Evil alternatives
DougPiranha
Member Posts: 50
Maybe this was mentioned in one of hundreds request threads, but here goes anyway.
One thing that BG lacks is options for evil parties. There are many +1 reputation quests that give lot of XP and cool items, while only evil deed with worthwhile gains is killing Drizzt. What I'm suggesting is adding evil solutions to existing quests with adequate rewards, and maybe even some new evil quests. This is also a good way to throw in some new items. Bioware obviously understood this since in SoA there were (almost) equal opportunities for both styles of play, so I hope BGEE will receive the same treatment.
One thing that BG lacks is options for evil parties. There are many +1 reputation quests that give lot of XP and cool items, while only evil deed with worthwhile gains is killing Drizzt. What I'm suggesting is adding evil solutions to existing quests with adequate rewards, and maybe even some new evil quests. This is also a good way to throw in some new items. Bioware obviously understood this since in SoA there were (almost) equal opportunities for both styles of play, so I hope BGEE will receive the same treatment.
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Evil alternatives
@Drayen I do agree that this is one area of the game that is clearly lacking, and some more options/rewards for evil decisions definitely wouldn't hurt.
Thanks.
Merged the threads.
This would give special incentive to play an character evilly.
I know the only quests that would be affected at present are X & Y because the original content's going to be largely unchanged. However, evil opions would be great. As Tauron said, smart evil options would be best. Manipulative, insidious evil options hehehe.
As an aside: I'm actually quite a nice person. Sometimes taking a morally gray (or pitch black) path is just fun.
A simple way to implement a more rational, self-interested evil path into the existing game structure would be to require selfless acts in exchange for reputation increases: you would only get the +1 reputation if you refused the reward or gave up something important to help others. Otherwise, you'd get the mercenary's reward of gold + items, but your reputation wouldn't improve, or the evil path of forcing an even greater reward but with a reputation loss. (I got what I needed from Cloakwood mine; now how much will you give me to not deliberately flood the place and kill everyone as I leave?)
In order for this to work, the ability to buy back reputation at temples would also have to be limited.
The most obvious evil deed in BG2 would be to get in on the slave trade instead of busting it.
There is also a black lotus smuggling (as witnessed at the gate interaction) and secret room for smoking it in Copper Coronet. Why can't a Bahlspawn become a Drug Lord, I ask?
(additionally, after getting Nalia's keep, you could force her to marry you to strengthen your position, then proceed to abuse your power in some political plot, AND you could put the cellar/dungeon to it's proper use - to stuff your enemies there! ... or to stash the cargo - slaves and drugs...)
I don't think I ever saw any evidence of slavers or drug dealers in BG1, but it could apply.
BG1 specific misdeeds:
- instead of going down to the sewers to find an already dead body for the necromancer, an evil PC could just kidnap/murder random citizens, and make it into a long-term contract.
- You could take Sky into your party, and then blackmail her father for cash in exchange for her 'safe return'.
- You could lead Bronwyn to that basilisc enamoured mage and then turn on her, helping the mage to petrify her again.
It wasn't Mutamin that petrified Branwen, it was Tranzig, a mage you can encounter in Beregost in Chapter 3.
What self-respecting self-interested character is going to help the halflings of Gullykin (given that there is no option to side with the ogre mage) or Delon in Baldur's gate? Regardless of an offer of reward, why would an evil character get involved unless they could name their price? Money alone is not a sufficient motivator.
Getting back to the point: good characters can be motivated by helping people, neutral by money, fairness or keeping balance. But only having money as a driving force for evil characters is one-dimensional in the extreme. What motivates Edwin in BG2? The search for a specific powerful & forbidden item to grant him
an advantage over others. Evil PCs are rarely offered such an interesting opportunity.
In fact the game already create an entire environment suceptible to evil quests and alternatives. In fact the nature of a son of Bhaal is to have an external evil (bhaal essence) merged with your soul that pull yourself to evil with time.
I give a lot of alternatives in other threads, many of them using the already existent content of the game and just extending some of their patches.
To make the game viable to evil characters we don't need even to add to much new content (but i really hope that a lot of evil new content comes to be added to the game), even in a mod we could do this. But just lemme let it clear that i see the lack of evil content as a defect, the true failure that exist in Baldur's Gate, so if a EE is being done, the frist thing to fix is this lack of evil feature.