Baldur’s Gate 3 players explain why betraying NPCs early is a morally better choice

Betraying Baldur’s Gate 3 NPCs in an evil run can be hard, but according to some players, this can be equivalent to doing them a “favor.”

One of the challenges of doing an evil run in Baldur’s Gate 3 is betraying and slaughtering characters that you’d normally help in a good playthrough. Hence, it’s not for the faint of heart, as there are just so many vile choices you can make throughout the game.

This is exactly what one player is going through. Sharing their story in a Reddit thread, they claimed that their evil playthrough is already “crushing” them despite only being in Act 1.

Seeing Zevlor’s reaction when you betray him, the Tieflings getting slaughtered, and Karlach being beheaded, among other things, made it “increasingly harder” to keep going.

However, despite that, some players in the comments assured them that betraying and killing these characters early is actually a morally better choice than doing it later in the run.

One user wrote, “Although if I understand it correctly, anyone you betray and murder in Act 1 is someone you won’t get to betray and murder in Acts 2 and 3, so presumably, it levels off at some point.”

“I read it once ‘don’t think of it as dying, think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush’ – Death, the day before the Apocalypse,” they added. Following this take, a different user claimed this is “ironically true if you’re taking control of the brain.” 

They explained, “If you kill people, they go to the afterlife, and if they fulfilled some easy requirements while they were alive, they get to go to a relatively nice afterlife because in Forgotten Realms there’s a million gods all with their own custom afterlives.”

Meanwhile, if those people are still alive by the time you dominate the brain, “they become a part of the Grand Design, either as thralls or illithds” – leading them to a fate worse than death.

Other users brought up some of the fates of their companions. “If you let Wyll die before Act 3, you can’t tell him to continue his pact and then kill his father in front of his eyes, which is probably the most targeted and vile decision against Wyll,” commented one user.

A similar thing applies to Karlach, according to some players. “If you kill her she keeps her soul. Otherwise she becomes a mindflayer. So actually, you’re doing her a favor.”

While playing an evil playthrough can be hard for some players, seeing the additional content you won’t normally see in a good run can be worth it.