actually no wait i’m still processing the ending and . the emperor REALLY tried to guilt-trip us into letting him snack on orpheus by saying “i have been your constant salvation…….. your knight in shining armor……….” like DUDE. YEAH NO KIDDING. you LITERALLY showed up as a fake paladin after plumbing my sorcerer’s deepest desires and identifying she had a thing for paladins. apparently. he’s so funny. “sorry about lying to you but consider: i’ve been lying to you”. “how DARE YOU call me out on my lies. did you forget that i have been manipulating your desires since the very beginning? and saved your life? also?”. “ignore the fact i single-handedly forged the evidence and also everything else to prove my point”
wait @asleepinawell YOUR MIND. i need everyone to see this.
it’s always an interesting approach when games take the fact that players aren’t given all the information at once in stories as part of the narrative process to make it the person who is in a position of power over your character is withholding the information to control you. they made the doling out the story aspect of writing into part of the story that meshed with the themes. which was very clever. and letting you design how your “guardian” looked in character creator was such a good idea since it invited you to start forming an attachment to them before you even met them. very mean. I approve
if you’re not cooperative from the get go the emperor shifts into much colder dialogue early on and as soon as you start pushing back gets mad. he plays a friendly, supportive mentor character right up until you say no which is hmm yeah big red flag. also constantly telling you to trust him while withholding information and saying it’s for your own good and you can’t handle it yet
one of the most blatant instances of this is if you refuse to tell him what you spoke about with raphael in act 3 he will invade your mind to find out. (also interesting how that puts the player doing that to other people (especially companions) in a new perspective because boy does it feel invasive)
Having replayed the early chapters a few times, I’m really impressed by both the language and the voice acting the “guardian” uses. Every single line is delivered with a subtle neutral flatness. You can read it as encouraging, or you can read it as threatening, or critical. Every time the guardian appears to you to tell you how vital you are, they always, always emphasize that it’s the tadpole that makes you important. Not you. Not who you are, or what you want, or what you’re capable of. Your parasite. It is powerful. It is special. It’s the worst possible flavor of Chosen One narrative you could get. You were chosen. To be a host to a monster. It was not your choice. And you have no agency.
The biggest, reddest red flag in my initial playthrough came when you finally meet the Emperor face-to-tentacles at the start of Act 3. And I know this doesn’t necessarily happen in every game, (because it didn’t come up for my spouse) but when the Emperor offered me the worm that would induce partial ceremorphosis, the narrator was telling me how much I always wanted this. And all my options were accepting it, a difficult will save to refuse it, or “drop the tadpole and step on it.” Which made it glaringly obvious that my character was being psionically dominated.
The only time the narrator tells you what your character feels normally is in a Dark Urge game, and those are clearly intrusive thoughts. So. Yeah. I got the message here, loud and clear.
