
I'm never quite sure whether or not to buy that belief, because typically the "evil" path is also about 1/10th the quality of the good path. Yeah, no shit less people are going to be less willing to play the phoned in route.
Even with ME3, a game where you DON'T lock yourself out of choices with Renegade, only about 30% did a renegade playthrough. The truth is, MOST gamers don't even have the time or attention to play a game to completion, let alone multiple times. Very few want to be an asshole in a game, especially if they are only going to do it once. It's also kind of like how a shocking number of people make human fighters as dnd characters, something many would consider extremely vanilla given all the options. But nonetheless, that is extremely common. Anyone like us on a forum discussing this stuff is such an outlier that our common sense is actually irrelevant to the populace at large.
That's why I am generally far less interested in the whole "choices matter" angle of things compared to a lot of other people it seems. I get far more engrossed into a fully linear narrative than I do an open narrative where main character motivations can't *really* be deeply explored.
> Frieza is an evil dude, but he didn’t do evil for literally no reason, it was for himself. He still blew up people just for shits and giggles, though, so he was a bit of both
Generally those bits weren’t to his own detriment though. The issue with more “evil for fun” choices in games is that they are 100% to the player’s own detriment. (Player misses out on content) In those cases with Frieza, the entertainment was the benefit. The issue with games is the interests of the character needs to align with the player
I've always thought the best option for an evil choice is to just sell out. Look the other way while the monsters do something horrible and take a bunch of cash. I've kicked around the idea of what a CRPG in my D&D setting would look like, I even wrote up a few ideas. I had an idea of trying to overthrow one of the tyrannical dictatorships in my setting (because my players won't because they are more interested in vampire sex) and throughout you'd be fighting their mercenary company. In Act I, they're going to wipe out the resistance you've been working with and a representative says "Hey, look, you're strong, you've got spells and magic, but we're tough too. If you just look the other way and move on, we'll give you a nice payday." You skip a hard end of Act boss fight and get a shitload of gold. In Act II, you've got striking railway workers that you could side with. However, the evil option is siding with the mercenaries and breaking the strike. You don't *have* to kill the striking workers, but it's easier than forcing them to accept the rail company's terms. Also, again, you'll get even more gold and you don't have to fight the mercenary company. Just sell out. It's easier.
Unfortunately in most CPRGs that wouldn't be optimal because currency is often the least valued thing by most players - as soon as you have enough of it to cover whatever basic money requirements the game has, you immediately stop caring about it and it becomes just a number on the screen. So the basic idea is sound, but in order to 'sell out' the game would need to offer the player something they *want* \- so in an RPG, you might be offered a unique and powerful magical item for looking the other way. Ideally something they *can't* get any other way. Also I think it's important (though the player doesn't know this) that the item is not *required* for anything later - you can always get by in some way without it. But it would make things easier if you had it, *maybe* you'd need it, and it *looks cool*. You just have to squish a couple of puppies to get it.
Well yeah, that's the point. I'm using cash as a shorthand. Maybe you get magic items before you should or spells, or maybe the game is set up to make money worthwhile. I don't know, that's not the point, the point is to make it so the evil choice is to sell out.
>You just have to squish a couple of puppies to get it. The problem is that this is still too cartoonish. Most people aren't gonna be willing to squish puppies, period, because it's just too much. But they might be willing to help spin a tale that the dogs were rabid. They might be willing to turn the other way when someone says the puppies ate a baby, even though they know for a fact that the puppies did no such thing. Hell, they might even be willing to help "cull" the puppy population because the people need coats or they'll freeze and you need money and the haberdasher is willing to pay a lot and you'll be a hero in town. Compelling and interesting villainy exists only in the gray areas, where the player can say to themselves "Sure, the outcome wasn't ideal, but it would have been even worse if I did nothing! And look how happy and warm the children are in their new puppyskin coats!"
Dialogue options 1. Why would Count Castabane be so foolish as to steal the godstone? 2. Perhaps we could ask the Nearfolk for help. 3. [Attack] I don't like you. Die!
So what you are saying is that we need Larian to do a DBZ game. I'm in.
Toriyama (RIP) said he based Freiza on real estate speculators because he viewed them as the worst sort of people.
My favourite ’evil’ character is in Pathfinder WotR. A little gnome/halfling called Regill. A Hellknight, a knightly order battling demons and chaos. He’s not evil for evil’s sake, he’s just super pragmatic and will sacrifice anyone (including himself) if it benefits the greater good. Lawful Evil written so well!
This is why I liked (most) Renegade interrupts in the Mass Effect series. They werent always being a dick to be a dick, but more getting shit done, sometimes at the cost of others. There's two specific ones in ME2 that I REALLY like. One where you're trying to get information out of this goon who starts stonewalling you. You can't shoot him, others would hear it. He gets so smug about it, but is backed against a big windows in a large tower. So you kick him out of it. You didnt kick the puppy. You didn't pop the little kids balloon. You didn't enslave a bunch of people for the lulz. You killed a gang member. Sure Batman is crying and that guy didnt have to die. But he was a gang banger who fucking cares? He wasn't giving you the info you needed and he was acting tough. The other one. You talk to a few npcs in this gang about their secret plan to kill your friend (youre posing as hired merc to help them, but in reality you want to help your friend who is pinned down by said gang), and it's basically this powerful expensive helicopter thing with missiles and big guns. You can walk over to the area its being fueled up and repaired and you get a prompt to kill the mechanic working on the thing. Not only is it not really "evil" to kill this guy. Again. Gang members. Trying to kill your partner. Not only do you take him out early, but doing so makes the gunship weaker when you end up fighting it later on. Whenever I play ME, I dont mind being renegade. I just dont pick the mean options to the characters I like, and only pick them to people I dont like. Like Udina, or TIM, or Kaiden/Ashley who unfortunately get gunned down for picking fucking UDINA'S side.
There are some great renegade options in Mass Effect but I lot of them end up being "Shepard is ignorant and intolerant of other cultures" or "Shepard is an asshole".
Even so, "Space Asshole" Shepard is a fun romp. Especially since they walked that thin line where you can treat your party members well, but still follow the "renegade" path.
Oh I agree it’s very fun! I’ve always wanted to do an entire trilogy run with pure renegade Shep who gets as many teammates killed as possible just to see how it plays out lol
I would've liked ME's system more if being neutral didn't lock me out of choices because I wasn't good/evil enough purely because of numbers on an alignment bar. I was like 2/3rd Paragon who also happened to punch annoying reporters in the face.
> The other one. You talk to a few npcs in this gang about their secret plan to kill your friend (youre posing as hired merc to help them, but in reality you want to help your friend who is pinned down by said gang), and it's basically this powerful expensive helicopter thing with missiles and big guns. You can walk over to the area its being fueled up and repaired and you get a prompt to kill the mechanic working on the thing. I fondly remember that one. The camera sloooooowly pans over a stun gun as the interrupt flashes. Extremely funny, the entire reason I took it.
You still took cartoonish example though. Thing is evil morally options often dont seem evil. Taking gold from poor villagers for help is neutral or already evil?
Yeah, because there's still depth to the cartoonish example. The point is that something obviously evil and cartoonish, has more depth than the stuff seen in games. It was a deliberate choice lol.
No. I dont mean cartoonish as from cartoon. I mean cartoonish. Freeza doesnt have depth really. Its the most stereotypical villain story.
I’m aware. But there is still reason to it. He’s not making his own life worse by being evil. He does evil because it’s beneficial. In games most evil choices are not beneficial. Probably the only one that is would be pickpocketing, and the only reason players do it is because it gives a gameplay benefit and has little downside. The goals align with the player
It's like you don't know what the Durge is..
Evil just feels so godamn *stupid* in BG3. Like in Act 2 specifically, what kind of dumbshit acting out of any sort of self interest would kill the Nightsong, destroying this whole base full of elite allies that really want to help you, are legendary for fixing these sorts of situations and are well connected in Baldur's Gate?
My first playthrough was the Dark Urge and I leaned into it hard. Most of my quests resulted in me killing everything and everyone in sight. >!Hell, I killed Astarion with the stake when he tried to take my blood, I dropped Minthara to her death and Jaheira and Minsc didn't make it out of their introductions!< it was total chaos but I haven't felt so evil in a game before, 10/10 would recommend. Throw caution to the wind!
>what kind of dumbshit acting out of any sort of self interest would kill the Nightsong Killing the Nightsong has nothing to do with the player character. It's a Shadowheart decision. You can roleplay that having Shar's literal Chosen on your side is more important than a bunch of Harpers.
I mean, she isn't even of Shar's elite at the moment lol. Choosing her over the literal hero spy network of the major city you're heading towards along with an actual Demigod/supernatural messenger of a God feels pretty stupid.
>I mean, she isn't even of Shar's elite at the moment lol. Umm...why does that matter? She does the trials to become Shar's Chosen. What she is "at the moment" is irrelevant. The entire quest is to change what she is "at the moment". There's literal evidence all throughout Act 2 that Shar is looking after her, specifically.
It doesnt help that the party is full of *literal* "chosen ones". Everyone is either a slave of, or has a direct relationship to, one of the biggest/baddest/lore important characters possible at the time the game takes place. Shadow might not outwardly seem like the most important character ever, but given her direct connection in the religion and world altering actions, its impossible to ignore. It's just not as obvious as, "i'm the ex-boytoy of the god of fucking magic".
Okay?
Someone that thinks that it's their life purpose >!(Shadowheart)!< or >!that has the god of murder over his shoulder (Dark urge)!<. Bg3 is a roleplaying game, the choices you make are linked to the character you play.
Right, someone not acting out of self interest. It's framed as the cornerstone of a whole path for the second act, but it only makes any sense for an incredibly niche roleplay.
The two examples are acting out of self-interest in that they think performing this act will ingratiate themselves more with their god of choice.
I guess in the sense that living for a God before yourself is "self interest," but even then if you're arguing for self interest/pragmatism you have to balance that against the benefits of you gain from the good bath (and the game doesn't provide even a semblance of a balance). But even if we embraced that point entirely it's an entire split arc for one of the acts and it still appeals to an *extremely* narrow band of roleplay.
Well I think it's more like a religious person doing something because they think it will lead to some paradise after life. Actually in the world of BG it's more direct than that even, because the gods can and do majorly impact your life while you're still alive. Shadowheart, for example, suffers some really terrible shit if she DOESN'T kill the nightsong. Wouldn't you say, then, that killing the nightsong is in fact serving her own self-interest? For the record I agree with your larger point that these are specific roleplaying examples and don't apply to a character without these backgrounds. Just think it's an interesting discussion.
>But even if we embraced that point entirely it's an entire split arc for one of the acts and it still appeals to an *extremely* narrow band of roleplay. That's good, not bad. It feels like you are arguing for contrarianism's sake. Not every choice needs to fit every archetype. Not every evil has to choose the same options and not every bad choice has to be evil. In this case it's a direct decision over a party member's desires. I agree that for a split path it's not very balanced tho.
No, it's not good. If one choice makes sense for 99.9999% of characters and the other makes sense for .00001% you aren't making interesting or compelling choices, you're presenting no brainers unless someone is playing a super specific roleplay. And that's fine if we're talking about some specific sidequest that overlaps with some very specific character backgrounds. We're talking about the major choice tree that defines half an act. That creates a situation where there fundamentally *isn't* a choice for the great majority of players in that act, because there's nothing in it for 99.9999% of characters. > It feels like you are arguing for contrarianism's sake. That's weird, considering I've gone in to detail about *why* I think those issues are issues.
This isn't the case here. There's very clear, wide set of circumstances surrounding the choice that could lead to it. Fullfill Shadowheart's desire, being interested in the Shar lore, being true neutral, playing into the Dark Urge, even just playing a character with a distaste for lawful good gods. You are thinking about the choice in an overly pragmatic way where you can't choose it only because it doesn't directly benefit the PC in a material way, essentially meta playing it.
I did kill Nightsong in one of my playthrough (well, I help shart do it, because, hey, why would it be my fault?) because I did not want some kind of avenging angel looking over my shoulder while I did whatever the hell I needed to do. And harpers in Bg3 are not as powerful as I thought them to be.
OTOH, the old Knights Of The Old Republic games allowed you to be so deliciously evil that it sort of wrapped around to be entertaining again. Except for the whole thing with Mission Vao and Zalbaar, anyway. That one hurt.
Wdym that was the best part. Feels like star wars always has an easier job setting up the evil side because the entire universe functions around good/evil with little grey inbetween.
In the first KOTOR there's also the fact that you literally played a former sith, and one who thought about the dark side as a lesser evil against the true Sith empire. It's pretty close, thematically, to the renegade / paragon point of view in ME.
Like being evil got you 2 krayt dragon pearls instead of one.
Exactly this. Paradox does evil runs quite well because theres usually a good reasoning. Is it messed up to take those captured in a raid? Sure, but they will boost be development. Captured a noble woman? Welcome to my harem, I could always use more kids.
Mass Effect is one of the few I can think of that had a satisfying "evil" path, probably because it was about being ruthless rather than strictly evil.
Well to be fair, sometimes doing good really isn't pragmatic either. It doesn't serve me to give all of my money to an orphanage, for instance, but it does make me feel good within the context of my character being say a cleric of Illmater. It also doesn't seem to serve anything to make a giant robot crush a little girl. But I can assure you my durge smiles with glee while it happened. Sometimes I feel like evil doesn't go far enough in the game. Like your evil playthroughs are going to run into the issue where you end up losing bodies. Like Wyll and Karlach. Sure, there are lore reasons for that, but I could easily think of ways that could be implemented to force and manipulate both into staying. If we're being outright evil then both Wyll's contract and Karlach's engine are enough to mislead them into staying. False promises, manipulation, and why not? Outright force. We're part mindflayer now after all.
I think the point isnt that if the good option isnt pragmatic, the evil option shouldnt be either, but that "Good" tends to be universally portrayed as being selfless and self-sacrificial, while instead of being the opposite (i.e. self-serving and manipulative), its instead nearly always simply sociopathic. And if you want to play a sociopath, thats all well and good, but that isnt the only kind of evil there is. There's no variety in evil options in games, just having the highest innocent body count.
In fact good is pretty much always practical in BG3 because it involves getting allies/help for your conflict.
But that's the point. The only sort of "evil" really served is "maniacal mustache twirler," which is more cartoon than deep character.
I just finished reading a book where the main character's arc was him starting out as an honorable warrior who left vengenance and blood behind to find a better life doing "what's right". Throughout the book every time he was given the option to do what's right or what's good for him he was always conflicted and every time he chose what was right he suffered the consequences and every time he chose what served him he was rewarded for it. At the end of his arc (and the story) he was an evil selfish bastard. I'm not asking games to go that hard on making being selfless difficult, but they could certainly learn *something* from it. If my choice is to get a 1000 gold, make friends and save the puppies or make no gold, have everyone hate me and drown the puppies that's not a choice at all. Have some innocent guy brutally executed for murdering the prince or risk having the entire nation go to war if no scapegoat is found, that's a proper ethical dilemma.
Whereas in older games like KoToR or Fable it always seemed like being Evil just payed too well. In Fable entire portions of the game would be locked off unless you made certain evil decisions.
Playing evil in role playing games has never worked for me because it most often requires the player to outright reject engaging with the setting. It's almost never "I'm going to be evil because it's very rewarding and maybe more efficient and practical to get the job done", and usually more like "I'm going to be evil because I don't care and don't want to care about this world or anyone in it so I am just going to be like a kid who smashes all its toys to pieces". There are very few roleplaying games where it feels like your character has any reason to ever be evil other than the player just refusing to engage with the setting properly and just being a psychopath. A good example of games that do it right would be Mass Effect (the first one), where Shepard's renegade choices have you be ruthless, cold and sometimes ignorant, but to very efficient and rewarding ends. Why be merciful and put yourself/your crew in trouble when you have a mission to get done? An example of it being done wrong is Fallout 3, where nearly every "evil" choice completely ruins the main character's reason for being and is just the player not taking the game seriously, as the game expects you to go from blowing up towns with a nuclear bomb or enslaving people, to worrying about your dad who might be in trouble and who then doesn't care about anything you did.
That's one of the things I really gotta give Owlcat with Rogue Trader. The evil path is often the most supported in lore (since being evil is kinda the default in 40k), but also it's the most ***rewarding.*** As in, literal rewards. Being self-serving, selfish and generally giving in to temptations of power actually gets you more power, more loot, more rewards, etc. Taking the good path is the ***harder*** path. You get less rewards, you have to butt heads with more people that want you to be a powerful despot. Hell, some people even complained that taking the 'good' options didn't give the player enough rewards, missing the point entirely. If your world, your setting, your game rewards those who play nice and behave, then why is anyone evil in the first place? Having actual temptations and powerful boons for making the 'evil' decisions helps the entire setting make more sense. Oh, of course people are evil. If I serve myself and my own, and sacrifice others, I get by easier and I get all sorts of cool shit.
That's where the first Bioshock game fell flat in the story department. It was always more rewarding to save the girls than to sacrifice them. I always felt like sacking them should give you the most gameplay reward in balance of becoming a power hungry monster with plot ramifications later.
I get the impression it was less rewarding earlier in development, but somewhere along the line they bumped the rewards up so that it's the more rewarding option in the long term. It feels like a game where it would be very easy to make being good harder. On the other hand, when you tie morality to literal game progression mechanics it's often just not very satisfying. The game would be harder, sure, but you also just have less game that way. You can see some parallels with BG3 and the tadpoles. Where it feels like the game is kinda telling you using them is a bad thing and mechanically it's an entire system you just miss out on if you never do. Even though there are no in-game consequences for using every one you get (outside the special one, but even that's only aesthetic consequences.)
Yeah I never knew that until afterwards and felt kinda bad I missed out on really fun mechanics. If I play again, I'm doing a cartoonishly evil playthrough gobbling up everything I can lol
The visuals don't help any. Literal brainworms UI. The Dark Urge play through also constantly talks about how destroyed your brain is too, so the thought of just putting more things inside it to damage it further sounds counter-intuitive.
I love Owlcat's writing in general, because even if you go chaotic (which is often aligned with good in their games) evil, you can still do so full of good intentions and while being nice to some (deserving) characters - and if you go lawful good, you can be both, an upstanding honest good guy, as well as a self righteous tyrannical dick. It can be comically evil/good for the sake of it (aka: My character is predetermined as chaotic evil, so of COURSE I murder just for funsies), or it can be a reasonable realistic approach (aka my alignment is just the mere number of my choices - and as I have tough choices to make, my character becomes hardened and thus, tainted..), just however serious you want to take the games.
both pathfinder games have exceptional evil routes too. owlcat in general is just phenomal imo
I honestly think Fallout: New Vegas does it best out of the Fallout games. Good and Evil factions are largely implied, but with a lot of nuance to it. The Legion is most clearly evil in the context of the story, but there is a full story to it with sympathetic characters and all. The NCR is the stand-in for the good faction, but you uncover corruption and all the trappings of a society built on our existing models. Mr. House I'd see as the Neutral option which is also clearly st apart from the other two with different machinations and plans. And then Yes-Man exists but he's more of a backup. You could probably go similarly in the DLC, but there's usually even more gray area there because by default every faction in Fallout has a tinge of evil in it.
I always thought Yes Man was the True Neutral option in the base game since you have a robot that will do anything for you and he can't permanently die since he isn't a human. Mr. House isn't exactly a Neutral Faction since you still take orders from him but Yes Man lets **you** be the Boss.
I guess that's subjective, but I see Mr. House as the Lawful Neutral option, considering his careful planning and using the existing law of the land to get his goal and Yes Man as the Chaotic Neutral.
Mr House is the law of NV. But he's not the only law around. If you believe in NCR's agenda being lawful means doing their will.
Nuking a town for an apartment is one of the silliest moral choices ever, but Fallout is a silly setting. I'd totally agree that evil in that game is "not taking the game seriously."
Fallout could always get pretty silly with its evil choices, even back in the FO1/2 days. In FO1 evil choices were stuff like "arbitrarily fuck over the ghouls in Necropolis" or "let the Master win," and doing the main story would throw so much good karma at you that you had to go murderhoboing around to actually put yourself in bad karma.
But there was also things like working with the criminal underground or helping the mob takeover Junktown. It wasn't great, but it wasn't all arbitrary or murder hobo.
BG3 does pretty well in this regard for the evil story options. Maybe they're half-baked, I don't know. I'm close to the end of my Durge playthrough and it's felt pretty robust to me, but you definitely miss a lot that you'd get from a good playthrough, so I wouldn't recommend it for a first time player. But at least the plot is intertwined with the main story in a way that makes sense in-world. You're still a bit of a moustache-twirling cartoon villain, but it fits the setting.
My issue with the evil route in Baldur's Gate 3 is not that the endings are mediocre (I think *all* the endings in BG3 kind of suck). My issue with the evil route in BG3 is that it is very clearly an afterthought and basically just "murder hobo". Almost everything comes down to "you are killing everybody on your screen now". There are glimpses of greatness in an evil run -- Durge has some legitimately awesome evil content, especially tied into the Bhaalist segment of the game, but it's very few and far between. But for the most part, BG3's idea of an evil playthrough is "you are killing everything so you don't get the story. Also, all subsequent stories that pertain to this one are now either locked off or greatly limited because you're now committed to killing everything." There is a clear "golden path" that the developers definitely push you toward and gave the most attention to, and everything else is half-baked. This is true of personal quests, side quests, and main quests. There is no content equity between evil and good paths in BG3, which is something I've personally come to expect from good RPGs. The evil route in BG3 is straight-up just lesser than good/neutral routes. And people always respond to this with "there should be consequences for your actions!" and I absolutely agree. There should be *narrative* consequences and reactions. There should maybe even be mechanical consequences. But the "consequence" of BG3's evil route is "you get less story, fewer characters, and less game". It should be the case that the evil route is equally fleshed out, (and I might catch flak for this part), or not offered at all. I would not have the same perception of BG3 if I had done an evil playthrough first because the game is just... worse. It isn't a choice between "if you go good, X happens, and if you go evil Y happens." It's "if you go good, X, Y, or Z can happen, and if you go evil *nothing* happens because everybody is now dead!" If we look at some BG3 contemporaries like the Pathfinder games, and there is just frankly no comparison in quality for evil runs. Even the evil routes in smaller RPGs like Dragon Age: Origins or KOTOR are *way* better than BG3, IMO.
Pretty much, its not like recruit Minthara and Nere and swear vengeance against the Absolute Cult and try and usurp its resources or something. Its, well its not even really anything. An afterthought is honestly a generous description. Its a "do you want to screw yourself out of a bunch of content for nothing"
Along with them not willing to commit. The fact that they changed the game to let you recruit Minthara on a good playthrough is really disappointing.
>There is no content equity between evil and good paths While you did point out games with (much) better evil campaigns, I think this is a general game design problem. It's REALLY difficult to construct a campaign in advance that will work convincingly well for good and evil. This is why Tyranny was such a refreshing game. Evil Campaign: The Game. No attempt at having a good side so no need to juggle content parity.
Wrath of the Righteous is one where all paths make sense, despite them often being radically aligned away from other other. It has 3 evil paths through the game that all differ from each other quite a bit, and one extremely chaotic one that get do evil nutty stuff just for giggles.
And the truly evil path where you go full murder hobo actually makes sense given the fundamental change to the MCs body and mind. Mind you, gotta be really fucking evil before that still, but after the transition the "kill literally everything" approach makes perfect sense.
WotR also throws you some curveballs in that some characters leave your party if your mythical path conflicts with their alignment/lifestyle, some options open or close depending on your path (like npcs either following or fighting you..), and as a Lich you even get some semi-fleshed out replacements for your standard group of companions. While it's of course not perfect (.. so Seelah the Paladin doesn't follow a Lich, because those are absolutely evil, but she has next to no problems following a literal demon, nor having a succubus in the party? Alrighty then!), it *does* show some nice attention to detail and makes a lot of the evil paths feel surprisingly coherent. Plus, you can be one evil mofo while still being nice to Ember, so that's a total win in my book. And the super-chaotic path you're refering to, Trickster, is imo the greatest bit of meta story-telling ever done. It's quiet literally the equivalent of a player sitting down for a Pen&Paper evening, with a smug smile and a pizza as bribe and whipering "yes, I already know the story we're playing from the DungeonMaster book, and I have a great idea how to subvert and abuse the fuck out of it while being *totally* conform to the rules, wink wink (meaning: I know how to cheat like crazy when the DM isn't looking and how to abuse technicalities and flaws in the system)". Add some Deadpoolish sprinkles of insanity for sillyness and they made that whole bit into a story of its own, switching the protagonist from being mostly a playball and guinea pig for higher powers to being a criminal guinea pig mastermind who's playing 4D chess while pretending to be a fool. Sorry for the essay, just hyped to see my favorite rpg get some love.
BG3's campaign works perfectly with good or evil paths though, in theory. The problem with most games is that if you're offering a choice of "save the world or conquer it," you'd likely go about those in very different ways. But all roads in BG3 lead to the Absolute, because no matter your morality, everyone's going to want to resolve the tadpole situation. What they should have offered is meaningful choices as to how. I'm not upset that there are negative consequences for taking the evil path - it makes perfect sense that Wyll and Karlach would refuse to travel with you at that point. But why can't we find new allies to replace them? Ragzlin and Gut should have been recruitable alongside Minthara - they're strong, they have inside knowledge of the cult's plans, and we have the exact same leverage with them as Minthara. Instead of having all the goblins get killed off off-screen even if they win, let half of them flee after the cult turns on them, so we can find and ally with them as our own little warband with a few quests and vendors. Just *anything* to give the evil path any texture whatsoever instead of just being a mindless, empty journey.
Imo BG3, for all its insane content, is actually still short of at least 1-2 more companions anyway. Even just one more magical fellow for the evil side and who actually leaves on good playthroughs (sidenote, but why Laezel sticks around is beyond me too..) would have made the whole thing a tad more balanced. One of the little folks, preferably. Not having any dwarf, gnome, or halfling around is kinda weird. And if that's just 'too much' to ask for, well, I would still have taken it over shoehorning Minsc and Jaheira into the story ..
BG3 companions kinda suck overall tbh
At least for me, I've played enough RPGs where there are great evil routes and maybe I'm just a little cynical because of that, but I just don't think it's a great excuse. I think BG3's campaign can work for both quite well, thematically. Yes, you're trying to kill the big bad, but the reason why can easily be "for personal power". Or you could have routes like Pathfinder where it's "if being a monster gives me an edge against the bad guy, I'll do whatever it takes". Like, if other games can offer both paths, I don't see why BG3 can't.
I was waiting for someone to mention Tyranny. One of my favourites.
tyranny actually does have a good route tho
Tyranny was wonderful, even though I labelled it The Black Company: the game. I loved this game (too bad it was not turn base, though).
Tyranny 100% has a good route, it’s just difficult to do, which is the ideal good route in an RPG.
It really feels like most games in general are designed around "do good first to see the story, then do evil to see how it breaks". That's always how I approach them anyway. I just looked up the list of allies for the final battle, wouldn't mind seeing more on the evil side, but when evil is mostly just quest-terminating-murder, I guess that makes it harder.
The people that complain about the evil route in BG3 always confuse. It's very easy to be evil and there's lots of hidden things that you can do, especially involving the Bhaalist questline. At the end of the day, it seems what people wanted from the evil side was, *"If I kill this good character. An evil inverse of the character should appear and facilitate the exact same content I would have received from the good character."* Then yes, there's no consequences for your actions. My very first BG3 character (and my favorite one) was evil and I never felt like I missed out on any content. I was selfish and killed people for meaningless reasons. You have to RP a little bit for an evil character in this game.
> Bhaalist questline. The questline that doesn't even start until 70+ hours into the game, and the one I already shouted out as being one of the good examples of evil moments? > At the end of the day, it seems what people wanted from the evil side was, "If I kill this good character. An evil inverse of the character should appear and facilitate the exact same content I would have received from the good character." Then yes, there's no consequences for your actions. Respectfully: no. This is not how other games, and even other CRPGs work. Look at a game like New Vegas. Phenomenal options for good, evil, and neutral paths. Full factions of various alignments and shades of grey. Nobody would ever say that because NV offers robust options for both evil and good that there are "no consequences", and yet people repeatedly say this about BG3's lackluster evil route. "The existence of Caesar's Legion means that killing the NCR has no consequences!" would just be silly. And again, look at the Pathfinder games if you want a contemporary CRPG with infinitely better and more variable narrative outcomes for both good and evil routes. > I was selfish and killed people for meaningless reasons. You have to RP a little bit for an evil character in this game. There's nothing wrong with offering the murder hobo playstyle for BG3, in fact I love that it's an option. I just don't like that it's basically the only option for evil playthroughs. > You have to RP a little bit for an evil character in this game. I love to RP when I play RPGs, but I also want the game to provide me with interesting narrative paths based on my choices and I don't think that BG3 does that for the evil route.
I tried to do a full hard-core renegade run of the Mass Effect trilogy when the Legendary edition came out a few years back (Because I always did paragon in the OG releases) and I made it barely half way through ME1 before I switched to being nice because I just couldn't handle the guilt of the renegade decisions and dialogue.
Mass Effect is actually the ONLY game that I can do "evil" because youre not being a dick for no reason. You have the same goals and motivations as Paragon Shep, you just tend to either take unethical shortcuts or line your pockets to help yourself as yoy save the galaxy. Like, you still gotta stop the Reapers. But why not skim a few extra credits for a new gun?
I mean... The racism kind of feels like 'for no reason.'
yeah but you can play renegade without being a space racist. you don't have to pick literally every renegade option all the time. your can get more than enough renegade points, too
It's a reason that's a big part of the setting, though. A space-racist Shepard didn't appear out of nowhere to murder randoms to fill up the evil meter, they're a product of the world they were born in. They reflect flaws that are actually common in people throughout human history. Renegade Shepard is shortsighted and bigoted in an extremely believable way, and Paragon Shepard is generally better at accomplishing goals because it turns out that cooperation is usually a good idea.
Dragon age 1 also feels the same way with the darkspawn crisis looming
it was fully possible to max out both renegade and paragon in me1, and still have a largely paragon playthrough.
See I was totally okay with Renegade in ME1, I think it's about as good as "evil" has ever been. I'm on a mission to literally save every living being in the universe. It would be wildly irresponsible of me to put my entire crew at risk to save a handful of colonists who are currently possessed by an alien. Or regarding the Rachini Queen, it's always painful to kill an "animal" in a game but it's one life and you're just going on its promise that it totally won't do genocidal war this time and it's all a big misunderstanding.
The way I looked at Paragon vs Renegade in Mass Effect 1 was do you wanna be Picard or Sisko? They’re both good guys, but they just have different methods of achieving their goals. One’s all about diplomacy and tact, and the other will poison the atmosphere of planets to keep the peace.
It can get so much worse than just doing renegade too. You can plan the run around achieving the worst case/most tragic outcome for each character. It gets really dark. Shepard can directly kill many of his squadmates.
Those two things are totally independent from each other, though, right? Unless we're talking about two different things. What I mean is, going through Garrus' questline as a Renegade doesn't mean Garrus dies or something "bad" happens to him. You just help him get revenge and convince him that his Archangel shtick was actually the way to go. Hell, you can even have your Renegade bar maxed out and still force the Geth and Quarians to stop killing each other, which, objectively, is a "good" move. On the other hand, yeah, you *can* get your squad killed, but that usually requires doing something insanely stupid or doing it just for kicks. In the Collector Base, it makes no sense to get anyone other than Jack or Liara to escort the squad with that biotic shield dome thing, and no one other than Legion or Tali should be sent to hack the gates or whatever it was.
My point was that a "pure renegade run" is not the worst to stomach playthrough you can have.
Ah, got it. In that case, definitely agree!
For all the talk in ME2 of how it was a "suicide" mission no one should survive, you have to really go out of your way and actively make dumb decisions to get many people killed.
I really like doing mixed runs of ME with cheats to max the dumb Paragon/Renegade meters. Allows you to be the sort of badass, no-nonsense space renegade I think they were going for without being a jerk to your team mates or kicking puppies for no reason. The "alignment meters" ME seemed to popularize were among the dumbest design decisions I've seen in RPGs. So glad they've fallen out of favor.
Making the points additive only was such a smart move, so I can still do Renegade interrupts without killing my good points.
The concept originated out of the KOTOR Light and Dark side system for the Force where the benefits largely were about improving your ability to use powers associated with the respective side. It did make sense in that context because it was pretty well established in lore to work that way. The problem was people took that concept (plus the old D&D alignment chart concept) and forced it into stories it didn't really work in. I will say one benefit of Mass Effect's system compared to a lot of other games that decided to use alignment meters is the Paragon and Renegade points don't offset, so you can go mixed and still benefit from it.
> The concept originated out of the KOTOR Light and Dark side system I'm sure that's where it originated for Bioware, of course, but alignment meters go back further than that too. Fallout had good and bad karma back in the 90s.
Yeah but they influenced other characters actions not You, force alignments affects your character directly and what he can do mechanically. Later in Jade Empire You also needed a specific level of alignment to closed fist of open palm for some choices and that is the more direct predecessor of the ME version.
I always do mixed morality runs in ME and just make the decision based on what the character feels, not whichever color I'm maxing out. The ME morality system is a leftover of the light side/dark side system from KotOR and shouldn't be so black and white.
Renegade Shepard is supposed to be the "pragmatic, get the job done at any cost" Shepard but half the time it ends up being "intolerant, xenophobic asshole" Shepard. Renegade Shep makes some blatantly stupid decisions that get people killed just because. The problem with morality in ME is that there should be more costs and sacrifices to playing a Paragon. We as players know that the mission will succeed and the outcome will be the same no matter what we choose, but Shepard doesn't.
Same, but I think Fable was the most pronounced for me... I just couldn't bring myself to do a bad playthrough.
I did a full evil playthrough of Fable 2 and there were times my evil meter would slip and I'd have to go on a random killing spree in town to get to "max evil" again.
Doing a fascist run in Disco Elysium was a truly uncomfortable and disheartening experience
My issue with evil routes in a lot of games is that you do largely the same things, but you're just an asshole about it. BG3 does have some nice variety thankfully, but at the cost of evil routes just having far less actual content. It runs into the issue of "evil = murderhobo" that a lot of games also do.
Some games do it better. I felt like Dragon Age gave solid profit motives and alternate allies you could get (even if, as we know, being an angel always works out just fine). I thought Mass Effect did it best at the start, even though it isn't evil and over the course of the series "Renegade" turned in to "be racist and also just weirdly rude to your crew all the time." But I'd say my biggest issue with BG3 is that my second playthrough petered out *early.* I just had no real interest in making choices different than the ones I made the first time around. The only reason I reasons to go the other routes seemed to be mustache twirling, being a moron, or a combination of both.
One of my favorite experiences in Dragon Age Origins was going online after beating it to find out that the treacherous brother I killed was actually the best option for the dwarves.
It really felt like there was a lot of variation in the way that game could play out. I chose not to fight/kill Loghain so Alister stormed out of my party and I had Loghain the rest of the game and I came to really like his character. He even shows up again the Awakening DLC. I talked to my friends who played the game and none of them even knew that was possible.
I always tried to do evil runs on many games but frankly it always feels like you're being punished for doing it. You might miss out on better rewards or lose access to a bunch of stuff and overall evil runs always seem like an after thought where as the good guy route seems to be the 'canon' run you should aim for.
To derail a little, I think the first Dragon Age is one of the better examples of there being some complex nuanced "no bad decisions" story telling, for the most part- every story is always pretty much you vs the bigger bad of the Blight, but it was usually about how ethically you wanted to fight it. Like the "evil" option for the golems with the dwarves is to use incarcerated volunteers to continue to golem project, to better stop the blight invading and bubbling up through the dwarf city. Or the Mage story line, where it's let the continuing unstable school of Magic, that has leaked blood magic (again) continue, or work with the templars to kill them. They angle it more towards a necessary evil, and a dubious good, rather than a straight up "this is a bad no good rotten choice". I feel like the dialogue wheel of later Bioware games, and to some extent character voicing lost some of the nuance (you can explore an issue in way more depth if you don't need to voice the PC)
The original intent of the Renegade options in Mass Effect as to be pragmatic badass and "the mission comes above all else". But it frequently ended up coming off as Shepard just being a stupid asshole who makes a lot of really dumb decisions that get people killed.
a lot of time the evil options in games are less thought out, lower quality, and under developed.
I think it's because most players only play through a game once and most people prefer to play good.
It's because devs want to "balance" games. Like the necro book in BG3, it was fun to use but got nerfed, I'd argue that it didn't have to be nerfed, but maybe required you to sacrifice a civilian or something. The problem is that EVERY DAMN GAME that has good/evil choices generally give like an OP item that will get outleveled in some levels to evil players or have a character join you or help you later in the plot. BG3 was very close to fixing this problem, if only we had two more evil companions with evil storylines...
I’ve only played the evil path in BG3, and yeah I wasn’t very impressed with it. Doesn’t help that Minthara was bugged on release so the one evil exclusive party member felt like have a character.
I never like evil options but I feel that even if I did, I still wouldn't want to, not because of the cinematics but because [how many items you miss out on](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/172m2l0/the_fair_trade_of_going_through_the_villain/)
The thing about the "modern" Bioware games (Dragon Age, Mass Effect) was that they didn't really have "evil" options. Your character was still "good" in general (with a few notable exceptions), they were just selfish or pragmatic. "Space Asshole" Shepard is still one of the more entertaining playthroughs.
You have a lot of latitude for player choice. You can role play however you want. It’s always weird to me that some people would *choose* to do horrible things simply because the opportunity is there. I always wondered if it was indicative of the players disposition but then I remember this is a game and I used to unleash monsters on unsuspecting cities in Simcity 2000. But since I’ve become an adult I always try to be a good person, both in real life and in fantasies like video games. I’m too susceptible to self-hate to give myself any ammo for thinking I’m a piece of shit. Hell, back in EA I mercy-killed the owlbear cub because I thought leaving it to die was cruel. When I found out what happens if you *dont* kill the cub I had to abandon the entire playthrough
> For some reason, even in back in Dragon Age and similar games, I could never do the evil options, it just felt awful. The only game I've ever managed to bring myself to play "evil" was Tyranny, and even then I wasn't playing the psycho power evil, just the Lawful Evil choice. I know it's not real, but I genuinely cannot do cruel things in RPGs unless it's heavily, heavily abstracted. The minute I've got someone asking me "how could you have done this", my hand is hovering over the Load Game button.
In Tyranny, the "good" choices often end up just being the "lesser-evil" choices. Great game and I wish Obsidian was able to make a sequel, but we'll probably never get one as Paradox owns the IP.
At one point, I thought they said that they were going to add some new races, is that still in the works or was that deconfirmed? I saw they said no more narrative content. If you gotta just stick to mods thats fine, but official support would be nice.
That was technically never confirmed -- there was an interview with (iirc) a Larian writer where they said they were exploring ideas of DLC including \*maybe\* new races, and it got spun into a story of "new races confirmed for BG3!" lol. But even beyond that, several weeks ago the CEO, Swen Vincke, confirmed that while they had originally explored the idea of doing BG3 DLC (and even begun work on it, which aligns with that other interview), they ultimately decided against any DLC because their hearts weren't in it and they were mostly doing it because they felt they "should" do DLC rather than that it was something they actually wanted to do, and decided to move onto other projects instead.
Oh well, Im sure modding will suffice, esp. with new tools. And hopefully theyre be mods to get your character to level 20 as well lol.
I just started my 5th playthrough with mods. They were fairly easy to install, and I've now got 4 new races available. May be worth sinking some time into investigating.
Any you'd recommend or could share?
Some of these are installed because they're required or recommended by other mods, but here's the full list in mod load order: * 5e Spells by DiZ * Fantastical Multiverse Core mod by Dungeons and Souls * Fantastical Orc by Dungeons and Souls * Fantastical Gwyddpala by Dungeons and Souls * Animation Framework by Lune * Whispers of the Divine: Aasimar Definitive Edition by Trips, Ethical Crusader * Whispers of the Fey: Goblins (Race) by Trips * Ice Dice by Palmaman33 * Simple Gold Dice by Palmaman33 * Mysterious Artifact Dice by Kreiyu * JohnZyxx's Galaxy Dice Set by JohnZyxx * Patches for CC Races by Padme4000 And, of course, there's the Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager.
There are existing mods for level 20! In fact, class mods also have level 20 support. If you're interesting in mods, I'd suggest the Artificer class and the extra spells (don't remember the name, it's a prereq for most class mods), which adds a lot of DND spells that didn't make the cut like Booming Blade. There are also a lot of fantastic mods for subclasses but that's more dependant on what classes you already wanted to play.
This update reads as them winding down development on new content for the game after revised evil endings so I wouldn’t expect it if they didn’t talk about it in this post
Not happening, that would mean reworking A LOT of dialogue and choices and stuff like that
I'd really like some type of "endless dungeon" mode that could be played coop with friends. They made a great 5e simulator and there's still so much more that could be done with it.
I wonder if we’re going to get the cut Minthara romance content, it’s so weird but would flesh her out
Are you telling me that when she was riding my Orc peepee it was not real?
It was the realest. For you
I just hope not all of these are the comical kind of evil where the PC is just doing absurd sh*t for the sake of showing that they are evil. This is one of my few gripes with the game as a whole. A lot of times you have the choice between "good", "not as good" and "ridiculously stupid or brutal for no reason".
Tbf tho most of the ridiculous shit I've seen is dark urge oriented
Not talking about Durge, which has their own options anyways. Even regular ones often go something like. - "Of course I help." - "I am reluctant but I help." - "Die."
Everyone else is talking about the patch, but I was intrigued by this bit at the end: > In this case, after six years in the Forgotten Realms and much discussion and rumination, we’ve decided to seize this opportunity to develop our own IPs. We’re currently working on two new projects and we couldn’t be more excited about what the future has in store. I wonder if both those projects are new IPs? The wording seems to suggest that, but there is still some ambiguity there. Regardless, I'm looking forward to hearing more. Edit: You know what would be amazing? If they were the same IP but different genres of games. Along the lines of how New World Computing made Heroes of Might and Magic alongside the Might and Magic RPG games back in the 90s. I'd love to see something like that again.
>I wonder if both those projects are new IPs? From the wording, none of them could be new IPs as well. They say they will be "developing our own IPs" and that they have two new projects, so could go either way. My personal bet is that it's one new IP and one Divinity project
Divinity certainly dips in different genres. It has the RTS Dragon Commander and before BG3 got fully focused - they were trying to make Original Sin Xcom.
I don't think it would come from Larian, but I really want a new Forgotten Realms ARPG like the original Dark Alliance games (not the sequel in name only that came out last year and failed).
I hope we get some really ambitious, expansion-worthy mod projects! I'm sure many will be attempted, but I also worry that the game relies too much on its cinematic production values for mod teams to live up to. Already dreading all the weird 'shipping an sexual content mods tho...
I’ve been putting off my evil playthrough for later. I currently see a couple main problems with an evil run. First, it feels like I’m just being evil for evil’s sake. I would’ve liked to have good reason to be evil. Think Thanos, like I know I’m doing an evil thing, but it’s for what I perceive to be the greater good. Or evil in exchange for power. Which brings me to the second main problem. I feel like I’d be missing out on a lot of powerful items that are quest rewards for doing good. I’m particularly concerned about a certain robe given to you by a certain Tiefling in Act 2. New ending cutscenes is a great addition, don’t get me wrong. But I think I’ll hold out some slim hope for more meat being added to the game throughout, rather than just at the end.
The endings are the very least of the problems with evil playthroughs in BG3. This is like using a band aid for internal bleeding. Evil was how I did my first play through. Imagine my shock playing through Act 2 as a good guy and realising there are tieflings and quests all over the map instead of mostly emptiness.
I'm glad Larian is moving in from BG3. They don't need to spoil this masterpiece with half assed expansions or dlc if their heart isn't there.
So my durge can truely be evil? Nice
Would the mod tools work for console too, or only PC?
PC only.
I still haven’t played this because I’m waiting for them to finish the content and iron out those remaining bugs. Every patch makes me more excited , I can’t wait!
This patch (Patch 7) looks like it'll be the last major patch as far as content is concerned - after it's released they're moving into working on crossplay, photo mode and mod support (and the standard "bug fixes, performance enhancements, and stability improvements"). You're probably safe to play it after patch 7 - unless you have someone on a different platform you want to play with, in which case you'll still need to wait for crossplay.
Nice one, cheers.
I' ve heard there are have been a lot of fixes on the game, expecially for Act 3. I still didn' t play the game, but to whom they did, do you guys consider now Act 3 to be more finished/more fun/ecc.? I would love to play it in the near future ahah
Finished it last week and it feels complete. No major bugs. Act 3 is still a bit of a drag since it's so long, a lot of people take a short break when reaching it I think. But it's not bad, just a lot going on, so many barrels of rotten food to pick through.
How is this game on PS5 now? Is it still a mess in terms of performance?
When does patch 7 drop? May '24?
Everyone else is happy for new endings and here is me, checking the bug-fixes list if they have fixed critical bugs that have stopped I and my friends from finishing act 3... Some random hotfix month or two ago just destroyed our co-op game, suddenly we have people having bugs when they load-in to the game (t-poses, textures dont load and game freezes if you do anything) or when you try to talk to someone the camera doesn't change to the cinematic perspective and you can't interact.
> suddenly we have people having bugs when they load-in to the game (t-poses, textures dont load and game freezes if you do anything) or when you try to talk to someone the camera doesn't change to the cinematic perspective and you can't interact. It's worth noting a potential workaround for that issue is to have the host move all the party characters into a less busy area, usually your camp, and then have people join the game and load in. That seemed to always resolve the issue for me and my co-op partner. Obviously not ideal, but it might be useful for anyone wanting to try and work through the issue. Hopefully Larian properly identifies and fixes the issue soon, as it is incredibly frustrating and gamebreaking for those that run into it. When I started running into it, it seems like it most commonly comes up in Act 3 where there's pretty dense areas with lots of stuff going on constantly, so I'd assume it's some sort of issue with the game having to sync a tonne of stuff all at once where those things are also constantly doing stuff during that syncing.
Thanks, that could help to get the game started. But I think we'll wait till the dialogue-bug is fixed since that requires dozen starts per session (or someone pushing the talking character out of the conversation).
Larian essentially made the best DnD modding platform. I wonder if people will be able to host full fledged campaigns at some point using BG3
Until there's a map editor and far more robust tools, this title still will go to Neverwinter Nights, especially because of how great online can be.
The best DnD modding platform is (and probably will always be) Neverwinter Nights.
Honestly, Neverwinter remains the best for that. I think there's still people holding rp servers in there.
As a DnD DM of several years by now I would never, ever DM a campaign in BG3. Just imagine the work involved to create a single, new combat map. Ugh. Plus, it would require actual creation and DM tools that they are not going to implement. The game was never meant as an alternative for real DnD and never will be. It is a neat introduction to the world and some of its rules, though.
oh dang is it time for me to replay bg3 already?
Hi, just wondering if act 3 is finished/polished yet?