Hardly any game makes you feel like the real villain. MeinMMO editor Leya Jankowski believes that Baldur’s Gate 3 can fulfill that fantasy. She spoke with lead developer Swen Vincke about how to take the ultimately evil path in his role-playing game.
It’s a hot day in Belgium (Ghent) and I just played the latest version of Baldur’s Gate 3. I am visiting Larian Studios, who will release one of the most anticipated role-playing games of the last few years in August. The game will be released for PC in August, a month earlier than planned.
During my visit, the developers announce the latest “Origin” character. These are pre-made characters that you can play as an alternative to your own character. Origins have their own story that you will uncover throughout the game.
The Dark Urge is his name, which translates to “The Dark Urge.” With him, you play a crazy, bloodthirsty murderer.
I start to think about the ultimate villain and how Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you the opportunity to live out that dark fantasy. There are not many games out there that truly allow you to do that.
As I am led to my interview with Swen and he sits peacefully on a park bench with a friendly smile, the perfect moment has come for me to ask him about the ultimate evil guide for his game.
Always follow the dark urge
MeinMMO: I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is a really good game to play an extremely evil character. In your presentation, you did many evil things, like murdering a child or sacrificing parts of your group for an absurd plan. I think you’re exactly the right person to give me tips on how to play the ultra-evil character in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Swen Vincke: If you want to be the ultimate evil character, I would recommend playing The Dark Urge and following its impulse. Every time you have the choice to follow its dark thoughts, you do just that. Then you’ll be truly evil.
MeinMMO: What should I be aware of when making decisions? What does it entail to follow a dark path?
Swen Vincke: You gain great power when you follow the dark urge. I don’t want to give too much away, but your urge is connected to something very evil. You will often be prompted to do things that are very evil, and if you follow that, your power grows very quickly. But you will be very lonely and end up alone.
MeinMMO: One of your colleagues told me that you end up alone if you follow the dark path. Where did that idea come from?
Swen Vincke: When you deal with people who are evil and have a lot of power, everyone wants that power. Eventually, you have to get rid of them all.
MeinMMO: Aren’t there any companions who are more on the evil side that you can take with you?
Swen Vincke: Absolutely, you can take evil companions with you. But you must give them something. So if you want to play evil, you have to get rid of any competition.
If you take a companion with you, you have to trust them to a certain extent. So I would kill them all. Then I would become an evil god, which is possible. I would kill everyone at the first opportunity so that I don’t have to deal with them.
MeinMMO: Wait, you can become an evil god?
Swen Vincke: Without giving too much away, yes, you gain divine powers.
Few want to be the villain
MeinMMO: Why do you think there are so few games that truly let you be evil?
Swen Vincke: It’s a lot of work. We have it in the game because it was important to us that you really get a choice. Every decision needs to lead somewhere.
Statistically, most people don’t play evil anyway. If 95% of your target audience plays good and only 5% play evil, then it’s hardly worth the effort. But even if it’s just a few, I believe it’s important to have a choice, because otherwise your decisions are worthless.
MeinMMO: Do you have data from Early Access on what players tended to do?
Swen Vincke: I prefer not to look at that data, because otherwise it would influence my decisions. We have things in there that are incredibly expensive and only 0.00001% will see them, but that’s how I want the game to be.
MeinMMO: Why is it so difficult to implement an evil path? It has to feel evil when you do something and not many games can manage that.
Swen Vincke: You need motivation to be evil or good, you need a reason to be somewhere in between. We’re dealing with around 170 hours of cinematics in the game, just to cater to different choices. You will never see all of that, it’s impossible. We also don’t want you to see all of it.
A good villain story needs a reason
MeinMMO: What do you personally believe makes a good villain story?
Swen Vincke: A reason to be a villain. So why are you on this path?
At the beginning of the game, you meet some refugees and you decide their fate. You can leave them behind or kill them to infiltrate an evil cult. If you take the murderous path, you meet a woman, a Drow, her name is Minthara and you can sleep with her.
You meet her again later, and she has fallen out of favor with the cult. Now you can choose again to kill her or save her by helping her escape. She will then become your companion.
She tells you that she has done evil things because she was part of the cult and followed it. She then asks you why you did all these evil things, what your reason was. Why did you kill all these people? I was controlled, you weren’t. So why?
And now you can decide what your motivation was and state it. That’s a really good moment when she asks you that. You also get many interesting answers to choose from.
Without trust, there would be no dark path
MeinMMO: That’s really clever. When I watched your gameplay presentation, something struck me. When I think of an evil person, the first thing that pops into my head is that I just run around and kill everyone. But in Baldur’s Gate 3, being evil has a lot to do with manipulation, which I find interesting.
Swen Vincke: There are two major themes in the game, one of them is trust. Trust is important to us because the game runs on a group dynamic. It’s basically a group of people who have come together for a reason. They share the common problem of having a parasite in their heads that they need to get rid of.
And when dealing with a group of people traveling together, they need to trust each other. So we put them in various scenarios and gave them backstories where they directly distrust each other. There are ways for them to trust each other and get along so well that a certain degree of manipulation is okay. But there’s also the other side, where they distrust each other.
Everyone has their secrets. In the game, you can read their thoughts to find out what their desires and secrets are. That’s something you shouldn’t do morally. And if they find out, that can be the reason they attack you or leave your group.
But you can get away with it if you want to go down the evil path. The fact that trust is so important makes this evil storytelling possible.
Why the release was moved up
MeinMMO: You decided to move the release up. Why did you do that? Most studios say they will be late, especially during the pandemic.
Swen Vincke: There were several reasons for that. One of them was that we had to decide whether to release on all platforms simultaneously. That was initially our goal. In that case, we would have had to push the release back further.
We didn’t want that because we have been working on the game for 6 years. On the PC, it’s almost finished. So we said to ourselves that if we split the release, we can release the PC first.
It’s a pretty crowded season, many games are being released. Many will be screaming for attention. Early August is still relatively free, we can position ourselves with the PC version then. And then we’ll push the PS5 version back a bit because it needs a bit more work.
That also eased the pressure from our team because now we can do one thing at a time. First PC, then console. If we had pushed it back, it would have been at the end of the year, and we didn’t want that.
MeinMMO: Are there specific games you wanted to avoid? I mean Starfield, of course.
Swen Vincke: I was just about to say if you want to ask me about Starfield. So this year we had: Zelda, Diablo, Starfield, the new Cyberpunk and we haven’t even reached the end of October yet. If August is our month, I’m happy.
At this point, a big thank you to Swen Vincke for taking the time to talk to me about the evil in Baldur’s Gate 3.
There is also a second part of the interview where I spoke with Swen about the use of AI in game development. However, that thematically doesn’t fit so well with the rest of the interview, so we will split it here and give it its own space.
What do you think about the ultimate evil path in Baldur’s Gate 3? Are you now tempted to take that path after this interview?
