Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General (Spoilers) Ending doesnt make sense to me...

This is in reference to the "purge all source" ending.

I think Lucian and Dallis are either ignorant, lieing or its a dev oversight concerning defeating the God King in wanting to shore up the veil by purging all source from Rivellon.

Why? Because purging turns people into silent monks...yet we are constantly told by the lore throughout the game that when people die...they turn into spirits and go to the hall of echoes...of which are then fed upon by the gods and they are wiped from existence because "their source" was absorbed.

Hence, to completely absorb source is to completely wipe one from existence...yet in the "purge yourself" ending...the other people of Rivellon still exist normally while you became a silent monk to be rescued by Malady.

The game tells us that all creation of the Seven was done by the source they took from the God King and/or the veil.

Sourcerers are thus exceptional individuals who have the capability to manipulate source either by causing a form of creation or absorbing the essence of other beings.

Purging someone of source therefore shouldnt actually turn them into a silent monk. It should completely wipe away their existence because they ARE source. This is shown multiple times when you can consume spirits to wipe them from existence. You can even threaten certain NPC spirits with complete annihilation in doing so. I also do not consider the remains of purged individuals to count as the purging doesn't seem to be complete in that regard.

Im thinking the purging does something that is not entirely explained by the devs. Im thinking some form of a mutilated extraction of essence. Its not actually complete.

...so I am leaning towards a dev oversight position. Though if all it required was just a little more source and the people of Rivellon, through reproducing caused more source to enter into existence then all they had to do was siphon it off gently from the populace without them knowing...which is what they were doing anyways but did it violently where-ever they could. Hence the Magisters.

What do you guys think?

Yes, if you think about it as a pure numbers match up, and to fix the whole you must replace all the source that was taken, and all that was taken is responsible for everyone alive, then it sort of follows that you'd have to wipe everything out to fix the hole.

Perhaps Source is an energy created and consumed over time, and so instead of a zero sum game, Lucian just needs X amount to seal the hole, and you provide enough to get him to X. (shrug)

I do think that this ending was the "best" choice for the world though. I tried all the options (seal hole, become divine, give everyone source, and (Fane) let Godking return) and the others all seem result in obvious problems.

Letting Lucian reign as a Divine is an obvious problem. Seriosuly this game made me feel betrayed in the end. In my opinion the 'one for all' ending is the best, the world will always be full of power-hungry tyrants, no matter if they're after the source or not.

I decided to be the Divine and hated the Ending. I was playing custom Undead and everyone was like "yeah you be divine!" and I chose to be divine annnddd....its a bad ending! Everyone is dying, congrats, you did so much as the "divine"!. Ugh.

None of the endings are perfect. I think they were trying to make things believable to which end, perfect Disney endings dont actually exist. Buy there is only so much you can do when lore is already established not to mention, the idea of magic is silly to begin with since it ultimately trivializes all life. I didnt care about the whole source, god, divinity stuff either (not even in DOS1 nor most games with similar themes). I did like the character interactions and backstories though.

That's not exactly it.

Source in itself is a form of energy. Therefore it follows and applies laws of physics.
Energy cannot die, it simply changes forms and dissipates but never dies.
Source, when consumed from normal sourcerers turns them silent, as the lore explains, removing Source from a living being is worse than death, that's because there is no safe way to remove it, the trauma shock is so great that people become thralls, mute and obedient, but they need a direct order to do anything. This is confirmed early on on 2 occasions:
-Silent Monks don't necessarily attack you when you kill the butcher in the fort dungeons, they never get an order to attack you unless during combat he runs off close enough to one of them to order them to attack you.
-Silent Monks in the fort harbor never get an order to attack you so they don't.

In addition, Dallis can turn some sourcerers into Shriekers, a form of wraiths inside living shells.

It's not like people from whom you remove the source and turn them into a silent monk are completely dead.
Theoretically they should be able to return to normal if some sort of therapy was applied, or they could create new personalities over time.

Also purging source from rivelon is not killing all the people, keep in mind not everyone has source.
Problem is, we can't be sure that the void will not find another way in, and the only way to effectively fight with the void is with source.

Also keep in mind that the other games in the Divinity franchise are placed much later in time and there is VOID and SOURCE in it, which means that even if you seal the void gate, it will find another way, and if you purge source nature will find a way.