Strange moral messaging...

PoE1 was mainly a bunch of people did bad and evil things and we need to clean up the mess. Simple. But PoE2?

We start out about to be hung for unknown reasons, then we save a village. That's good.

After that we follow a hooded guy to a huge slave caravan because he says the slavers are good people. At the end of that act we need to join another caravan to kill their 'evil' reborn king and notice his caravan is being pulled by huge tame animals. So... like that was an option all along and our allies went with thousands of human slaves for the lols? The slavers are the good guys? We ally with slavery? The Monk says something like "Slavery bad" but still rolls with literal slavers as his buddies?

Then we find out our hooded buddy is the God of Sin, which makes sense with his fondness for slavers. He lets us know that he created one of the Beasts, he betrayed his daughter and had her killed. Instead of reconsidering this ally we just say "Cool, Sin, can you ID this shit I found for me?"

Throughout Act 3 we see loads of human sacrifice and experimentation, and then... recruit one of the main people behind it. Wut?

Act 4. Dude betrays us, steals the weapon, beats his daughter, and converts his own people into evil monster things. We have to go wipe out his entire island. We have to kill like 99% of his people because he turned them evil. Then after we knock him down he... rejoins our team?

Him: "My bad for beating my daughter, turning all of my people including the women and children into demon things so they had to all be killed."

Us? "No problem, buddy, here on Team Sin we're cool with killing daughters and experimenting on people!"

... I mean, I get that you don't want to copy Diablo's story line, but fighting evil demons is pretty simple.

But why are we allying with them instead? Why are the literal slavers the good guys? Why are all of our main allies evil in some clear and obvious way?

The God of Sin tells us he's the God of Sin and created the last Beast that led to countless deaths and suffering. Yet we blindly do whatever he says.

Doriyana is evil enough even the God of Sin says not to trust him. And all that clear human sacrifice and experimentation in his area... that he was in charge of... yeah, clearly not a great person.

In Act 4 we finally get mostly decent people on our side. Can't have that, so Tavakai has to betray us and cause massive death and suffering and *then* he can become one of our real allies. Before you can join our team you have to kill a lot of innocent people.

What is the messaging here?

Have you looked at our caps recently? The badges on our caps, have you looked at them? They've got skulls on them.

I'm starting to think we deserved that hanging back at character creation.

Are you seriously trying to imply that a company that generates tens of millions of dollars on this game has the budget to even hire an underpaid staff of two or three professional writers?

Granted I don't know if they actually have people they paid to construct this mess... but it's not something I would put on my resume if I was one of them.

Big part of the problem is that most their user base is so eager and willing to excuse it.

Couldn't care less about the morality. Perfectly moral stories tend to be boring. Would be nice if they could at least be bothered to have logical consistency, if not also a creative and engaging story line.

I don't recall anyone saying were the heroes of the story. Sin OBVIOUSLY has a plan that hasn't been revealed yet. We're just humans, hungry for power and trying to survive. We didn't really chose this path.

Think of the D2 story. Why does Marius follow the hooded one?

Brilliant comparison. Virtually every line from Marius in D2 makes it very clear he thought it was Tyreal. He is horrified to learn who it really is.

Whereas in PoE2 we learn our buddy the God of Sin likes slavery and human sacrifice and just do as he instructs knowingly.

I don't really care about anything else, but I really wish we could choose to execute Tavakai instead of letting him leave

Maybe he will be important on chapter 5 or 6 and we will get a redemption arc or whatever, but I will be very disappointed if he's just forgotten and letting him leave alive on act 4 doesn't mean anything

Aside from that I won't judge the plot too much until it's completed. Have to say it's no masterpiece so far tho

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AbyssianOne#1625 wrote:

Brilliant comparison. Virtually every line from Marius in D2 makes it very clear he thought it was Tyreal. He is horrified to learn who it really is.

That's not quite right:
https://youtu.be/XRXP5td0ZrA?si=vEMeoCzU7t0U0VW_&t=392

He just went with it.

It was later on when he's in the asylum that he mistakes Baal for Tyrael. The Hooded one (Diablo) he just followed because "reasons".

SO? You're conflating following someone you don't know with following someone you know is literally the God of Sin, created one of the Beasts that caused mass carnage and destruction, and allying willingly with slavers?

There's a massive difference between making a poor choice and and knowingly siding with evil in a story where you're supposed to be fighting it.

Our allies are the God of Sin, slavers, evil human experiment doctors, and a thieving ass who gets the bulk of his people killed. What's next? Is Act 5 going to be recruiting the Klan and Act 6 bringing Hitler on board?

It's a work of fiction. A game. Pixels on a screen. That is all.

"

AbyssianOne#1625 wrote:

What's next? Is Act 5 going to be recruiting the Klan and Act 6 bringing Hitler on board?

Man, that would be absolutely epic.
I would play even more.

It explains why PoE 2 storytelling is terrible, you never understand whats going on :P maybe like 1% of people do. thanks for explaining the story in a nutshell and yea, also, not like it takes more space than that anyway hehe