heywood on 30/5/2006 at 02:42
WARNING - SOME SPOILERS AHEAD:
The recent IW thread on the DX forum got me interested again, so I've started playing a new game.
Anyway, I'm on my first trip to Cairo, got dropped off by Sid in the Arcology, and spoke to the Templars at the recruiting booth on my way out to the Medina. In one of the possible conversation choices with them, you can agree to sign up with the Templars. The recruiter welcomes you and says somebody will contact you once your security clearance can be verified. Does anybody know if this choice of conversation path actually has any impact on anything in the game, or was it supposed to be some kind of joke? As far as I can tell, there is no way to side with the Templars at that point in the game. They are planning a raid on the Omar and I think your only option is to either help Leo defend the Omar or ignore the goal he gives you and stay neutral.
While we're on the subject, does anybody else find it strange that you're not given the option to side with the game's most important faction until fairly late? By the time you finally have a choice to take their side, the plot has been trying to convince you that the Templars are evil since Seattle and you've spent several missions fighting them. So it seems pointless, kind of like giving you an option to side with MJ12 in the Ocean Lab in DX or something like that.
I could see a justification for not giving you an option to side with them at all, since they are against all biomodification. But since they DO give you a choice later on, and obviously they are not so opposed to biomodification that they won't use a mercenary (they recruited Billie after all), why not make it an option earlier? It certainly could have made for more interesting goals earlier in the game, rather than some of the silly things the WTO and Order try to get you to waste your time doing.
Rogue Keeper on 30/5/2006 at 12:05
It's a scenario and plot development issue. The player has to be presented with some "bad guys" he can fight at every point of the game.
Billie is a loyal templar brat from the beginning, but Alex D. (the player character) has to make doubts about various factions and questions about their intentions until he can make some real decision which one he will join, and what conclusion of the story he wants to see. The number of scenario paths you can take is always limited, there are some limits in storytelling.
Templars have an image of wackos. Such is the world of DX presented to us.
heywood on 1/6/2006 at 01:14
Yeah, I guess. It just seemed odd to put a Templar recruiting booth in the game and offer you the conversation option of joining them if such a thing is not possible until significantly later in the game. It would have been an interesting gameplay option to help the Templars in their raid on the Omar.
Rogue Keeper on 1/6/2006 at 11:49
Right... perhaps it was originally intended that the player could join Templars earlier, and later the plot has been reduced or changed out of necessity, who knows.
Matthew on 1/6/2006 at 13:29
Or maybe it was put in to show that the Templars were actively recruiting and growing in support.
Rogue Keeper on 2/6/2006 at 09:00
By the way, I like how they stylized Templars... a reactionary, militant neonazi group, promoting racial purity. Just their uniforms, it's like SS outfit, save for the shades.
In you decide to join them, in the final conversation with JC, Alex sounds precisely like a brainwashed Hitlerjugend kid. :laff:
elkston on 4/6/2006 at 21:28
Quote Posted by BR796164
By the way, I like how they stylized Templars... a reactionary, militant neonazi group, promoting racial purity. Just their uniforms, it's like SS outfit, save for the shades.
Actually, I
hated how they did this. They purposely made these parallels to make it easy for us to "hate" the Templars when in fact, their goal of elminating biomodification is not necessarily evil.
It would have been much more interesting to have the arugment of "pure humans" be presented without mixing it up in fanaticism.
...and I don't buy the whole "slippery slope to racial intolerance in general" that is hinted at by the Templar ending either.
Rogue Keeper on 5/6/2006 at 10:13
Why, "national socialism" and "racial purity" do not sound so bad at first glance either. :laff:
Even the main Templar dude (what his name is...) says at one point "I am not evil!", but the final cutscene makes it obvious his goals to purify the humanity of all genetic modifications is a very radical one, and he recruits the masses by totalitarian, populistic rhetorics. The Templars do not hesitate to massively kill modified beings (including intelligent transgenics like Grays). In a world of progress and evolution, an effort to go back always smells of reactionarism and can slip into fanatism quite easily. Take a parallel from a real world : what is fascism if not an extreme conservatism, mixed with militant and nationalist ideas? A group of peaceful intellectuals and hippies promoting purity of human body would politically achieve barely anything, because without populistic simplification and slogans they wouldn't be able to attract the masses.
History tends to repeat itself, radicalism is part of human nature and it's nice the factions in DX world are so diverse, both ideologically and in form they present themselves.
Good and Evil are created by point of view, but yes, the devs purposely made them look evil, so that the player could join and obvious evil, if he wishes to, and reach an obvious evil conclusion. It's quite a smart choice for a non-linear RPG with different endings, if you ask me.
elkston on 5/6/2006 at 14:15
But we are not talking about racial intolerance or the wish to abolish other cultures.
We are talking about changing what it means to be human forever. Do you think it is wrong for some people to have a problem with that?
I was sympathetic to Billie's argument.
Rogue Keeper on 5/6/2006 at 14:51
Ah... but what it does mean, to be a human? What is the essence of humanity? Where it begins, where it ends? The take on human nature develops as the human nature develops itself over millennia. As JC said to Alex "In time the humanity will progress to next level with us or without us."
Billie's conviction might be honest, (and so might be Alex's if he joins Templars) but I see her more like a hot-blooded unwise youngster, who's been manipulated by Saman for his vile purposes. Doesn't ambition of power just ooze from that guy, even though he uses his rhetoric skills and charisma to convince the player the other way?
No there is nothing to be wrong with being just mere, not modified human. Unfortunately the Templars have turned this innocent idea into their perverted fanatical agenda and they want to push it down the throats of everybody, with force if neccesary.
There is very little humanistic in their actions and I don't think their pretty ideas can excuse their actions.
