This is a HUGE SPOILER THREAD STOP READING IF YOU HAVENT BEAT THE GAME
Hot take? Not if you beat the game and made the mistake of a second play through.
The game is fun, fleshed out, tries really hard to stay true to the setting and to 5th ed DND. Yet it falls into a terrible trap. It feels like a bad session run by a shitty DM.
If you play a “lets try to be good path” You will have to kill party members to stay on that Path. You want to resist becoming a mind flayer? a souless husk that slowly losings all touch of who you use to be? Tough shit, because at the end of the game, someone is becoming a mind flayer or you are trusting the stones into an evil, souless literal murdering rapist mind flayer.
The Emperor pretends to be nice to you. is always coming up with sweet words to explain away any evil they did in the past. But if you dont allow him to gas light you, he shows you the truth. He killed his best friend, he mind dominated his allies to force them to do what ever he wanted. He states he was intimate with one of them then shows you he basically took over their brain and used them as a meat puppet. He tries to force you to change into a mind flayer, he tells you that you are his slave and will do what ever he tells you to. If you try to get him to work with the prince he fucks off and joins the big bad at the end.
You want to save the prince and not trust a mind flayer? Tough shit, in the end someone has to be a mind flayer so if you dont become one, or offer up one of your companions as one. (good luck you have to know before hand which 2 can even become a mind flayer) the Prince just, snaps his fingers and becomes one.
If you go the emperor route someone is killing the prince. Which forces the entire Gith race to be slaves forever. the only hope of freeing them was the prince. If you go the prince route, same issue unless you give up your soul and become evil.
My first play through i focused on stopping the big bad. So i made some good choices, i made some bad choices. I needed powerful allies. Kill 7 thousand vampire spawn but i get a Vampire lord to help me? Sure bro i will help you kill your master. Kill an angel that has shown no sign of helping me. but i get the leader of an entire religion and their goddess dark powers? Sorry angel, you need to die so i can save the literal world. Give more and more of my brain over to the tadpoles so i can have the power to fight gods? Fine. Each step i took on my first play through was to stop the big bad, for the greater good and ended with me becoming a mind flayer and stopping the netherbrain. But in the end, Karlach died, wyll was cursed to be a devil, Gale still has a time bomb in him. Hasin didnt leave the shadow lands. and Shadow heart fucks off with out me because now im a mind flayer.
I thought wow. this is a great story about the greater good. But i want to try to play for the good ending.
Spoiler, there is no good ending.
the dark urge, which is a special play through was fucking amazing, pure evil sure. But at least you know your evil. and you even get to kill the emperor at the end just for fun. it feels like they gave up on the other endings and spent all their time on the dark urge. it has the best story, the most interactions, the longest and most detailed sex scene, a story that makes sense and an ending that fits perfectly.
Any other play through, good, bad, neutral? You get to the end, you make the impossible checks. a fucking 99 btw. and then, nope. the DMs puppet shows up, and saves the day. You have no choice but to end it the way we said. period. in the end. Your choices do not mean shit. there is two endings to the game. The dark urge. and the same generic you saved the day but at what cost.
Great game, until you get to the end. Feels like they gave up, or the people that worked on Act 1, had nothing to do with the end.
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