Having played through the entire Early Access plenty of times as I'm seriously addicted and can't stop, one story arc that consistently keeps disappointing me and makes choices feel completely meaningless is Arka's story, due to > inconsistencies < with her dialogue and responses always leading to her death.

  • We are first introduced to her on the ramparts of the Druid's Grove, mourning her brother Kanon.
  • We observe her passionate rage towards goblins and get an option to either further encourage that rage or sympathize.
  • No matter the choice she storms off to kill Sazza as payback, where we get yet another conversation with speech checks.
  • We can step in front of her crossbow and persuade her that killing Sazza won't avenge Kanon nor change anything.
  • After we further persuade her that drowning her heart in revenge will only be yet another victory for the goblins, she admits that the player is right, calms down and peacefully leaves.
  • But the story still treats her as if we fueled her rage, so she despawns and once again is found dead in front of the goblin camp. Just... dead... without any consistency with her actual responses and any meaningful encore.

Patch 8 re-introduced the option to calm her down and make her see the error of her way by mentioning it won't bring her brother back, which she agrees with.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

And I was thinking, great! Finally a way to save Arka and she will now hang out in the grove with Memnos to comfort her. Well... wrong. The choices in her story arc are utterly meaningless because no matter what I say or do she ends up dead once again and Memnos is nowhere to be seen.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Which makes this whole story arc so disappointing and the main reason why I completely avoid Sazza's quest in majority of my playthroughs. Because Arka's corpse otherwise stands as a permanent monument of failure and a reminder that she is dead because of me.

If she is dissuaded from the path of revenge and acknowledges us to be right, then she should be alive and well in the grove with Memnos as her dialogue lines imply.

There are far more minor side characters in the story that end up having more satisfactory and actually meaningful outcomes...

  • Scratch the dog
  • The baby owlbear
  • Sazza (female goblin in the camp)
  • Pandirna (tiefling woman with legs paralyzed)
  • Lakrissa (tiefling woman with an interesting humor who makes a bet with you on surviving the goblins)
  • Guex (tiefling miserably trying to hit the training dummy)
  • Mattis (tiefling child trying to scam you with rings)
  • Timber (a squirrel that tells you there's treasure nearby)
  • Bored Oxen (the philosophical oxen that tells you about treasure hiding in the hay)
  • Efrin (the petrified dwarf in Hag's lair which can be saved)
  • Possessed Masked people in Hag's lair which can actually be saved
  • Mayrina's brothers who die no matter what, but at least serve as a progression of Mayrina's story and are a catalyst to turn her against the hag
  • The three stranded fishers being possessed by the Mindflayer, we either save, kill or knock out.
  • And if I'm even going to go into other games, in Divinity Original Sin 2, "Septa the Ineffable" which is the most minor character of them all and an insignificant crab on Fort Joy beach has a more meaningful and rewarding outcome than Arka
  • And could honestly go forever with this list...


So why is Arka who actually has an engaging story arc when compared to all these other minor characters, always getting the short end of the stick where choices are meaningless and always end up with her abruptly dead and Memnos missing. Shouldn't Memnos be dead alongside her at least since they both leave together? Or to at least have a few goblin corpses near her to show she went down fighting? Or actually have a meaningful outcome based on our choices and her responses which imply she is supposed to stay at the grove?

It's incredibly disappointing to have all these various choices, but only one set-in-stone outcome, especially because her death serves absolutely no purpose, makes no sense nor does our main character even acknowledge her death. It's just an abrupt, unacknowledged and disappointingly hollow end for a character without any encore whatsoever.

I seriously hope that Arka's disappointing story is just a result of it simply not being fully fleshed out yet and will eventually get consistency with an outcome that feels satisfactory. I've pointed out inconsistencies with her story in the post below and how it actually should be playing out, based on actual responses by Arka.