About evil playthrough and illusion of choice

[.pleasures]

I've asked here before if evil playthrough is viable. Most people answered that yes and I decided to give it a try. So let's look at the difference between the good way and the evil way in the first two acts.

ACT 1
Goblins/Druid Grove.
What we lose by playing as an evil character:
- 3 (!!!) companions: Wyll, Karlach and Halsin (Halsin is optional, bust most likely)
- one of the best merchants, blacksmith Dammon. If I'm not mistaken, it's also the only character that can make some of your items into other items. (Masks from Grymforge, Infernal Iron)
- several quests from tieflings in Act 2 and rewards for it from different NPCs. Alfira is one of them and she gives you one of the best robes in the game. You'll never get it any other way.

What we get for evil path:
- bugged as f*ck Minthara. That's it. She has no quests, no rewards, no interesting storylines.

Is it that really hard to replace the tavern dwellers in Act 2 with goblins? Is it hard to give two other companions besides Mintara to compensate for the loss of Wyll and Karlach?

Duergar/Nere
Nothing to say here. Nere just disappears from the game if we side with him. You lose quest with gnomes.

ACT 2
Nightsong
The same sh*t as goblins/Druid Grove in Act 1.
You lose:
- Jaheira as companion, her quests
- Nightsong and Isobel storylines
- multiple others quests, storylines and dialogs in Act 3
What do you get?
- literally nothing.
The game pushes you to kill Nightsong if you have Shadowheart in your squad. It looks like killing Nightsong is the only way to keep Shadowheart, but that's not true.

In game descriptions and reviews, they always write "decisions that actually have consequences, amazing replayability, every playthrough is like a new one". Yes it does look like that, but have you tried to load and change your choices in the dialog? Here are some more examples for you:
- to kill or not to kill the Guardian from your dreams (Creshe, Act 1)
- agreeing to or refusing Raphael's deal
- trusting or not trusting the Emperor, using or not using tadpoles

When I make choices in dialogs like this, I think "How awesome it would be on the second playthrough to kill the Guardian, agree to Raphael's offer, make completely different choices! It's going to be a completely different game!" Haha. It's all an illusion. The Guardian won't let you kill him anyway, you don't have a choice. All you can change is his reaction in the next line. And so it is with almost every "big choice". No big decisions give you anything unique. At best, you change the next NPC's line. At worst, you cut off HOURS of content. It would be better if the game didn't give the option to team up with Minthara at all. Imagine people who choose the evil path and go through the game that way. Most people won't start a new game a second time, especially a game of this size. Many people simply don't have that much time. They just cut off Wyll's interesting story, the heartwarming story with Karlach (one of the players' favorite companions overall), and a bunch of other stories, items, quests from the game.

I realize that by killing or harming an NPC you lose interaction with them, it's logical. But it's a game after all. It should offer you other (evil) companions, other quests and rewards in return. Was it difficult to replace the tavern dwellers with goblins? It wasn't even necessary to change quests and rewards, just that you'd be rescuing goblins from prison, someone else would be in place of Jaheira, and Isobel would be their hostage. Choosing the evil path was a bad experience and I don't recommend it to anyone at the moment.

[Revan619]

If you let her choose shadowheart doesn't kill nightsong. All the companions are pretty much lawful good and you actually can lose Gale too when siding with Goblins.

The vampire isn't even technically evil he is just whatever benefits him

[.pleasures]

Originally posted by Revan619:

If you let her choose shadowheart doesn't kill nightsong. All the companions are pretty much lawful good and you actually can lose Gale too when siding with Goblins.

The vampire isn't even technically evil he is just whatever benefits him

But it is not the point

[Abisha]

if you do nothing companions all choose "good" side options even Laezel go's pure heart.
it's boring that this day's being evil no longer pay's it takes away the RPG element from the game they might as well remove the dialog choose and makes it linear

[Solem]

Originally posted by Revan619:

If you let her choose shadowheart doesn't kill nightsong. All the companions are pretty much lawful good and you actually can lose Gale too when siding with Goblins.

The vampire isn't even technically evil he is just whatever benefits him

Astarion is Neutral Evil. He does whatever he likes at the cost of others.

[.pleasures]

Yo, guys, I’m not talking about companions choices. Look at the title at least

[Abisha]

Originally posted by Solem:

Originally posted by Revan619:

If you let her choose shadowheart doesn't kill nightsong. All the companions are pretty much lawful good and you actually can lose Gale too when siding with Goblins.

The vampire isn't even technically evil he is just whatever benefits him

Astarion is Neutral Evil. He does whatever he likes at the cost of others.

that's chaotic evil.
Neutral evil is commit evil for self-serving, but not necessarily malicious purposes

[.pleasures]

I write about evil choices in the game and big choices in general, but in the comments people argue about the nature of companions. How do you play a game that consists of 90% text if you can't read lol