Baldur's Gate 3 has been out for a week so let's check the tape, shall we? Larian Studios posted a big infographic of first week stats and most things check out: Elves are popular and gnomes are gnot. Everyone likes petting the dog and also talking to animals. My fellow Paladins are on top of the class choice, nice. But wait, 35% of you decided to assault the Emerald Grove? Over a third of us are going the evil route? Actually, I'm a little proud.
Among plenty of other gameplay statistics, Larian notes that 34.9% of players decided to assault the Grove of druids on behalf of the goblins early in Act 1 of Baldur's Gate 3. It's presented as a pretty clear good versus evil decision, with druids and refugee tieflings on one side and goblins following the shadowy Absolute on the other. Not a lot of grey area here—the goblins are baddies for the sake of it and the tieflings are just scared and trying to survive their emigration to the city.
I'm astounded that, presented with those choices, an entire third of players went ahead and attacked The Grove. I'm not judging, it's just that usually when you see gameplay telemetry for RPGs with big choices, the large majority of players can't bring themselves to be downright bad. Those 35% of players are still in the minority, but not nearly as much as I'd expected. Apparently a similar 35% of players went Renegade in Mass Effect 3, so maybe this is a more common good/evil split than I'm remembering. (Granted, picking spicy dialogue in Mass Effect isn't quite the same as murdering refugees.)
I'm willing to bet that not all of the 35% of players who attacked the Grove followed through with a full on evil playthrough in Baldur's Gate 3, though. We're all curious, so I imagine a good chunk of folks fought on the [[link]] goblins' side just for kicks before chickening out and reloading an earlier save file. With how long fights can take in Baldur's Gate 3, though, even that's quite a commitment.
If you're in Act 1 and haven't decided what you'll do yet, you can peep the details ahead of time in our explainer on whether you should [[link]] save or raid the Emerald Grove.