Massacre at Sayuka

[elohinen]

As most of you reading this know, if one sides with the druids during the quest Hunting Season, it will lead the Watcher & Co killing everyone on Sayuka. This in turn results in RDC becoming permanently hostile to the Watcher and their cohorts. Everyone with me so far, right?

My question is... how would RDC know this? Cuz again, everyone gets killed if you side with the druids. According to the 'official' wiki, this is the designed/intended outcome (hardly compelling evidence, since anyone can edit the wiki, but still).

There's no established lore on teleporting magic or that ciphers can use telepathy over great distances. I suppose a gunhawk could use their feathered friend to relay a message back to the Brass Citadel. OR that someone could escape on a boat, get real lucky and get picked up by a RDC-ship, but there's no event or cutscene to display this.

I first asked myself this very question during my first playthrough when I got my very first bounty hunting task. I put it off for the longest time, because I felt it was still too early for me to pick a side. Then I decided to attack one of the targers just to test out the boarding action and noticed that my rep didn't take a hit - this was baffling at first, but then I thought... how would they know? We were out on the sea by ourselves, everybody gets killed, so no witnesses etc. and the faction that gave the target probably wouldn't go flapping their gums about the hit to their rivals.

It's also hilarious, that even when RDC somehow has this knowledge of the Watcher destroying the whole outpost, they accept the Watcher's testament as an eye witness during the final Huana faction quest where one frames the VTC as the culprit of the powder house destroyers.

Let's, for the sake of argument, assume that all this isn't just bad game design, but there's some in-game explanation for this. What's your headcanon on this? How does RDC find out that the Watcher was responsible for the massacre at Sayuka?

P.s. it's a shame that siding with the druids means one can't get the quest 'Overgrowth', but I can live with that.

[Boeroer]

53 minutes ago, elohinen said:

Let's, for the sake of argument, assume that all this isn't just bad game design[...]

You lost me there.

[elohinen]

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

You lost me there.

Hopefully, on some distant day, you can find yourself back to us

[thelee]

On 10/24/2020 at 4:56 AM, elohinen said:

There's no established lore on teleporting magic

there is! but... it's vailian and requires giant adra pillars

 

On 10/24/2020 at 4:56 AM, elohinen said:

Cuz again, everyone gets killed if you side with the druids. According to the 'official' wiki, this is the designed/intended outcome (hardly compelling evidence, since anyone can edit the wiki, but still).

unlike a boat, which can be lost at sea, it is much harder for a fort/settlement to just randomly go missing. depending on your actions in-game, the RDC might notice that the watcher went to sayuka, and then later left sayuka and mysteriously all comms and such ended with sayuka. it's kind of hard to avoid the conclusion there.

similarly, it's established that Maia is an RDC spy/agent who writes notes about you and your adventures (though obviously this explanation doesn't work if maia is not recruited).

 

On 10/24/2020 at 4:56 AM, elohinen said:

It's also hilarious, that even when RDC somehow has this knowledge of the Watcher destroying the whole outpost, they accept the Watcher's testament as an eye witness during the final Huana faction quest where one frames the VTC as the culprit of the powder house destroyers.

the RDC is chomping at the bit to dominate the other factions, all they need is a plausible pretext, right?

 

don't get me wrong, i think "entire faction goes hostile" is poor design for an incidental quest that seems to clearly give you one of two relatively balanced choices. typically for OBS consequences are relatively symmetric. this is a quest where there clearly is a "good" resolution and a "bad" resolution, and the "bad" resolution is very very bad. it's like if in Trade Secrets the choices were "discretely supply the gullet with food, petition the royalty for more prize-share, OR thanos finger-snap the entire archipelago."

[xzar_monty]

This problem is a very specific example of a general flaw in the game, which is that whenever something happens, everybody in the game world instantly knows about it. I can't see it as anything other than rather poor design. This example is particularly obvious, but I was often annoyed by the fact that after I'd arrived in Neketaka, everybody seemed to know that it was me who caused a bit of a stir in the harbor. Also, random strangers on the street appeared to know that I was "Watcher". D'oh.

[elohinen]

On 10/26/2020 at 8:16 PM, thelee said:

there is! but... it's vailian and requires giant adra pillars

I get that you're joking here, but there aren't any adra pillars (I think?) on Sayuka, so no dice

On 10/26/2020 at 8:16 PM, thelee said:

unlike a boat, which can be lost at sea, it is much harder for a fort/settlement to just randomly go missing. depending on your actions in-game, the RDC might notice that the watcher went to sayuka, and then later left sayuka and mysteriously all comms and such ended with sayuka. it's kind of hard to avoid the conclusion there.

Yeah, if the Watcher is going there when following the RDC quest chain and then sides with the druids, it wouldn't be hard to put two and two together. Doubly so, if Maia is part of the crew, like you pointed out.

I should've specified that 'argued' this point on the premise that the Watcher sailed to Sayuka on a whim or say, during Serafen's personal quest.

On 10/26/2020 at 8:16 PM, thelee said:

the RDC is chomping at the bit to dominate the other factions, all they need is a plausible pretext, right?

This is a fair point - RDC might know what the Watcher did, even about both incidents, but won't react because it would weaken their position in the bigger picture.

However, during the whole eye witness hearing, the Hazanui seems to take the false testimony at face value. That, or she's one the best actors in the whole archipelago.

On 10/28/2020 at 11:39 AM, xzar_monty said:

This problem is a very specific example of a general flaw in the game, which is that whenever something happens, everybody in the game world instantly knows about it. I can't see it as anything other than rather poor design. This example is particularly obvious, but I was often annoyed by the fact that after I'd arrived in Neketaka, everybody seemed to know that it was me who caused a bit of a stir in the harbor. Also, random strangers on the street appeared to know that I was "Watcher". D'oh.

Regarding the initial arrival on Neketaka, I get this weird feeling that were supposed to be a lot more people in the harbour at that time, but they forgot to add more people or ran out of time or something. In any case, people love to talk and thus rumours spread and it could be easier to single out the Wather if they are a godlike, orlan, pale elf etc someone less common in the archipelago.

I think it would be a neat detail that  people wouldn't recognize the Watcher in regards to the harbour incident, if they were human or an island amaua.

And it's not like these kind of 'suddenly psychic' people can only be found in Deadfire.

Off the top of my head I can point how in BG2 every merchant would somehow know if you had stolen something from someone, be it from themselves or someone all the way in Trademeet and refure to buy said items. They wouldn't call the guards or try to get the items back now would they?

The guards in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion were pretty much the same - steal something in one town, get arrested in the next.

Obviously there isn't any in-game explanation for this, it's just bad game design.

[Ivanfyodorovich]

Sawyer gave a talk about reputation systems that's on Youtube where he distinguishes between games with simulationist design w/r/t reputation and games that aren't that way. He specifically mentions the "no one got away" issue. It's a conscious choice to have a system here that is less simulationist, from what I gather from that talk.