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Sunday, December 17, 2006

A moral quagmire

So I've been playing Neverwinter Nights 2 since Monday, and it appears I've gotten myself into a bit of a bind. It started Friday when I picked up a neutral-good wood elf druid and my tiefling rogue didn't really care for her namby-pamby tree-hugging help-the-animals quest to the Maiden's Grove. I'd been tossing influence points between the two all through the Highcliff quests--first one would be happy with me, then the other, but never both at the same time.
So by the time we finally get to Neverwinter, I'm ready to do something really nice for the tiefling: I choose to help the crime syndicate on the docks rather than the City Watch. We've got to get into the closed Blacklake district, and the only people who can get us there are cops or criminals. Neeshka's made her opinions about the Watch pretty plainly known, and I figure she's be happy to hang out with the thieves and thugs in the docks for awhile, seeing as how she used to be a thief in Neverwinter herself. So I see this thug Caleb and he puts me in touch with the head of the criminals, who tells me I have to kill or bribe the city watchmen at the four guardposts in the docks area. No biggie. We take down the guards at the first post before I remember I can bribe them instead, which I do, and feel better about it. Then we get the chance to wipe out some thugs from Luskan, which I am more than happy to do. Then when I go back to finish my quest, she tells me I have to burn the City Watch building to the ground and kill everyone in it!
The problem is that one of the watchmen, my contact if I'd decided to join up with them instead, is this guy Cormick who comes from the same small town in the swamp as I did. Actually, he's sort of a town legend: "the boy who got out" and so forth. AND I actually met him at Fort Locke and talked to him and everything.
I actually had to quit playing the game, I felt so bad about this! I can't believe I let one of my companions decide for me what to do. I even went back to one of my saved games with the intention of re-playing all the stuff in between there and Neverwinter, then choosing to drop the tiefling in the bar and take the druid to join the Watch, but it would mean two or three days of redoing stuff. I just keep telling myself that I will probably play the whole game again because I like being all kinds of different characters, so next time I can do it right. Tyson doesn't mind having a character that goes around killing everybody, but it really bothers me.

Besides this, I am wasing dishes and doing laundry and getting ready for family to come over tomorrow. The house is a mess and we still have no heat, so we've got a lot to do. And if I start feeling any worse about this whole City Watch mess, I may just switch back to Sims 2 for awhile instead for some good wholesome much-less-morally-sticky fun.

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