Honest review after going through endgame on two characters

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yourwhitenoise#3882 wrote:

re: story beats and representation. I would try to keep more of an open mind, but I respect your view. To offer a different perspective:

I can respect this point of view. I would argue that the first act is comprised of a fairly fine script. You are part of the society that is being brought down by an overtly evil ruler and fight against him and the people fighting for him. You aren't on the outside, you start on the inside fighting for your own life. This is the difference between act 1 and 2 & 3. I'm not even saying we always have to be the good guys or never have to make tough choices, I'm saying in act 2 & 3 we don't even attempt to make good choices, and we don't get any commentary on the awful things happening. We instantly ally with slavers and ignore that glaring issue to pursue our own goals. This isn't handled with deftness or with us questioning our choices. We just blatantly rush past it and say, "not our problem."

I do get your viewpoint on a3's setting. It is amazing to see some Aztec/Mayan culture being used in fantasy, and their cultures, like most, had as many atrocities as others. I guess act 2 left enough of a bad taste in my mouth to being perhaps overcritical of 3. Thanks for your interpretation, gave me stuff to think about!

Its almost like the entire story line of Act 2 is about the issues the Maraketh has caused by their harsh and brutal culture, leading to the Sekhema you ally with trying to reform their society by the end of it afterwards.

They're not 'good' people, they're not 'evil' people either - they exist in a sociopolitical development where slavery could be argued to be the lesser of two issues compared to mass execution of captured enemies (although using them as cattle when they have roas is the cheesiest solution I can imagine - the giant lizards the other guys have make so much more sense lol).

One of the themes from the first game is that evil is repaid with evil. The Oriathans mass slavery leads to a bloody slave uprising that summons an evil cannibalistic god that threatens the very world. You can draw a real life parallel with it to the Haitian rebellion, an uprising so violent that it became propaganda for the southern USA for decades that kept even poor farmers from supporting abolition despite it being to their economic interests. Its a very tragic, yet very human, and very grim reality that our better natures don't often win against spite and vengeance.

The sekhemas callous abandoning of children and slavery leads to an uprising that might just do the same via the beast (who is becoming suspiciously Kitava shaped, thinking of).