Alberich

If I remember, he also wrote a post or gave an interview saying that there was no guarantee that a forum poster represented any group larger than one, and they contradict each other a lot...and heaven knows that is true...but that he consults the playtesters at length and takes their opinions very seriously. (Which is why I said elsewhere that the best hope of influencing his future games is to write something so compelling in the forum that a future playtester brings it to his attention. Which is one reason I'm glad the wishlist has been pinned to the top of the board...maybe it will be consulted by a playtester or two in that far-off future day.)

Oh.

I think it would be more poignant -- and more realistic -- if Silke found you less attractive for abandoning your principles, the Pact, and Avadon for her sake, and more attractive for sticking with what you believe in, being strong and unyielding with the enemies of the Pact, while still sparing her. (In the former case, the background music could change to selections from Carmen...)

I agree with the last two posts. Interestingly, there are some people you can "betray" without losing their loyalty. Specifically,

It's even easier than that....you go to the stairs, and run down the stairs while staying in combat mode. When you go up the stairs, you get a free round of attacks, so you hit 'em and run back down, then wait a few rounds for your preferred attack to recharge (if it does recharge), then run back upstairs again, never leaving combat mode...the sentinels will never get a single blow in. (As long as you don't leave combat mode, they won't heal.) I killed them this way with a shaman and his drake, using the drake's inferno attack every other round, but I could've done it with any class with a ranged attack...that free round every time I came back up made it simple.

One thing I always like, and always want more of, is detail of what happened to whom in the ending. I was glad that this time I learned the individual fates of my companions, and that my choices in the game made the difference...I always like this even on minor matters. As in Geneforge 3, where I never used canisters, and the game at the end said I held my hand up and saw it was not glowing, so that at least I had retained my humanity. Learning what happened to some of the NPC's I left alive, or what happened because of some of the optional creatures I killed, this too I would have liked. Even if I'm not going to replay the game, and I'm not a big replayer, knowing that my choices changed the ending and that I could have gotten a different one with different choices makes me enjoy it more.

Thank you! Fascinating stuff. Interesting that in this game, if you help one of your companions do a disloyal act (disloyal, at least, to Callan and Redbeard's wishes), he comes out as a more loyal and effective hand. If you don't, he dies at Foresight or comes out ineffective.

I already had one farm by the time the scout told me she was working for the rebels because she had to to survive...I was hoping for an option that said, "Look, I've got a farmhouse over thisaway, it's on a patch of land, and if you don't know how to plant your own garden and build a chicken coop, it's near some good hunting land...now get out of that rebellion!"

"You are assessed for street repairs..."

Thank you. Interesting that there appears to be an interesting option where you become keeper, yet Hanvar's Council does take over, leaving you on as Keeper to fight for the pact, but not to stand above the law. (However, it apparently assumes that you wanted to resist this, and only submitted reluctantly when Avadon would not back you up. Maybe this is the option if you haven't reported enough stuff to Callan or something?)

Thank you both! By the way, is there a dialogue file where I can read the different endings language? I looked through some of those for the different areas (including Fort Foresight, which has some near-the-end dialogue) but didn't find the one for the endings.

I agree with this wholly. However, I will admit a part of me was hoping that, even as a loyalist, I would end up with a position of influence in Avadon, such that I could issue (or convince Redbeard to issue) an amnesty to rebels who came in from the cold, and thus bring Silke back to me. The fact that I couldn't do this -- and wanted my character to have a romance if possible -- put the PC on the same footing as the companions. I mean, each of them has the chance to do something Avadon won't like in order to carry out some personal goal. In this one, so do you. (I went so far as to return her satchel to her, though it felt wrong, but in the end I simply couldn't lead our old boss into an ambush or betray the Pact for her.)

I finished the game and liked it overall. I'm not likely to play it all through again, at least not anytime soon, and I'm wondering if anyone knows some things I'm wondering about. For most of the game, I had my character take up the view that Avadon and the Pact should be preserved, but that Avadon should be accountable to the civilian government (i.e., Hanvar's Council). After a certain point I started taking the basement councilwoman's quests...the last thing I did for her was to check out Redbeard's tower and tell her about the level with the magic pool. (I also told the other councilwoman about Redbeard's underground lair, though I suspected her of being a spy.) What I'm wondering is - did this attitude make any difference towards the ending? I mean, I was glad to see that the Council made up its mind to insist on asserting its authority, even when I played the loyalist ending. (I dropped the difficulty to normal to kill Redbeard and see the "other" ending...and was disappointed to see that that ending assumed I would fight the Council once I was Keeper.) But if I hadn't spied for the Council, or had slowed it down the way Callan wanted, would they have let Redbeard reign unchecked? I notice that I like the Spiderweb games best when they are "ideologically complex"...I mean like Geneforges 2 and 5, where you have several different factions to align yourself with. What I'm wondering is whether this game really had multiple options at the end...as opposed to the simple "pro- or anti- Redbeard." In the same vein - does Redbeard always disappear when you take the loyal ending, or does it depend on your actions? (I gave him straight answers about how he should step down for the good of the Pact, even if it means his life; I would like to think he took it to heart and vanished to avoid assassins.)

I very, very sincerely thank you!

I am at that certain late-in-the-game encounter where someone wants me to lay down my arms, and if I refuse, I get trained basilisks all over me. I've done some experimenting with that encounter. I have a plan that, if it works, will let me kill those basilisks, though with enormous difficulty. But it will take a LOT of time-consuming gameplay with a risk that I lose anyway (at least on torment it will). My one question is: if I do this, is it worth it? I mean, will I be better off (or at least able to advance) if I succeed, or is the game going to force me into such a situation that I might as well not have bothered? (If it matters, take it as given that I am pro-Pact; I want Redbeard to step down but I want the enemies of the Pact to lose.) (In this thread, I am requesting no spoiling of what happens one way or the other, and also no suggestions for better strategy to kill them...though that might make a fun discussion for another thread. I'm asking only for whether, if I succeed, it's worth it.)

I don't think this would make a big difference...Heart Callan would probably treat that as you making excuses rather than having a valid reason (after all, if you were attacked you could always run away instead of clearing the whole place out down to the last monitor). And no way would she engage you in debate. She's concerned with the effect on other Pact members (specifically the Kva-ians who treat it as a sign of favoritism in the brewing civil war) rather than how wrong the mercs were to be there in the first place. As with all the companion side quests, it's up to you to decide if doing this is justified. If you go to Callan and report that one of your companions wants to do any of them, she'll give you her views in no uncertain terms. So it sets up the same basic dilemma as the others...are you going to be loyal not only to the pact and the idea of Avadon, but to Callan and Redbeard and their wishes? Or do you have some other priorities? Obviously a CRPG as opposed to a tabletop RPG is always going to have less flexibility, but given Callan's inflexible views on all these side quests, I doubt she would let you get out three words of why you thought they were justified, no matter which kind of game this was.

That was actually a complaint I had about Geneforge 4, that however hard I tried to become openly "Shaper," the rebels never seemed to get the message that I had been slaughtering every one of them I could get my hands on. One of my justifications for agreeing to burn the records for Yoshiria was that I wanted the Gray Raptors' help in tracking down Gryfyn (I owe him some pain from game 1); but I'm glad I avoided this incongruity by making that choice. I think a little more writing, just a paragraph, might've resolved it: "So, player, you have killed a large number of Gray Raptors. Your death will be excruciating when the time comes. In the meantime, as a loyal Hand of Avadon, perhaps you'd like to help us track down the rogue duke Gryfyn anyway? We can pay you in money and nice items, and as an added bonus, we will forward them to your next of kin after we torture you to death."

I don't see it that way -- I actually am playing a shaman on Torment and I had seen how good the tinkermage item was for the first side quest, but whether I'd find such an item didn't even enter into my thinking for this one. And I don't say the item I found wasn't nice, but it's not the kind of item that makes or breaks my ability to win the game, even on Torment. There's more than enough good stuff floating around for every class that the game doesn't really pressure you into side quests just to find items.

I found it easier without Yannick. The biggest help was realizing that the enemy tinkermages won't activate until all three of my characters are in the room; that meant that my tinkermage could run in by himself and set up his pylons (and my shaman could summon his drake) before the fight began. My Yoshiria has a battle frenzy scarab and does a lot of damage with those razordisks, so I was able to rely on her (plus the occasional fire blast from the drake, and the pylons) to take down the unlucky tinkermage without needing many potions at all. (She spent most of her time in the south end of the room, until enemy constructs started rushing her and she had to teleport.)

I think that would've been out of step with the flavor of the adventure. You've been thrown into the world with some very tough assignments to do and a mandate to do other jobs on the side (mercenary and similar work) as long as you don't commit treason. There isn't a set of rules that outright forbids or allows these side quests and gives you an easy answer. If there were that would kind of defeat the point. So instead you must use your judgment. Do you want to please Hand Callan, walk the straight and narrow, and act the way the current Avadon regime likes best? Or do you want to retain the personal loyalty of your companions, and if so, can you justify the semi-disloyalty each of these side quests entails? It's precisely because the rules are so fuzzy on the margins that you can justify these quests if you are of a mind to...and it fits well into the theme of personal loyalty versus state security and other principles. I like it. You get other options in other places if you want to betray the Pact outright (or at least I've seen a couple of options I didn't take that pointed that way), and you get other options in other places if you want to support the Pact but subvert Avadon.

Unfortunately I did not make new saves in the right place and will have to redo that scene (and, apparently keep the same party for both halves of the fight). But thank you for telling me that so that I now know it will work! (And it's still a bug that I think ought to be fixed -- either by explicitly telling the player that he cannot exit this section of the map until the whole thing is done, or else by not making Odil disappear when you do that. I like the latter option because it lets the player exercise more flexibility.)

Thanks!

Judging by what I've seen, he's not the only one in the game who acts indecisive at the decision point -- looking to you for the decision -- but gets upset if he doesn't like it. That's pretty common in human beings, in my experience. I personally liked having the choice. One nice thing about the level cap is that you *don't* have to take quests you disagree with just to get XP, because you're going to max out at level 30 way before the end of the game anyway. (And you'll find more than enough good items to equip your party even if you skip lots of optional quests.) I ended up helping Dedrik but I justified it to myself in pact security terms. Those Kva mercenaries were there for one purpose only, and that was to support the Kva in an upcoming Pact civil war, and maybe even provoke that war once they were strong enough to do it (as they were already helping to do just by their presence). I treated them the same way I treated the Wyldrylm rebels...as enemies to the security of the pact, to be destroyed.

Not to throw cold water on your hopes, but a long time ago I read something of his -- an interview or a blog post, I forget -- in which he explained that he generally ignores fan input except from the playtesters, since so much of it is contradictory. (It stuck in my head because it's similar to Machiavelli's advice to the prince for dealing with flatterers...have a small coterie of trusted advisors and don't listen to anyone else.) That suggests to me that your best hope for influencing the next game is that one of its playtesters will read this thread and make your suggestion when the time comes. One very minor linguistic wish from me: not to refer to the summoned creatures as “pets.” To my mind, a "pet" is an animal you keep for ornamentation or love and companionship. A military working dog, a police dog, a warhorse is a fine thing, but is not a pet; neither should be a drake or hellhound I summon to launch ahead as a fire-spitting meat shield. The word “beast” would be better. (btw, nowadays about half the time when I post on this forum I can't do carriage returns...this time I pasted from a word file but it still took several tries to get the blank spaces in...is there anything I can do about that?)

And the same thing just happened to me. I thought it might be because, in between the aboveground fight and the underground fight, I went back to Avadon to change my party (I figured I'd need the tinkermage down below, and boy was I right). When I came back to go underground, I did not check to see if Odil was still in the hall, but when I finished off the rebels and came back upstairs, he sure wasn't.