Katarack21

Pfft. Edwin's where it's at. "It's aggravation like this that will eventually cause me to fireball the entire party as they sleep. Yes indeed, everyone peaceful and quiet and then FOOM!"

Don't get rid of it, *make it useful*. Crafting was *clearly* an afterthought in PoE. It needs to be integrated much more with the game; it needs to be robust, deep, and complex.

Incorrect. Some of the items were in fact stupid and useless crap, and I did in fact say "Naw. Don't put that crap in."

I'd much rather they take different players decisions into account. I'd rather the choices I make matter--that they effect the story and game world--than just play through some dudes personal "THIS IS HOW THE STORY GOES" power trip.

As far as I know, the game was designed around "Hard", and "Hard" was intended to replicate the difficulty of the original IE games, but they also generally expected PoE to be played by most people on "Normal", as they didn't figure old-school IE fans would be the majority of players.

That's adorable. I have 671.

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I'm honestly surprised Obsidian hasn't announced that PoE 2 will be a thing already.

1) you've missed the point I was making. I'm not saying anything about his actual beliefs about Magran. I'm talking about how Durance changed a deeply held belief based on evidence and logical argumentation. If he was non-functional as you claim that wouldn't have been successful, or he would've forgotten about it, etc. 2) what outbursts, memory/focus problems are you talking about? He makes interjections the same as other companions, has no problem remembering events that occurred 15+ years ago or since then, and he can focus on any given subject you bring up. I honestly have no idea where you are getting this from. 1) Crazy people can in fact change deeply held beliefs. Schizophrenics can change religions, change political positions, etc. That only becomes a problem if the belief in question is delusional or something. The loss of mental flexibility discussed in problems with executive function are for one thing not of that type--it's about the tendency to become stuck in routine habits, not the inability to change ones mind--and are only one symptom of executive dysfunction, experienced by some but not by all patients. 2) Durance can recall some events with perfect clarity, others are extremely fuzzy and unclear when discussed, and I recall at least one occasion where he couldn't remember details that were important to him. Sometimes he doesn't even seem clear about where he is, or what's going on. He can focus temporarily on the immediate events, but then he'll go off on unrelated tangents, or start ranting about random things at random times. Difficulty focusing also doesn't mean what you seem to think; it doesn't mean you can never pay attention to anything ever. It means you have a hard time controlling your focus; sometimes you can't pay attention to things, sometimes you pay *WAY* to much attention to things (hyperfocus), but in general outside of an acute manic or psychotic state even a deeply troubled individual can pay attention to a conversation for a minute or to. Even the dude down at the Mission I was sleeping at who wanders around in a daze talking to four or five people who aren't there can stop, say high, chat about the weather, discuss the food in line and then go back to his own little world. 1) Routine habits, like using priestly magic? Durance never uses it again if you convince him that Magran betrayed him. 2) Yeah, no I just finished my play through last night with durance in my party the whole time. You'll need to come up with specific examples you think show this behavior because there was none that I saw the entire game. 1) That's more like a person deciding to not be a Christian and therefore not pray; it has very little to do with the "routine habits" that come with loss of mental flexibility. You simply don't understand what it is; that's okay, but there comes a point where you should start paying attention to those who do. You're whole conception of mental illness is flawed, and you refuse to listen to the fact that your definitions and concepts regarding it are simply incorrect. 2) I'm sorry, I didn't take notes and write down every quote Durance ever said throughout the game. My bad. My 7th playthrough, I'll make sure to do that.

1) you've missed the point I was making. I'm not saying anything about his actual beliefs about Magran. I'm talking about how Durance changed a deeply held belief based on evidence and logical argumentation. If he was non-functional as you claim that wouldn't have been successful, or he would've forgotten about it, etc. 2) what outbursts, memory/focus problems are you talking about? He makes interjections the same as other companions, has no problem remembering events that occurred 15+ years ago or since then, and he can focus on any given subject you bring up. I honestly have no idea where you are getting this from. 1) Crazy people can in fact change deeply held beliefs. Schizophrenics can change religions, change political positions, etc. That only becomes a problem if the belief in question is delusional or something. The loss of mental flexibility discussed in problems with executive function are for one thing not of that type--it's about the tendency to become stuck in routine habits, not the inability to change ones mind--and are only one symptom of executive dysfunction, experienced by some but not by all patients. 2) Durance can recall some events with perfect clarity, others are extremely fuzzy and unclear when discussed, and I recall at least one occasion where he couldn't remember details that were important to him. Sometimes he doesn't even seem clear about where he is, or what's going on. He can focus temporarily on the immediate events, but then he'll go off on unrelated tangents, or start ranting about random things at random times. Difficulty focusing also doesn't mean what you seem to think; it doesn't mean you can never pay attention to anything ever. It means you have a hard time controlling your focus; sometimes you can't pay attention to things, sometimes you pay *WAY* to much attention to things (hyperfocus), but in general outside of an acute manic or psychotic state even a deeply troubled individual can pay attention to a conversation for a minute or to. Even the dude down at the Mission I was sleeping at who wanders around in a daze talking to four or five people who aren't there can stop, say high, chat about the weather, discuss the food in line and then go back to his own little world.

There is no "think you can breathe in water or your not crazy" sanity check. That doesn't exist. That test has to exist, otherwise nobody is sane. There has to be an objective reality to go with an objective test, otherwise half the people can believe the CIA owns that MCDonalds and the other half disagrees. But nobody is right, or rather everyone is right. No, it doesn't. You seem to be going with the idea that if your not completely and totally disconnected from observable reality, you're fine. That's not how it works. Even in the depths of a total psychotic break, that's not how it works. It's more of an overlay changing how reality is perceived. The people who think they can breath underwater are really, really rare and mostly sit around in institutions being catatonic. More likely are the people who think they *could* breathe underwater if you can only find the final ingredient in that recipe the alien gave you last night, that recipe being needed to save the world from the secret Reptilian base under Lake Superior so if the security could just give me that St. Elmo's Wart and let me go I'll get on about my damn business. That's how delusion, paranoia, etc. work. They don't force you to do irrational things with no logic to them. Crazy people aren't being irrational, or illogical. Crazy people are making rational and logical decisions, having rational reactions, etc. *to completely irrational ideas and fears*. As I said, it's logical reactions to an absurd premise. Then there are other symptoms of mental illness, such as a break down of executive function. That ones common with schizophrenics; what that means is a disintegration of the ability to plan ahead, to inhibit the expression of emotions, the breakdown of working memory, the ability to focus attention, etc. What that means is that the people who suffer these symptoms have had a complete or partial loss in the ability to influence or control their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, the ability to plan ahead, the ability to focus on one task until completion, etc. They also tend to lose mental flexibility and suffer some forms of amnesia to episodic memory. People who suffer from these conditions are perfectly capable of walking around, going shopping, having a normal conversation with you on the bus, etc. They might seem strange, act a little weird, or they might seem perfectly ordinary. That doesn't mean they aren't completely off their rocker, or that they are in any way responsible for their behaviors. Damage to executive function is *defined* as damage to the ability to influence oneself; delusions and paranoia generally mean that one is reacting in perfectly logical ways to a belief that is irrational and *impossible to influence, control, or change*. Durance is clearly non-functional. He is the Eora equivalent to the wandering homeless preacher ranting about aliens on the street corner. I'll I have to say is look at the end of the Durance quest. If Durance was as non-functional as you claim, there would be no convincing him he had been betrayed by Magran. Not at all. Magran wasn't the center of his functionality problems, just the cause. We don't get to see whether that knowledge actually changes anything. I would argue that it probably won't make any difference, because what he believes about Magran's loyalty or lack there of won't suddenly make him able to control his outbursts, fix his memory, make him able to focus, etc.

There is no "think you can breathe in water or your not crazy" sanity check. That doesn't exist. That test has to exist, otherwise nobody is sane. There has to be an objective reality to go with an objective test, otherwise half the people can believe the CIA owns that MCDonalds and the other half disagrees. But nobody is right, or rather everyone is right. No, it doesn't. You seem to be going with the idea that if your not completely and totally disconnected from observable reality, you're fine. That's not how it works. Even in the depths of a total psychotic break, that's not how it works. It's more of an overlay changing how reality is perceived. The people who think they can breath underwater are really, really rare and mostly sit around in institutions being catatonic. More likely are the people who think they *could* breathe underwater if you can only find the final ingredient in that recipe the alien gave you last night, that recipe being needed to save the world from the secret Reptilian base under Lake Superior so if the security could just give me that St. Elmo's Wart and let me go I'll get on about my damn business. That's how delusion, paranoia, etc. work. They don't force you to do irrational things with no logic to them. Crazy people aren't being irrational, or illogical. Crazy people are making rational and logical decisions, having rational reactions, etc. *to completely irrational ideas and fears*. As I said, it's logical reactions to an absurd premise. Then there are other symptoms of mental illness, such as a break down of executive function. That ones common with schizophrenics; what that means is a disintegration of the ability to plan ahead, to inhibit the expression of emotions, the breakdown of working memory, the ability to focus attention, etc. What that means is that the people who suffer these symptoms have had a complete or partial loss in the ability to influence or control their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, the ability to plan ahead, the ability to focus on one task until completion, etc. They also tend to lose mental flexibility and suffer some forms of amnesia to episodic memory. People who suffer from these conditions are perfectly capable of walking around, going shopping, having a normal conversation with you on the bus, etc. They might seem strange, act a little weird, or they might seem perfectly ordinary. That doesn't mean they aren't completely off their rocker, or that they are in any way responsible for their behaviors. Damage to executive function is *defined* as damage to the ability to influence oneself; delusions and paranoia generally mean that one is reacting in perfectly logical ways to a belief that is irrational and *impossible to influence, control, or change*. Durance is clearly non-functional. He is the Eora equivalent to the wandering homeless preacher ranting about aliens on the street corner.

I think you're way exaggerating. He functions just fine on a day-to-day basis, and in some interactions with NPCs his observations/interjections actually indicate above-average clarity and even wisdom. Sure he lives in a separate reality in a sense, but it seems to me that that's more due to his refusal to come to terms with Magran's rejection of him and his attempts to rationalize an evil philosophy, than a result of clinical illness. You seem to be arguing from the premise that if someone has just a pinch of craziness in them, their free will and capacity to be responsible for evil acts immediately drops from 100% to 0%. I'd say it's more of an overlapping spectrum, and I'd put Durance at about "15% crazy, 85% evil" in that spectrum. Yes, he functions so fine on a day-to-day basis that he smells like a trash heap, never showers or bathes, doesn't clean his clothes, gives every impression of being a wandering beggar, and goes on essentially random rants at people for no reason that those people can understand. He's so functional that sometimes he's not sure where he is, or when it is. He's so functional. Being crazy doesn't mean you're a babbling, incoherent mess every minute of every day. It doesn't mean your stupid, either. Having moments of clarity, and even being wise on a general basis, are things that crazy people can do. I'm certainly not "arguing from the premise that if someone has just a pinch of craziness in them, their free will and capacity to be responsible for evil acts immediately drops from 100% to 0%." That's a ****ing strawman. That's *you* attempting to justify your desire to punish a clearly crazy person for actions that they aren't responsible for by making the amount of damage they've suffered seem much less than it is, by making legit statements regarding the damage in question seem utterly ridiculous. What I'm arguing is that Durance is bat**** crazy, that his bat**** crazy originates specifically from that damage that was done to him by the Godhammer bomb, and that because of those facts he's not culpable as "evil". That's what I'm arguing, not your "premise that if someone has just a pinch of craziness in them, their free will and capacity to be responsible for evil acts immediately drops from 100% to 0%".

That's a silly thing to say. He's damaged, yes, but it's not as if he has no will. I don't think it's a silly thing to say at all. Durance has been a wandering, homeless ranter since the day Eothas died. He no longer controls any of his actions. No longer understands what he does or why he does it.

I'd contend that "Evil" and "Crazy" are not mutually exclusive conditions. I would disagree. I think that in order to be evil, you have to consciously choose an action and be capable of understanding that the act in question is morally wrong. If you're crazy, you don't qualify under at least one of those requirements. The thing is by this standard absolutely no one would be Evil. No one actually thinks what they're doing is evil. Try to think of the worst people in history, not one of them would say the actions they committed was morally wrong. No, I think for insanity to excuse ones actions it needs to rise to an elevated level. Like they didn't intend to behead their wife, but they actually though her head was a hat (to mangle a famous example). I didn't say "believe that the action is wrong", I said "be capable of understanding that the act is morally wrong". The two aren't the same; I'm say the person has to *have the capacity* to understand the moral relevance of their own actions. Not that they judge their own actions a certain way. Ah, my mistake then. In that case then Durance is clearly not crazy but evil. Durance clearly has the capacity to understand the moral relevance of his actions. Durance can barely understand what's happening to him or the world around him on a day-to-day basis. I doubt he has the capacity to understand why he's doing anything, let alone what any of it means or the purpose behind any of it. Thoughts and ideas just occur to him as right or wrong; as do or don't. The meaning behind it is long gone. That's part of what the Godhammer did to him.

No. They are thinking rationally, rationalizing, and thinking logically *within their reality*. If one is delusional, and is under the paranoid and delusional belief that the McDonalds down the street is a front for a secret CIA mission whose goal is to slowly sabotage your life to such a degree that it drives you to suicide, then bursting into the McDonalds screaming "ALL YOU SORRY SACKS OF **** CAN BURN IN HELL, I AIN'T GONNA DIE, YOU CAN TAKE YOUR SORRY SACK OF CONTRIVED BULLYING AND **** YOURSELVES!!" may *seem* like a logical, rational thing to do. It's rational decision making from an inherently absurd premise, the product of mental illness. There is no "think you can breathe in water or your not crazy" sanity check. That doesn't exist.

Depends on how you characterize evil. That's the whole point of the companions; pretty much all of them are doing--or have done--only things that *they* felt were good, necessary, and required to be moral at that moment. And they all have good reasons for thinking and feeling that. Durance, the Devil, and Eder are the easiest examples. All of them did super wrong things--building a weapon of mass destruction that needed human sacrifice to work, serial murder, and traitorous sedition and helping a foreign enemy to invade their homeland. @Eder: What an American thing to say. Seriously. Also, evil characters usually think they're in the right. Those "Evil League Of Evil"-characters might be a dime a dozen in comic books, but very few people actually embrace "EVIL" in this way. It's 99% lazy writing, born out of cultural narratives we usually use against enemies. You mean "what an American way to write a character".

I'd contend that "Evil" and "Crazy" are not mutually exclusive conditions. I would disagree. I think that in order to be evil, you have to consciously choose an action and be capable of understanding that the act in question is morally wrong. If you're crazy, you don't qualify under at least one of those requirements. The thing is by this standard absolutely no one would be Evil. No one actually thinks what they're doing is evil. Try to think of the worst people in history, not one of them would say the actions they committed was morally wrong. No, I think for insanity to excuse ones actions it needs to rise to an elevated level. Like they didn't intend to behead their wife, but they actually though her head was a hat (to mangle a famous example). I didn't say "believe that the action is wrong", I said "be capable of understanding that the act is morally wrong". The two aren't the same; I'm say the person has to *have the capacity* to understand the moral relevance of their own actions. Not that they judge their own actions a certain way.

I am pretty sure you can be both at the same time. Being insane is not a pack of mentos, you don't get to say "sorry", shrug, then everyone laughs and it is all okay. Again, as I said earlier, being "evil" requires that you be be culpable for your decisions. It requires that you willingly make choices of which you understand the consequences. Being insane doesn't make it so it's "all okay", it just makes it so that you yourself are not personally responsible for your actions. In the adult world, complex situations require more than "good" or "evil". Sometimes nobody is either, more often everybody is a little bit of both. Durance may be morally reprehensible, and even irredeemable, *without* being evil *because of the nature of the damage he's went through and how that damage is directly affecting him*.

I am still waiting to hear the part where you guys explain how this makes it so his actions aren't reprehensible, he is somehow not morally bankrupt, and is redeemable in some way. In fact the way you guys phrase it he is basically a dog with rabies and the only option now is to put the poor bugger down. His actions are reprehensible, but he's not morally bankrupt because he's not capable of making good, rational, morally upright decisions. He is *broken*. The thoughts, ideas, concepts, and actions that he takes *seem* reasonable to him *because his soul is damaged and he's no longer functional*. He *might* be redeemable, if there were some way to repair the damage that was done to him so that he he's capable of making sane, rational decisions again. Durance is no more culpable for the things he says and does than a man in a deep, permanent psychotic state would be. That means Durance isn't a human, he's just a tool. Which he is, of course. Humans with moral agency have free will, and thus moral agency. The good or evil of a tool is up to the user. The question then becomes, if anyone can be transformed from person to tool by the Authorities, what makes anyone else immune to the proscription? Any Authority, the State included, has the power to determine who is psychotic and what penalties that requires. Which merely means that might makes right. Anybody, including you and all other humans, can lose their free will when damage to the brain directly causes personality shifts and other problems--such as delusions, paranoia, mood lability, etc. In these situations the person isn't controlling their thoughts, ideas, actions, beliefs, etc--they are being directly caused by an organic dysfunction in the physical make up of the brain. In a psychotic state, you do not control your actions--your psychosis does. In the same sense, a TBI can cause a complete personality shift, and the new personality--it's feelings, it's thoughts, it's opinions, etc--is not something the person chooses. In the world of Eora, the soul is a real, quantifiable, measurable object with a direct impact on a persons thoughts, actions, beliefs, personality, etc. *just* like the brain is in the real world. In Eora, you can *directly* cause people to develop different beliefs, thoughts, etc. by screwing around with that persons soul. This is, in part, what animancy is about and part of the reason for the distrust and general dislike of animancers. This is, in fact, how magical spells effects like "charmed" and "frightened" are achieved. Durance is not culpable because so much damage has been done to his soul that he is now being controlled by that damage--his thoughts, beliefs, and actions are no longer those of a sane, cohesive personality. Your comment about him being a tool is in some sense appropriate. Magran used him exactly as such--as a tool to achieve her ends, a tool that she used carelessly, damaged beyond repair, and then lost before she could destroy it.

Naw. Things are just changing. Part of it's the rise of computers; the graphical icon-based interface coupled with the global transmission of visual mediums like movies and TV shows have engendered a generation that's more comfortable with that. Much like how the rise of TV entirely killed most peoples ability to "see" with their ears in radio dramas.

I am still waiting to hear the part where you guys explain how this makes it so his actions aren't reprehensible, he is somehow not morally bankrupt, and is redeemable in some way. In fact the way you guys phrase it he is basically a dog with rabies and the only option now is to put the poor bugger down. His actions are reprehensible, but he's not morally bankrupt because he's not capable of making good, rational, morally upright decisions. He is *broken*. The thoughts, ideas, concepts, and actions that he takes *seem* reasonable to him *because his soul is damaged and he's no longer functional*. He *might* be redeemable, if there were some way to repair the damage that was done to him so that he he's capable of making sane, rational decisions again. Durance is no more culpable for the things he says and does than a man in a deep, permanent psychotic state would be.

I'd contend that "Evil" and "Crazy" are not mutually exclusive conditions. I would disagree. I think that in order to be evil, you have to consciously choose an action and be capable of understanding that the act in question is morally wrong. If you're crazy, you don't qualify under at least one of those requirements.

Um...no. A damaged soul is a *cause*, not a symptom. A soul, in this world, is a real actual object that can be quantified, studied, examined in detail, and yes even damaged. Souls can be damaged in many ways, and different kinds of damage create different kinds of effects. The kind of damage that creates a Watcher is different from the kind of damage that creates a Durance. That's what animancy is all about--learning the different effects that different things done to souls have. Durance is *broken*. Not in a metaphorical, emotionally damaged sense. He's actually broken--his soul has been damaged and he is no longer functioning correctly. Don't think of it as trauma. Think of it as TBI resulting in major personality changes resulting in what you see today.

Accurate. My bad.