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There's nothing whimsical about any of the quests except Alcander's, and some people like his outlook because it provides contrast to the moral heaviness of everyone else, and everyone in the first game. Classifying all five party characters as "evil" and "hateful" is reductive, but you seem fixed on that position. It simply isn't going to lead to any real discourse on the thread.

As we've been doing in previous posts. Many people more or less agree with you that the characters' side-quests are unreasonably bent to produce a certain effect -- the slaughter of a bunch of mercs in what could pass for a terrorist act, etc. If you hate the quests, explain why. If you hate the *gaming mechanics* that force you to go there, there's nothing to be done about that: don't play the game then.

You already said all that in your first post. The hate-spewing seems like a conversational dead end for the thread. I'd rather discuss the mechanics of character and story. More interesting.

No. And there really should be in A2; your party should start to mistrust you if you tell her that you went to find gold for Alcander, that you slaughtered mercenaries who were nominally loyal to Avadon for Dedrick's sake, that you SET THE FIRE in Avadon's basement -- for that last one they'd obvs. send you to the dungeons yourself -- you AND Yoshira -- as soon as they even suspected that you did it, in the reality of that situation; there are points at which the seams in the story Jeff scripted really show, and that's one of them. Yep. See above.

Disagree. Avadon covers up for Xenophon because's Avadon's interest is in maintaining the status quo, not in justice -- as we learn very well throughout both games. This denial of justice is of course is leading to the tragedy of full-scale rebellion, but that's how the story works. Then Xenophon has to die because Khalida knows full well that getting angry at whatever Avadon officials made the decision to put her under the mental probe-knife would be pointless: it happened, she has to live with it for the rest of her life. Her character takes shape from the fact that she IS loyal to Avaon, even though they've done what they've done to her. All that's left to her is vengeance on the man who made it all happen in the first place. Agree -- the PC in both Avadon games is like the PC in the original Knights of the Old Republic; all they can do is ask questions and make either/or choices. But this is only the second game Jeff's written where you get party characters who are NOT just stats you punched up; who are individuals, and their character lends meaning to what class they are -- in Avernum class was meaningless, I never played anything but custom-built characters. He'll probably learn to make your convo options more like a real person's options would be in future games. (Oh yeah, I forgot about the Geneforge NPCs you get who matter. Still, it's only in the Avadon series that everyone you fight alongside has a personality.)

Bioware made Jade Empire, which I posted about earlier in this thread. Nothing about that game sucks. The Avadon romance isn't Anna Karenina, it's a video game. Various aspects of A2 don't thrill me, but I had no problem with the romance. It's fine. Didn't find it pandering. Chill out.

Haven't played that path, but my guess is that they do what the A1 characters did: "I will still fight by your side, but we're no longer friends."

There ARE loyal Avadon officers, of course - Callan, Leila in the first game, Eye Marmora, Proteus was loyal for many years, until he came to believe that Redbeard simply had to go. I can grant the games a certain amount of latitude for making your party members the morally ambiguous types, for a couple reasons: A: moral ambiguity tends to make for good storytelling, so points to Jeff there. B: Hands, who are out in the field all the time, (unlike Eyes or Hearts) confronting the reality of the situation around Lynaeus, will of course run up against the places where principle fails, where "Open Arms Within; The Stone Wall Beyond" seems inadequate to address the scope of, say, the total destruction of Dhoral Stead in A1, or the problem of Dheless. In A1 the disparity between your party's views and the oath to Avadon that you all took does redress itself, when Miranda tells you that you were given all the dissatisfied ones in order to provoke you into seeing things the way she sees them (and killing Redbeard), and so I ultimately felt that the storytelling was contiguous, viewing the game as a stand-alone. In A2, yes, there's a dissonance. And the blindness that Redbeard presents you with when you finally confront him beneath Fort Foresight ("could I have done more to prevent the bloody apocalypse now unfolding upstairs? Sheesh, I guess I could've, totally my bad there...") really doesn't help. We need a reason to believe in Redbeard *throughout* the game, as a leader; we need more than the default of, "well, no one's assassinated him yet." In A1, the reasons are axiomatic: he's strong, he's a leader. In A2, we see his vulnerabilities, but we don't ultimately see him rise above them. And that's the crux of what we're discussing in this thread, I think.

Who are Alwan and Greta?

Which was my larger point re: the Shadowalker. Everyone you meet has a bias, against outlanders, against Avadon, against the neighboring country. Doesn't matter. No one has anyone else's best interests in mind, everyone's bound by their clans, locked into a centuries-long cycle of political gridlock for the sake of "stability", which is an illusion. As the Shadowalker goes on to say - yes, of course they want you to sacrifice your friends. Who cares about your friends? Or you? All that matters is the Pact.

Khalida had chunks of her mind irreparably ripped out, Dedrick was disowned by his country, Yoshira was doing her job and took out the wrong assassin. It's called making hard choices.

I don't see any spoilers in any thread titles at all. It's all pretty safe.

Who in the Pact has the slightest concern with fairness? I think the Shadowalker who killed Shima's clan with Avadon backing in A1 put it best: "sometime when you have several weeks to spare, someone can explain all the politics to you."

The larger story of the Avadon series is similar to the decline and fall of the Roman empire. A ruthless imperium with the best army in the world, eaten by bandits from the outside and by weak/divisive leadership on the inside.

You need to take vitamin supplements for a week.

Corruption water is not water in basins that look like other basins you find, in both A1 and A2. Corruption water is, as we've established

Would a new Pact member even be Redbeard's decision? In A1 perhaps, but at this point Hanvar's Council would definitely have to approve it. In the larger scope, however, Dheless' question is rhetorical. There is no real solution for the Tawon, no way for it to become a force without becoming a tyranny, any more than it's possible for the Pact to resolve its own internal conflicts. Both entities are splintering, and at the start of A3 what you'll clearly have is a free-for-all across Lynaeus, with mercenary rule, in which Avadon is nothing but a more-than-typically organized mercenary force.

You can piss her well off and still complete Callan's quest re: her.

There IS no Canon. There is no official backstory of the 1st party. He just left them out, end of story.

Sorry to spoil, but there are a dozen full-screen shots of NFSW erotica when you get hot with the scout, later. They thought of your character all the time when they were in chains and being horsewhipped as a slave. They can't wait to find out how much damage you can do in a single round. Silke porn is already all over Google.

If you stay upstairs in Fort Foresight, will Tawon just keep pouring into the fort infinitely until you die or go downstairs? That is apparently what happens if you don't lay down your weapon when you meet Dheless again; the Basilisks just pop into existence again if you kill them, which wasn't so thrilling.

You can fill in the gaps with your imagination, much as you have to do while reading any good comic book. If that doesn't suffice, then don't sleep with the dude, hm?

If you think that was hard, just wait 'till the quest that the *other* Tinkermage gives you.

One of the first things you learn about the scout is that they have a talent for moving silently, which makes sense in light of the path they take after you separate from them in the first part of the game.

Imagine that. Well, I finished the game without finding him and to re-do I'd have to go from a save point hours of gameplay earlier, so I may never see him. I'd assumed that, like A1, there'd be a warning when you're about to enter the endgame. There isn't.