Katarack21

The Engwithan's clearly thought so, bit Iovara shows that not everybody agreed with that. That's the very problem with the robot council controlling the world; it's the Engwithan idea of what is right and proper for a society, and everything else be damned. Iovara came after, IIRC. She didn't see what the world was like without the gods. The entirety of the Engwithan people did this. Think of how hard it is to convince a society of anything. This would be like 100% of America voting for one party. Except they're electing to commit mass suicide. The state of the world had to be absolutely horrendous for them to even consider it. No, the Engwithans had to THINK it was. There have been real-world societies in the past that decided every body else was evil and they needed to conquer/destroy the entirety of the rest of the world to make it less of a hell-hole, they just didn't have the ability to actually do it. I don't recall for certain whether or not their was any implication that giving up their souls to make the gods had to be a 100% voluntary act from every single member of the society; but, judging by what Thaos has been up to with the machines in the modern world, it appears exactly the opposite, ie the machines can do their thing and rip your soul out regardless of what you think or want, indeed without you even knowning they exist. What I'm saying here is that we know that the Engwithans, as a whole, died to make the gods; do we know for certain that every single Engwithan was okay with that? If you judge the state of the real world by what the Pope thought of it in 1120, you'd come to the same kind of conclusion. My point is that we don't actually know what the world was like; we have one picture of it from a group that was clearly not unbiased, and the robot's they made have been continuing that perspective for two thousand years. I think the machines support my point. The introduction to them (coming out of Cilant Lis) shows a group of willing cultists. Thaos has to psyche them up to give in to the device. Also, if they were capable of ripping souls from everyone, then why didn't everyone in the Dyrwood just drop dead, rather than having their children born soulless? I think it's more likely that the machines intercepted the souls, but aren't capable of taking them from unwilling persons. The machine in the city (can't remember the district) would seem to contradict this, but I think it's a different sort of device. It's much larger than the others, being several stories tall, and it turned the population into zombies rather than motionless bodies. The ability to cause varying effects would be useful to Thaos. Furthermore, when you read Thaos' soul after killing him, there's a scene where a vast number of people are gathered in front of the device. Thaos looks at a woman holding her child, and she nods at him. The people are there willingly dying to do this. It seemed more like the people had to be there to activate it to me. The first person to sacrifice themselves their is already dead when you arrive; that person was the source of the biawac that killed the Galfathans at the caravan sight. The second activation that we actually saw ripped the souls out of Calisca and company, in addition to the people that were actually in the ritual. You, the PC, survive and became a Watcher. It seems to me the machine in Defiance Bay is the prototype; remember, it didn't just make zombies, it also held the souls of a whole bunch of people inside it, and you can absorb the power from them if you wish.

The Engwithan's clearly thought so, bit Iovara shows that not everybody agreed with that. That's the very problem with the robot council controlling the world; it's the Engwithan idea of what is right and proper for a society, and everything else be damned. Iovara came after, IIRC. She didn't see what the world was like without the gods. The entirety of the Engwithan people did this. Think of how hard it is to convince a society of anything. This would be like 100% of America voting for one party. Except they're electing to commit mass suicide. The state of the world had to be absolutely horrendous for them to even consider it. No, the Engwithans had to THINK it was. There have been real-world societies in the past that decided every body else was evil and they needed to conquer/destroy the entirety of the rest of the world to make it less of a hell-hole, they just didn't have the ability to actually do it. I don't recall for certain whether or not their was any implication that giving up their souls to make the gods had to be a 100% voluntary act from every single member of the society; but, judging by what Thaos has been up to with the machines in the modern world, it appears exactly the opposite, ie the machines can do their thing and rip your soul out regardless of what you think or want, indeed without you even knowning they exist. What I'm saying here is that we know that the Engwithans, as a whole, died to make the gods; do we know for certain that every single Engwithan was okay with that? If you judge the state of the real world by what the Pope thought of it in 1120, you'd come to the same kind of conclusion. My point is that we don't actually know what the world was like; we have one picture of it from a group that was clearly not unbiased, and the robot's they made have been continuing that perspective for two thousand years.

The Engwithan's clearly thought so, bit Iovara shows that not everybody agreed with that. That's the very problem with the robot council controlling the world; it's the Engwithan idea of what is right and proper for a society, and everything else be damned.

It has *MUCH* better loot than BG 1 did. 95% of the weapons in BG 1 were +1 and that's it. A few were +2. A couple even had elemental damage, oooh, how badass!

There's a ton of items with special abilities you can't get from enchanting--bash, spell strike, coordinating, disorienting, etc. You can't get these abilities on any item except the ones you find it with. The figurines are actually one of the worst examples of that, as you can summon creatures with a Chanter or a Druid. What you seem to be wanting is not an interesting and unique item, it's a Crom Faeyr-type item.

Clearly some are.

No, god damn no. That's the opposite of a review. That's a simple rationalization of the persons own gut reaction and biases. A review is the opposite, namely a careful and honest analysis of the individual elements of the game, which then grounds a fair conclusion based on this, despite of what oppinion the person had prior to writing it. If done well, the conclusion is often supprising to the reviewer him/her-self. Ultimately all a review is a report of an evaluation or inspection of something. The criteria of the evaluation is just as valid if it is "did I like it" or "is this a good representation of its type" or even "how does this compare to genre leader". And frankly (and IMO) it'd be impossible for a reviewer to be surprised by their own conclusions, only surprised by the thing they reviewed. What you're arguing for would be the fictional equivalent of Agatha Christie getting to the end a novel and thinking "The sister is the killer? That Poirot - what a surprising little man, I totally thought the butler did it..." Um...that happens among authors on occasion.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-who-enjoys-thing-informed-he-is-wrong,7057/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:NA:InFocus

Vast majority likes **** pop singers like Gaga or Spears. PoE was being marketed on KS as a IE spiritual successor and made promises they didn't keep. Opinions are like ****. It's all good to have one and be proud of it, but nobody really cares about yours nor particularly wants it shoved in their face. Same goes for you bub Exactly.

Vast majority likes **** pop singers like Gaga or Spears. PoE was being marketed on KS as a IE spiritual successor and made promises they didn't keep. Opinions are like ****. It's all good to have one and be proud of it, but nobody really cares about yours nor particularly wants it shoved in their face.

Naw. Anybody who can't handle the occasional random insult from some anonymous stranger on the Internet without being protected by the moderators probably has bigger things to worry about then a debate on the PoE boards.

I didn't consider it a lie because I was literally on my way up that path and would have went there regardless of what Kolsc did or did not say. He didn't send me, he just happened to run into me on the way and encourage my visit.

...What? Just making the point that the dialogue options as listed there are not all lines stating opposition to Raedric or any problem with him or his plans. Both "Kolsc is your cousin?" and "Kolsc didn't send me." are fairly neutral dialogue options that then open further dialogue, including allying with Raedric. They at least provide the ability to be neither confrontational nor immediately all-in; you get some information, then make your choice.

"Kolsc is your cousin?" I've never heard a stronger statement of opposition to a person in my life.

What if somebody makes themselves into a god?

I would like to point out here that all reviews, everywhere, from everybody are in fact entirely meaningless and this entire argument is silly.

Using your analogy - what if the robot was part of a group of robots, could grant men untold power or wipe out entire civilizations, and the only thing keeping it in check were the other robots? If the only thing capable of hurting the robot were other robots, what could the humans possibly do about it? Even though Eothas possessed a mortal body, he was not slain by mortals. Waidwen was described as if not invulnerable, then nearly impossible for kith to defeat in battle. He was killed by a weapon made under the guidance of another God, who proceeded to kill off the engineers to ensure it would not be used against anyone else. So it was not really the kith who killed a God, but another God acting through mortal hands. Woedica is also told to have been subdued by the other Gods. I am not sure if the available lore explains exactly who brought her down or how, but the Gods in the Council of Stars appeared to take credit for it. So if the gods are real, have real power to bestow boons and dish out punishment and cannot be harmed by mortals, does it matter that they were created by Engwithians? One way or another, they are now a force of nature that you have to reckon with - just as not believing in cold does not stop you from freezing to death, ignoring the Gods won't stop them from punishing you. It doesn't matter how much power they have. That power was created by mortals for the purpose of making sure some ideal or philosophy really liked stayed around forever and every would follow it. That's all. Humans *can* do something about it, clearly; the gods are afraid we would, or otherwise they wouldn't have killed off everybody who know how to. What mortals have made, mortals can unmake. The "gods" aren't real, in the sense of the entities and mythologies presented as their history. There's a bunch of robots, named Woedica and Eothas and whatnot, who have all been programmed to believe they are these made-up beings and who have been given a lot of power to enforce their pre-built belief structures. They can be harmed by mortals; mortal hands can create things that would kill them, and the gods will kill us to stop us from doing it again. You act like they are some sort in inevitable force; they are just tools that the Engwithans made to do a job, that job being the perpetuation of their cultural ideals. Their ideals are old and outdated, and need to change. Human society on Eora needs the chance to develop their own culture and their own ideals, seperate and apart from what the Engwithans decided should always be.

It's important because what it really comes down to is the Engwithans controlling and manipulating the rest of the world for thousands of years because they think they're better. The gods are just the philosophies and ideals one specific society, incarnated and given power. It's like if I made a super-advanced robot, programmed it with all my beliefs, gave it super-powers and told you this is god and you have to do what it says. It's a form of control, a way of forcing future societies to hold to their own standards and concepts.

Eagerly anticipating! The documentary is actually one of the things I was looking forward to most.

Alright, but then why would you ask? You seem to care a great deal about all of that. Of course it is, because it's a *specific act that he took*. We're not discussing the broad implications of what rights nobelemen are granted as part of their socioeconomic position. We're discussing his impregnating his niece in order to continue his line; that's what the quest is about, that's the "crime" that he committed, that's the action you said was legitimate. You can wax blue in the face all day about the rights of nobelemen in our world and the historical context; it doesn't apply. Eora isn't our world. You can't apply our worlds medieval gender roles to it, you can't apply our worlds medieval ethnic rules to it, you can't apply our worlds medieval homosexuality rules to it, and you can't apply our worlds nobles rights to it. What you're doing is searching desperately to find some way to justify your claim that raping his niece was a legitimate right of his within the game world, and you're not finding it because it's not there. You don't like the fact that the quest is set up with the moral judging of the act as evil already being done; that's a legitimate complaint. However, the fact is that within the game world, the morality of Halrond's action's isn't questioned--everybody who finds about them, regardless of foreigner (PC) or local (Eder) or religion (Hiravias) or anything, they *all* react as if it is wrong and he needs to be punished. Again, if you can just point out one single place where Halronds actions are stated or even implied to be legal or legitimate within the world of Eora in any way, I'll admit I"m wrong. But I'm pretty sure you won't find it, because as has already been said the quest is a railroad. The judging of Halrond as evil and his actions as non-legitimate has already been done by the developers; your job as the PC is just to decide the punishment (or lack there of in exchange for money).

Dude. The guy You can already choose to kill either, neither or both of them. Is that not enough choice? Why would you need an option to pat the guy on the back for what he did. Because, in the world of PoE, that was all his right and a legitimate thing to do. What could possibly make you say that. Everybody who found out about it was disgusted, the man was going out of his way to hide it, and he bribes you to keep it quiet. The whole point of the speech about it is saying that he's using his power and nobility to *hide his crime*. I'd say odds are, it's not something the Dyrwood approves of. Something can be your right, legal, or legitimate, without it being considered permissible in the eyes of the public or your peers. For example, incest is legal in Portugal and China (I just grabbed two countries out of a list). But you bet that a politician wouldn't want you to know about his S&M dungeon where he practices his incestuous foot-fetish. Homosexuality is legal in Russia, but you'd still not want to advertise it. Noble rights obviously go a long way in the Dyrwoods. Saying "It's his right to do what he wills with his subjects, and it's their duty to serve" is an extremely fitting thing to the setting as presented. Also, it's about player agency. Taking away the choices of the player means that the choices do not matter. When everyone is forced to be good, no-one is. My main character is an Aristocratic Bleak Walker. He's mostly Benevolent, often Rational, and very Aggressive, but he's got some very firm principles that would not be considered very popular by modernist, 21st-century morality squads. Finally, I love the possibility that Rumpelstilskin posited. Right, I don't care about all of that. My point is that nowhere in the game is ever stated or implied that anything Halrond did was accepted or legal. There's no implication, anywhere, at any point, that nobles have the right to continue their line by impregnating blood relatives or that this is any sort of law or regulation anywhere in the Dyrwood. Clearly Raedric had the right to execute his wife for breaking the law; not because he's a noble, but because he's the Thayn of Yenwood. That's a specific title with specific rights and responsibilities; not all nobles are Thayns, for example Lord Halrond doesn't appear to be, nor is Lord Doemenal. As a Thayn it is his job to police the area over which he has authority and convict/punish those who break the law. He's crazy, and the law in question is crazy because he's crazy, but he was abusing his legal authority to do it. At no point does anything in PoE ever say that Lord Halrond was doing something that he had a legal right to do. In fact it's strongly implied that he wasn't. Player agency be damned; if you can show one point anywhere in the entire game that states or implies that Lord Halrond had the legal right to impregnate his niece, I'll shut up. But you are the second person I've seen make that claim--that it was a legitimate action for him to take--and that's a load of horse ****.

Dude. The guy You can already choose to kill either, neither or both of them. Is that not enough choice? Why would you need an option to pat the guy on the back for what he did. Because, in the world of PoE, that was all his right and a legitimate thing to do. What could possibly make you say that. Everybody who found out about it was disgusted, the man was going out of his way to hide it, and he bribes you to keep it quiet. The whole point of the speech about it is saying that he's using his power and nobility to *hide his crime*. I'd say odds are, it's not something the Dyrwood approves of.

The narrative in this game is very good. The plot is solid, the setting is fantastic, the characters have depth and complexity and the entire story is engaging. The fact that this is my subjective opinion just proves how truthful these statements are.

Yes, I too often find that people discussing their subjective opinions are more honest than people discussing objective facts. Objective facts tend to color the reviews with reality; subjective opinions don't have that problem.