NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 9244757" data-attributes="member: 58197">The Emperor... yeah. I love what they were trying to do with him, but they messed up in some pretty important ways. I know this is a spoiler thread, but I'm wrapping the rest of this post in spoiler tags anyway because it's extra spoilery.[SPOILER]The Emperor was skillfully written as a super-unreliable narrator*. Whenever you get an opportunity to fact-check him, the result is almost always "The Emperor was lying." It's not just his initial pretense of being your guardian figure; he lies to you again and again and again, always with the aim of manipulating and controlling you. There's a book in the githyanki creche which says, in essence, "Ignore everything a mind flayer says, only pay attention to what it does," and IMO that is a direct warning to the player on how to interpret the Emperor. The slow revelation of layer after layer of deceit is brilliantly done.But unless you're deeply invested in Lae'zel, there's no payoff to figuring this out! If you play along, accept the Emperor's lies, trust him at every step, and finally give him the Netherstones, he... does exactly what he said he was going to do. He uses the stones, fights the brain, wins, and kills it when you say it needs to die. Then he levitates off into the sunset.Contrast Raphael: If you cut a deal with Raphael, he too keeps his end of the bargain, and you triumph. But then you get a cutscene at the end where Raphael gloats about how the archdevils are falling before his newfound might, and he's already making plans to conquer the rest of the planes, yours included. That's a much better way to handle this kind of thing.Then there are more general story concerns. First, there's the scene where the Emperor's true nature is revealed. He's in desperate straits and says "Trust me, I'm the guardian in your head, kill these githyanki and save my life." At this point, you are given two options: You can trust the FREAKIN' MIND FLAYER and kill a bunch of strangers to save his skinny purple butt. Or you can refuse to help him, whereupon the game ends and you get assimilated. So you have to choose door #1, but it felt wildly out of character, for Lae'zel especially. It would be much easier to swallow if you defended the guardian and then discovered what your guardian really was.Second, the ending left and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The initial confrontation with the brain feels like the worst kind of railroading: You go into a fight where the outcome is predetermined, none of your actions matters, and no matter what you do, you lose and have to be rescued by the DMPC. And then your final mission is "Escort this mind flayer, who used to be (Balduran/Orpheus/Karlach/you), to the elder brain so they can do the real work of defeating it, because you, puny non-illithid, are incapable of overcoming such an entity." That's just a terrible way to end any game. The protagonist should be the one front and center in the final battle, and they should not have to turn into a mind flayer to do it.I wouldn't mind if it was just the Emperor claiming that only a mind flayer can beat the brain. The Emperor is very clear that he thinks mind flayers are superior beings. But if you reject the Emperor and free Orpheus, and Orpheus goes "Dang, guess I have to be a mind flayer now, kill me as soon as we're done here," it's like... WTF? We went through all this to free Orpheus from captivity, and his response is to turn ghaik and go on a suicide run? Suddenly it feels like the game itself is taking the Emperor's position: Mind flayers are just better than you, so either become one or accept your role as spear carrier to one.Ugh. It's a pity because so much of the writing is so damn good, and the depth of the plot is stunning. And it wouldn't take much to improve the ending -- just getting rid of the bit where Orpheus turns into a mind flayer would help a lot. As is, though, I always delay going into the endgame sequence because it feels so demotivating.*Yes, yes, I know, that's not the technical definition of "unreliable narrator," he's not actually narrating the story. But he is the one presenting you with a lot of key information throughout the game, and much of it has to be taken on faith. Unreliable expositor?[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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