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A Thought on PST

Tris McCall

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bryce777 said:
Most importantly, the whole point I have been trying to make is I do not really believe that he is eternally doomed as such. He is just back to where he originally was. Yes, he is in the blood war FOR NOW. But he is mortal again...the whole point of the fucking game!
So, now he perhaps has the opportunity to make amends, and when he dies will not be doomed to life as a nubbia or whatever the fuck those evil blobbies are.

I like this hopeful interpretation a lot, and it does help to explain why The Nameless One isn't cast into the form of a lemure or a nupperibo or larva or whatever when he arrives in the Lower Planes. We never actually see him die, so perhaps he *isn't* dead, and that means he's got (literally) a fighting chance.

It's been five years since I played the game, so my memory about some of the details isn't as sharp as it should be. But I definitely walked away from the computer after finishing PS:T convinced that The Nameless One was irrevocably damned. My understanding was that this was why he sought out Ravel in the first place: because the deeds of the first incarnation were so unspeakably awful that he knew he'd need an eternity to make up for them. The first incarnation, or the "Good" incarnation says so in the Fortress -- it tells The Nameless One that it was a thousand times more evil than any of the other incarnations ever were. This is the punchline of the "three incarnation" sequence in the fortress, and it's a clue about why The Nameless One went to such lengths to avoid his fate. That initial incarnation knew it could have no other fate than eternal struggle in the Blood War.

This is something of a Planescape cliche: the character who has done something so unforgivably evil that he knows he's bound for the Blood War, and who is therefore doing everything he can to cheat death. Because the Abyss is *not* a purgatorio or anything like it -- condemnation to the Lower Planes means an eternity of suffering, as surely as elevation to Mount Celestia means an eternity of reward. As a Planescape petitioner on the planes after death, you don't get another chance. Forevermore, you're sport for the devils.

There are clues in PS:T that hint that the boundary between the dead petitioner and the living planar is more permeable than it is in the pen and paper game. Morte is "rescued" from Ba'ator and given a second chance, suggesting that there is some slim hope for souls lost in the Blood War. But Grace, who's spent eons on the Lower Planes, does conclude the game by telling the Nameless One "time is not your enemy, forever is", and that seems like a pretty profound acknowledgment that he's eternally damned. Grace wishes desperately that throughout the millenia, The Nameless Once can cling to some memory of her, and he tells her he'll try. But *he's* not hopeful, and it's pretty clear *she's* not hopeful, so should *we* be hopeful?
 

kingcomrade

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I sorta thought he was looking forward to the carnage. He always looked really smug in the final cutscene, at least to me. Remember, TNO was not a nice happy squirrel rainbow puppy guy. He was sent to Hell because he committed some crime, and you know he's responsible for the deaths of dozens or hundreds of people throughout his life, directly or indirectly. The reason the finale seems apt for me is that things are finally returning to the way they should be, no unnatural life or immortality. Remember, the whole point of the immortality was for TNO to escape a punishment for a heinous crime, not because someone framed him or that he was just a helpless bystander. I got the impression that when people die they don't turn into devils or demons, that those are just the natives to those planes, like angels, and that when people die they don't transform, they are just transported.
 

bryce777

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He was not *sent* to hell.

The dude never died. He was a MERCENARY. He signed a contract to fight in the blood war. They only tell you that like 700 times ingame.

Just like the game was not set 'in the city'...you know, except all those planes you visit, and the tombs, and you know, 75% of the game.
 

kingcomrade

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The game was set "in the city" you don't leave Sigil until the very end of the game. You know, after 75% of the game. The tombs are part of Sigil.

Don't give yourself a heart attack.
 

WouldBeCreator

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I should add, of course, that the ending is brilliant the first time through -- the equivalent of a strong suckerpunch right to the emotional gut. But playing the game again, spending the whole time bracing your abs, is less cool. :)

The difference between this and Contra -- aside from the more obvious ones -- is that while both have fixed endings, the fixed ending to Contra is the best you could want for Red and Blue or whatever their names were (apparently Bill Rizer and Lance Bean?!) short of a buxom woman on each arm. You won't play through wanting something else. Even the second time through. It never occurs to you to want, say, to join Red Falcon as his consiglieri or something.

But in PS:T, the player doesn't necessary *want* the brand of redemption you're peddling. Maybe -- maybe -- the good guy does the first time through. But subsequent plays through, I've always wished for something else. When I faced off against TTO the second time, I had unlocked the Bronze Sphere. By that point, I had passed TNO's previous form of immortality -- that he would be reborn -- into "unkillability," basically. I was regenerating health at an obscene speed, able to cast numerous Level 9 spells, etc., etc. I think I could plausibly roleplay TNO as assuming that he would never create another shadow, given that he would never die again, and that he could do good things. There were many griefs unresolved -- people on the Pillar to be saved, Curst to be reinvigorated, etc. -- and I alone seemed willing and able to solve them. Heck, I could've helped Dak'kon restore the citadels lost in the past, I could go wipe out the Illithids once and for all, etc. But that option -- which still seems to me to be the best option -- just wasn't available.

Neither is the option there for an evil incarnation, who, reaching the same point, wants to continue to cheat death. Using what we learned from the Bronze Sphere, we could probably craft quicksave sensory stones to insure against even the remote possibility of actually getting killed and losing ourselves. We could force Dak'kon, bound as he was to our will, to make sure that subsequent incarnations were exposed to the stone. Etc., etc.

The game's inability to offer anything remotely like this is the equivalent of ending Mario Bros. with "I'm sorry, Mario, but the princess is in another castle."
 

Zomg

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WouldBeCreator said:
Neither is the option there for an evil incarnation, who, reaching the same point, wants to continue to cheat death. Using what we learned from the Bronze Sphere, we could probably craft quicksave sensory stones to insure against even the remote possibility of actually getting killed and losing ourselves. We could force Dak'kon, bound as he was to our will, to make sure that subsequent incarnations were exposed to the stone. Etc., etc.

That would've been great.

I need to replay the fucker so I can get in on these PS:T wank threads. My memory of the game is more holes than cloth.
 

WouldBeCreator

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kingcomrade said:
I got the impression that when people die they don't turn into devils or demons, that those are just the natives to those planes, like angels, and that when people die they don't transform, they are just transported.

Negative.

Ghysis the Crooked said:
“All right, one: let me give ye an example of what ‘meat’ means ta them. They'll get some mean-spirited mortal mercenaries together, maybe a drop o’ a few million strong an’ let them slaughter each other for no real reason at all — a pointless battle over some Power-forsaken piece o’ land. Guess where all those souls go?” I asked the rhetorical ‘Where?’ so he could continue.
“Their souls sink inta th’ Planes o’ evil they fight on, where they can be ripped from th’ soup o’ th’ Plane an’ set ta fight again as lemures or manes or whatever the pikin’ sod those little fiendish dung-heaps become. The more of those soddin’ petitioners they get, the more troops they ‘ave.”

bryce777 said:
He was not *sent* to hell.

The dude never died. He was a MERCENARY. He signed a contract to fight in the blood war.

TNO said:
i cannot remain here for much longer. my punishment calls . . . . i have committed many crimes across many lifetimes. i go now to a place of punishment. you cannot come with me.

You're right. He's *clearly* just fulfilling a contract. :roll:

FWIW, I can't remember, nor can I find, any definitive statement that TNO is going to the Blood War under contract. Do you mind dredging it up for me? Thanks. Are you referring to the various implications (i.e., the flashback in the lecture, the chat with Fhjull, the baatezu in the bar?). You seem to have in mind something more concrete.

FWIW, here's what Dave Maldonado said:

He gets sucked right on down because Ravel's magic/"the split" isn't protecting him from becoming an owned petitioner anymore. He's dead already, many times over, and doesn't need to die again to enter his "bargain."

Could be read either way, but I think it more strongly supports that he's going down b/c he's being punished, not because he's under contract.
 

Drakron

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Sorry but here I go again explaining things.

Souls when arrive to a plane became part of it BUT not always ... they have to be of the exact same aligment of the plane.

The Beatezabu (the LE ones) make contracts with souls (or people that are not dead yet) that in exchange for something they fight in the Blood War for a amount of time when they die ... since its a unique situation they dont became part of the plane (my guess is the contract protects then, of couse that only applies to LE souls since everyone else is protected by the fact their core is not the same as the plane) since the Beatezabu have no use for such lower forms, they could just get then without the whole contract deal.

My take is that TNO did the contract and then tried to bail out of it, in the end TNO follows the contract because its the only way to be really free from it.
 

WouldBeCreator

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Drakron said:
My take is that TNO did the contract and then tried to bail out of it, in the end TNO follows the contract because its the only way to be really free from it.

But this is totally contrary to what we're told by the original incarnation, who has no reason to lie. He says that he commited horrible sins and *that's* why he was going to be sent down. Wouldn't he say, "I signed a contract and I've been trying to get out of it ever since" if that was the situation?

I agree that contracting is a major theme of the story (Xacariah, Grace, Fhjull, etc.), but I really don't see the weight of the evidence backing that idea up.
 

DorrieB

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No, no. It isn't about redemption and it certainly isn't about TNO expiating any crimes. Don't think of it as TNO's punishment, think of it as his Fate. In the beginning, he fears his fate and tries to escape it by becoming immortal, but all he succeeds in doing is shattering his Self. So he finally puts himself back together and finds that his tragic fate is still there waiting for him, BUT... in becoming who he is, he has learned to not only accept, but embrace it. That grim look of satisfaction in his eye at the end is him affirming his existence, no longer hiding from it or trying to escape it.

Any other outcome would be a cop-out and a denial. It wouldn't matter whether he decided to live forever and do only 'good things' or 'bad things'; either way, his existence would be a sham. He would be caught in eternal recurrence, having learned nothing, achieved nothing, gained nothing. It would be unspeakably banal.

If you can't see anything beyond 'He'd been evil, so he went to Hell. The End', then you just didn't get it, and you do need to play it through again.
 

bryce777

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WouldBeCreator said:
kingcomrade said:
I got the impression that when people die they don't turn into devils or demons, that those are just the natives to those planes, like angels, and that when people die they don't transform, they are just transported.

Negative.

Ghysis the Crooked said:
“All right, one: let me give ye an example of what ‘meat’ means ta them. They'll get some mean-spirited mortal mercenaries together, maybe a drop o’ a few million strong an’ let them slaughter each other for no real reason at all — a pointless battle over some Power-forsaken piece o’ land. Guess where all those souls go?” I asked the rhetorical ‘Where?’ so he could continue.
“Their souls sink inta th’ Planes o’ evil they fight on, where they can be ripped from th’ soup o’ th’ Plane an’ set ta fight again as lemures or manes or whatever the pikin’ sod those little fiendish dung-heaps become. The more of those soddin’ petitioners they get, the more troops they ‘ave.”

bryce777 said:
He was not *sent* to hell.

The dude never died. He was a MERCENARY. He signed a contract to fight in the blood war.

TNO said:
i cannot remain here for much longer. my punishment calls . . . . i have committed many crimes across many lifetimes. i go now to a place of punishment. you cannot come with me.

You're right. He's *clearly* just fulfilling a contract. :roll:

FWIW, I can't remember, nor can I find, any definitive statement that TNO is going to the Blood War under contract. Do you mind dredging it up for me? Thanks. Are you referring to the various implications (i.e., the flashback in the lecture, the chat with Fhjull, the baatezu in the bar?). You seem to have in mind something more concrete.

FWIW, here's what Dave Maldonado said:

He gets sucked right on down because Ravel's magic/"the split" isn't protecting him from becoming an owned petitioner anymore. He's dead already, many times over, and doesn't need to die again to enter his "bargain."

Could be read either way, but I think it more strongly supports that he's going down b/c he's being punished, not because he's under contract.

Again, you just don't get it and I am getting tired of trying to explain. Also, his contract is only mentioned approximatel 2x10^234232323423234 times ingame. If you don't remember that, I don't know what game you played....
 

WouldBeCreator

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@DorrieB

Honestly, you guys really need to develop a mode of argument beyond, "You're stupid, you don't get it, play it again." It gets tedious.

It doesn't matter what you want to call it, fate, punishment, redemption, whatever. My point is simply that as a player, you have no control over where he ends up, and where he ends up is godawful. It doesn't matter if it's the right thing to do. It doesn't matter if it helps him overcome his cognitive dissonance. The only way his ending is the "ideal" ending on your account is if your ideal is to be true to oneself (one's fate?) no matter what. But that's a rare and perhaps utterly unpracticed ideal. If I were put in TNO's position, it is not the fate I would've chosen.

Maybe if I knew everything he learned in the Bronze Sphere and from merging with the past incarnations -- maybe if I saw the futility of trying to fight destiny rather than submit to it -- then I would've just go along with it. But even then, I really don't know.

The Blood War is awful. There is really nothing worse than it out there. TNO acknowledges that when he admits to Grace that he may not be able to remember her because time destroys all things. Time spent in the Blood War destroys all decency. Even a glutton for violence would become repulsed by it. That much is driven home by the game. It's also not just passive suffering; one actively inflicts violence on others. So not only is your mind broken by your own pain, but it is broken also by the pain you inflict on others.

Given the power to do great good in the world and faced with the alternative of sopping myself in the blood of my own endless butcher's work, I suspect I would choose the former. (It's worth noting that Ghysis makes clear that you have no hope of *bettering* the Blood War.) And I don't think that choice is a "wrong" one. Or a cop out.

And even if it is a cop out, the game should give you the option to cop out.

The outrage, in my opinion, of the ending -- from a gameplay standpoint -- is that it is unchosen and a poor (or at least dubious) choice. It's like if the ending of the game were letting a villain go because "we'll get him next time." It's not that it's not the kind of ending that sometimes works in fiction. It's just not the kind of ending that works in a game. And PS:T is a *game.* If it were a book, I'd be quicker to reread it than I am to replay it.

The ending is also problematic from a game-story standpoint in that the theme is that regret is what changes the nature of a man -- a troubling move to *answer* the question, when the game gives you a range of choices when faced with it initially and the question is far more interesting when left open. Setting that aside, the problem is that the regret that changes TNO at the end is one we just don't know. It's *not* the regret for what we as players have seen and learned, but rather the regret gained from merging with the incarnations and TTO. Basically, our avatar makes a choice for us based on reasons we don't know. It's a bit like how the game won't give us TNO's name. It reinforces that TNO in fact is *not* our avatar, but rather an independent who, grudgingly, let's us make some choices for him. But not the ultimate choice.

So we don't get to choose, TNO makes a dubious decision, and he makes it for reasons we don't know. Sorry if that makes the preceding game seem trivial for the player. But it does. It doesn't ruin the preceding game and it makes a nice capstone for the first playthrough. But it undoubtedly does put a damper on future runs.

You're right though. I'm just stupid, I don't get it, I'm not well-read, poorly educated, etc., etc. If I were those things *of course* I would agree with you 100%.

@ Bryce

Avellone said:
He ends up in Baator to serve his sentence, as I remember it.

Again, ambiguous.

Also, his contract is only mentioned approximatel 2x10^234232323423234 times ingame. If you don't remember that, I don't know what game you played....

The fuck are you talking about? I just downloaded the entire script, searched for contract, and didn't find a single concrete mention of TNO having a Blood War contract. There is a suggestion that Fhjull recognizes him, and we know he fought, for some term, in the Blood War, based on his flashback.

Honestly dude, you can barely write coherently and you seem not to be aware what's actually in the game. But hey, you've proven your chops with your "burrowing up" story idea for FO3. Who am I to doubt you?
 

bryce777

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It is not said outright, I suppose, but that is the only thing that makes sense. The hints about signing stuff. Hints about using your real name. I am pretty much certain this is the case.

It is hinted to over and over again.

The problem you are having is the story is not concrete and obvious. I am glad you like the dump idea. I know it is a whimsical fantasy - I suppose maybe one day I will make a game liek that.

Actually, I have a SOOPER SEKRIT idea for a game I am working on (very slowly) that I like much better. It is sort f out there, though, so I don't know how well received it would be.
 

WouldBeCreator

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It's hinted at maybe five times, all of which I noted above -- which you apparently ignored, ranting instead about how it was said outright "thousands" of times. Read the script, or play the game, and come up with something more concrete than calling me stupid. I can run circles around you if that's the game we want to play, but it's a waste of everyone's time, especially if you've got game designing to do.

You're right, of course, that it's hinted that TNO served some time in the Blood War. There's no reason *at all* to think that that's why he's going back there at the end of the game. The message that *is* given to the player explicitly -- again and again -- is that TNO commited *sins* and those *sins* needed to be recompensed with suffering.

Again, I quote for you:

i cannot remain here for much longer. my punishment calls . . . . i have committed many crimes across many lifetimes. i go now to a place of punishment. you cannot come with me.

The original incarnation says:
Death’s kingdom will not be paradise, not for us. If you spoke to these others that were here, know that a fraction of the evil of their lives is but a drop of water compared to the evil of mine. That life, that one life, even without the thousands of others, has given a seat in the Lower Planes for eternity.

(emphases added)

He does not say, "I made a bargain and there is no escaping a contract with the baatezu." In fact, there's no mention of a contract. And it's totally unclear how a contract would be "evil," rather than foolhardy.

You've come up with your theory that he sacrificed his army to get out so that you can roll your contract theory into the game's *explicit* message that he's being punished for a crime. First off, I don't know where you're getting this from, other than your imagination; all we know is that he met a witch (presumably Ravel) on the Gray Wastes. It is Ghysis who killed his comrades to escape. Second, even if he did sacrifice his army -- which is pure invention -- I hardly see how that is such an evil act as to completely swamp all the evil done by other incarnations since. Some other incarnations were pretty damned bad. (See, e.g., what was done to Ignus.) So I don't buy that even sacrificing ten thousand men in the Blood War would be enough to fit what the dialogue *actually tells us* there (that it was vastly worse than anything any other incarnation did). Moreover, the game *explicitly* says that it was a *life* of sin, not one incident, that condemned him. It's *many* crimes, not one. (Those're the game's own words, not mine.)

I agree, as I said above, that contracting runs throughout the story. There are a half-dozen characters who made contracts they regret. But it just *isn't TNO's story.* And all the, "You're stupid. Hahaha. Stupid stupid stupid!" in the world won't change that fact.

The script is easy to get. Google "Rhyss Hess." Then you can search for whatever evidence you want and can actually *support* your wild claims.

If you can't support them, you might as well rethink the game in light of what it says, apologize, and move on. :)
 

Drakron

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Jewish-christian idiocy have (fortunatly) no place in Planescape.

TNO would NEVER go to the lower planes if he is not of the LE/NE/CE aligment, the way the planes and afterlife works in D&D does not comes with "sin" and "pushiment", you are of a certain aligment, you get send to whatever plane matches that aligment.

So if TNO was the shiny LG that was the original one was then he was going to Mount Olympuss (sp), never be send to a lower plane ... the only way to be prevented to go to your aligment plane is you make a contract to serve in the Blood war.

My impression is that TNO make a contract, I rarely mention it because its not directly mentioned in the game ... just heavly hinted and adding my knowledge of planar mechanics its the only explination.
 

WouldBeCreator

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It strikes me as pretty silly to discount what the game says on the basis of extratexual sources like Planescape's general setting. The game is self-contained and clearly describes his fate as *punishment* for evil acts. I don't know enough about AD&D's stupid alignment system, but at least in PS:T, you can slowly change alignment through your acts, which means you can be willing yourself to be good, but nevertheless saddled with an evil alignment due to past wrongs. My impression is that that's where the original incarnation was.
 

Jora

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The writers didn't follow many of the Planescape/D&D rules strictly. They made the game the way they wanted, and in this case it means that TNO did something so horrible that no amount of regret, even if there's enough of it to build the Fortress of Regrets, is enough to not send him to hell. That's the whole reason he became immortal, the point of the story!
 

Drakron

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Saying you are good is pretty pointless when CE is written on the character sheet under aligment.

Every spell that targets evil will work as advertise no matter what.

Aligment is dynamic, in PS:T it certainly was less "forgiving" for stepping out of aligment (like it or not, the original one was the Good incarnation).

I say again, there is no "punishment" or "sin" in the setting and I go futher saying they are absent of the game as well, TNO was not going to be punished and the damn game was not about escapting punishment ... it was about TNO recover his mortality since its immortaly was rather "flawed".
 

kingcomrade

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I don't think the alignment you gain during the game has any effect on the overall alignment of TNO. He's committed so many crimes across so many years that doing a few paltry things in this final life isn't going to change his overall alignment. Remember, also, at the end, be merged with his mortality and becomes the person that he was originally with all of his memories and such returned (check out his final dialogue, if you revive your companions).

@Dorrie
There's more to it than his martyrdom and his catharsis. That's what the overall story is about, but there's more to it than that. He's getting his cosmic justice and returning his "part" of the universe to its natural state (as it was unnatural before).
 

Jora

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Drakron:

It wasn't about escaping punishment, it was about finally accepting it.
 

WouldBeCreator

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All right, this is getting tedious. But a point of advice for those who want to go somewhere in the arguing business. Support your wild claims with evidence. Anyone can talk out of his ass, as this thread has shown. But to actually find some evidence to support your theory is a different matter entirely.

For example, Drakron says that "punishment [and] sin . . . are absent of [sic] the game." He does so by shoving his head really deep in the sand where pesky things like the actual content of the game can't scare him. For example, TNO's final speech: "i cannot remain here for much longer. my punishment calls . . . . many are the crimes that were committed when my mortality and i were split. these crimes carry a… price. there is a place reserved for ones such as i on the lower planes. it is… punishment of a sort. . . . i have committed many crimes across many lifetimes. i go now to a place of punishment. you cannot come with me."

Drakron will never respond to that with text from the game, because he cannot. He probably will ignore its inclusion in this post, as he and Bryce have ignored it in every previous post, because it doesn't work with his theory and the worst of all worlds would be to admit he's wrong. But one has to wonder: HOW MANY MORE FUCKING TIMES WOULD THE GAME HAVE NEEDED TO SAY IT for it to get through his head?

Or what can Drakron do with this exchange:

Vhailor: You have admitted to the crime. Vhailor’s eyes flared within his helm, and I had a sudden glimpse of the terrible force lurking within this spectral armor.The guilty shall be punished.
TNO: But I have already been punished, Vhailor.
Vhailor: I will hear of your punishment.
TNO: Every time I die, Vhailor, I have lost my memories. I have no sense of self, no sense of who I am or was, and I bear thousands of scars in the mind and body from wounds I cannot remember. Death rejects me, and I fear I shall never be able to be at peace.
Vhailor: You have been punished. The mark of justice is upon you. I see it upon your flesh. know this: There is much that cannot be seen in you. I shall watch you. You have been punished. But it will not save you from future punishments for crimes to come.

Not only is punishment TNO's explicit fate, it is foreshadowed throughout the game.

@ kingcomrade:

I agree. I think that the weight of karma has TNO at "evil" alignment no matter what he does. But given that TNO is doing only good things in my story, it's hard to say that he's an "evil" person. (He shows no evil impulses, no evil motives, no evil actions.) Better to say that he's a changed man with a weight of unpaid sin. I don't see any other sensible way to parse it.
 

Drakron

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Nope, it was finding out who he was and correct the whole flawed immortality deal.

And sorry, planes are of absolute aligment ... D&D is about absolutes and it does not matter if someone commited "many sins" and similar jewish-christian crap since as far the planes care what matters is what aligment is the soul.

There is no god or anything to go around punish and reward souls, what you *are* is were you get sent, not what you *did*.
 

DorrieB

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WouldBeCreator said:
Honestly, you guys really need to develop a mode of argument beyond, "You're stupid, you don't get it, play it again."

I neither said nor meant any such thing.

WouldBeCreator said:
And even if it is a cop out, the game should give you the option to cop out.

I disagree. It would utterly ruin the story. It would be like giving Oedipus a happy ending; what would be the point of it all then? The story is all important to what makes this a great game. Sure it isn't because they came up with a fantastic game engine, or character system, or combat, or anything like that.

WouldBeCreator said:
The outrage, in my opinion, of the ending -- from a gameplay standpoint -- is that it is unchosen and a poor (or at least dubious) choice.

Here's what I think you're missing, which isn't anywhere near the same as saying that you are stupid: The Nameless One is a tragic hero, like Oedipus, Byron's Don Juan, Elric of Melnibonee, or Melmoth the Wanderer. For such a hero there can be no choice in the end, because he carries his Doom with him (with a capital 'D'), and it cannot be escaped. The whole point of the journey is to deliver him to his fate, and if he then says 'yes!' to it he affirms his existence and gains victory over despair.

If the doomed hero *did* escape his fate (which is what you're asking for) he would then not be a hero, and there would be no tragedy, and the story would have no meaning. It would all be just 'a bunch of stuff that happened', and you'd be left scratching your head and wondering what the hell was all of that in aid of.

So what you call 'a poor (or at least dubious) choice' is actually the only resolution that gives any meaning to everything that went before. You seem to have missed this and I urge you to play it again and put a little more thought into it. This is hardly the same as calling you stupid. Why would I even bother, if I thought you were stupid?
 

Drakron

Arcane
Joined
May 19, 2005
Messages
6,326
WouldBeCreator said:
Vhailor: You have admitted to the crime. Vhailor’s eyes flared within his helm, and I had a sudden glimpse of the terrible force lurking within this spectral armor.The guilty shall be punished.
TNO: But I have already been punished, Vhailor.
Vhailor: I will hear of your punishment.
TNO: Every time I die, Vhailor, I have lost my memories. I have no sense of self, no sense of who I am or was, and I bear thousands of scars in the mind and body from wounds I cannot remember. Death rejects me, and I fear I shall never be able to be at peace.
Vhailor: You have been punished. The mark of justice is upon you. I see it upon your flesh. know this: There is much that cannot be seen in you. I shall watch you. You have been punished. But it will not save you from future punishments for crimes to come.

Not only is punishment TNO's explicit fate, it is foreshadowed throughout the game.

You do realize that the Doomguard are a bunch of blockheads that make Paladins look nice in comparacy.

Vhailor exists only to punish but he is only part of a fraction and each fraction have radical diferent views so in oder for him to be *right* every other fraction have to be *wrong*.

The planes dont care, as I said they are of absolute and do not conflict (much) with each other.

The higher planes dont plot to destroy the lower ones (Trias is against that) as the Blood War is said to be required for the existence of the lower planes.

If one plane breaks, the whole wheel breaks, you cannot have good without evil and law without chaos.

Each being pushes his aligment, the wheel moves because of that conflict but the planes are not part of the movement ... they are just moved.

Your whole argument fails because ultimate you are saying "Good is right" as in reality there is no right, the day one aligment wins the prime and every other plane ceases to be.
 

WouldBeCreator

Scholar
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Messages
936
Drakron said:
Nope, it was finding out who he was and correct the whole flawed immortality deal.

And sorry, planes are of absolute aligment ... D&D is about absolutes and it does not matter if someone commited "many sins" and similar jewish-christian crap since as far the planes care what matters is what aligment is the soul.

There is no god or anything to go around punish and reward souls, what you *are* is were you get sent, not what you *did*.

Snicker. Told you he would ignore the game text. What a joke you are, Drakron.

@ DorrieB

What I think *you're* missing is that PS:T is a game, not a book, and in a game, you cannot have a Doomed hero without expecting it to discourage players from replaying the game. Especially when the Doom is so utterly horrendous. You're concerned primarily with what makes the best story. Well and good. I've not quibbled with the fact that the ending to PS:T would be the best ending if PS:T were a book. Heck, I think it's the best ending even though PS:T is a game. But it's just not an ending that invites replaying. It's an ending that discourages it.

Making Oedipus a game would be a collosal failure (for many reasons). The whole point of Oedipus is that no matter what he chose to do with his life, fate would turn his paths to ruin. Everything done to avoid fate in fact brought it inevitably closer. (From his father's actions to his own.) Turned into a game, that would basically play out like the most frustrating form of dialogue trees, where no matter what option you pick, you always go from Node 1 to 2 to 3 to 4.

PS:T is the same way. The ending spits in your face the fact that nothing you did mattered. But it does more than that. By making the final choice not a choice, it robs it of emotional force.

The better analogy, methinks, is to Hector, not to Oedipus. I wrote a poem about Hector once that contained some doggerel about "god-like Achilles in god-wrought armor" and that the wonder was not that Hector fled from fate, but that he turned to meet it head on. Turning to meet your Doom head on is what makes you a heroic figure (rather than just a doomed shmuck). But in PS:T, the *player* doesn't make that choice. So it's meaningless for the player, except as an outside observer.

I think the ending would've been vastly more powerful if we were given a choice. Or, alternatively, if TNO gets to make the choice, rather than the player (an outrageous, outrageous move for a game to make), then at least have that choice be shaped by the personality the player has crafted for his TNO throughout the course of the game. *That* would encourage replay. Can I make a TNO who will accept his doom? Can I make one who will reject it? Can I make one who will reign as a demidemon from the Fortress? Can I make one who will become a wandering hero? Etc.

My debate with you has never been about the *literary* merits of the ending. This arose from someone saying that the ending discouraged replay. I agreed.

Let me take one last stab at this for you. Say I wanted to write a story the point of which was the importance of forgiveness. So I write a story where Person A does so many bad things to Person B, and Person B has to go on some grand adventure to right them (rescue his children, resurrect his wife, rebuild his home, whatever, whatever). It turns out A had some grudge against B because B had done a minor wrong to A decades before. At the end, B faces his tormentor A, whom he has now overcome, and says, "I could avenge myself on you, but that would only continue the cycle of violence. I forgive you, and hope that my forgiveness will end this." A gets up and walks away. The end.

Maybe that's the best way to end the story if it's a book.

But if it's a game, having that ending, and *only* that ending, is outrageous. It's a slap in the face to the player. Because some players don't have ultra-Christian forgiveness powers. Some players are retributivists. Some believe in specific deterrence. Some believe that leaving a villain free to wander about is merely assuaging our own guilt at the risk of others suffering. That may have been the driving motivation for the player throughout the game. The game permits them to play with that justification. But then, when they reach the end, they're denied the opportunity to realize their goal. The game instead says, "The soul that you gave your avatar is not really the soul he had. Sorry. Go play Max Payne II if that's what you want."

That is outrageous. It's an abdication of what a *game writer* is supposed to do. A game writer is not just a story-teller. He's a story-facilitator. Sometimes it's hard to facilitate, so we take shortcuts and just tell stories. But an ending that presents a clear-cut moral choice is the perfect place where the writer has to step back and let the *player* decide what to do. That's because at the game's end, there are no design repercussions to giving the player freedom. Letting me choose to walk away at the end of PS:T, or kill the villain at the end of my hypothetical game, is just as cost-free as letting me choose from a list of 17 options when Ravel asks me what can change the nature of a man. It's challenging the player to make a moral choice, and *trusting* him to make *his* experience meaningful.

To be sure, you don't need to include frivolous endings, like TNO hosltering his axe, grabbing FFG in one arm and Annah in the other and crooning, "Now it's time you saw what my regeneration can *really* do!" The endings should be ones supported by the personalities you let the player develop throughout the game. But there PS:T permits at least two personalities -- a completely self-serving one and a completely save-the-world one -- that would be compatible with endings *other* than the one you like.

So those should be available.

Even if they aren't the ones Sophocles would've picked.
 

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