A graphical representation of my relationship with her:
Many FacesFrom beginning to end its just a constant "ite...guess this is happening now" feeling.
- You, a complete stranger with a weird group, get to just go torture her prisoner or point to her map or lead the war party for the absolute with pretty much no rolling. For what ended up being a really long battle in the grove and a pretty climactic ending to the "choose a path" portion of this, it would be nice to see you having to do tasks for her that were evil. I went from fairly evil, but pragmatic and helping the druids to drilling her on a satanic altar covered in blood and avoiding her slitting my throat in what, narratively, was a day and the drilling to throat slitting was a few hours. After which, I passed a dice roll, so it went from snarling "die scum!" to "ok, I can help you, I have a special thing to protect those I care about and you can have it. I cant wait to see you again". Now, if she was absolutely NUTS, and thats how she always acted, I would love to have a dont stick ...in crazy affair with her that wasn't a romance but more of a Geralt continued fling and try to not get killed kind of thing. As a story element though, no consistency.
- I think the side quests to unlock her final attack would be great because its you choosing evil repeatedly. The druids sucked, but its kind of like a bandaid. Once you were in it, that is your world now. Having to go kill a farmer and his family because they have 2 more sacks of potatoes she wants, waylaying a paladin on his way to the druid grove and killing him and burning his holy book in the name of the absolute...get stuff where...no man...youre committing to be this evil. It would also make sense to generally pick off, spy on, steal, etc...classic "bad" choices from people in the grove to weaken them. Poison animals, just make you constantly want to turn back and say no, this is too evil / messed up. She makes you pick a townsperson to sacrifice to the Absolute before you consummate the pact.
- The payoff for going down that evil road should be better than having crazymonster taking you to crazytown. EA cuts when it gets interesting but a further relationship that has continuous benefits of multiple types and threads into BG and beyond as the Absolute seems like a recurring theme. A personal item from her would be nice. Also, she scrys on you through it and youll just sometimes roll a wisdom save and you wont know why during story parts and thats her scrying and shell know what you fail on.
- The path to hell be paved with good intentions. You can try to say youre doing deep undercover, playing the long con, etc...but you end up having touched so many lives through what you did, you see farms burned, refugees getting rejected at the gates from roving bands of goblins making it not safe. You talk to someone who is at the front gate asking about the person you sacrificed. Make these little nods through the game that you did something and it hurt people.
- This also means you need an alignment system that is a bit stronger than rep as you wont be known to people but someone should slip a note in your evil little pocket in the streets trying to recruit you into something. They can feel it radiating. You are barred from certain temples as the priests and priestesses ward you bacl
- EA? That all cant come to fruition, obviously, but I think a lot more foundation can be laid and seeds planted for you to say "I cant wait to see what becomes of that decision later..."
