Ruin Explorer
Legend
Did you?
It sounds like you didn't, because you clearly missed the detailed discussion of how you could "take characters with you" morally, and convince them to behave in certain ways. I guess you just heard that as being able to make them evil, but that was clearly not what was being discussed - there's no doubt you'll equally be able to convince some of the darker-side PCs to come into the light.
At the very start of the game, the only "good" PCs are likely Karlach and Wyll (who are opposed to each other initially), but by the end of the game? Or even the mid-point? From what they said it sounds like potentially most companions could become decent/honest and perhaps even altruistic. I could very easily see Astarion, as annoying as he is, eventually being convinced into some altruistic move a la Spike from Buffy.
There was not.
Bestiality is what it is because animals cannot consent and are not sentient. You're pearl-clutching in the worst way possible. A person shapeshifting into a bear and banging is obviously rather deviant, and you don't have to like it, but it isn't bestiality any more than someone in an ultra-high-tech Furry costume would be. It's actually less bad than someone banging a god, or angel, or demon, all of which exist on a level above humanity, and I don't hear you moaning about that FR staple.
For better or worse, Larian have succeed despite not doing what the received wisdom is on "what people want" and "what people do".
They did turn-based when everyone was saying turn-based was dead and predicting it was suicide for them, and instead it got them rave reviews (of what is, in retrospect, not that great a game). They did joke-y and kinda meta when RPGs were going through a super-serious phase (DOS1), and despite not being that well-written, it was well-received.
So should they just do what they think "95% of players will do"?
I think if CRPGs companies did that, we'd see lots more games like DAI at its worst, Fallout 4 (easily the weakest Bethesda game), and Skyrim (which was a good game at least), and a lot fewer like Dark Souls (indeed, by the "what players want" metric, Demon's Souls should never have got made, let alone got a sequel), DOS2, Mass Effect, and so on.
Also let's be REAL for just one second.
It isn't that hard to be good in BG3.
I've played the EA. So have others. This is absolutely not Tyranny levels of "hard to be good". It's not even Pillars of Eternity levels of "hard to be good"! Both the Pillars games make it considerably harder to be fully good that BG3's EA Act 1. What BG3 though does well that Tyranny also did pretty well, and Pillars much less well (sorry Josh), is tempt the player with evil options that sound pretty cool or exciting or like they'd solve a problem or just get rid of an annoyance. Most RPGs are terrible at this, because they typically only have three modes - Altruist, Mercenary, and Puppy-Kicker. It's been a problem since literally BG1 in 1999. But BG3 actually threads the needle pretty well here and you rarely have to go to those extremes unless you want to. It's rather reminiscent of Fallout 2 in that regard. In Fallout 2 it was easy to do bad things for good reasons, and BG3 offers both that and more trad Puppy-Kicker options (evil for evil's sake).
Seems like that's probably more than a coincidence.
