In the shadow of Bhaal

[Icendoan]

Needless to say, I will add more options to the Solar's Ammellysan talk, to offer an explanation about why Ammellysan should be spared. A loose one, however, and I have ideas about how to make this realistic.

 

The mod cannot begin simply via dialogue. Releasing that is pointless, you are talking about absolutely nothing. Everything revolves around the fight with Bhaal and so, it should be released when that is in a working state.

 

Icen

[Sorrow]

Let's add intelligence and plot, yes. But I'd prefer not to go overboard on "there's no such thing as black and white" preachiness, as the real world is chock full of it, often erroneously. If there was ever a proper place for black and white, it's in a fantasy role playing game of champions and villains.

I think that the "there's no black and white" has it's place as a reminder that despite that enemies of humanity aren't totally evil towards everyone, we need to do our duty. What the games show too rarely is how people get deceived by those "good" qualities of enemies of humanity and what are it's consequences.

 

Needless to say, I don't think a trend is bad because it's popular;

No, but as sorrow put it, "villains with a tragic past are a terrible cliche." Actual evil villains without any redeeming or sympathetic qualities have become less cliche by simple virtue of the pop trend in question.

 

It needn't be a tragic past, it could simply be a varied past, which has allowed her to develop a range of emotions -- like most human beings do. The cliche, I believe, is having her be nothing but a power-hungry bogeyman with an echoing laughter. I can understand your concern if you feared that I intended to turn Baldur's Gate into a sob-story for Amelyssan's sake.

Amusingly, I found Amelyssan, together with President from Fallout 2 one of the most believable characters.

She's a typical psychopath - unable to feel deep human emotions and very good at deceiving people. I bet that if she had deep human emotions she would be to busy to search for godhood. If she was a real person, not a psychopath, she probably wouldn't be able to become a high priestess of god of murder or to come up with the plan of winning trust of children of Bhaal and then killing them all off. Not to mention the infanticide thing...

 

I remember reading an article about psychopaths - they aren't real people - they are completely alien. They are able to kill their own family members for saying something bad or from ordinary boredom.

 

 

Speaking of the Bhaal thing - I never found Melissan being the final boss anti-climatic, because I never expected to fight Bhaal physically in ToB - while both SoA and ToB were a ridiculous munchkinfest, fighting a god would be too over the top - like LotR ending with Frodo fighting Sauron.

 

To me, the nature of fighting Bhaal was purely spiritual - my character's quest wasn't about killing Bhaal, but to freeing oneself of the burden of the taint, just like Frodo's quest was about destroying the ring. I think that despite its faults, Bioware succeeded at showing it.

[Icendoan]

Fine, then don't install the mod

 

Icen

[Paradox]

To me, the nature of fighting Bhaal was purely spiritual - my character's quest wasn't about killing Bhaal, but to freeing oneself of the burden of the taint, just like Frodo's quest was about destroying the ring. I think that despite its faults, Bioware succeeded at showing it.

 

I don't think they did, because they made Bhaal an incompetent before ending it -- otherwise it might've been a worthy ending, yes. Now the great evil you were fleeing all your life was a dimwit rather than a God scheming from beyond the grave.

 

I don't think the Lotr-analogy is fair, because Frodo's story is about how the small and humble can manage to make a difference in a world of giants -- Sauron's weakness was not a lack of wit, but simply that he did not count on the immense and touching strength that two small hobbits were able to summon.

 

Also, Peter Jacksson actually had plans of making Aragorn fight a weaker version of Sauron in the final movie, but then cut it because he thought it would detract from Frodo's story. That's why we see him fighting a troll instead. Personally, I think the Sauron-fight might've worked, since it would still be Frodo defeating him trough destroying the ring -- and the encroaching victory of the dark lord would've seemed more imminent if he had loomed over the king of Gondor personally. I'm not going to complain about the Lotr movies, though.

[Paradox]

Needless to say, I will add more options to the Solar's Ammellysan talk, to offer an explanation about why Ammellysan should be spared. A loose one, however, and I have ideas about how to make this realistic.

 

Icen

 

I think it would be wasted effort to allow for Amelyssan to be spared, especially since we can't use the final cinematic then. The Solar's talks are sufficient, if you make Amelyssan's past color her brief exchange with Bhaal before entering the Throne of Blood. More isn't always better; what's not explicitly said can be implicitly understood much more vibrantly.

 

The more important thing is to get Bhaal's possession of her right.

[Icendoan]

You spare Ammellysan anyway, and get the same, final clip.

 

I am going to allow a sacrifice to Bhaal, either you or another Bhaalspawn has to be killed for Bhaal to become real, adding yet more options, but we could still use the non-divine ending dialogues.

 

In my current dialogue (not finished, as work is sucking my spare time up like no tomorrow), you can ask Bhaal about Ammellysan if you have certain stats (I got my head round some triggers, YAY) and then certain options become available. You might even find that the same option gives you different results... (Not using a random number generator, but I may use that for something else).

 

My current aim is to give a complex dialogue which alone can give more replayability.

 

I think that even if you use the final rituals, the ending sequence can still be played, as I think it was only used as a storage place for the essence anyway. As even if you assume the position, the throne gets destroyed.

 

Icen

[Sorrow]

To me, the nature of fighting Bhaal was purely spiritual - my character's quest wasn't about killing Bhaal, but to freeing oneself of the burden of the taint, just like Frodo's quest was about destroying the ring. I think that despite its faults, Bioware succeeded at showing it.

 

I don't think they did, because they made Bhaal an incompetent before ending it -- otherwise it might've been a worthy ending, yes. Now the great evil you were fleeing all your life was a dimwit rather than a God scheming from beyond the grave.

I never considered Bhaal's return a real threat for one simple reason - I've read the avatar series and I knew that he was a dimwit. The only thing that he was really good at was slaughtering people in interesting ways. Also, Bhaal was dead and I never felt that his return was really an option - the plan seemed to me somehow flawed since the times of BG1.

 

Also, you are overestimating him - he could foresee his death, but not precisely enough to prevent it by avoiding the guy with a red sword.

Similarly, Bhaal didn't plan to allow the Bhaalspawn to grow up - the plan was to kill them all as children when he died - they weren't all killed because the Harpers intervened.

 

Then the whole plan fell apart - Melissan was left without guidance for 11 years and her plans changed. Maybe she didn't feel that a god that got himself killed and let his plan fall apart was really worthy of worshipping.

Maybe she felt that all her work towards the destruction of Bhaalspawn made here more worthy to be a god than him. After all, her role was to perform the rite after all the Bhaalspawn get sacrificed - it was in times when she was still under impression of Bhaal and felt powerless without him giving her divine spells.

When she accustomed to living without god and discovered that she can rely on herself, her state of mind changed together with her goals.

 

Taking in account that the ritual was supposed to be performed soon after his death, he didn't have reasons to be afraid about being betrayed 10 years later.

 

So, to me, the taint as an essence of evil residing inside Bhaalspawn, especially <CHARNAME> was the real enemy. Special abilities, changing into slayer, the pocket plane, etc. and then Imoen being tainted by the same abilities, not some dead guy.

[Icendoan]

I might also work something like that in, as already Imoen is slayer changed and fights you in at least Ascension.

 

When you see things, and then try to directly prevent things, you would die in another way. There was a film about this. Making a contingency is a much better plan.

 

You also said, as did in the game "He forsaw his own death", never stating he actually knew what was going to kill him. I don't think he KNEW much about the time of troubles.

 

Icen