[SPOILER] How does Siegfried play out differently in Chapter 5 depending on which side you choose?

[NewbieOne]

I know about the options to kill or spare him or the way the quests involve him or not.

What I'm asking about is the story side, his thoughts, emotions, like does he reject all the anti-nonhuman nonsense or does he act prejudiced, and how he speaks/feels about his boss Jacob. Do his good traits come out and shine or does he lean on the evil or pragmatic side?

[Ragnarök]

"To the average pleb in the street, the Order is fighting my armies. But make no mistake, this is a confrontation between me and the Grandmaster." - Foltest

Siegfried disavows De Aldersberg, remains loyal to the crown, and is promoted to the rank of Grandmaster of the Order of the Flaming Rose by King Foltest. He goes on to help you fight Salamandra and the traitorous elements of the Order, throughout Chapter V.

He expresses doubt as to whether he can fight his brothers that still serve De Aldersberg, but does so. He takes great exception after finding out what was done to the Greater Brothers calling it an affront to humanity. He takes a leg wound before you can go confront Jacques, so he has to sit out.

He makes no comments on the Order's beliefs, though Siegfried himself, was never prejudiced according to Geralt's own words in the journal. He merely hates the Squirrels.

As a result of the ended rebellion - "Non-humans faced greater hatred than before the rebellion. The king's edicts punishing the Scoia'tael caused a mass exodus of elves and dwarves. - The king turned a blind eye to the inequities of the Order of the Flaming Rose. The new Grand Master, Siegfried of Denesle, reformed the Order and consolidated its power."

[NewbieOne]

Thanks. Crap, I've been decision-locked for a week now, doing other things in the meantime.

How do people react to the neutrality choice? If you choose the neutral 'Witcher' path, does the game imply you abandoned the villagers?

[Ragnarök]

Siegfried and Yaevinn both wind up hating you, having been polarized to their respective sides. You have the option of either killing them both or letting them go.

The King allows each side to bleed eachother, then Foltest sends in the troops to clean up. Temeria loses a lot of power due to the uprising of non-humans. The lodge of sorceresses gain influence over the Crown. Foltest expells ploters. Common folk saw no difference and were too busy licking their wounds.

[ZWXYZ]

I played order path 5 times.

1.Siegfried and Rayla are Geralt's main allies.

2.Zoltan said "order" kill women and children. On the map, they only killed "red name Scoia'tael". They didn't kill ordinary "non-humans".

3.They didn't attack field hospital.


4. Although grandmaster Jacques behind Salamanders, not all knights betray ideals. (That makes the grandmaster, him alone, the enemy. Is that clear? )

[NewbieOne]

Short version: So far I've decided to take the Order path in Murky Waters and perhaps reload if I really don't like the in-game consequences.

Longer version:

By reloading the game and by watching YouTube videos, I've established that the presentation of both sides at the end of Act 4 differs depending on which side you supported in Gold Rush in Act 3, at least as long as the language versions don't differ considerably (I could check this too).

It's no surprise to anyone that if you supported the Order in Gold Rush, Toruviel still says there won't be any massacre if she's allowed to leave, but, of course, she does not ask Geralt's help to leave quietly without the hostages.

However, the critical difference is that if you supported the Order in Gold Rush, neither Rayla nor the Adjutant make any mention of intending to judge the Murky Waters villagers for treason, nor does Geralt tell Rayla he won't let that happen. The Adjutant implores you to save the villagers, and the villagers cry out to you for help. Toruviel is probably right in suspecting the 'fair trial' would end in death penalties anyway, but she still fails to ask for help fleeing.

On the other hand, if you helped Yaevinn leave Vivaldi Bank, Toruviel is ready to leave the hostages alone and flee, and White Rayla wants to put the villagers on trial for treason. Neither option will bring back to life those hostages whom Toruviel has already killed, but the for the ones remaining alive the better option is for you to fight off the Order's ambush.

Either way, neutrality is the worse choice for the peasants, and the game is emphatically clear about Geralt running away with Alvin, rather than leaving some room for speculation about saving the peasants too.

The above is because the only side you can fight against — which means the side you did not support in Gold Rush — is represented as the villagers' main enemy and threat, hence no need for saving the villagers from both factions. This is the 'alternative state of the world' depending on whom you chose in Gold Rush.

The result is that whichever party you had supported in Gold Rush ends up becoming the better choice morally in Murky Waters.

As regards Toruviel's fate or the Order's alleged crimes in Wyzima, you know nothing about that, but you know Wyzima is ablaze, just like Yaevinn planned. It's only later that you will find out the fighting may have been intentionally provoked by the Grand Master. At the end of the game, Jacques's fake hero funeral is not Geralt's decision.

Someone please correct me if I'm missing something.

[NewbieOne]

Hey, guys. I really need your help, I'm still stuck choosing. This is one of those rare moments I'm completely deadlocked and can't go on. Can you help me?

The 'TL;DR' is, in Murky Waters, if I could take a neutral option that kept Geralt away from the Scoias vs the Order but clearly saved the hostage villagers, that would be my exact choice.

So let's there was a third dialogue line, say: 'We grab Alvin and every single other villager down to the last one of them, THEN we flee,' I would take it.

Heck, if I could broker a deal with Toruviel to set the villagers free, I would enforce that deal by keeping off and killing, if necessary, any Order troops trying to still catch Toruviel at the cost of exposing the peasants to danger.

But if Toruviel poses an immediate danger to innocents and won't back down, then the right choice, unfortunately, is to attack Toruviel.

The right choice is probably not to take lives just to defend Toruviel from capture, trial etc. However, if there was a way of breaking her out of jail without killing anybody, Geralt would be happy to. Although she would have to promise to respect civilians for ever after.

So what do you think is the better representation of this stance in the game right at the time of the choice in Free Elves/Murky Waters, Order or Neutrality?

In other words, what would you suggest I do?

A) Go in with the Order solely because there are innocent hostages to set free here and now and diplomacy has failed.

OR

B) Stay neutral & make up some back story about how Geralt didn't in fact (intend to) abandon the peasants?

My impression is the game wants to be taken at face value, hence Geralt's 'If I leave, there may be a massacre' is true, but also Toruviel's 'There won't be any massacre if we are allowed to leave' is true, which poses a lot of difficulty figuring out just what the face value is supposed to be.

Do Witcher 2 and Witcher 3 at any point reference Geralt's decision to flee Murky Waters? Do any abandoned peasants popped up later in the Trilogy to hound Geralt?

Are there any in-game suggestions in the Trilogy about this at all?

But first and foremost: what the heck do I want to do?

[Ragnarök]

For real dude, just make a choice. You're not Superman. You can't fly backwards around the world until it stops moving, freezing time allowing you to save them all.

You don't get an option to negotiate their release with Toruviel because the Order were not interested in saving peasants. They were there to destroy Toruviel's commando unit to prevent it from reinforcing Yaevinn's units already in Vizima. They weren't going to leave anything to chance.

At this point in the game you are essentially a father to Alvin, so act like one. Your child's safety comes first. The safety of your friends who are trapped in Vizima comes second. Not to mention all of the peasants being cut down in Vizima as you're dithering there. It is your duty to stay alive to protect them.

Dying for a group of peasants is shirking that duty and that is exactly what would happen if you got in the way of the heavily-armored Order to protect Toruviel. Toruviel who your character warned in the past that her actions would end in ruin. Toruviel who continued on the same path, despite that warning. Game mechanics are not canon. Geralt would not be capable of holding off a platoon of knights allowing for Toruviel & Co. to escape. He barely walked away from a fight against just four people in one of the books.

Lastly, it can be safely assumed that most of the peasants escape or live anyway. When the Order ambushes the Squirrels, they're are shown running past the cowering peasants and halting with their backs turned, swords out, in front of them to engage the Squirrels, meaning the Order were considering them as non-combatants. Because of the decisive initiation of the ambush, the Squirrels had no time to begin executing them either. They were forced to engage the Order and fight for their lives. (How the hell a platoon of clanking knights managed to avoid being seen or heard by the Elven sentries is anyone's guess.)

Again, since game mechanics are not canon, if the engine causes the Peasant A.I. to stop cowering against the walls, stand up, and become targetable, that's not what would actually happen. You don't swat a mosquito biting your neck when a bear is chewing on your leg. A stray arrow may have kill a few of them, but the majority would continue huddling or else crawl or run away at the first opportune moment. They would not be persued.

[NewbieOne]

I went with the Order in the end. The decisive issue was the hostages' immediate fate.

I was impressed to see the game clearly distance itself from Zoltan's reaction and initiate a quest for Geralt to check if the Order really was slaughtering civilians. Far less impressed, in fact the opposite of impressed, to hear Geralt spout racist nonsense to Foltest, how non-humans needed to pay for their crimes (wrong focus) and how the Order needed the King's support (arguably correct). We'll see how things go. I'd certainly much rather be in a neutral position from the look of it, but at least the game does a good job of making me focus on investigating Zoltan's claims as the next step instead of brooding on the choice.

[NewbieOne]

Eh, disappointed in the way the game goes so casually about Toruviel's fate. I was expecting a difficult conversation, and here she pretty much brags about it, and Geralt's supposed to be fine with the decision. This is almost as bad as not getting a choice about that nonsense racist dialogue line to Foltest. Equally bad is the auto-acceptance of Rayla's wager about squirrel tails.

[Ragnarök]

Racist nonsense? Virtually all of the non-humans took up arms as Zoltan attests, meaning, naturally, "the non-humans must pay". Who else? They were all complicit at that point, not just the Scoia'tael.

The journal entry is poorly-worded but at least there's nothing forcing you to compete with Rayla. It's entirely optional.

[NewbieOne]

The journal entry about Rayla's wager is okay, 'tis the dialogues that's off. You can choose to skip the tail collecting, but the game still shows it as your current task. You can go to the hospital without completing 20, but Geralt's response to Rayla is along the lines of quality over quantity, not withdrawing or refusing to play.

Ironically, at least the way I see it, the way almost all of them took up arms lends more legitimacy to their cause as it no longer being Yaevinn's little terrorist affair but something closer to an ethnic uprising for self-determination, rights etc. Obviously not fully there, as there are no laws preventing the non-humans from leaving and founding their own villages and towns, etc., which they prefer not to do, but in any case the whole thing ends up being more legit.

Anyway, we'll see. I'm 100% sure I'd like the way the neutral path plays out in Chapter V more, but you can't really leave civilians unaided versus terrorists. Which, ironically, my Geralt is just about to find out the Order's leadership are. Eh. At least Sieg's getting put in charge.

[Ragnarök]

I'd have to disagree. Popularity doesn't lend legitimacy, especially when that popularity is predicated on a false flag. Yaevinn pre-armed the non-human populace of Vizima for a purpose, and they consented. Being armed itself isn't a problem if they used those arms soley to defend their lives and property, but that wasn't what happened. They took the violence to the streets and began fighting alongside the Squirrels.

Yaevinn was almost certainly the one who initiated, knowing that to the average non-human it would be seen as a race war starting. Akin to hitting someone and then crying out: "Ouch! You hurt my hand!" So the non-humans see his "hand being hurt" and rise up, not just against the percieved aggressors, the Order, but against everyone else too. Their freedom would come when all the humans were dead.

The sad part is, the non-humans were not being treated fairly. They had just cause to revolt, and a revolt could have succeeded if they would have cast out the radicals from their number. Disavow the Scoia'tael, march to the castle armed, kill the Order if they opted to fight, but otherwise do as little damage as possible. Take a page from the Peasants Revolt of 1381, fly the Kingdom's banner and petition Foltest for equal rights in exchange for fealty. Go further, offer to help destroy the Scoia'tael. They didn't do that though, and in no scenario does it go well for them.

As for Rayla, the wording is wrong in that it says something along the lines of "I bet Rayla that..." when it should be "Rayla bet me that..." But if the game also treats it as if you took part in the quest, even when not taking part, that's quite a flaw though.

[NewbieOne]

Massive support for a terrorist organization doesn't make terrorism right, sure, but the way I'm looking at it is more like a conquered nation rising, albeit spearheaded by a bunch of radicals with a track record of war crimes and terrorism. At that point they become something closer to a proper belligerent party and not just a bunch of unlawful combatants.

However, the affair in Vizima doesn't seem to be a proper ethnic rising but more of a Squirrel fest killing humans left and right. No representatives or elders or nobility or anyone else like that taking charge, just everybody tagging along with Yaevinn. And obviously being played by Aldersberg.

The sad reality is I see the Order spouting just the same 'death to all X' nonsense or worse, except they do stop short of attacking civilians, at least until Jacques's last moments in office. Really making me wish I could be neutral, though at the very same time I feel I can't be, given the way innocent human non-combatants, civilians, need protection from Scoias. Just like Geralt — and in fact Siegfried — did mow down a bunch of Order troops attacking civilians, and probably even Siegfried would have done the same if the civilians had been non-human. And some possibly were, anyway.

This is probably just like the game wants you to feel. You'd like to be able to remain neutral, but you can't, or at least it's very hard — and for ethical, not just practical reasons.