The entire discussion has probably run its course if this implication is going start becoming a pattern from people that won't even consider the idea of individual interpretation to be a valid experience while playing a videogame wherein the character is written for non-monogamy to be a possibility that can actively be explored and established in the romance. It's probably more worthwhile to focus on writing quibbles instead of going this direction which based on prior personal experience in this thread I am interpreting as a certain kind of accusation about the real people posting here.
Originally Posted by Backinstyle
That at least makes sense for her story though as we know she is written as being on the fence about Shar and Selune. Several points in the story show her heretical side, so it's not a surprise for the player if she were to go the Shar route if you don't have enough approval etc. But on the other hand, she expresses doubts on several occasions. That is proper foreshadowing. We as the player are not confused by this because it's handled properly and there isn't anything open to interpretation.
Its just not the case with her being into polyamory. If they wanted her to be that way they should have been more clear and had more foreshadowing. As it stands, it's written very poorly and looks shoehorned in. Writers cannot just plop something randomly in act 3 like that, that's not how proper writing is done.
I mean if you want proper foreshadowing it was brought up recently: why does a Shadowheart that you've encouraged to lean deeper into her Shar worship time and time again randomly decide NOT to in Act 2 if the choice is left to her? Cuz the doubt is almost non-existent on that route. The answer is obviously a mechanical issue with it being based on approval rather than anything about the writing or your choices to that point, but it's a far more blatant inconsistency where you aren't just reading lines differently than other players interpret them, the game has actively gone against everything it's presented to you and that you've chosen to that point. With her romance opening up, a player who has made choices in pursuit of that will likely have come across dialogue that such a player can rather easily read as supporting the possibility of it, and then sure enough the game does allow it to happen. I personally think this is consistent writing. The writing is open to the interpretation of the player, and the game's own design tells us that BOTH interpretations are correct, it just depends on what you choose in this extremely choice-heavy game.
It's isn't clear if it just based on approval as I've seen ppl in other forums/apps say they had high approval and she chose Shar. So I have no idea what decides this.
Still, we know she's capable of choosing one or the other because it's explained clearly. There's no guesswork here. Nobody has a thread open to dispute this. We all understand this is what her story was leading to. There is no such thing with the polyamory stuff, it just simply doesn't exist prior to act 3. If she was polyamorous they should have stated it right away, so players know what to expect and quite simply that this is who she is. But there's none of that.
The problem I'm seeing here is that some don't seem to grasp story structure/techniques and how they shape a proper story. Writing isn't like real life. We do things out of the blue IRL but that doesn't often work in writing because the audience can get confused and doesn't believe it. This is just standard writing practice.
