[SPOILER] About the evil route, player companions and cut content

[Valefar]

I’ll be spoiling the whole entire game, that was your first and last warning.

Okay, so. I already went through the game once: typical good route, full heroic mode, standard playthrough: Shadowheart turned good, Astarion killed Cazador and rejected the ritual, Lae’zel abandoned Vlaakith and so on and so forth. Right now I’m wrapping up act 2 on my second playthrough, evil route this time: Dark Urge origin, massacred the grove and the tieflings, ripped Gale’s arm off, hooking it up with Minthara and so on. I’m not planning a Bhaal playthrough, that I’m saving for later time.

I have some thoughts about design of this game. A lot of people I saw all over, this forums here included, complaining about how the evil route lacks in content. And that’s, well, is completely true. If you’re going to play this game as an evil character you loose a lot by simply, objectively picking the bad quest options. You loose 4 companions or even 5, you gain 1 instead. You loose quests, you loose opportunities, you even loose shopkeepers. After act 2 evil route doesn’t really offer anything. You don’t tend to gain anything narratively. With one major exception, and this exception is Minthara of course.

Which leads me to companions. Your companions are easily grouped in two categories. No, it’s not origin characters vs non-origin characters. There are a couple of companions who are very, very clearly much more integrated not only into the plot but into the whole game-world. They have expansive locales dedicated to them or to their themes, their personal plotlines converge and go along with the main plot. Shadowheart, Lae’zel and Astarion belong to this group, in that exact order – I believe that you could argue for Shadowheart being an integral part of the main plot, ranking her even above the others, but that’s debatable. Wyll, Gale and Karlach are not given this much importance. Jaheira, Halsin and Minsc are trivia. However, when you think about this, there is one more companion who fits this criteria – and that is Minthara. Minthara, when you plan your actions around getting her and going this specific version of evil playthrough, is also very strongly integrated into the main plot. She does not have a personal questline, but the way she’s connected to the main plot makes this plot her story as well. She has a remarkably insightful and wise input on many main occasions, for example in Bhaal temple after killing Orin. In short, when you go evil you loose some but game rewards you with good, important content in person of Minthara if you choose to go this path. Please notice, that 3 most important companions you also get to keep if you go evil route, which is not an oversight.

I think that game lacks precisely this when it comes to evil route. It’s not that you should get additional party members of Wyll’s quality, nobody really wants that. What should be done is that when you choose evil path the party structures around you differently, you get different and substantial content which should change the way you approach the gameworld. Some of this could be done by restoring cut content, but I believe, judging by my two playthroughs, that this game as a whole is not designed, from bottom up, to accommodate this kind of flexibility. I also don’t think that it’s the case of cut content. Integration of key companion characters and how obvious it is that their ‘good outcomes’ are designed to be the desired outcomes from narrative point of view goes way too deep. Fully fledged evil path was never part of Larian’s design and datamined cut content which suggested Minthara as a part of standard team (her ‘pregnancy content’) shows that. In other words, I don’t think you should want or postulate enhancing the evil path. It can’t be done without fundamental rewrite of the whole game.

[Teufels Beitrag]

I agree somewhat and i think much of it could be easily solved in a way that makes the existing characters more interesting. In terms of characters you lose, it should be no more than the choice between Minthara and Halsin as they occupy the same spot in the camp. I would have loved to go the KotoR route. There you could influence your companions. You should have several ways to alter the paths of your companions. I mean you can do that with Shadow Heart. Why not turn Gale into an evil Necromancer. There could be countless reasons for that despite him beeing a good Person. Think of Darth Vader! The same with Whyll or Karlach.
In the case of the loss of Merchants and NPCs, we already have an NPC replacement system, why not simply replace thouse characters with evil characters? This would significantly alter the world and makes it more evil like you. I really think Larian will go this way with the NPCs, but i doubt they will change Gale, Wyll and Karlach the way i suggested.

[Cat]

Gale is already showing signs of being rather, maybe not power hungry, but toeing the line of knowledge at any cost justifies the means of getting it. Wyll could have a corrupted side where his demonic punishments cut away more and more of his humanity until he basically becomes more about vengeance than justice for the frontier. I'd honestly leave Karlach alone though, outside of maybe having her succumb to her uncontrollable rage but that seems like it was an idea they cut as she only ever does this once in act 1 and never really shows any major signs of losing herself to it ever again. Shadowheart is already possible to go full Shar, same goes for Astarion embracing his vampiric side, Lae'zel starts off as a fanatic follower of her queen, so bending her into even more of a zealot should be easily done. Halsin, Jahira and Minsc probably won't even factor into an evil campaign as all of them kind of get removed if you pick the evil side anyway.

You could easily warp most the companion with some rewrites in a similar vein to the corruption in KOTOR 2, but the main issue is more so the story as a whole as it's not really written in a way that makes evil feel like it's rewarding.