Obviously, this contains spoilers for Act 4 for Lhose's quest. So you have been duly warned.
Yes, I know I give a lot of criticism on the forums and elsewhere, but I can also give praise where it's due.
The climax to Lhose's story is simply brilliant. You meet Malady outside the Doctor's practice, and she offers you a one-time chance to weaken the demon. Malady takes you into the demon's personal pocket dimension.
The demon gets his power from souls, so to weaken him, you are faced with the choice of snuffing them out - killing them, in other words. It's a bleak choice, but if the alternative is to fail, and to let the demon continue to enslave more and more in the future, it seems like a necessary sacrifice.
The first soul-candle to be snuffed out is that of someone you briefly met. My avatar, Beast, encouraged Lhose to do it. Then there were two more candles, strangers, one a good man who wanted Lhose to snuff the candle to destroy the demon, the other a murderer who didn't want to die. I once again nudged Lhose into doing it.
But then came the next scene.
A ledge overlooking a veritable SEA of candles. Hundreds of them, thousands of them twinkling out into the darkness. Each representing a life. Even Malady was shaken, she had no idea it would be that many.
So many lives to be snuffed out at once, but if they are not, and we were to fail, how many more thousands would get added to his collection?
I decided to have Beast say nothing here. This was a choice Lhose had to make on her own. Either way I would support her choice. She considered it for a long moment, pondered it, then gave her assent to snuff them all. Malady summoned a storm to rain out all the candles.
We just stood there in silence watching the rain pour down and extinguish them. Then Malady returned us to the world. There was nothing more she could do. It was time to confront the Doctor.
The door let us in, an we walked past the demon nurses to the end of the hall. The Doctor was clearly weakened. For the first time, Lhose faced her tormentor with confidence, and the Doctor seemed almost afraid.
Inevitably, the fight started. The Doctor transformed immediately. His stats were incredible, so much more than any foe faced before. And that was with the Weakness affliction - the incredibly powerful abomination standing there before us would have had TWICE the health, TWICE the armor, and TWICE the resistances had we not snuffed out his source of power.
That's a brilliant piece of story and gameplay integration. You were given a hard choice between killing thousands to make a very tough opponent weaker, or trying save them to fight the Doctor at his full, overwhelming strength.
It's an actual ambiguous moral choice where taking the high road is notably costlier than the easy road.
The fight was fairly tough, but surprisingly manageable even with 6 nurses being annoying distractions. However I managed to persevere and even won on my first attempt without a single death. Lhose finished him off her self with Superconductor.
And after it was over, one last little bit of brilliance, with Lhose for the first time bursting out into song, an original, wonderful, uplifting tune, complete with some special effects around as well.
Just a brilliant piece of work. Truly wonderful.
