I’d also agree that "it is a badly written encounter" and "this doesn't make sense" are just figures of speech – there should be no need for a disclaimer to point out they shouldn’t be taken literally. I wasn’t going to chime in, but this is becoming a familiar and tedious problem across the entire online world.
Not that it’s ever going to stop, but it’s at least cathartic to write about it.
I’m getting some unpleasant déjà vu, too, just reading the topic’s title (where have we heard this before?) and the slow build up to that tired war of attrition that is the never-ending ‘I quote you, you quote me’ ping-pong that keeps going until someone eventually caves. But since everyone now seems to be clear we’re all just delivering our two cents and not the law on what is and what isn’t, I’d also like to repeat what I said before about disliking the Minthara ‘evil’ path for similar reasons to those already raised.
The notion of a ‘good’ or ‘evil’ path doesn’t work for me – a quality writer doesn’t view the world in such simple terms, and should be able to take everyone’s side, equally, and not weigh in with their own trite view of what’s good and what isn’t. No sentient being is so stupid as to think they’re ‘evil’. That kind of thing is best left to the realm of cartoon villains.
It’s worrying, frankly, that the good/evil paths are so cartoonish-ly pronounced in this game, each so vividly sign-posted that they might as well be good and evil tags in the dialogue. With Minthara’s speech, there’s no question about the direction in which you’re heading, and so it’s no wonder the data says it’s the least trodden road, because if there’s no mystery, there’s no intrigue – aka boring.
It looks like this will be the template, however, for all good/evil paths going forward – with a huge chunk of resources going towards ‘unique’ yet uninspired ‘evil’ paths that probably most won’t want to play, at least on the first run.
I see plenty of excuses going round stating the player should ‘fill in the gaps’ themselves – or head-canon the whole evil route. That only enforces the fact that it’s lazy writing – and yes, that’s a figure of speech, not a fact.
Tbf, I have to head-canon the entire experience at this point: the ‘evil’ path is just more on-the-nose with the narrative heavy-handedness. I enjoy the combat and did enjoy the graphics before the Patch 8 disaster, but I’m guessing that’ll only get me halfway through Act 2 before I quit. Then again, I quit most games early these days if they’re not firing on all cylinders, in all areas, so nothing new there.
Graphics: 8/10 (patch 7) 5/10 (Patch 8). Combat: 8/10. Story: 5/10.
Last edited by konmehn; 30/08/22 07:51 PM. Reason: typo
