[Choice and Consequence in this game feels....lacking. [Spoilers Galore]]

I'd qualify most of what you said, chouia, but I'm on the whole in pretty close agreement with you, so for all intents and purposes those sane enough not to read the very lengthy examination I posted under the spoiler tag can safely consider I simply repeated chouia's opinions in a long-winded, pretentious voice.
 
WARNING
Only proceed if you have the patience of a saint. I am not trying to dare you. The following examination of an earlier post by Longknife has been expressed closely and concisely enough elsewhere. It is long. It is boring. It was written by a moronic nobody (yours truly). Seriously.

 

 

ABSTRACT

     The general design philosophy at work throughout the whole game – inclusiveness; making the player feel like their decisions are valid; making sure that any choice, if not optimal, is at least always viable; having the game anticipate what the player might want to do and roll with it – has shaped the quest design in Pillars of Eternity (PoE) and accounts, I think, for Longknife's impressions. Just like PoE's combat does not have hard counters, PoE's choices and consequences do not have hard conditions to entry. Most of the time, variable checks – sex, class, attributes, skills, background, reputations, item counts, known talents... – are not used to create exclusive branching paths, let alone exclusive quests. They are used to create bypasses or incidental comments that provide positive, reassuring feedback on character creation and expression. And they are used in the final stage of quest completion to choose an outcome or reward believed to fit the player's character concept and the context. In the case of dialogue reputation, that outcome typically focuses on the psychological development of both the PC and the person they are speaking to.
     Just as the game painstakingly makes sure to validate character builds, so does the game commit to making sure that quest and dialogue choices feel valid to the player by ensuring that quest completion is rewarded (if not rewarding) in any of the following ways (preferably in combination): an opportunity to roleplay, material compensation, answers/information, influencing an NPC's life, causing a change in the setting that scales to the stakes and effort, NPCs recognizing the PC's achievements. How fitting that consequence is, is always up for debate, but one must recognize that the designers tried their hardest to always include one where there should logically be one and to make it matter to at least someone in the context.
     Notwithstanding these positive points, too big of a focus on inclusiveness and reactivity has arguably proven detrimental to other aspects of quest design. It has all but eliminated exclusivity, as the care taken to accommodate every build and showcase that care has led to the neglect of gated/ specialized/ variable-specific content; and it has drawn attention away from the game's own dynamism and proactivity. I think this is where Longknife's concerns mainly stem from. It feels like the designers have taken everything into account and prepared for anything, but did not cater to you specifically.

EXAMINATION
 

1) Community reputations do nothing for you beyond making some merchant prices cheaper or help to end a quest one step faster. The only time you'll encounter choice and consequence is the three factions all have a merchant offering different things. That's it.

     More could have been done with them, no argument. The only valid arguments I can see would be about, first, how much more given the production constraints, and, second, how much content-gating players are willing to put up with, both of which are entirely different matters.

     That said, given that community reputation is a measure of how much a particular group (dis)likes the PC, what do you want party reputation to do that it doesn't? What would be acceptable for a group who doesn't like your party to do? Not help you? They already don't. Not offer you jobs? They already don't. Tell you they don't like you if you go and talk to them? They already do. Try to kill you? They already do. Go out of their way to try and thwart your every move? They don't (though sending assassins ought to do it), and I'd argue that's a good thing. You can become a serious inconvenience to them, but certainly not the defining factor of their every action. Now, what would be acceptable for a group who does like you to do? I'd say what the designers already have them do covers everything I can think of. They treat you decently, they are even so kind as to show you some favoritism and some of them provide employment. I certainly don't expect them to run up to me every time I show up in town to give me various knick-knacks, offer to name their first "normalborn" after me or erect a statue in my honour (I wouldn't be above it, though).

     Something that muddies the issue here is how the community reputation system is hijacked by the factions in Defiance Bay. Ingratiating yourself with any faction in order to be sponsored into the animancy hearings (which automatically nets you positive reputation with that faction on the way) is interpreted by the other factions as an active and exclusive affiliation. From that point on, community reputation with the three major organizations in Defiance Bay is a reputation system that seems to work as a de facto faction system. Choosing one faction over the others does have consequences beyond merchants, prices and faster quests. It unlocks a short quest chain for your faction while blocking a similar chain for every other faction; it influences what the faction representatives will say about your interventions at the hearing; it unlocks a unique way to appeal to the Duc; and all of these elements impact the ending slides about factions and the fate of animancy in Dyrwood. But is it by virtue of the reputation system, by virtue of the faction rivalry, or because of the interaction of both?

     All in all, I'd say the community reputation system is sound and referenced more than you give it credit for, but I agree with you that not enough is made out of it. The game world is more than reactive enough to it (something that should not be dismissed, considering the care that has been taken to translate that Champion/Terror/Whatever status into ambient dialogue and incidental dialogue remarks – seriously, just compare what strangers, not only quest givers, have to say before you've done anything and what they have to say once you've accomplished something) but only very rarely in a dynamic way.

     I think that's what your criticisms boil down to, Longknife, and I can get behind that: you don't want to feel like you've brought about a new state of things, but set new events in motion.

 

2) Dialog reputations seemingly do nothing. It's an amazing illusion of uniqueness, but the amount of times a dialog reputation actually changes your outcome can be counted on one hand. Typically dialog reputation amounts to little more than someone commenting on what a great person you are (Benevolent) reputation before offering you the quest they were going to offer you anyways. Prime example? There's a quest where you find a monk who asks you to deliver a sealed message to his order. If you have Honest reputation he thanks the gods you found him, if you're deceptive he comments on it but also says you're sadly his only hope. In both scenarios, you're treated exactly the same. There is no situation where his monk order will be skeptical of what you tell them because you're deceptive or the like, it plays out exactly the same. All scenarios where dialog reputation is recognized, it has no actual impact on the quest and the quest would be obtainable anyways. The only exceptions I can name off the top of my head is it's possible to psyche out some enemy attackers with Aggressive rep and get them to back off.

     Fair warning: I played with no metagame dialogue information, so what follows is an opinion based on impressions left by the dialogue options I remember.

     If community reputation is how much a given group (dis)likes you given how beneficial or detrimental your actions have been towards that group, dialogue reputation is what individual people have heard of the way you treat people in dialogue, which for all intents and purposes acts as your character's perceived personality. If that has little to no bearing on what type of job people think you're the best kith for, I agree it's a wasted opportunity. If that has little to no bearing on what extra option you are offered to complete a quest, I agree it's a wasted opportunity.

     However, I feel that on that last account it would be absurd to, for instance, make your ability to even come up with benevolent/ cruel/ honest/ deceptive etc. answers depend on your mastery of a benevolent/ cruel/ honest/ deceptive etc. skill. I certainly don't want the game to prevent me from trying to lie altogether just because I haven't lied enough. Judging from what I've seen, it seems to me that what the designers have decided on is to provide the player with different options to express a personality trait and have the intensity and effectiveness of some of these options scale with the character trait rank. Then again, I might be wrong for all I know.

     It also seems to me that they have tried when appropriate to have the attitude you choose influence the outcome in some way. Let's assume for the sake of argument that there is only ever one way to complete a quest, only ever one reward for the player, and only ever one outcome. Even then I remember very vividly getting to influence how the person my PC was talking to interprets the outcome. For instance, I have the nagging feeling that because of the attitudes I adopted during her quest, Sagani decided to commit blizzard-assisted suicide, that the tone I used while handing Calisca's sister the potion she wanted could be life-changing, or that the (pertty distinct) ways to deal with Iovara's soul correspond to dialogue reputations.
This is something that can be overlooked or downplayed in the game's quest design. It highlights the fact that how people deal with answers/solutions or lack thereof is as valid an outcome to take into account as physical consequences. Dialogue reputations are a means to cause psychological repurcussions both to others and to your PC.

     Unfortunately, like you said, it seems that dialogue reputation checks are not used to influence how a quest develops. That is, I think, tied to a more general design choice that permeates almost every aspect of the game: inclusiveness. The designers created everything like a GM painstakingly making sure that no-one around the table will feel left out, overlooked or useless. The way quest designers went about it was twofold. First, they did not put character-dependent conditions to quest acquisition. Barring a very few quests, any character can pick up any quest. Second, they bent over backwards, once you started a quest, to make sure that at any stage any player could find a way to move forward that suited their playstyle, that fit their character concept and that validated their build and choices. I for one think that they did an admirable job on that account, but that apparently did not leave them enough time to design more branching and exclusive quests or paths.

     To take your monk quest example. There is no barrier to entry: no PC is prevented from talking to the dying monk and he will entrust the sealed scroll to any PC (the writer took care to put the monk in a position where it made sense). But the writer, according to your own account, has him take under consideration the PC's reputation and treat the PC differently (yes, differently and not "exactly the same" – if you meant that, in both scenarios, the result is the same because you're given the missive, that's what you should have written) and, if I remember correctly, the PC can accept the scrolls adopting different attitudes (I can't remember if you can refuse). My own PC, who was honest, was then offered a choice to break the seals and didn't, and in the end could either deliver the scroll or lie and try and keep it (or, third option, never even bother to deliver it). I don't know what happens if an honest PC lies to the monks (do they buy it because people say you're trustworthy? Do they catch up on it because you're a bad liar?), I don't know what happens if you open the scroll, and I don't know what happens when an honest PC opens the scroll and goes see the monks anyway. I'll take your word for what happens with a deceptive PC. However, even though the same people are involved whatever the case, I still see different ways in which the situation can play out and in which the designers try to validate your choices both for the quest and in character development.

     To sum up, I agree that it's a shame dialogue reputation checks apparently are not used to gate exclusive content. I personally like how the system is used to create room for the player to provide meaning and internal motivation to their character's actions and to draw attention to the psychological outcome of the quests, but, just like with party reputation, using the system less reactively and more proactively would be a boon.

 

3) Endings feel meaningless as far as difference goes, at least on the Gods. Helping a God is always universally good; even supporting Woedica does not support in the game feeding you tidbits about the bad it did, but rather only good or neutral aspects of this choice are mentioned. Betraying a God is always bad. I enjoy morally grey, but I also think trying to be as good or as evil as possible should be a thing. As far as the Gods and Companions go, bad endings are achieved by purposefully breaking a pact with a God or by just not bothering with a companion's quest (usually). It just feels a little weak. Unfortunately, Gods and Companions endings make up the majority of the endings.

     I have some difficulty getting my head around the "I enjoy morally grey, but I also think trying to be as good or as evil as possible should be a thing" bit, so I'll just interpret it as you saying that morality is handled poorly, presumably because it is too clear-cut (only two sets of alternatives – help god=good/ betray god=bad and help companion=good/ ignore companion=bad – and no real and profound quandary involving multiple choices that have nothing in common). But what your wording suggests is that the endings are too ambiguous and do not allow for clearly good or clearly evil decisions, which contradicts what you said in the previous sentence.

     Moving on. There is a point you make I can't get behind, Longknife, not even to qualify it. The god endings are not "meaningless as far as difference goes." Go to the page you yourself provided a link to in another post and read the slides. Fair enough, in all endings you end Waidwen's Legacy, go PC! But can you really not see the difference in the way that was accomplished depending on your choice? Can you really not see how restoring souls to the Hollowborn is different from using them to make Woedica - the Queen that Was - the Queen that Is and Apparently will Forever Be? The intricacies of your choice haven't even been fully felt yet.

     As for the endings in which you did not betray your promise to a god being "universally good" or the writing focusing on the "good or neutral aspects,"I guess the writers were going for "slightly uplifting but not shamelessly triumphant while not too detailed" as their ending note rather than "rock falls everybody dies" this time, so they try and make the player feel a little bit good about themselves. They had to give the player a sense of accomplishment for ending the Legacy, knowing that their actions did not undo the Legacy (for instance, whatever their choice, parents who murdered their Hollowborn children have murdered their Hollowborn children still, a fact some slides state outright) while leaving room for expansions and sequels (notice how the god slides and the PC's own slides only move the timeline a few months into the future at most). The endings in which the player betrays a god are bound to be less enjoyable (unless there was no love lost between your PC and the Dyrwoodans) because they are meant to show the gods' revenge (still, do they cancel out ending the Legacy?). But yes, I freely admit that not betraying a god is presented in a positive light and as having a net positive outcome, whereas betraying a god is presented in the opposite manner.

     However, all of those endings – and I consider that what you do about Iovara's and Thaos' souls is part of the ending, as the resolution of the PC's personal quest even if there is no slide for those recent decisions – are morally grey and contain elements that most people would consider desirable and other elements that most people would want to avoid, and the writing, though always implying that the player was right, tries to present those endings without passsing moral judgment and without encouraging you to feel that "ending C3 was the right choice, duh." Here too you can see the overall design choice to promote inclusiveness of player input at work. "Players had reasons for doing what they did, reasons that we helped them formulate over the course of the whole game. So we are going to roll with what they chose and provide their choices with fitting consequences, instead of beating them on the head with it and telling them they're saints or monsters. Well then, so, yeah you won and you're awesome, here's what happens because of you, now make up your mind about how that makes you feel on your own."

     Because the game itself will not provide the player with a moral code. The game designers went as out of their way as possible not to paint anything as unequivocally good or unequivocally evil. They created a setting where all the gods are True Neutral constructs with completely amoral portfolios. They allowed players a broad range of actions morally speaking. It's up to the players to judge what they did according to their own moral standards, so they can be as good or as evil as they want, particularly in their motivations.

     All things considered I'd say that although it cannot be denied that the god endings fall under two categories that can at first glance appear to obey a good/bad opposition, the "good" endings, which indeed all share in the celebration of the player's achievement, never result in a situation in which the player has righted all wrongs and unmade all suffering, they are not interchangeable and they do not include one obvious right choice. The "bad" endings are more similar (but their particulars are very different) and more clearly traditionally bad (in that they all simply involve people suffering).

 

[My impressions of the game]

I don't care that you find the game lacking, I don't care that you think Obsidian makes subpar games, I don't care that you think you're a real RPG connaisseur. What I do care about is that your only reaction to a long, developed post was a throwaway disparaging snigger.

[My impressions of the game]

if you found the encounters fun , or found combat to be tactical, I don't know what to say

 

Maybe "I am glad you were able to derive enjoyment from a feature I hate so much I cannot stop harping on it" or simply "good for you"?

 

Thanks for taking the time to leave some solid constructive criticism, Danvil.

[Benevolent = tough luck, you won't get this powerful artifact?]

@archangel979 I think most of the information Sonntam has on vithracks is gathered from encounters with vithracks in Caed Nua (Lvl 12). If you do take the time to know them they can be quite chatty.

[How much in terms of Lore/Story/Content will I lose by not recruiting Companions?]

Not that I can think of, no (excluding those they already have when you find them).

[How much in terms of Lore/Story/Content will I lose by not recruiting Companions?]

The companion with the backstory the most relevant to the plot's background is Durance. He will provide you a very... colourful first-hand testimony on events that have quite the bearing on the current situation. The other companions will mostly give you an insight into and put a face on what it is to live in various parts of Eora, be a certain race or face the most troublesome events in Dyrwood. Each has their own take on a certain god or on animancy and souls, etc. It is worth noting that Aloth is the only companion whose backstory has very tenuous ties to your own quest in the game. The factual value of the exposition the companions provide can also be found in the Cyclopedia and in in-game books.

As far as content goes, you will miss on a few encounters tied to their quests (which are not extensive, though Durance's and Grieving Mother's require a lot of talking and rests while in your party) and on a few comments and interjections (with a very irregular distribution companion- and time-wise), but that's pretty much it. The main things the companions bring to the game (and these are good) are a way to relate to the setting on a personal level, a way for your PC to express a personality (when they ask for your input) and a way for the writers to echo the themes of your PC's main quest.

 

So I'd just invite you to experiment and roll with the companion(s) that strike(s) your fancy. I think travelling with them adds to the experience but they're definitely not necessary to it.

[Choice and Consequence in this game feels....lacking. [Spoilers Galore]]

Come on guys, let's be real. Of course Longknife is right. If there is one thing Mass Effect 2's ending has taught us, it's that blowing up machines we know nothing about because they have been evilly used by evil people to do evil things of epic evilness we do not understand is the paragon thing to do, and paragon means good. Don't even think about trying to study it or coming back to it to see what you can do about those souls because you are a watcher, that's just inconceivable, we don't want any of that.

 

No, what we do want is a morally grey^tm option to swallow these souls and become a god, because that's obviously a skill your character has, and a chaotic dumb option to use an unmoveable machine that your character knows sucks the souls of kith in its surroundings (especially those close to it) to suck souls across town, because who cares about boring logic as long as we have edgy C&C.

[Choice and Consequence in this game feels....lacking. [Spoilers Galore]]

I have a very long answer ready to go, but here's simply the gist of it.

 

All in all, I'd say that the design is rather sound. The watcher and his/her influence are not blown out of proportion; the quests and their outcomes always matter to someone ingame; the paths to solve them may be similar but you are rarely limited to one solution and care has been taken to accommodate multiple playstyles; the reach of the consequences fit the stakes; and the game gives the player feedback anyway it can, particularly via what NPCs say and think of you depending on what you say and do. Particular quests can always be improved in their pacing, in the options made available, in the rewards given, or even in their outcome but I don't think the way Pillars of Eternity handles choice and consequence is fundamentally lacking - except if you demand your every choice be on an epic scale or if you want instant karma/drama; then, sure, the game is bound to disappoint you. Do not play Pillars of Eternity thinking you are playing against a computer; play it thinking you are playing with a computer GM.

[Price System is absurd]

I'm in complete agreement with Varana. You can lament the fact that the designers didn't go for a realistic simulationist economy; you can say that what they came up with hasn't been thought through but you cannot claim that it doesn't make sense. It is simply tentatively balanced around what is precious or worthless to you, and not around the acceptable minimal wage in Defiance Bay.

[Benevolent = tough luck, you won't get this powerful artifact?]

@OP So what?

 

A "Benevolent" in a line of dialogue shouldn't matter to you if you're craving for loot and/or a fight, and if you are roleplaying it should only matter to you in as much as it dispels any ambiguity about the intent of the line. Personalities only open up new options, they never take away from your choice, and you should certainly never feel compelled to choose the lines with their labels in them just because of that label.

 

You make that choice, and you give up on a big fight (and so loot) with a defenseless, adorable and all around huggable vithrack and his/her bros, who get to live another day to spread their loving webs and eggs and you give up on a seemingly powerful artefact; you attack them, and they die, you loot their horribly mangled and yet surprisingly accusing lifeless bodies and you get a seemingly powerful artefact. Choice, consequence, risk, reward, your character's morality, roleplay, munchkin, you know, that kind of stuff.

[(spoiler) About the "morality issues" of the quest « A mother's plea »]

The point of reproach in the OP was that the only way you could progress that quest was by killing that specific xaurip tribe when we are shown in the very setup of that stage of the quest that xaurips are quite clearly sentient and capable of reason even if the PC cannot understand them, not that "[xaurips] are for killing" - obviously not, since you are wiping out a tribe of xaurips to save a xaurip (The PC does it to get a potion to save an unborn human to... make them feel good about themselves I guess? But the healer's motivation is to save her xaurip buddy. There can be no debate about it.)

 

The general undertone of the OP was that the quest and its author were obviously brainless xenophobes (shameless caricature on my part, I know, what a bad reader I am, putting words in people's mouths): "You cannot communicate with the tribe you murder, because, well, they are different (smaller, ugly, less developped culture, seen as between animal and civilised ... In a word : Xaurips)" (my emphasis) Never are you presented with that line of reasoning in the game, not even implicitly. What you are presented with is a creature of the same "type" as you (=kith=human-like) that is asking you to kill a whole lot of creatures with a red circle (=enemies!) that are not the same type as you for the sake of one exact same creature but with a green circle (=friend!).

 

I agree that this quest could have been designed in a less xaurip-hating way. Your PC could have tried hand gestures, they could have tried putting their down on the ground, they could have tried spending ten years learning the xaurip's ways, I don't know. But it certainly was not designed with a neo-colonialist state of mind. (Fair warning: I'm about to prove that I can read the writer's mind too.) It was designed with a "now I need an obstacle that fits the map and hopefully presents some sort of quandary" state of mind. Because it is a quandary, and it is obviously set up to be one. Why not simply have the most important ingredient be in a cave full of unequivocally righteously killable creatures? Or only accessible via a scripted vignette the healer herself was not fit for? Why introduce that friendly xaurip outcast and his/her/its tribe?

 

Maybe the journal should have had an extra step to make the writer's intentions crystal clear, like , "now stop and think really hard about what you are about to do" or "now take a moment to bask in your glorious kith supremacy" or even "now turn off your brain because there is no deeper meaning to what you are doing."

[only right click to move?]

If I'm not mistaken, you just have to go to Options>Controls, and change the binding for "Move" in the "Party" category to something else or unbind it.

[(spoiler) About the "morality issues" of the quest « A mother's plea »]

@Nevrose: Did the game give you good guy points for killing the evil xaurips and tell you you were the most moral of them all for helping that poor mother-to-be? No. Did the game give you good guy points for not killing a whole tribe of xaurips who hadn't done you any harm just for the selfish emotional comfort of one cowardly character? No. Did the game expect you to start or finish that quest? No. The story that gets written is the one you write with the elements the game makes available to you. You chose to act as what you consider a chaotic evil character. Granted, the designer of the quest did not include another way to resolve it (lazy design, a plague upon their house unto the seventh generation, how dare they), but you can't always get what you want. I'd say that quest says as much about its designer as it does about the setting (if you insist) or the player. I know I certainly didn't lose any sleep over it. Huh? Kill a tribe of dragon-worshipping lizardlings that haven't stopped attacking me on sight ever since I set foot on this beach? Sure!

[[spoilers] Is it possible to side with Woedica?]

 

I had high scores in benevolent, honest, diplomatic and rational, so its possible I just didn't play enough of a psychopath to get that option.

 

So did I (with a high score in Clever as well), yet I was offered the option to restore Woedica, so it must be some other factors.

Ditto for the "god-machine creation" interpretation.

[Nothing I Did Mattered in the End #rant #review (Major Spoilers)]

It's interesting to see the different endings and overall experience you had compared to mine. I certainly understand where your rant comes from - the desire to see your choices bring about the consequences you want - but I don't think a game can work like that. In the best of circumstances, you do something that should logically have an impact and it has an impact because the game's programming has already taken it under consideration. And in all the cases you bring up I find that the game's programming has taken my input into consideration and done something with it. The consequences were not always what I had wanted or even foreseen, they were not always a spectacular instant gratification but they were always there at some point, and I feel that really rewarded proper roleplay. An outcome that is not your or my perfect solution is only bad if you can't trace it to the preceding situation without throwing logic out of the window. I can't speak for any ending slide that didn't appear in my one epilogue, but those I did get make sense knowing both what my PC did or said and what other forces were at work.

[The disconnection between companions and the overall story.]

TL;DR

Companions meaningless to to the plot in the game = no contest      ///     Companions not important to the story and theme = have at you

 

Wall of text

The OP is right, as far as the plot is concerned, the companions "don't have any part in it", but so what? That's not to say that they are not important in some other regard. As many have said here, they put a - hopefully memorable if not relatable - face on what it means to live on Eora (=ways for the writers to explore the situations that their premises throw a new light on, otherwise why bother writing at all?); they provide an avenue of exposition that is more palatable to some; as SpitefulOne puts it they "act as a sounding board to find out the character's stance on the big issues"; and they also (perhaps the most important aspect in Obsidian companions) act as dramatisations of the narrative's themes. That may look like some pretty standard fare for cRPGs but it is well executed and the character concepts are varied - except for how you pick companions up, one can argue.

 

I'd even say that the thematic unity of the whole game is impressive. You can easily divide the companions into those that provide exposition primarily on the history of the setting (including cultures, races, nations, etc.) and those that provide exposition primarily on animancy and souls, but deep down (or not so deep for some) they all share the same defining need that only the PC can calm, a need that also drives the PC (... and the player to some extent), a need that the gods were supposed to keep in check. They are looking for something certain beyond a doubt and for the freeing comfort that brings with it. They all want to know and be certain. And they all come to see the PC as the only means to get definite answers. Their quests and the PC's soul's quest are quests for answers and/or questions. Even the pantheon is organized around that idea (and the reason why becomes clear at the end).

 

Let's have a look at Edér. He provides living, breathing exposition on the Saint's War and the following Purges as seen by one Eothasian Dyrwoodan - which is good world-building - but even though his own quest relies on the Watcher's power – which is proper if flimsy motivation for following the Watcher -, the Watcher's quest does not depend on his - which is what Obsidian was originally reproached with here. However, he is thematically resonant on two accounts. First, he is part of a systematic exploration of the base premises of the world - what if souls were real, were reshuffled and ground down in reincarnation cycles, could leave a mark on the world and could be manipulated? If that were the case, wouldn't there be people who would want to get in touch with their beloved departed in some way? Second, his is a quest not for glory, not for riches, not for revenge, but for answers, like yours, and his is a quest that ultimately invites you to question answers and to question questions, like yours. What answer are you looking/waiting for? What question(s) does it answer? Why do you want it? What do you want it for? Would you be looking even if you were not aware of the question? What if you cannot get one? What is an answer? Does it have to account for the letter or the spirit of the question? Does Edér want to know what his brother did, why he did what he did or how to live on and move on? Does he want an answer, meaning, closure, a solution, all of the above in one easy-to-process sentence? And how will he deal with that knowledge or absence thereof? What about your character? What about you? Is the answer good enough or do you need another, more satisfactory one?

 

All of the companions are in a crisis of faith or trust or belief - just as the world itself is adrift. They are looking for guidance and latching onto the PC for it: they're a watcher, they see all of the eternal souls as they are, they'll know! "They are drawn to you", so to speak. You can criticize that aspect of the game and of the companions on many grounds, but you cannot say it is not there, and if you are right in saying that the companions do nothing for the plot, you certainly cannot say they do nothing for the story.