Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Larianshill]

Here's something new I've thought up today while playing evil act 3.

The most fun evil things you can do in act 3 are
1) Selling out the Nightsong to Lorroakan
2) Enacting gondian genocide on the deep gnome behalf
3) Delivering the painter into the hands of a vengeful ghost.

Now, here's the thing. All of them require you acting like a good character before.

1) Selling out Nightsong requires not killing Nightsong for Shart.
2) Enacting gondian genocide requires that you don't kill Nightsong, don't kill Isobel and save the deep gnomes. Killing Nere is not mandatory, but you're probably going to have to.
3) The painter must first be rescued from slavery at no small expense to you.

There are NO scenarios in act 3 where you can commit further evil, because you've done evil things at some point before, which only adds to the point "evil only exists to lock you out of content".

 

[Grauken]

which only adds to the point "evil only exists to lock you out of content".

Excellent

 

[AwesomeButton]

You just lose Wyll and Karlach's quests if you play evil and Minthara doesn't have one even after she gets patched. And there are a number of side quests you lose besides companion quests and you don't gain a single one

Lmao @ anyone worrying he "lost a quest" in an RPG. Losing quests means an RPG is good. If you want a medium where you don't lose "content", which is the term preferred by zoomer consoomers, then watch a movie instead. Games are supposed to be interactive, and choices have cost and consequence.

I don't mean you personally, this kind of people in general.

It should go both ways though. There should be evil only content that good misses out on also. It's clear they put all their effort into the good campaign and want to shoe horn players into that path

You won't like me for saying this but the only one who provided that much options to quests was... Sawyer in Deadfire. And they were mostly cosmetic alternatives, because the XP rewards were the same.

 

[AwesomeButton]

which only adds to the point "evil only exists to lock you out of content".

Excellent

My whole argument is that if you are playing a role-playing game, you are supposed to act in accordance with your character's moral stance on matters. If you start thinking about gaining/losing "content", you are gaming the system and likely won't have fun with the game, no matter what choice you made. Strange that I should have to explain this.

 

[notpl]

Well, be an asshole, deal with nobody wanna deal with you, should be a good life lesson for you

That's not really an argument for not making an evil path viable though.

Yeah where are the fellow assholes in the evil playthrough so we can scheme against all the heroic fags and trannies?

As far as I can tell, only one of the companions (Astarion) gets more powerful than a normal character if you complete his quest a certain way. All the rest of them don't. Additionally, it doesn't really seem like any of them have unique content. There is almost always a breadcrumb quest that overlaps with the companion quest. You don't really lose content apart from all the irritating commentary of the companion character and their tendency to way outshine your silent main character just because they get more plot and more screen time. If anything, you get more content because you can kill the "bad" guys and the "good" guys in the same run. If anything, running more companions punishes you with more cutscenes that add more meaningless gibberish piped from the remainder bin of the BritBox streaming service.

Shadowheart's stats don't change, but she gets very different equipment as a reward from siding with Shar instead of Selune in her personal quest. It's such a dramatic difference that I could see respeccing her as some kind of assassin hybrid if you go that route.

 

[AwesomeButton]

1) Selling out Nightsong requires not killing Nightsong for Shart.

Hold up, have you tested this? From what I inferred, choosing to kill Nightsong wouldn't work anyway, and she would still become free and attack the tower. She mentioned she had been killed many times before during her captivity. Right after the Moonrise Tower first battle on the ground floor, when she arrives, she comments on you releasing her in such a way that suggests she would have been there even if you hadn'd released her. Is killing or not killing Nightsong a real decision with consequences?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

PS5 players, welcome to the party.
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now for Collector's Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition players on PS5, and out for everyone September 6.

Head to head with Starfield!

Starfield won't release on PS5

 

[Larianshill]

1) Selling out Nightsong requires not killing Nightsong for Shart.

Hold up, have you tested this? From what I inferred, choosing to kill Nightsong wouldn't work anyway, and she would still become free and attack the tower. She mentioned she had been killed many times before during her captivity. Right after the Moonrise Tower first battle on the ground floor, when she arrives, she comments on you releasing her in such a way that suggests she would have been there even if you hadn'd released her. Is killing or not killing Nightsong a real decision with consequences?

You didn't have Shadowheart in your party, did you? Yes, killing Nightsong is a real thing you can do, but Shadowheart has to be the one to do it. It's the catalyst for her turn to the dark side.

 

[Zariusz]

Its ridiculously hilarious when during battle one of the enemy barbarians happens to be a halfling or gnome and it uses rage ability. Some manlet screaming and throwing tantrum, running at you on those tiny little legs and swinging some toy weapon with tiny little hands . In such moment i can barely contain my laugh, its just so hard to treat it seriously, especially if such manlet looks like a woman with dyke haircut.

 

[Shaki]

which only adds to the point "evil only exists to lock you out of content".

Excellent

My whole argument is that if you are playing a role-playing game, you are supposed to act in accordance with your character's moral stance on matters. If you start thinking about gaining/losing "content", you are gaming the system and likely won't have fun with the game, no matter what choice you made. Strange that I should have to explain this.

Yes, but role playing only works if the game supports it. If I enter next act and 99% of my evil allies from the previous one are gone forever, the act is full of empty places that obviously are supposed to be filled with good NPCs that died, and I have to fight the evil faction again anyway, it's all kinda immersion breaking and make the playthrough feel worthless. First act is the only one that supports evil roleplay, after that it all falls apart.

 

[AwesomeButton]

There should be evil only content

You realize this only works if there is some unique content on both routes.

"evil only exists to lock you out of content"

^This mentality is trash.

What I can agree with is that the game BG3 doesn't represent evil and good on an equal footing, hence you are able to tell "evil" from "good" forces. Unlike Fallout 2 with NCR vs Valut 17, or FNV... though FNV suffers from a similar problem where you are first introduced to NCR and the player tends to assume them the "good" faction opposing the "evil" Legion.

Yes, it's inherently easy to play "good" and to design for "good" characters. Not only it's a core philosophy in DnD, but the good player doesn't need half the motivation busywork on the DM's part that an evil player would need. The good player acts because he is good, and there is evil in the world. The DM has to come up with the "bad"'s motivation and it's usually non-existant. Therefore most devs do a bad job or half-ass the evil path.

I understand that, that's your argument. You're criticizing the DM that he didn't work enough on your rewards for being evil, or on your motivation for being evil, and by doing this you're rediscovering the fact that the Earth is round. This has been a fact since there have been RPGs. If you play evil, you are playing counter to the DM's plan for the campaign, and there is more burden on you for making your own fun.

If you feel so robbed of "content", then maybe you shouldn't have made those evil choices? If you want equal rewards, then what's the difference between playing evil vs playing good? And finally, if you want a complete fork in the campaign a la Witcher 2, then you practically want a second game, which for your sake I hope you didn't really expect to get.

 

[AwesomeButton]

If I enter next act and 99% of my evil allies from the previous one are gone forever, the act is full of empty places that obviously are supposed to be filled with good NPCs that died, and I have to fight the evil faction again anyway, it's all kinda immersion breaking and make the playthrough feel worthless.

Yes, and by all means tell that to Swen. I assumed, the evil motivation to kill Ketheric would be because you want to take his place in the ladder of power or something like that?

 

[AwesomeButton]

1) Selling out Nightsong requires not killing Nightsong for Shart.

Hold up, have you tested this? From what I inferred, choosing to kill Nightsong wouldn't work anyway, and she would still become free and attack the tower. She mentioned she had been killed many times before during her captivity. Right after the Moonrise Tower first battle on the ground floor, when she arrives, she comments on you releasing her in such a way that suggests she would have been there even if you hadn'd released her. Is killing or not killing Nightsong a real decision with consequences?

You didn't have Shadowheart in your party, did you? Yes, killing Nightsong is a real thing you can do, but Shadowheart has to be the one to do it. It's the catalyst for her turn to the dark side.

Sure I do, she is one of the NPCs I've almost never took out, and visible on every screenshot I've posted. I just didn't test the killing outcome, because I didn't want to break my RP flow with save/loading, and wanted to keep the mystery. Well, that's actually great, it has a real consequence. Good job Larian.

 

[whydoibother]

The Storm build is 6 Cleric and 6 Sorcerer, right?
You definitely want 2 Cleric, for Channel Divinity to roll max damage for every lightning spell, meaning you can't get the level 11 Sorcerer subclass ability to return lightning damage when attacked.

More importantly you don't get chain lightning. You want real OP storm build go cleric 2/sorcerer 4/divination wizard 6

Right, spell progression isn't shared between cleric and sorcerer. Has to be wizard. Build isn't looking that great anymore.
But 2 cleric + 2 wizard + 8 sorcerer should be good. Can learn Chain Lightning from a scroll.

 

[whydoibother]

Here's something new I've thought up today while playing evil act 3.

The most fun evil things you can do in act 3 are
1) Selling out the Nightsong to Lorroakan
2) Enacting gondian genocide on the deep gnome behalf
3) Delivering the painter into the hands of a vengeful ghost.

Now, here's the thing. All of them require you acting like a good character before.

1) Selling out Nightsong requires not killing Nightsong for Shart.
2) Enacting gondian genocide requires that you don't kill Nightsong, don't kill Isobel and save the deep gnomes. Killing Nere is not mandatory, but you're probably going to have to.
3) The painter must first be rescued from slavery at no small expense to you.

There are NO scenarios in act 3 where you can commit further evil, because you've done evil things at some point before, which only adds to the point "evil only exists to lock you out of content".

"Evil" shouldn't be purposeful waste and destruction, anyways. It should be selfish behavior and disregard for others. CEO psychopathy rather than Captain Planet villainy.

 

[Larianshill]

If you feel so robbed of "content", then maybe you shouldn't have made those evil choices? If you want equal rewards, then what's the difference between playing evil vs playing good? And finally, if you want a complete fork in the campaign a la Witcher 2, then you practically want a second game, which for your sake I hope you didn't really expect to get.

Only an imbecile could have possibly written this post.

If you feel so robbed of "content", then maybe you shouldn't have made those evil choices?

There is no reason why evil playthrough shouldn't result in evil content. Even New Vegas manages to deliver some Legion content, and it was made in 18 months and infamously had almost half the game cut.

If you want equal rewards, then what's the difference between playing evil vs playing good?

Nobody wants equal rewards, people want different rewards. Currently, the game rewards you with further quests, OP gear and merchants on the good playthrough, and does not reward you at all on the evil playthrough. Why? Why does Alfira, a penniless refugee tiefling have a magical warlock robe that would be an appropriate reward for a high level character in tabletop, and give it away to you? Why can't you loot this robe from her if she dies? Was it shoved into some cavity that your character wouldn't search? Why is Dammon the only blacksmith in the world who can make good armor? Why does sacking the druid grove result in you losing access to druid merchants because you killed them, but if you destroy the goblin camp, the Zhentarim merchant miraculously survives you killing her, doesn't habour any ill towards you later and actively covers your ass against the cult? I could go on forever about illogical retardation in this game when it comes to good and evil.

And finally, if you want a complete fork in the campaign a la Witcher 2, then you practically want a second game, which for your sake I hope you didn't really expect to get.

Nobody expected a second game. But you know, Neverwinter Nights 2 OC campaign pulled it off more than a decade ago, you could choose between the guards and the thieves of Amn, both paths were equally valid, and it impacted things down the line. Why couldn't the small indie company that is Larian just do that? Did all the money go towards animating the squid sex? Understandable, but I would have different priorities in their place. And if I were Swen, I would also not say the words "It's a shame most players won't see the evil playthrough, because we poured a lot of love into it", when I know for a fact it's not true.

 

[AwesomeButton]

"Evil" shouldn't be purposeful waste and destruction, anyways. It should be selfish behavior and disregard for others. CEO psychopathy rather than Captain Planet villainy.

Evil is embodied by the organized effort towards an evil goal. The paragon of "evil goals" is the subjugation of free will. Hence most evil villains you might think of in fantasy are looking to subjugate, lord over unwilling subjects - you have this in LOTR, in Star Wars, and in most dreivatives of the fantasy genre in videogames. The other kind of villain is the one looking for revenge, think Irenicus, though I think he was looking for power as well.

It's very handy if you check the motivations for the main character listed when you start a campaign in Mount and Blade, but think from a villain perspective.

On the other side, Good is the idyllic stasis of lack of organized effort towards any kind of goal, it's playing in the sandbox, it's the child's innocence. Hence most of the human trash writing for videogames nowadays conclude that corporations = evil, wokesters/late stage hippies = good.

 

[Reinhardt]

There should be evil only content that good misses out on also.

there is. good people don't kiss goblin feet. it's for ebul niggers.

 

[Larianshill]

I assumed, the evil motivation to kill Ketheric would be because you want to take his place in the ladder of power or something like that?

The "evil motivation" in act 1 and 2 is that you're a retard.

You retardedly side with cultists, who are seeking you out and trying to steal the artifact, the only thing that's keeping you from brainwashing. Then you slaughter many innocent people with these cultists for no promised reward, just so you can infiltrate them.
After infiltrating them, you have another episode of retardation and venture down to Grymforge. There you save a brainwashed cultist Nere for (again) no promised reward, and get nothing for it. By the way, Nere dies off-screen later. Didn't have the money to pay the voice actor, I guess.
After that, you enter the Shadowlands, where you head into the Moonrise Towers to learn about your condition and find out who is the Absolute. You effortlessly infiltrate the cult, and then you are told to do yet another errand for them, but this time there's an actual promise of a reward - meeting the Absolute. Why would you want that? Well, there's no actually good reason for it.
In Moonrise towers you find out that your evil companion, Mintharra, has actually fallen from grace now, and is no longer in good standing with the cult. You rescue her and finally recruit her. Mintharra's motivations are no longer aligned with the cult, and she explicitly wants Ketheric dead for mistreating her. That probably should be your new motivation too.
Despite that, the game continuously gives you the options to keep doing that errand for the cult. And here's where things get really weird.

You can
1) Continue doing this stupid errand for the cult for the nonsensical reward of meeting the Absolute. Despite it being a very stupid thing to do, some effort is actually put into that path - there's voice lines, there's several well-animated unique cutscenes that you won't get on the good playthrough.
2) Destroy Ketheric's source of immortality by killing or freeing Nightsong. Both of these are identical to the good path, but with less voice lines and cutscenes, and absolutely no unique ones.

If you pick the path number 1, you meet Ketheric, sort of meet the Absolute, they finally find out that you're an infiltrator, and you get captured like a retard. Then you have to kill Ketheric. At no point your genius plan of infiltrating the cult pays off.
If you pick the path number 2, you're either back on the good path, or back on the "good path, but with no good content". You go to the tower, have a very short conversation with Z'rell, kill everyone on the way to the top same as you do on the good path, but with no harpers or Jaheira, and then you fight Ketheric as you would on the good path. Again, at no point your genius plan of infiltrating the cult pays off.

Now, this was a lot of text, but let me sum it up. Larian devoted a lot of time, money and attention to making an evil path that is actually the retard path, where you keep infiltrating the bad guys for no reason and no reward. At no point you learn some information, find some weaknesses, subvert their organization from within or get the opportunity to do anything clever. You insert yourself into a dangerous situation for no reason (like a retard), and then you get captured (like a retard), and then you get nothing out of it (like a retard).
Now, Larian actually broke new ground. There are very few RPGs where this amount of effort is dedicated to opportunities to make a fool out of yourself. And I dare say, that all this effort could be diverted into something else. Like an evil path that's actually cleverly written, or maybe just scrap the evil path altogether and make... I don't know, the Upper City or something.

 

[MerchantKing]

Here's something new I've thought up today while playing evil act 3.

The most fun evil things you can do in act 3 are
1) Selling out the Nightsong to Lorroakan
2) Enacting gondian genocide on the deep gnome behalf
3) Delivering the painter into the hands of a vengeful ghost.

Now, here's the thing. All of them require you acting like a good character before.

1) Selling out Nightsong requires not killing Nightsong for Shart.
2) Enacting gondian genocide requires that you don't kill Nightsong, don't kill Isobel and save the deep gnomes. Killing Nere is not mandatory, but you're probably going to have to.
3) The painter must first be rescued from slavery at no small expense to you.

There are NO scenarios in act 3 where you can commit further evil, because you've done evil things at some point before, which only adds to the point "evil only exists to lock you out of content".

There are no Gnomes in this game. There are only halflings and dark-skinned underdark halflings. None of them are real Gnomes. They don't even look like Gnomes and no self respecting Gnome would ever invent anything as generic as a giant police robot. That being said, all of those scenarios are good options. The amount of sodomy on display by those people merits their genocide. Nightsong is a dyke, Gondians are sodomite halflings, Deep """Gnomes""" are sodomite halflings though you should've exterminated them as well, and the painter is likely producing sodomite propaganda so he must be purged.

 

[whydoibother]

The "evil motivation" in act 1 and 2 is that you're a retard.

No?
The "good" motivation is that the cult is evil, so you fight against it.
The "evil" motivation is that the cult might hold the means to cure yourself/empower yourself, so you try to infiltrate it and gain power over it.
If your main personal concern is the tadpole, its not retarded to look up and make deals with the devil, the hag, and the goblin shaman. Its almost common sense to try everything. And once you are there and trying shit, infiltrating the cult to find out more information isn't retarded either.

 

[Orud]

My whole argument is that if you are playing a role-playing game, you are supposed to act in accordance with your character's moral stance on matters. If you start thinking about gaining/losing "content", you are gaming the system and likely won't have fun with the game, no matter what choice you made. Strange that I should have to explain this.

And if it didn't work like this people would bitch that being evil or good has little impact. Something that is usually brought up in discussions about the old games, Mass Effect series, etc... .

If you want to be 'hihi'-evil without impact, play games like Mass Effect and go full renegade. Bioware employees said it themselves that they believe anyone should be able to see almost anything in one playthrough. I think that's stupid for RPG's, choices should lead to consequences.
Now, as I said before, the complaint that the pay-off for evil characters isn't enough might be valid (since I've not done a full evil playthrough), but complaining that there are serious consequences for acting like a murderous sadistic bastard is stupid.

 

[Larianshill]

The "evil motivation" in act 1 and 2 is that you're a retard.

No?
The "good" motivation is that the cult is evil, so you fight against it.
The "evil" motivation is that the cult might hold the means to cure yourself/empower yourself, so you try to infiltrate it and gain power over it.
If your main personal concern is the tadpole, its not retarded to look up and make deals with the devil, the hag, and the goblin shaman. Its almost common sense to try everything. And once you are there and trying shit, infiltrating the cult to find out more information isn't retarded either.

Two questions.

1) Does infiltrating the cult ACTUALLY pay off in any sense at all?
2) Does the evil path actually help you infiltrate the cult?

The answer to both of these questions is "no". No, it doesn't pay off, and you don't learn anything. No, helping them doesn't pay off even in infiltrating, because the security at Moonrise Towers is just cool with whatever and will let you in if you killed Nere and slaughtered the goblin camp, even if you did these things in front of Z'rell's scrying orbs. Z'rell is the only one who displays any common sense and tries to vet you, but it's as dangerous to someone who invested into infiltrating the cult as to someone who didn't.

I also disagree with the premise that infiltrating the cult to learn about your condition is not retarded. You find out very early on that true souls have no idea they have tadpoles at all, so you would understand that they don't know shit. Your only way of actually learning something through infiltration would be getting closer to the leadership, which means stepping into the belly of the beast - these people are actively hunting you, and no amount of doing errands for them will change that. There is no way getting close to Ketheric or Absolute will end well for you, and, well, it doesn't.

 

[Reinhardt]

The "evil" motivation is that the cult might hold the means to cure yourself/empower yourself, so you try to infiltrate it and gain power over it.

nigga, come on. it's fucking GOBBOS! who would side with GOBBOS for POWAH?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Only an imbecile could have possibly written this post.

Then I'm an imbecile, since I wrote it, and I don't see why you keep replying to the post. Unless you're a fellow imbecile yourself. In any case, only someone very butthurt would have started with that, so I should feel flattered instead.