[quote=Cahir] Well, for one thing, I did not say being a sinner and a victim are mutually exclusive. One could potentially be both (and also obviously neither). In your example, the second person is both. I would feel strong sympathy for their victim past, but complete revulsion for their subsequent life of sin in the present, which in my view was a choice they made.
Then, is the person who is a sinner and a victim at the same time worth redeeming or not?
I agree, that usually the person's backstory is not a black and white and there's always a trigger that made them do evil things, but that's also applying to BG3 characters, like Shadowheart. Admittedly, I haven't played EA, because I didn't want to spoil myself the story before playing the full game, but my friend told me, we don't get to learn Shadowheart's full backstory in Act 1 (which is EA's content), so we cannot see the full picture. We don't know what led her to worships Shar and if this devotion is strong or not. We can of course threat a character like a set of statistics on the character sheet, with their alignment, class, worshipped deity and so on, and said that this character is evil and not worth taking to our group, but IMO that's oversimplification.
Like I said before, I'm just philosophically not inclined to be a redeemer of anyone for their sins. I'm someone who feels there are some things that can never be forgiven by me, certain lines that can never be uncrossed once crossed. But as I also said, I am equally very strong on being a champion of people who've been victimized. So, it all depends on the facts of the situation.
Re. SH, I think ultimately the real problem is Larian's writers. More specifically, the problem is our not having been given adequate reasonable dialogue options when interacting with SH as Tav. My PC can even kill SH, but I am not provided the opportunity to call her out for being a Sharran? I cannot tell her that she's a fake, a fraud, a phony for claiming to support good actions even while being a Sharran? To tell her to her face that anyone who worships Shar is a monster? That Larian does not provide those dialogue options is my real issue.
However, I am willing to grant that maybe, just maybe, that is because they were trying to avoid spoiler situations in EA, and that in the full release of the game those kinds of dialogue options will indeed be available. One can only hope.
