Animancy

[Portico]

I'm nearing the end of the Emerald Stair, just about to turn in my last few side quests. Map is fully explored at this point.

Anyone else feel that Animancy was treated as one big joke? In Pillars of Eternity it was treated with genuine discourse, where as in Avowed all of the Animancers are portrayed as inbred idiots.

It felt tone deaf and not befitting a story in this setting. Made me feel like I was playing Borderlands or something akin to its poor comedy.

[Xeirus]

In what way are they portrayed as inbred or idiots?

Their land is dead and they are on the cusp of starving to death.

I guess there’s a few “dumb” characters, but they’re just normal people, so there’s smart ones and dumbs ones like anywhere else.

[Portico]

How about having rotten cadavers handle your food, which is a surefire way to get a plague going. Or the dunces who think there's ever a justifiable reason to use essence as a 'male performance enhancer'. These are things that are just so blatantly obviously played for laughs instead of exploring the ideas.

[Xeirus]

How is that inbred?

The first one is literally exploring the ideas.

The whole point of that area is how easily things go awry when something interferes (the dreamscourge). Using the undead is extremely dangerous and it’s why most people don’t like animancy, on top of it just being morally wrong.

It also addresses the poor selling their body off while alive to make ends meet and the farmers taking advantage of their position to get a flow of cheap labor.

I’m not sure what more you could want outside of just a flat super serious game the whole time.

[Portico]

Using the undead is not simply not an idea anyone would entertain to begin with because of contamination. Unless you took extensive measures to protect the harvest from it. But then that invalidates the entire point of the cheap labour. This is such an obvious thing to consider, yet the writers of the second zone didn't even stop to consider it. Instead choosing to play it all off for laughs. "Ha-Ha, the undead have cowbells." And so forth.

Had they entertained the idea genuinely, they would have gone with constructs for labor, which is actually what we've seen in PoE.

[Xeirus]

Again, how is this for laughs? and what part is inbred?
I feel like you're just saying things.

I never thought the collars were funny, maybe that's on you?
I thought it was actually really messed up and extremely disrespectful of the dead to treat them like cattle.

[Ace]

Sounds like someone doesn't wash their vegetables after getting their free range revenant produce.

[Taifun_Vash]

Originally posted by Portico:

Using the undead is not simply not an idea anyone would entertain to begin with because of contamination. Unless you took extensive measures to protect the harvest from it. But then that invalidates the entire point of the cheap labour. This is such an obvious thing to consider, yet the writers of the second zone didn't even stop to consider it. Instead choosing to play it all off for laughs. "Ha-Ha, the undead have cowbells." And so forth.

Had they entertained the idea genuinely, they would have gone with constructs for labor, which is actually what we've seen in PoE.

The cheap labor is questionable at best, when you talk with Elia or whatever her name was she tells you that her undead get room and board, three meals a day. Some human or other workers would dream of this conditions.

[Xeirus]

I’m gonna guess they don’t require much. I don’t think they specify the “meals”.