Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General [SPOILERS] Climax for Lhose's quest is brilliant

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.

I was actually quite moved by your retelling of that particular segment: it was indeed really well done, though being me I did get pwned anyway until I took an alternative approach. I think there's been too little focus on some of the story's high-points so it's really nice to read stuff like this.

Agreed, I love the Lohse story line

Whoops, it turns out that I need to take back some praise, because there's an absolutely STUPID consequence to this. If you snuff the candles, Trader Friel, the ONLY seller of elemental and Polymorph skillbooks in all of Act 4 DIES.

Awesome. Thanks for screwing people over. Really smart idea to do that for people right before the final boss, Larian. Wonderful.

Hmm. That sounds like it's up there with FO3's Tenpenny Tower in that whichever decision you make, it's going to suck one way or another. I guess I don't really view that as shades of grey, just shades of irritation.

You are given the choice between killing thousands of innocent and weaken the doctor, or save them and face the "true" doctor.

That's actually a good and balanced choice. Are you ready to kill so many people because you are afraid of the doctor true power ? Who are you to kill thousands of people because you think the doctor deserve to die and/or you deserve to live through this encounter ?

The problem is that the morale repercussion should be the only one, killing only innocent villagers, people not selling stuff or important for a quest. But I love that some people just die after this choice and you found their dead bodies, even though I didn't understood why at first. It should be better explained, maybe their ghost telling you how an horrible person you are or forgiving you.

I'd just like to reiterate that I, personally, did not make the choice. I left it up to Lhose. Her life, her decision.

It's absolutely an unacceptable dick move to kill the ONLY skillbook vendor for all the elemental skills and the polymorph skills at a point when you're not even likely to notice until after a tough boss battle - maybe THE toughest boss battle, second only to possibly the final one.

I have no issues with the game killing off the skill book vendor. The skill book vendor drops the highest tiers of skill on death anyhow and anything below that which you planned to use you should have acquired long before A4.

Honestly I like the fact that it kills off relevant characters and would have preferred it even more if some quests became incomplete able as a result of this decision (due to their npcs dying as a result). It makes the decision more meaningful and impacting. Also adds to replay value.

In life you make choices that you regret, that you cannot unmake with lasting consequences and for a top tier game I would like choices in the game to feel the same. Another example of this is if malady tells you how to find the nameless isle, she dies.

This is just poor design no matter how you look at it, unless you're an idiot.

This happens right at the specific point before a huge boss fight against the single toughest poss in the game, and you have no reason to wander off and check all other NPC's at that point.

It is absolutely bad design to have quests kill off skillbook vendors no matter how you look at it. This was severely obnoxious in Act 1, and they never changed that stupid decision then, despite complaints.

There is absolutely no reason for this to be in the game.

Good to know that I am automatically an idiot for disagreeing with you, such a great argument /s. The fight isn't even hard anyhow, if you get past A2 then the hardest part of the game is over and I stand by my statement that it is a good design. You made a choice, the choice had a consequence. Live with it. Just like life, some outcomes suck for you.

Yes, you are automatically an idiot for disagreeing with me on this point. I am being completely serious.

Somewhere else in A4 there is a valve that turning will kill every single npc in arx. Do you also think this is a bad design?

No, because the valve and the consequences for turning it are clearly indicated at the time you can turn it. That is not the case here. There is a difference between "do this and you will definitely kill pretty much everyone" and "do this and you will have no way of knowing who dies". AND once again, in this case, I did not make the choice.


EDIT: I'll also mention that I was totally on board with this whole part right up until I realized that I'd need to go back several hours, redo the boss fight, and re-do all the shopping for level 21 gear.

The dilemma worked for me, it was effective, it was already doing its job. Screwing over players is absolutely not necessary for the sequence to have the intended effect.

There's also need to have only one vendor for the books in the act. Add redundant vendors and I would be back on board with this.

i did enjoy lohse's storyline and think people give it a lot of undue disdain

it's one of the few that feels complete and well written

i didn't like the fakeout "is she still possessed???OoOoOoOo" afterwards though. that's so horror movie cliche. why would she still be possessed? you killed the demon. just let her enjoy her newfound freedom larian, god damn

You did make a choice though. You made the choice to NOT try and dissuade her. In a game the npcs make a sum total of 0 choices and the players make all the choices. If you had chose to try and dissuade her, the outcome would be different.

I am pretty sure if you were to count the number of candles snuffed out in the demon encounter it would exceed the number of people living in arx, it makes sense that some people in arx would die and that some of them would be significant. When you are standing at the candle scene, you know that a lot of people will die if you snuff them out, you don't exactly know who or where, but you know you are killing a lot of people and a lot more people then you would kill if you exterminated arx. Considering that you are killing a lot more people, the consequences are a lot less severe.

i think the only problem he's noting is that from a gameplay perspective, killing off an important vendor limits the player unnecessarily. there are a number of semi-prominent characters in arx that could have died instead

i don't actually think he's that necessary of a vendor so when i made this choice and found him dead (didn't realize that was why he died, at the time) i wasn't too upset

It's this. Important NPC's keeling over and dying isn't my biggest complaint, it's that it's costing the ONLY skillbook vendor in Act 4 for FIVE skills.




He's the only elemental and polymorph skillbook seller. At least on the Lady Vengeance I could get books from Gareth, the fletcher, and Tarquin.

The last battle has different rules, so I wanted to try out some skills I otherwise would have passed up, but because of this, I could not - not unless I wanted to redo a couple hours and a couple more hours of shopping.

for some reason i was under the impression that his skillbooks were identical to those of the vendor right across from him, but i was wrong oops

If you add redundant vendors, then there's no visible consequence.

It's a fair trade off for a very difficult fight where if you took the high ground and don't defeat the demon quickly enough, or protect her mind, you permanently lose Lohse.

Simple fix, move the vendor somewhere you're bound to see them before the boss fight. I think it was said the vendor also drops skill books (And you can make some out of scrolls you find as well). Or name the Vendor as one of the recognized people, pending you've spoken to him. Some people rushing through things might still miss it, but that's on them. A third fix is just to add a couple of skill books. To be honest, you're -really- not missing out on any skill books at this point you couldn't acquisition on the nameless isle from memory, or make on your own even.

Anyway, I highly disagree with your choice of diction later on in this post, and it's rather arrogant and poor mannered to call people idiots if they disagree with you. You can be critical, but you would find that you would be more successful and taken more receptively if you did not insult the makers, and more importantly, fellow forum members.

I really have no problems with the Doctor getting 2x stronger without snuffing out the candles. If that was so, everyone would refuse to do that. In exchange of not snuffing them out is taking Lhose's soul for good. I know it was possible to defeat him in his full power, it was difficult not because Adrahmahlikh was twice stronger... but you have limited time and you have to kill him before he takes Lhose. I'd use the Anathema on him the next time I see him in full power.