Final Conversation bug? (Big spoilers, obviously)

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

So, I finally finished this game just now. Great end-game sequence, fun game. However, the start of the final conversation with Redbeard left me scratching my head a bit.

 

Thing is, my opportunistic-loyalist-for-now character had managed to kill Wayfarer/Shadow Tarkus in the Beraza Woods thanks to some well-timed daze-inducing attacks and such. So Redbeard was left fighting some generic shadowdancer-assassin type whom he swatted aside with little difficulty. From what I read on the forum Shadow Tarkus was supposed to be there if you hadn't killed him.

 

Only when my character walks up to talk to RB, the dialogue reads as if Redbeard -did- fight Tarkus. And then Redbeard questions my guy about thingsTarkus supposedly said about his loyalty. Only the replacement-shadowdancer didn't say anything about that because he obviously didn't even know my character.

 

So, two questions. Firstly, I'm curious to hear how the confrontation would go if I had not managed to kill Tarkus. Are my assumptions above correct? Should Redbeard just not have asked about the Wayfarer? Would anything else have happened differently?

 

Secondly, have more people encountered this bug? Is there alternate dialogue for Redbeard which accounts for Tarkus being dead? Is this even a bug or is the writing just confusing?

[Mosquito---Slayer]

I think the game just assumes that Tarkus/wayfarer remained alive and no state where Tarkus was killed by the PC was imagined/incorporated in the writing, I believe the Dialogue would have pretty much gone the same way if you hadn't killed him.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Hm. Disappointing. I loved the idea that it was possible to kill Tarkus, but difficult and that he could easily escape. But to then have the game ignore and contradict that, when it does acknowledge all kinds of other decisions I took... that takes the fun out of it a bit.