Hardly any game manages to make you feel like the real villain. MeinMMO editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski believes that Baldur’s Gate 3 can fulfill exactly this fantasy. She spoke to lead developer Swen Vincke about how to take the ultimate evil path in your RPG.
It’s a hot day in Belgium (Gent) and I’ve just played the latest version of Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m visiting Larian Studios, who are releasing one of the most anticipated RPGs in recent years in August. The game will be released for PC in August, a month ahead of schedule.
During my visit, the developers are announcing the newest “Origin” character. These are pre-made characters that you can play as an alternative to creating your own character. Origins have their own story, which you will discover as you progress through the game.
The Dark Urge is his name, which translates as “The Dark Desire”. With him you play a mad, bloodthirsty murderer.
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I’m starting to think about the ultimate villain and how Baldur’s Gate 3 allows you to live out that very dark fantasy. There aren’t many games out there that really allow you to do that.
As I’m led into my interview with Swen and he’s sitting peacefully on a park bench with a friendly smile, it was the perfect moment for me to ask him about the ultimate evil guide for his game.
Always follow the dark instinct
MeinMMO: I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is a really good game to play an extremely evil character. You did a lot of evil things in your presentation, like murdering a child or sacrificing parts of your group to some absurd plan. I think you are 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 his urges. Every time you have the choice to follow his dark thoughts, you do just that. Then you become really evil.
MeinMMO: What do I have to consider when making decisions? What does it involve following a dark path?
Swen Vincke: You get great power by following the dark urge. I don’t want to give too much away, but your drive is connected to something very bad. You are often asked to do things that are very evil and if you do so your power will grow very quickly. But you get very lonely and end up alone.
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MeinMMO: One of your colleagues told me that if you follow the dark path you will end up alone. Where did this idea come from?
Swen Vincke: When you deal with people who are evil and have a lot of power, everyone wants that power. At some point you have to get rid of them all.
MeinMMO: Aren’t there any companions that are more on the evil side that you can take with you?
Swen Vincke: In any case, you can take evil companions with you. But you have to give them something. So if you really want to play evil, you just have to get rid of any competition.
If you take a companion with you, you have to trust them up to a point. So I would kill them all. Then I would become an evil god, which is possible. I would kill anyone at the first opportunity so 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 get divine powers.
Few want to be the villain
MeinMMO: Why do you think there are so few games that let you be truly evil?
Swen Vincke: That’s a lot of work. We have that in the game because it was important to us that you really got a choice. Every decision has to lead somewhere
Statistically, most people don’t play evil anyway. If 95% of your target audience plays well and only 5% plays evil, then it’s hardly worth the work. But even if it’s few, I believe it’s important to have a choice, because otherwise your choices mean nothing.
MeinMMO: Do you have data from early access, what your players did before?
Swen Vincke: I prefer not to look at this data because 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 also has to feel evil when you do something, and not many games can do that.
Swen Vincke: You need a motivation to be bad or good, you need a reason to be somewhere in between. We’re into something like 170 hours of cinematics in the game just to serve up different choices. You’ll never see all of it, that’s impossible. We don’t even want you to see all this.
A good villain story needs a reason
MeinMMO: What do you personally think 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 a few refugees and you decide their fate. You can leave them behind or you can kill them to infiltrate an evil cult. If you take the murderous route you will 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 to kill her again or you can save her by helping her escape. She will then become your companion.
She tells you that she did evil things because she was part of the cult and followed it. She then asks you why you did all those nasty things, what was your reason. 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 say that. That’s a really good moment when she asks you that. You will also get many interesting answers to choose from.
Without trust there would be no dark path
MeinMMO: That’s really smart. While watching your gameplay presentation, I noticed something. When I think of an evil person, the first thing that pops into my head is that I just run around killing everyone. But in Baldur’s Gate 3, evil has a lot to do with manipulation, which I find interesting.
Swen Vincke: There are two big themes at play, one of which is trust. Trust is important for us because the game is a group game. It’s basically a group of people who came 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 you’re dealing with a group of people traveling together, they have to trust each other. So we put them in different scenarios and gave them backstories where they directly distrust each other. There are ways that they trust each other and get along so well that even some level of manipulation is okay. But there is also the other side when they distrust each other.
Everyone has their secrets. In the game you can read their minds to find out what their desires and secrets are. That’s something you shouldn’t do morally. And if they find out, that may be the reason why they attack you or leave your group.
But you can get away with it if you want to go the evil way. The fact that trust is so important is what makes this evil storytelling possible.
Why the release was brought forward
MeinMMO: You have decided to bring forward the release. Why did you do that? Most studios say they’re coming later, especially during the pandemic.
Swen Vincke: There were several reasons for this. One of them was that we had to decide whether to release to all platforms at the same time. That was our goal at first. In this case we would have had to postpone the release further.
We didn’t want that because we’ve been working on the game for 6 years. It’s almost done on PC. So we said if we split the release, we can get the PC out first.
It’s a pretty full season, lots of games coming out. Many will be screaming for attention. The beginning of August is still relatively free, so we can position ourselves with the PC version. And then we’re going to push the PS5 version back a bit because that still needs a little more work.
It also took the pressure off our team because now we can do one thing at a time. First PC, then console. If we had postponed that, it would have been at the end of the year and we didn’t want that.
MeinMMO: Are there certain 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’re not even at the end of October yet. If August is our month, I’m happy.
At this point, thanks 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 to Swen about using AI in game development. That doesn’t fit the rest of the interview so well thematically, though, so we’ll split it up at this point and give it its own space.
What do you think of the Ultimate Evil Path in Baldur’s Gate 3? After this interview, do you now want to go there?