moral choice- you got fooled aka. hells trials
trinit
Member Posts: 705
in other words- did you ever pick the "wrong" moral choice thinking it is the "right" one? what situation was it?
thread title relates to "wrong" choice of mine. i passed all of the hells trials except the pride. i frequently got the neutral evil alignment (as opposed to neutral good one) and i did not get what i was doing wrong until i checked the walkthrough. as it turns out, i should remain humble and question the reason for every battle, remaining level-headed about my power in the game. i though it was quite interesting and informative regarding my own personality.
eloquent demon with deep, sane voice, seemingly empathizing with your situation and presenting you with your own might and accomplishment, simply got the better of me every time. it really had me thinking about my own pride, seeing how blatantly blind i was to its "lure". still, should i become evil after failing just one test?
how about you? did game ever put you in a doubtful position? do you think some of the choices are unfair regarding representation of alignment or you got punked also?
thread title relates to "wrong" choice of mine. i passed all of the hells trials except the pride. i frequently got the neutral evil alignment (as opposed to neutral good one) and i did not get what i was doing wrong until i checked the walkthrough. as it turns out, i should remain humble and question the reason for every battle, remaining level-headed about my power in the game. i though it was quite interesting and informative regarding my own personality.
eloquent demon with deep, sane voice, seemingly empathizing with your situation and presenting you with your own might and accomplishment, simply got the better of me every time. it really had me thinking about my own pride, seeing how blatantly blind i was to its "lure". still, should i become evil after failing just one test?
how about you? did game ever put you in a doubtful position? do you think some of the choices are unfair regarding representation of alignment or you got punked also?
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Comments
The good thing is that this practice is becoming less common with time. In Mass Effect, for instance, it's no longer good vs. evil, but paragon vs. renegade.
The part that did fool me the first time I beat the game was that I did this as a Paladin (my first full playthough of all the games), and early in TOB I noticed my change in status and had to go back and redo the trials.
The hell tests are heavy handed, narrowminded and stupid. The mod to enhance them make them a little better, but they still irk me.
Oh, and the Blackrazor sword ... I could give it to the djinni or keep it for myself and kill him. Umm, duh it's a freaking awesome sword, I'm keeping it!!
Instead I was gifted this extra piece of content with seemingly meaningful quandries. Though perhaps silly, I couldn't bring myself to kill a party member even to save my stats. It just didn't seem true to the character i'd played through the series so far. I did of course load and try it with killing my companion but couldn't go through with it as it seemed to be a really low act.
It was an interesting move really by the designers to juxtapose a player's investment in their virtual Avatar with the (possible) emotional investment with the rest of the player's party.
In a way that final set of moral choices was a clever method for the player to reaffirm their character before dealing with their nemesis. No matter which options you choose, you make a series of choices which reaffirm the type of person your PC is. After having done so you can proudly denounce your enemy and send him to hell.
I agree though that it is quite a fun addition to the game - provided you can somehow roleplay the route you're being shoehorned into.
I personally never got fooled by the tests, as I found the good answers to be rather obvious. I did feel a bit betrayed with an evil MC though (on the 6. playthrough or so) when I found out in the middle of ToB that his alignment had changed.
Ethical theory is generally* grouped into two major categories: consequentialist and deontic. These can be seen as two extreme characterizations generally held intuitions of what makes an action right or wrong.
The first, the one you seem to be talking about, is broadly construed as "relativist"while the latter is "universal".
The conflict between these views can be seen in an example: Imagine I push a large man in the path of a train to save five others (lets just assume I know they will be saved by this action and I also know that I an not large enough to save them by jumping on the tracks myself). We can ask the question: does the fact that I saved five justify the murder of an innocent person? If murder of an innocent person is always wrong in every situation--if it is a universal law--then no. but if the consequence of my action justifies the action then it's permissible and perhaps even the only right thing to do.
I don't think it's exactly deontic but d&d is probably more deontic than consequentialist "meta ethically" speaking.
The "take an attribute hit or your friend dies" test would be better represented as "Either take an attribute hit, or kill this innocent person we've plucked from the street."
In fact, most of the trials would be better that way. After all, you are a child of the god of murder; it seems strange to me that none of the trials involve actual murder.
The test I've always hated was the nymph cloak one (I think that was greed). I wanted that cloak but every time I took it I ended up as neutral evil. A big issue I had with these tests is the fact that you can't go from evil to good or either of those to neutral. I never thought that the tests were that stupid, except the kill your friend one...
I think a more lasting permanent solution should be offered there. @drugar said that on harder difficulties, the team member IS permanently exploded so I think I may play the game on a harder difficulty to get desired results.
Then cheerfully and for no apparent purpose I gambled away everything I had on the roll of a single die