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two steps back(an avadon game review)


devilkingx

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Originally Posted By: Txgangsta
Yes. I've played Geneforge 1-5 and Avernum 1-6. I like Jeff's style of level scaling.


your not hearing me, you dont quite understand

the level cap is effectively whatever level the strongest monster stops giving you EXP at do you understand?

Originally Posted By: CAJUN
Game review:
I guess its ok.I do have a few ideas.For the Knothead who wrote the ending,what an idiot.What were you thinking,why do I wanna kill redbeard?I really don't.I do wanna kill his 2 faced wife.Well....I'm not able too,You know why?Because jeff has the ending already played out,well thats ignorant.
Come on dude.....give me a ending thats my choice,I still had way too many things happening.My thought is don't send me somewhere else because I didn't kill redbeard,or better yet don't fix the ending so's I can't go back and finish other tasks.I can't get back out of avadon,well thats really ignorant.I wanna explore other areas...WTF


you could be a little nicer, but you've gotta be kidding me? i didnt know you HAD to replace him i thought it was optional

Originally Posted By: Txgangsta
Not everyone thinks that their child can grow up summoning demons on games and quit cold turkey once the game gets boring. =)


exactly, you shouldnt be summoning demons, you should be brutally murdering all members of opposing political parties to maintain absolute power

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves
Originally Posted By: Master1
Originally Posted By: devilkingx
- demons, they're awesome but they werent in any geneforge but G2 and then they were mysteriously removed, probably to quell the "magic and demons in video games is the equivalent of devil worshiping and satanism in real life" crowd but whatever the reason its nice to see them back in the series, they are mythology staples.


Forgot to comment on this earlier, and it's too late to edit it into my first post.

Ok, so there are demons, and you love that. Great. Absolutely great that you enjoy part of the mythology of this game. Alas, you seem to think that Jeff purposely removed demons from the Geneforge games because of some taboo. This really isn't the case, as far as I know. Jeff didn't put demons into many games because, well, they didn't fit into the games. I believe that there is a demon (or something along the lines of one) in the midsection of G5.

And while demons are common in fantasy stories and games, they are not necessary. I would rather have a game without demons than a game with demons thrown in where they don't belong.


I was actually a little irked that Moritz'Kri's big super secret surprise, complete with evil laughter and gleeful hand-rubbing, turned out to be a demon. Really? Ho hum.


well it was apparantly an insanely powerful demon
Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves
Originally Posted By: Master1
Originally Posted By: devilkingx
- demons, they're awesome but they werent in any geneforge but G2 and then they were mysteriously removed, probably to quell the "magic and demons in video games is the equivalent of devil worshiping and satanism in real life" crowd but whatever the reason its nice to see them back in the series, they are mythology staples.


Forgot to comment on this earlier, and it's too late to edit it into my first post.

Ok, so there are demons, and you love that. Great. Absolutely great that you enjoy part of the mythology of this game. Alas, you seem to think that Jeff purposely removed demons from the Geneforge games because of some taboo. This really isn't the case, as far as I know. Jeff didn't put demons into many games because, well, they didn't fit into the games. I believe that there is a demon (or something along the lines of one) in the midsection of G5.

And while demons are common in fantasy stories and games, they are not necessary. I would rather have a game without demons than a game with demons thrown in where they don't belong.


I was actually a little irked that Moritz'Kri's big super secret surprise, complete with evil laughter and gleeful hand-rubbing, turned out to be a demon. Really? Ho hum.


well it was apparantly an insanely powerful demon

Originally Posted By: Darth Ernie
he did seem inordinately proud of it


again, insanely powerful demon that took lots work to summon wouldnt you be proud too?

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba
Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves
I was actually a little irked that Moritz'Kri's big super secret surprise, complete with evil laughter and gleeful hand-rubbing, turned out to be a demon. Really? Ho hum.

Moritz'Kri may be a cliche, but Beloch still managed to be one of the better characters in the game.

Dikiyoba.


beloch was like the devil, except he invalidates the statement "the devil is a liar" with "its true i cant deny it"
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Originally Posted By: devilkingx

you could be a little nicer, but you've gotta be kidding me? i didnt know you HAD to replace him i thought it was optional


You don't have to. It is in fact totally, 100% optional, and the game doesn't even really give you a lot of good reasons for doing so.
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The game makes it pretty clear that a lot of people think Redbeard is good at his job but not a good person. If you think you can do as well without being terrible, that's a reason to replace him.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the game stays appropriately silent on how well anyone else could do Redbeard's job without becoming Redbeard. Or, worse, destroying Avadon's power and causing chaos.

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Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba
Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves
I was actually a little irked that Moritz'Kri's big super secret surprise, complete with evil laughter and gleeful hand-rubbing, turned out to be a demon. Really? Ho hum.

Moritz'Kri may be a cliche, but Beloch still managed to be one of the better characters in the game.

Dikiyoba.


Oh, he's a well-written demon, to be sure. I was just hoping for something different this time.
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The game gives you reasons. It's up to you to decide whether they're morally good or bad. As far as quality of reasons go, they're neither good nor bad, because it's still left to the player to decide whether you can justify toppling Redbeard.

 

—Alorael, who wants, one day, to encounter an evil wizard who uses the ends to justify the means when those ends are, in fact, better than world conquest. A hundred thousand immortal, adorable kittens, say, or a cure for the common cold.

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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Based on your last post it seems like one of your big complaints is that the game doesn't tell you things ahead of time -- about how stats work, about enemy vulnerabilities, etc. I agree that some of this would have been nice, but many players also enjoy finding this stuff out on their own.


No. I want the game to tell me how things work.
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Originally Posted By: Hearing Hands
—Alorael, who wants, one day, to encounter an evil wizard who uses the ends to justify the means when those ends are, in fact, better than world conquest. A hundred thousand immortal, adorable kittens, say, or a cure for the common cold.
Wouldn't that make said wizard not so much evil as eccentric?
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Originally Posted By: Hearing Hands
—Alorael, who wants, one day, to encounter an evil wizard who uses the ends to justify the means when those ends are, in fact, better than world conquest. A hundred thousand immortal, adorable kittens, say, or a cure for the common cold.
Wouldn't that make said wizard not so much evil as eccentric?

It depends upon your opinion about the ends, also some means are considered evil no matter what the good for the ends. Nazi medical testing may have resulted in some advances in medicine, but the high fatality rate among test subjects is considered illegal in most civilized countries.
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Originally Posted By: Randomizer

It depends upon your opinion about the ends, also some means are considered evil no matter what the good for the ends. Nazi medical testing may have resulted in some advances in medicine, but the high fatality rate among test subjects is considered illegal in most civilized countries.


well, pretty much all the "advances in medicine" were along the lines of "how long can people survive being tortured to death in various ways". on one hand you can't really get this information without torturing people to death. on the other this is a pretty bad reason to torture people to death.
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It depends upon how many deaths or torturing is acceptable for the ends. Killing people for a disease (common cold) with almost no fatalities isn't that acceptable. Most current drug trials are discontinued if there are more fatalities than expected statistically for the treatment over no treatment.

 

Then you have Viagra that was a total failure for its intend disease.

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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Originally Posted By: Hearing Hands
... A hundred thousand immortal, adorable kittens, say, or a cure for the common cold.
Wouldn't that make said wizard not so much evil as eccentric?


Are you kidding me? A hundred thousand immortal, adorable kittens isn;t evil?!?! Don't you know that kittens try to kill you in your sleep? They are almost as evil as poodles!
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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
It depends upon how many deaths or torturing is acceptable for the ends. Killing people for a disease (common cold) with almost no fatalities isn't that acceptable. Most current drug trials are discontinued if there are more fatalities than expected statistically for the treatment over no treatment.

Then you have Viagra that was a total failure for its intend disease.


what i thought viagra was to give old men wood, and it gave old men wood, seems like a success to me

Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Randomizer

It depends upon your opinion about the ends, also some means are considered evil no matter what the good for the ends. Nazi medical testing may have resulted in some advances in medicine, but the high fatality rate among test subjects is considered illegal in most civilized countries.


well, pretty much all the "advances in medicine" were along the lines of "how long can people survive being tortured to death in various ways". on one hand you can't really get this information without torturing people to death. on the other this is a pretty bad reason to torture people to death.


actually read the link below, it details the various experiments in their horrible, informative glory your mostly right but the info is still useful and practical

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
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Viagra was developed for high blood pressure and angina. It's not really good for that, but erectile dysfunction might be a more lucrative market anyway. Oh, and it's fine for very specific hypertension, too.

 

"All advances in medicine" is obviously false. Some, certainly, but not most, and certainly not many in the last few decades.

 

—Alorael, who is pretty sure mass murder for eccentric ends makes you evil. It's a fine line: terrible means to highly desirable ends make for interesting moral decisions. Terrible means to terrible ends make you evil. Terrible means to odd ends make you eccentrically evil. What he really wants is terrible means to good ends that very obviously cannot justify those means. No slaughter for the greater good; slaughter for the lesser good!

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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Randomizer

It depends upon your opinion about the ends, also some means are considered evil no matter what the good for the ends. Nazi medical testing may have resulted in some advances in medicine, but the high fatality rate among test subjects is considered illegal in most civilized countries.


well, pretty much all the "advances in medicine" were along the lines of "how long can people survive being tortured to death in various ways". on one hand you can't really get this information without torturing people to death. on the other this is a pretty bad reason to torture people to death.

AFAIK, the only "legitimate" thing Nazi research is used for is data on how the human body reacts to being frozen for research into hypothermia and cryogenics- which, while admittedly useful, isn't really worth freezing people to death for.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer
It depends upon how many deaths or torturing is acceptable for the ends. Killing people for a disease (common cold) with almost no fatalities isn't that acceptable. Most current drug trials are discontinued if there are more fatalities than expected statistically for the treatment over no treatment.

In fairness, the cold and the flu kill way more people than you'd think- it's something to the order of 50,000 people per year in the US alone, but then again, most of those people were very old or very young or had compromised immune systems, so they were more at risk than the average adult.

And then you get things like the Spanish flu. Hoo boy.
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Quote:
I was actually a little irked that Moritz'Kri's big super secret surprise, complete with evil laughter and gleeful hand-rubbing, turned out to be a demon. Really? Ho hum.


I thought the lack of creativity suited his character well. Moritz'kri is much more the mustache-twirling, lacking in self-awareness type of card-carrying villain. I kind of like how he contrasts with the more complicated, morally ambiguous antagonists like Gryfyn, Miranda, Tarkus, and depending on how one looks at it, the 'beard himself.

@Dantius: and hamthrax!
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Originally Posted By: Dantius
Originally Posted By: Randomizer
It depends upon how many deaths or torturing is acceptable for the ends. Killing people for a disease (common cold) with almost no fatalities isn't that acceptable. Most current drug trials are discontinued if there are more fatalities than expected statistically for the treatment over no treatment.

In fairness, the cold and the flu kill way more people than you'd think- it's something to the order of 50,000 people per year in the US alone, but then again, most of those people were very old or very young or had compromised immune systems, so they were more at risk than the average adult.

And then you get things like the Spanish flu. Hoo boy.


Randomizer is correct in that the common cold (rhinoviruse) has almost no fatalities linked solely to it. Dantius is correct in that the cold and flu combined have significant fatality. So killing people to develop a cure/vaccine for the common cold is hardly worth it, but would killing one year's worth of flu victims in research trials be worth preventing the flu from ever striking again?
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Well master1 if the shoe fits...1st of all I didn't call jeff anything,I said whoever wrote the ending.I did say ignorant.Why not let jeff intervene here.Hey jeff what do you think?Did you write the ending?If you did WTF dude?

The only reason behind the ending is to continue with the story line,the people you didn't kill will be in the next series,plain and simple.

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In Jeff's blog, he states that he rarely reads his forums, usually only for bug fixing. Jeff most likely wrote the story, and Jeff and his wife both write the dialogue. Jeff doesn't have the resources to hire employees, he does most of the work himself.

 

The ending was probably my favorite part of the whole game I think.

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I'm also not clear on what's so terrible about it. If you don't dislike Redbeard, you can stand by him loyally and the ending is fine with that.

 

—Alorael, who found that ending more compelling himself. It works just fine. Redbeard probably doesn't want you attacking Miranda anyway. He seems to deal with these things in his own horrible way.

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Originally Posted By: Dantius
Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Randomizer

It depends upon your opinion about the ends, also some means are considered evil no matter what the good for the ends. Nazi medical testing may have resulted in some advances in medicine, but the high fatality rate among test subjects is considered illegal in most civilized countries.


well, pretty much all the "advances in medicine" were along the lines of "how long can people survive being tortured to death in various ways". on one hand you can't really get this information without torturing people to death. on the other this is a pretty bad reason to torture people to death.

AFAIK, the only "legitimate" thing Nazi research is used for is data on how the human body reacts to being frozen for research into hypothermia and cryogenics- which, while admittedly useful, isn't really worth freezing people to death for.


it kinda is, between advancing cryogenics and saving hypothermia victims, i'd say that is justified(although the rest maybe not)
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They didn't really advance cryogenics. And for that, at least, I think torturing animals would work fine. And, interestingly enough, anesthesia would fix even that. There's nothing about hypothermia that requires consciousness.

 

—Alorael, who imagines it would be hard to replace humans with anything else when studying hypothermia. Surface area and volume are very important, and nothing is really like a human that way. Certainly nothing cheap enough to be a good sacrificed research subject.

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Originally Posted By: Hearing Hands
They didn't really advance cryogenics. And for that, at least, I think torturing animals would work fine. And, interestingly enough, anesthesia would fix even that. There's nothing about hypothermia that requires consciousness.

—Alorael, who imagines it would be hard to replace humans with anything else when studying hypothermia. Surface area and volume are very important, and nothing is really like a human that way. Certainly nothing cheap enough to be a good sacrificed research subject.


it was pretty messed up and barbaric, but they hated the jews so they werent exactly trying to be nice

so the nazi's were terrible terrible people but their messed up brutal and cruel experiments advanced science and made life better for us

and it seems like ti would advance cryogenics because you'll have research into freezing the human body without killing the subject first
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Cryogenics don't have a whole lot in common with hypothermia. With hypothermia, you're usually well on your way to dead once you're around 30º C or 80º F. For cryogenics, you need to reduce body temperature to well below -150º C or -200º F, often extremely quickly, and always by something other than simply lowering temperature or water crystallization will rupture all the cells you want to preserve.

 

The Nazis advanced science, but many of their advancements were reproducible (and have been reproduced) in entirely non-horrible ways. Hypothermia is their big contribution that can't be easily replicated. And, well, while being able to save more people from hypothermia would be nice, I don't think those ends come anywhere close to justifying the means.

 

—Alorael, who also doesn't think that most Nazi science was very good science. In consideration of whether their data could ethically be used, most of it was rejected for being unusable or just not useful regardless of moral quandaries.

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Originally Posted By: So you want to be an incantatrix
Cryogenics don't have a whole lot in common with hypothermia. With hypothermia, you're usually well on your way to dead once you're around 30º C or 80º F. For cryogenics, you need to reduce body temperature to well below -150º C or -200º F, often extremely quickly, and always by something other than simply lowering temperature or water crystallization will rupture all the cells you want to preserve.

The Nazis advanced science, but many of their advancements were reproducible (and have been reproduced) in entirely non-horrible ways. Hypothermia is their big contribution that can't be easily replicated. And, well, while being able to save more people from hypothermia would be nice, I don't think those ends come anywhere close to justifying the means.

—Alorael, who also doesn't think that most Nazi science was very good science. In consideration of whether their data could ethically be used, most of it was rejected for being unusable or just not useful regardless of moral quandaries.


yeah, but even if you could reproduce it later you would still have it earlier than otherwise using nazi research

and what about thawing frozen subjects, does the research not help with that too?
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Most of their results had to be reproduced if anyone wanted to use them, because their work was too focused on the "horrible torture" and not focused enough on the "produce valid data points for analysis." The real exception is the hypothermia data, I believe. One consideration in whether to throw out Nazi research was preventing others from performing monstrous experiments, releasing the results, and accepting the consequences for the good of science. By throwing it out, they removed the incentive to do anything of the sort.

 

Hypothermia doesn't mean being frozen, it means being too cold to live. Your body tolerates cold by generating more heat; even small changes in core body temperature are very bad. You're irretrievably dead before your body is below room temperature, so figuring out how to thaw people has nothing to do with dealing with hypothermia.

 

—Alorael, who will also point out that you cannot freeze and then thaw most living things. Water expands and crystallizes, rupturing cells. A substantial part of cryogenics is figuring out how to freeze things so that they don't fall apart when you thaw them. If you don't freeze them right, it's all over anyway.

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Originally Posted By: So you want to be an incantatrix
Most of their results had to be reproduced if anyone wanted to use them, because their work was too focused on the "horrible torture" and not focused enough on the "produce valid data points for analysis." The real exception is the hypothermia data, I believe. One consideration in whether to throw out Nazi research was preventing others from performing monstrous experiments, releasing the results, and accepting the consequences for the good of science. By throwing it out, they removed the incentive to do anything of the sort.

Hypothermia doesn't mean being frozen, it means being too cold to live. Your body tolerates cold by generating more heat; even small changes in core body temperature are very bad. You're irretrievably dead before your body is below room temperature, so figuring out how to thaw people has nothing to do with dealing with hypothermia.

—Alorael, who will also point out that you cannot freeze and then thaw most living things. Water expands and crystallizes, rupturing cells. A substantial part of cryogenics is figuring out how to freeze things so that they don't fall apart when you thaw them. If you don't freeze them right, it's all over anyway.


on the subject of cryogenics did they ever figure out how to thaw you yet? because i hear they can only freeze you indefinitely at this point

on the subject of throwing out nazi reasearch, then doesnt that mean that info you cant get otherwise is now gone(i would imagine their reasearch would also tell things like pain tolerance, and what can kill you and what cant or rather how much of something kills you and how badly) unless someone wants to replicate the experiments...
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Originally Posted By: devilkingx
on the subject of cryogenics did they ever figure out how to thaw you yet? because i hear they can only freeze you indefinitely at this point


thawing you is very easy. it's bringing you back to life that's the hard part
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Originally Posted By: devilkingx
on the subject of cryogenics did they ever figure out how to thaw you yet? because i hear they can only freeze you indefinitely at this point


Sidenote: I'll presume that by "cryogenics", the study of cold things in general, you're referring to "cryonics", the somewhat-pseudoscience of trying to freeze and revive very rich people so they can live forever in the future (which is also not to be confused with cryobiology, the study of the effects on cold on living things in general). We kinda need to clarify terms here, as terms are being used interchangeably here when they really shouldn't be.

Short answer: No.

Medium answer: No, and they won't for a very long time, due to a multitude of serious problems that won't be solved anytime soon, especially when you consider the fact that even if they do unravel it, you can't be legally frozen until you're medically dead, so even if you could revive people, they'd still be, well, medically dead.

Long answer.
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Originally Posted By: devilkingx
on the subject of cryogenics did they ever figure out how to thaw you yet? because i hear they can only freeze you indefinitely at this point

No, there's no good way to either freeze or thaw people, or most animals, without killing them. Most cryopreservation of people relies on the future to invent both the method of thawing and the method of fixing whatever required someone to be frozen in the first place.

Quote:
on the subject of throwing out nazi reasearch, then doesnt that mean that info you cant get otherwise is now gone(i would imagine their reasearch would also tell things like pain tolerance, and what can kill you and what cant or rather how much of something kills you and how badly) unless someone wants to replicate the experiments...

It's not gone, it's just largely not scientifically useful. The results were not literally destroyed, just discounted by anyone interested in learning things. The Nazi "experiments" largely failed to meet the criteria of good science.

—Alorael, who has decided that if he ever decides to be cryonically preserved, he'll just have himself dumped in liquid nitrogen and just wait for methods for recovery to advance enough to deal with that sort of coarse preservation.
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Originally Posted By: How I fish in mine?
I'm also not clear on what's so terrible about it. If you don't dislike Redbeard, you can stand by him loyally and the ending is fine with that.


I found the story frustrating because there were lots of good reasons to question Avadon but no one ever mentioned them. The game itself was fun but the anti-Avadon arguments all missed the point -- I was pigeonholed into a loyalist-by-default simply because the pro-Avadon arguments were less irrelevant than the anti-Avadon ones. That's really unsatisfying.

The other Hands' complaints were ridiculously petty. If anything, as Redbeard points out at the end, his ignoring them is evidence that Avadon isn't corrupt. Their pettiness did lead to some nice moments (the chance to call out Jenell for her hypocrisy during Trail of the Drake, Miranda calling them all "inept" at the end) but they were wasted as an anti-Avadon argument.

The Tawon Empire's arguments weren't compelling either. Their only concrete offer was money, which is hardly in short supply in a game where learning new spells is free -- I never sold loot and bought all the lockpicks and group heal/group speed/resurection scrolls I could find and was still swimming in gold. Their attempt at a vague personal freedoms ethical argument would carry more weight if they weren't asking me to frame innocent people -- Avadon's command to rampage through Carsta'Arl's castle was excessive but at least he was guilty of something. Their claim that Redbeard was a corrupt tyrant was false (see consistently putting the Pact before Hands' personal vendettas). Their claim that his lack of attention had created problems was true, but they never explained how sparking a civil war could be an improvement for the average Lynaean.

No one discussed whether Avadon's ends (preventing civil war) might not justify its means (constant targeted assassinations). No one other than the Codex and Redbeard addressed civil war at all, which was bizarre given that preventing it was Avadon's stated purpose. No one got into the ethics of reading minds or how absolute power corrupts or how it's probably not a good idea for one strongman-for-life to rule Avadon -- the Wayfarer and Miranda merely suggested I replace Redbeard, showing either that they missed the point (if I were effective I would be as bad as him) or that they thought I was an idiot (I could only be better than him from Tawon's perspective if I were an ineffective puppet).

I enjoyed the more structured encounters that the new closed map allowed but the tradeoff in freedom to explore doesn't really feel worth it unless the story we're guided through is solid. And it wasn't. I'm not asking for a "right" path and I know a lot of stuff needs to be left open for the sequels but I don't think it's unreasonable to want the characters to touch on the real issues and give me one mildly logical reason to turn traitor.
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I sympathize almost to the point of agreeing, but I feel I should point out that most of the traffic here seems to say that the game is rather biased against Redbeard. I'm with you in feeling that none of the bad things about Avadon that are presented seem to add up to much compared to civil war. But judging from the general response, it looks as though Jeff did a pretty good job of showing both sides.

 

I, too, feel it's very frustrating that the major issue, of Avadon staving off civil war, is not addressed by anyone but Redbeard. But I don't think I'm frustrated with the game itself. I'm frustrated with the idiots in the game. And I think they are all too realistic. Avadon has kept the large-scale peace for so long, people have come to take it for granted. If they do think about Avadon preventing civil conflict, they mainly think of that as preventing them from achieving their individual goals by means of short victorious wars. They're just too short-sighted and ignorant to perceive that those wars would be neither short nor victorious, but would inevitably descend into a barbaric morass that would make Avadon's lethal tyranny look like a parliamentary debate.

 

The flaws in the Pact are in my opinion deeper even than the problem of giving the Avadon Keeper so much power. The basic problem is that Avadon is a substitute for what the Pact has always really needed: a common culture. The five societies that Jeff lovingly details have remained sharply distinct for all this time. No member of one can contemplate the achievements of another and feel instinctive pride that "we did that." They have no common cause, except avoiding war with each other. With the fading memory of war, that cause has faded, too.

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Originally Posted By: glauc
No one discussed whether Avadon's ends (preventing civil war) might not justify its means (constant targeted assassinations). No one other than the Codex and Redbeard addressed civil war at all, which was bizarre given that preventing it was Avadon's stated purpose.


The correct conclusion to draw from this is probably that nobody else in the game cares very much about preventing civil war, even if it would be in their best interests to do so. This certainly fits most characters' actions, at least. Pretty much everyone who actually has the power to act meaningfully against Avadon is trying to weaken it, not reform it.

So in short: yes, the Wayfarer is probably hoping that your desire for power exceeds your common sense and caution. If you've done all his other quests up to that point, he has good reason to hold that hope.
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Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity
If they do think about Avadon preventing civil conflict, they mainly think of that as preventing them from achieving their individual goals by means of short victorious wars. They're just too short-sighted and ignorant to perceive that those wars would be neither short nor victorious, but would inevitably descend into a barbaric morass that would make Avadon's lethal tyranny look like a parliamentary debate.


cf. WWI.
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