Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
3 
Report this post
For Styx, it's about making peace with who he was rather than continuing to bury all the baggage he's not dealing with. Styx has more character development than just "guarded and cynical" - it tends to be little things, but it's there. Especially in his ending monologue. So I don't think it's necessarily out of character for him to finally stop pushing everyone and his own feelings away with his constant bluster ("you're alone, rakash. you're dying of loneliness"), at least enough to have his friendship with Arkail and some measure of peace with himself. Assassin!Styx doesn't feel like a satisfying character arc to me, it just feels like throwing a satisfying character arc out the window, lol.
For Arkail, it's the only way he'll ever be able to see his wife and son again, as there was a much earlier conversation about how he had to leave for fear he'd go insane and hurt them. Arkence warns him away from berserker path for a reason IMO. Blind stupid rage won't make him a good leader and it won't get him his family back.
I can't comment on how the classes play in extreme settings. Everything I've heard about that difficulty level is that game balance completely breaks down and it's just an exercise in fights dragging on forever due to everything being giant sacks of hit points, so I don't bother with it. :P However, on other settings I enjoy them well enough.
I really pick both for roleplay/story reasons, but Master also has the added bonus of "I just plain don't like berserk gameplay and the less Arkail ever berserks, the more I enjoy the game." :D
Would make sense if there is.
Don't suppose you could give the gist of it, without too much spoiling? What's his tone if you choose Shadow?
-edit
Oh, and the spoilers are accomplished with (spoiler)Spoilered text here(/spoiler), replacing the () with []
Anyway, for Styx, I figure he's lived a long time already- 200 years, right?
And he might keep on living for a LONG time-- His character arc doesn't have to take place in this game.
And the Assassin dialogue makes it seem like there has been SOME progress, so it's not like he's still running away, but instead acknowledging it and refusing to let it be a part of him from now on.
Here's the transcript:
"Accept yourself Styx. Accept your origins. Accept ME."
"But I don't want to remember for ♥♥♥♥'s sake! If I got you the hell out of my skull, it was for a good reason! You're not me! That's not me, any of it. THAT'S NOT ME!"
"You were an orc, you and me...A powerful orc mage...Too powerful..Or maybe not powerful enough...Too hungry for power, that's for sure."
"We found an easy solution with the Amber, and it corrupted us. We became a grotesque avatar, a deformed Orc..."
"We created the first goblin. We are the first Goblin. The one all others are descended from. The father."
"Stop talking ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!"
"Stop denying it! Stop denying your origins. Stop denying me.
"Come with me... Come fill the emptiness in your soul."
From there, you can go one of two ways.
Shadow:
"It's... it's right. I buried my past so deep I completely forgot it. It was too hard to accept. Too hard to live with. Everything I've done since is just to survive."
"But that's over... I have to accept what I am. Live with it, instead of survive without it. All this poiwer... it would be pretty stupid to just walk away from it, right?"
Styx cringes in pain & concentration, Shadow-goblin jumps up, floats, and then joins with Styx
Assassin:
"Fine. Know what? OK, I admit I've got some vague memories that might be, you know, what you said... But I trust myself. If I did what I did, I had my reasons."
"You gotta know how to stop living in the past sometimes, y'know. Keep moving forward... I'm not the kind of guy who has regrets. But try to explain that to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ghost!"
"You're just a part of my mind that died. I buried you so long ago I forgot all about you. So thanks, but there's no emptiness in my soul these days."
"I filled it in. I replaced you. So now be a good little ghost and get the ♥♥♥♥ away from me, I got no room for you now."
The Shadow stands up and backs into the shadows, disappearing.
Here are some videos if you want to actually see the dialogue:
https://youtu.be/6pAgzgWsfSU Go to ~2 hours 20 min
https://youtu.be/vcunUUR52e8
Keep in mind, Arkence called shadow-styx 'the monster' and 'that thing'.
Anyway, having a major character change seems like it'd be a gradual process, not an all-at-once kind of thing. And the Shadow choice very much seems like the latter, while Assassin is one part of the former, and makes his character seem stronger.
I don't know if the ending changes, like I said I always pick blue-side. For red-side, I've only ever done it to watch the cutscenes and then reload, I never played through the rest of the game with them.
Those were just things you can very reasonably extrapolate from what's in the game and how you choose to develop their characters. Because yeah, an Arkail fully giving in to his insane rage just can't be an Arkail who will get to see his wife and child again, the information's already there.
When I was talking about Styx's monologue, though, I was talking about him being more developed as a personality than just "guarded and cynical," not about a changing in-game ending.
With all respect to Arkence, she also didn't know what it was or what was happening, only that it was causing Styx pain for some unknown reason (he was refusing to acknowledge a part of himself that demanded to be heard). The situation was a lot less obvious (and a lot more complicated) than Arkail's.
The assassin dialogue has always read to me like Styx just continuing to yell "I don't care! I don't care! I don't have emptiness in my soul! Nothing's wrong! I'm a tough cool guy and if I did something terrible I probably had reasons for it, but I'm not going to address or accept the parts of myself as a person that made them! So go away because lalalala I can't hear you!" Pushing people and their feelings (and his own feelings) away is a character flaw Styx has, and as mentioned elsewhere, it's killing him.
He even admits right there in his own dialogue that accepting himself was "too hard"; the assassin path is only more of the same. Making peace with himself is a lot harder than living in denial, and the assassin chooses to not only stay on the easier road he's been going down all this time, but cut himself off completely from the chance to ever be whole again. Because it's hard.
A Styx who can step up and "live with it, instead of survive without it" is a Styx who's actually showing some personal growth, IMO.
Apologies in advance for rambling.
Eh, killing Arkail's berserker might not be as obvious as it seems from hindsight. Could have gone either way really. If not for Arkence, a lot more players would have killed the zerker, thinking that vanquishing him in the dreamworld would vanquish him in the real one. She's got that magical dream-insight joojoo.
Meanwhile with Styx, she doesn't really give him any direction, instead just identifying that part of him as a really nasty part. Which, given her magic insight, makes me think both choices are at least partially gray.
Shadow, he might be remembering a part of himself he's been running from or ignoring, and 'coming to terms with oneself' sounds good, but is it really wise to open up that wound again, let 'that thing' be a part of himself once more?
What does he get out of it? Even clearer memories of his orcish shadow-sorcerer past and whatever horrible ♥♥♥♥ caused his identity crisis in the first place? Oh, but wizard-power too, and who doesn't like power? Old-Styx certainly didn't mind acquiring more power. Funny who that last line of the Shadow choice rings true for old-Styx..
Unfortunately, choosing Shadow may weaken him and his resolve, his force of will, and his identity as a whole, (which, while prickly, is ultimately decent & has kept him alive for at least a hundred years).
And it doesn't necessarily promise he'll make peace with it, only that he'll have to try once more.
That might not have a happy ending.
To me, seems like this part of him that he sealed off, stitched closed & cauterized, it's been wanting to come back all this time. Worm its way back into his soul. The power-hunger, the sorcery, maybe its intentions aren't pure, maybe the Styx that sewed it shut made the right choice.
I mean, would you rather have a stump, or a painful, cancer-ridden eldritch-power-arm?
I think 'I trust myself. If I did what I did, I had my reasons.' doesn't mean his reasons were just. Just that he had them. This is his way of 'accepting' himself- by not caring about it, moving on, leaving it as old muddy water under the bridge.
I think he's afraid of what he might find if he sought to understand those reasons, that he would judge them and loathe himself if he looks into it. And that he'd stop being the Styx he is today if he remembers his tainted past.
So he doesn't. He leaves it to be forgotten, accepts that ♥♥♥♥♥♥-him had some sort of reason for doing ♥♥♥♥♥♥ things, and most importantly accepts his past decision to forget it.
He trusts every part of himself BUT that part & has made an identity for himself without it.
Assassin, and he's keeping his blinders up. He now has 'vague memories' of what the shadow told him, but he doesn't like what he sees & prefers not to remember more. So he stays wounded, 'with an emptiness', but he 'fills it with other things' like he said.
I think he might be right to scoff at others telling him he's 'dieing of loneliness' or 'empty'. They might be sensing something there, true, but maybe not the whole picture. Maybe they aren't infallible- they don't see what came before the 'emptiness'/the character flaws he has now, and they don't understand/appreciate how strong he really is because of it.
After all, maybe being 'lonely' isn't easy either. And didn't he have friends in the Black Hand?
'You're just a part of my mind that died' is the most important line to me.
And I don't think this is the last Styx'll see of the shadow. Just the last he'll see of him for a while.
I don't think this game is supposed to be about Styx's growth. It's supposed to be about Arkail's.
Styx does get some, but future stories are where he'll see real change. Not this one- this is just one of many stepping stones.
And again, at least with how I played him, (the cynical counterweight to Arkail's idealism, though he's not irrationally skeptical ((does all the sidequests))), the Shadow choice really does just come out of nowhere.
Am I missing optional dialogue elsewhere in the game that would support Styx making that decision?
It makes perfect sense if you take a moment to think about it. You're not going to overcome your rage by giving in to it and fighting it with more rage, you're just going to become it. :P
I don't have much more online time before I need to go out the door, but I do want to note that while things like this do make for interesting what-if, there's still a lot of "may" and "maybe" in the interpretation you're putting forward, and it makes it kinda hard to respond to in a story analysis conversation like this, you know? ._. Which is not to insult you, I just end up feeling like a jerk if all I can say is "well I think your 'maybe's are wrong" because we've moved into more theoretical territory. :)
No, he didn't. Remember his monologue at the end of the side mission in the guard tower? He HATES humans, has no hope for peace between the races, and believes "dead on the floor" is the perfect place for them.
Whatever halfway positive relationships he has with individual human characters are going to be poisoned by that. He learned to smile and make nice as a matter of survival, and maybe he even kinda likes a couple of them, but if that's what's really in his heart then they are not - and never have been - his real friends. That distance is going to be there.
So above and beyond him being a lone freak of nature to begin with, he's got a lifetime of negative baggage about humanity in this setting also keeping him lonely in the world.
We can't assume there will ever be sequels though, and the assassin cutscene has an air of finality about it IMO.
I only have time left to note that Arkail may be the hero, but the story is about both of them. The developers openly marketed it as a buddy adventure story (complete with an official "buddy trailer") and everything.
And now I absolutely have to go, I may be able to finish some other thoughts later. :)
The scene is a bit easier to understand if we consider the fact that he's not technically talking to himself. Choosing the Assassin path is the final "fυk you" to Styx, if you know what I mean. ;)
This is a spoiler to you if you haven't completed Styx: Master of Shadows yet, so take that in mind before reading ... If I remember and understood the ending correctly, technically the Styx in OOAM is not the original Styx, but the special Rakash the original Styx created in the prequel. The prequel ending also explains why he doesn't remember anything in OOAM. The Rakash we played in the prequel wanted to be free of the original Styx once he found out he's a clone and also wanted to choose his own path. That's what I meant by the "fυk you", since I think he's not talking to himself in that cut-scene, but to the memory of the original Styx. By choosing the path of Assassin, he's finally acknowledging that he's not a mere clone, a Rakash anymore... or something like that. ^^ , maybe I'm reading too much into it since it presupposes that the Devs already had the story of the prequel written out. This all will probably change once the Shards of Darkness comes out. We shall see.
Huh, maybe I'll go back & finish it then.
It's sad that is the only guide available as it's kind of full of misinformation and subjective suggestions. How he says Arkail is not a real tank is a bit silly.