Mmogog

Exactly. My point is not that the story itself is not interesting, but how they pretend you have a choice and that what you did mattered to you or the world in a very cheap way.

The story as you saw could have been very good. The problem for me is at the end, those choices are not present. That thins both your character and Thaos down to "good guy" and "bad guy". And one option as good (telling the people that the gods are false) and another is bad (not telling). The dialog options boil down to that! I did not feel like the game made a choice for me until that point. I felt I could have played my character in a completely selfish manner if I wanted to up to that point. Good stories come from good spherical characters. The characters and the story fell flat at the end. There is no "debate" as you put it. As to religion vs. atheism, it is not me who is seeing it lazily. It is the flat Thaos character vs. the flat Watcher / Ivonara characters explicit disagreement put in by the writer that motivated everything you did in the game. The game's ending does not do it justice.

Anamancy feels more like an argument about ethics. Anamancers in the game tend to be outright evil gits raising undead and torturing people. But the science itself can lead togood things. I felt more resonant with the struggle at wether the benefit of anamancy outweighed the cost of having a bunch of looneys run around torturing for science. The religion thing is less atheism and more intollerance. The religious folk are all running around murdering whatever group the religion decides they don't like today. A decade ago it was eothosians, now it is anamancers. In a few years they'll find another group to hate and attempt genocide against. Those are good points. Except the story is not steered to thinking and making decisions about these things. The the main story sequence requires you to approve of animancy and decide is wrong to tell people that gods exist. There is no option 2. There is no decision-making and impact on your character or the world.

OK, I am going to stop quoting otherwise this thread will be 90% the same wall of text. For the sake of argument, let's define god as a being with supernatural powers. Let us also define false gods as beings with no supernatural power posing as gods. Now, the gods in the game do have supernatural powers. Then the game says they are false gods, created by men (or kith, whatever). Illogical.

"What kind of companion are you that dies after the tutorial?" "Kind you can afford."

The existentialist aspect is most certainly prevalent. Too prevalent. It ruined the story for me, in combination with other factors. When I finished the first side-character story (Kana), I though to myself: "let me guess, all of these long and ambitious quests by these dudes will reveal nothing at all because the writer had a thing about existentialist". Bingo. The story should not have been that predictable. @Verenti: you mentioned animancy linked to existentialism. It is much more linked to Hare Krishna and Spiritism. Animancy proves that it is not an individual's will that shapes reality. But it is an outer force that affects his soul in relation to how he lived his previous life. There is a pseudo science vs. religion discussion that does not make sense at all, because the gods actually have godly powers in the game. And animancy, which is supposed to be the science side, actually proves the supernatural. It feels as though there is a pervasive real-world influence of an atheism vs. religion debate influence in the game, which is is, quite frankly, a disappointment, because it is just the fad of the current times to praise atheism. Good stories are timeless. Think Planescape: Torment. That game was a better example of what you were saying about power and reality.

Where can I get a list of voice actors/actresses sorted by in-game character? I found some quite compelling. Thanks!

How does that even make sense? Gods that are not real but have godly powers?

By the way, I killed Roedric, paused the game and took a shower. When I came back, I saw the start of Rolsc's dialog. Now I completed the quest but when I try to move around in the keep the game crashes in the loading screen. This should be fixed also.