Disfavored playthrough spoilers follow.
I found that the game underwent a massive shift from Act 1 to 2. In the first act, you're constantly pondering the morality of your choices. Who do you side with? Who do you let go? Do you choose order over chaos? How much brutality is necessary to establish peace?
Act 2 is the exact opposite: After siding with the Disfavored, this dictated almost all of my choices and I suddenly got to decide very little myself. All has already been decided by my previous choices.
- The Unbroken are always your enemies, and so are the Regent loyalists. The only way to lift the Edict is to literally slaughter everyone belonging to either faction. Now this didn't bother me as much yet because there is the significant choice of the heir at the end, which was a brillant and brutal surprise. And from a story point of view, it made sense that the stubborn people of Stalwart would not bow to you.
- However, this then repeated itself at Lethian's crossing, and here it felt much more contrived. The Bronze Brotherhood are a band of mercenaries with serious doubts about their mad leader, and yet it's entirely impossible to bring ANY of them to your side? Nope, you once again have to ultimately kill every single one of them you come across. There's one or two groups you can talk your way past, but nothing significant in terms of story. A choice between two sides never comes up here because the Forgebound simply don't do anything wrong and the Brotherhood is insane. When you suddenly had the option to kill the Forgebound leader at the end despite the fact that you have absolutely no cause for it, it didn't feel like a great and meaningful decision. It simply felt nonsensical.
- Lastly, you travel to Cairn, the archon of stone. And once again, you have absolutely no choice how to handle things. Sure, the Chorus won't be open for negotiation at this point, but I feel you could have justified the Beastmen not being dead-set against you in any case. This meant that it once again came down to simply slaughtering your way through everything with very little room for creative solutions. And most egregiously, when the plan is hatched to blight the entire landscape forever, your only option is to fully cooperate. What the hell? I'm an agent of Tunon, not Ashe's lackey, and to my character the notion of permanently destroying Kyros' land (to kill Kyros' own soldiers, no less!) was repugnant. And sure, I could say so, but it had no effect.
Act 3 gets much better again because your relationships to the different factions bear fruit and can result in a number of possible outcomes, many of which feel awesome (that the ending comes very abruptly is another matter). But during Act 2, I felt way too much like a simple errand boy. This had the unpleasant side effect of making a LOT of dialogue feel pointless, well-written though it is, because you can't actually change anything.
I know that there is one significant choice you can make, and that is betraying your alliance. I didn't do that for roleplaying reasons: In the Blade Grave, I didn't know yet that two further regions of railroaded slaughter lay ahead of me and found it fitting that I couldn't reason all that much with the Unbroken - after all, it's in their name! By the time of Lethian's Crossing, I was already wishing for independence, but I found the specific way I had to declare it (killing a Forgebound master who had done me no wrong and wasn't even fully part of the Disfavored) to be distasteful.
How do you guys feel about this? Did you have a similiar experiences? Are there choices I could have made that I have overlooked? My character had high Lore, Athletics AND subterfuge, so I usually had all possible dialogue options available to me, but perhaps I still missed something.
I also wonder how things go on the other paths, especially the independent one. Do you get to choose between factions more often there? I'm just a bit disappointed at the moment because the first act was so great (and there's still plenty to love about the rest of the game!), but this aspect of constantly challenging my perceptions of morality suddenly fell away for a VERY big chunk of the game.
I found that the game underwent a massive shift from Act 1 to 2. In the first act, you're constantly pondering the morality of your choices. Who do you side with? Who do you let go? Do you choose order over chaos? How much brutality is necessary to establish peace?
Act 2 is the exact opposite: After siding with the Disfavored, this dictated almost all of my choices and I suddenly got to decide very little myself. All has already been decided by my previous choices.
- The Unbroken are always your enemies, and so are the Regent loyalists. The only way to lift the Edict is to literally slaughter everyone belonging to either faction. Now this didn't bother me as much yet because there is the significant choice of the heir at the end, which was a brillant and brutal surprise. And from a story point of view, it made sense that the stubborn people of Stalwart would not bow to you.
- However, this then repeated itself at Lethian's crossing, and here it felt much more contrived. The Bronze Brotherhood are a band of mercenaries with serious doubts about their mad leader, and yet it's entirely impossible to bring ANY of them to your side? Nope, you once again have to ultimately kill every single one of them you come across. There's one or two groups you can talk your way past, but nothing significant in terms of story. A choice between two sides never comes up here because the Forgebound simply don't do anything wrong and the Brotherhood is insane. When you suddenly had the option to kill the Forgebound leader at the end despite the fact that you have absolutely no cause for it, it didn't feel like a great and meaningful decision. It simply felt nonsensical.
- Lastly, you travel to Cairn, the archon of stone. And once again, you have absolutely no choice how to handle things. Sure, the Chorus won't be open for negotiation at this point, but I feel you could have justified the Beastmen not being dead-set against you in any case. This meant that it once again came down to simply slaughtering your way through everything with very little room for creative solutions. And most egregiously, when the plan is hatched to blight the entire landscape forever, your only option is to fully cooperate. What the hell? I'm an agent of Tunon, not Ashe's lackey, and to my character the notion of permanently destroying Kyros' land (to kill Kyros' own soldiers, no less!) was repugnant. And sure, I could say so, but it had no effect.
Act 3 gets much better again because your relationships to the different factions bear fruit and can result in a number of possible outcomes, many of which feel awesome (that the ending comes very abruptly is another matter). But during Act 2, I felt way too much like a simple errand boy. This had the unpleasant side effect of making a LOT of dialogue feel pointless, well-written though it is, because you can't actually change anything.
I know that there is one significant choice you can make, and that is betraying your alliance. I didn't do that for roleplaying reasons: In the Blade Grave, I didn't know yet that two further regions of railroaded slaughter lay ahead of me and found it fitting that I couldn't reason all that much with the Unbroken - after all, it's in their name! By the time of Lethian's Crossing, I was already wishing for independence, but I found the specific way I had to declare it (killing a Forgebound master who had done me no wrong and wasn't even fully part of the Disfavored) to be distasteful.
How do you guys feel about this? Did you have a similiar experiences? Are there choices I could have made that I have overlooked? My character had high Lore, Athletics AND subterfuge, so I usually had all possible dialogue options available to me, but perhaps I still missed something.
I also wonder how things go on the other paths, especially the independent one. Do you get to choose between factions more often there? I'm just a bit disappointed at the moment because the first act was so great (and there's still plenty to love about the rest of the game!), but this aspect of constantly challenging my perceptions of morality suddenly fell away for a VERY big chunk of the game.
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I´ll try a second run as tank (to avoid the need for Barik) and I´ll try to be friendly to at least some group XD
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