Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you nearly complete freedom during a playthrough: kill or save whoever you want and be as brutal or gentle as you like. However, many players seem to struggle to truly embrace their dark side. The death of a cat is enough to reverse many hours of gameplay.
Why do players want to be evil?
- Baldur’s Gate 3 offers 17,000 different endings, some of which you see only if you are evil.
- There are even companions that you can recruit only as an evil player because you are supposed to make very dark decisions.
- Although almost everyone wants to be “good,” players try to be “evil” just to see everything in the game.
Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers regarding Act 3 and a major antagonist from Baldur’s Gate 3. In the video, you will find some exciting facts about Baldur’s Gate 3:
This NPC causes tough decisions: On Reddit, thousands of players discuss how difficult it is to truly be evil. The user I_hate_mortality writes that he even reloaded a save from 4 hours earlier in Act 3.
The reason for him was that Grub died – the cat of the little Yenna, whom you can bring to your camp in Act 3. Grub dies when Orin infiltrates your camp, as more evil players are likely to target Yenna:
- The targets are actually Lae’zel, Halsin, or Gale, according to players
- As a really evil player, you normally won’t have Halsin and Gale in the camp anymore because you’ve either lost them or never recruited them
- Characters in the group are never targets, and since you probably have Lae’zel because of the limited options, there are no targets left
- Yenna is the “failsafe” in case your decisions have led to no other targets being available
- In an older save, you could try to not bring Yenna to the camp at all or leave Lae’zel in the camp so that she becomes a target
If Orin abducts Yenna and takes her place, she kills Grub and even serves him to you as stew. A truly evil player would care little about this – but apparently, humanity still lies dormant in most people.
“Is anyone simply incapable of being truly evil?”
The topic creator’s question has garnered over 2,300 comments. The questioner himself gave up wanting to be evil in Act 1 when it came to punishing a child. Others became soft in Act 2 when another cat was found dead in bed.
This cat poses a significant problem for particularly the already intrinsically evil “Dark Urges”. The cat is actually just hunting a few mind flayer larvae. However, if you speak to it with “Speak with Animals” as a Dark Urge and try to remember it, you lose control – and massacre it.
Fans discuss how much evil is still acceptable and where to draw the line. Even truly evil players still have principles and try to protect at least certain people, regardless of their alignment.
Others say in a rather derelict manner: it gets easier. Once you have gotten through a few rough spots, you are over the hill. It doesn’t get worse after that, and eventually, you just give in to the flow.
However, that’s not entirely true. From personal experience, I can say: even hours later, some of the evil decisions come back completely unexpectedly and hit you again:
Baldur’s Gate 3: I wanted to be ‘really evil,’ but the game is rubbing it in my face
