I’m faced with a dilemma. Arabella, a little Tiefling child, has stolen a precious idol from the local druids at The Grove. She’s now facing death at the fangs of acting First Druid Kahga’s serpent, Teela. You have several options, some meaning Arabella will live, others meaning Arabella will die. On every other playthrough, I’ve talked Kagha off the ledge, but there’s a fresh Dark Urge option here: flick your eyes toward the cave entrance, and urge the girl to run. It’s over in a flash. Fangs pierce flesh. A life snuffed out. It’s my first real evil act as Dark Urge in Baldur’s Gate 3, and I can already feel a heaviness in my stomach.
We all love the idea of being an absolute bastard. For every good act we do in RPGs, there’s often the allure of a more macabre alternative. I’ve never quite been able to commit to it, so when my partner recently suggested a pure chaotic evil Baldur’s Gate 3 run, I thought “he’ll hold me accountable. Let’s do it.” We fried people’s brains in the Nautiloid, left Gale to die in the abyss, and let the snake kill poor Arabella; none of it felt great, but it was a shadow of what was to come.
The major decision in Act 1 is, of course, the ‘save the Grove’ conundrum. Most people will always aid the Tieflings, partly because it’s the right thing to do, and partly because siding with the goblins alienates several party members and locks you out of some quests. As a Dark Urge with a chaotic evil Fighter by my side, however, we chose to demolish the Grove.
But by that point, there was already nothing left. To try and play Kagha and Tiefling leader Zevlor off of one another, we chose to kill the former and collect the latter’s reward. This triggered all-out warfare in the Grove, leading to the deaths of all the Tieflings, as well as the Druids. As bodies scattered the ground, blood seeping into once sacred soil, I felt my will sapping out of me. A place so full of life had been desecrated, and it was all my fault. In some ways, that made siding with the goblins easier – a subliminal passing of the buck. “They’d have done it anyway,” I told myself as I agreed to aid Minthara in her assault. “I just sped up the inevitable.”
While Minthara and her merry band of misfits praised my efforts, there was no feeling of triumph in returning to the deserted Grove. The birds no longer sing. There’s no chatter and no music. There’s the dull hum that signifies you entering a new area, but that’s it. There’s pure, deafening, crushing silence.
I return to camp that night to see my makeshift home defaced with bloody totems dedicated to the Absolute. The Goblins cheer, priding themselves in their bloodlust – a marked departure from the gentle music and playful dancing of the Tieflings. Wyll tells me I’m clearly not who he thought I was and promptly leaves my party. I’m left in a camp of strangers celebrating a massacre. My partner and I call it a day, slumping onto the sofa in a rare moment of silence.
My partner has never played Baldur’s Gate 3 and has no affinity for the characters. I, by contrast, was running my own neutral-good campaign at the same time. Where I had forged bonds with the denizens of Faerûn and seen one version of what the world could be, he had zero attachment to the Tieflings or our companions. Yet, for some reason, we both felt like we were dirty.
Baldur’s Gate 3 can make you feel truly evil as you steal the life and magic from Faerûn, dodging bloodied corpses felled by your blade as you go. Minthara and her Absolute cultists are insufferable – they’re evil to their rotten cores. Siding with them doesn’t make you feel good or powerful; instead, it makes you feel like you’ve stooped to their level.
It’s rare that the outcomes of your decisions in RPGs challenge, shock, or stay with you. You can choose to be nice, charismatic, rude, or aggressive, but the worst-case result is typically a bit of grumbling from your companions. Baldur’s Gate 3 takes the choice-and-consequence storytelling of Dragon Age: Origins and amplifies it tenfold, instilling the sense that my choices and general attitude to the world around me actually matter. The massacre at the grove isn’t something I’ll soon forget; the jarring lack of life is smothering. Knowing I’ll soon head to the next area and do it all over again might be too much. To top it off, Astarion still doesn’t want to romance me: nail, coffin.
I’ve not returned to our Dark Urge playthrough, nor has my partner asked to. The entire experience was, in many ways, the right kind of unsettling. Of course, this is a videogame, so I’m hardly crying myself to sleep every night, but the fact I’m wary of returning to the now-lifeless Grove is a testament to Larian’s world design. Where the best horror games may give me nightmares, Baldur’s Gate 3 has me questioning my morals.
If you haven’t tried Dark Urge, I’d encourage you to. It made me feel a way few other videogames have. Even destroying the Urn of Sacred Ashes doesn’t live up to the sheer guilt I carry after my actions at the grove. Moral of the story? Don’t be a dick, unless you’ve got the guts to see it through.
