Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Stray Thoughts

I'm back, as promised!  Did you miss me?

...You know, a little white lie every now and then to make someone feel better doesn't cost you anything.  Just saying.



My Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous rants have thus far been pretty spoiler-heavy, but I’m happy to say that today’s you can probably read regardless of familiarity with the game.  In fact, as a stand-in for a recommendation rant for the game, I wrote it as much for those unfamiliar with the game as those who are.



Hey, remember when I did a collection of mini-rants for Tales of Vesperia?  I was thinking I might do it again today for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.  Except that whereas last time my stray thoughts were mostly evincing vices because Tales of Vesperia is vexing and vaguely vile, today’s viewpoints are applauding various virtues I vowed to voice my approval of while playing this very diverting videogame.  

Normally with a Kickstarter RPG, I’d just make a rant outright recommending and applauding it (if it’s good, of course; I certainly haven’t made such a rant for every Indie title I’ve helped crowdfund).  I did so for the first Pathfinder game, after all.  But therein lies much of the problem: while very much its own entity, a LOT of the virtues that give Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous its great quality and individual personality are ones I already enthused about in my rant recommending Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  Rather than make a whole new major rant for the successor and have to grasp at straws the whole time to re-describe many of the same characteristics that make it so good, we’re just gonna shine a spotlight on a few of the noteworthy bits and pieces of PWotR’s enjoyability, and cover the rest with the following blanket statement: The signature elements that made Pathfinder: Kingmaker great are by and large still present in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.

On with the thoughts!



- After Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s mistake in making the only romance option for a gay male protagonist one which would end in the death of another party member--a matter I criticized in what has turned out, for reasons I couldn’t possibly guess at, to be my most-read rant of all time--I greatly appreciate the fact that Owlcat Games were quite careful this time around to make sure that there’s an appropriate number and variety of romantic partners for players who want to play heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual protagonists of either gender.  Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has 2 romanceable dudes for male protagonists, 2 dudes for female protagonists, 3 girls for guys, 3 girls for girls, and even 1 girl for players who are fucking psychopaths.  While things are still a little imbalanced in favor of players who want a female romantic partner, the fact is that Owlcat Games put in the work to ensure that each of the major sexualities has multiple viable romantic options to pursue, and I applaud them for recognizing where they went wrong in the previous game and striving to correct that misstep.  Good work, guys, and thanks.


- I was very pleased throughout the game with the dedication to involving the party members in conversations.  It’s not just the generous quality and quantity of the major characters’ dialogue as they pitch in with their own reactions and thoughts, either.  What also stood out to me as I played the game was that the writers were dedicated to making sure that even the less prominent companions of the party were included as individuals worthy of having a say.  Finnean the living weapon, for example, may only rarely have something to opine on, but it’s a pleasant reminder of him each time it does happen, and the fact that he’s valued enough as a member of the team to take part in conversations is laudable.  I mean, not every speaking spear and chatty chakram can is meant to be a Boyfriend Dungeon love interest, but still, minor talking weapon sidekicks are usually a speak-only-when-spoken-to deal.  Likewise, even though there’s every chance that he won’t ever be in the party, the writers made sure that Trever has stuff to say in reaction to the events and conversations that unfold before him, and even though it’s substantially less likely that they’ll both be in the party together, there’s a decent chunk of dialogue for Trever and Sosiel both interacting with one another in these circumstances, too.

And it’s just plain awesome that a TON of reactionary dialogue was put in for Aivu--considering that she’s a minor companion locked into only 1 route of the game, you wouldn’t think the writers would go to too many lengths for her involvement, but they actually just go all in.  Aivu is pretty much the most entertaining character in the game and I love her to pieces, so Owlcat Games making sure to involve her as much as--hell, sometimes more than--the rest of the main characters is an awesome blessing.  They even went as far as to create a few extra lines for her here and there that play if, at the end of 1 particular sidequest, you adopted the dragon messiah and she decided on the spot to be his big sister.  Just...very cool that no team member ever seems to be forgotten, taken for granted, or have less effort spent on their presence.


- Speaking of party conversations, how fun is it that when you set up camp on the date that you’ve set to be the protagonist’s birthday, your companions actually express birthday wishes to the Commander?  And they all can do it; even Grandpa Drill Sergeant Regill has genuinely positive sentiments to share on the special day, because Regill is secretly a goddamn bro.


- You know, when Baphomet shows up in the game, he has the bearing, the voice work, the profile art, just the general presence of a terrifying, arcane force of malevolence beyond the ken of we mortals, just as a demon lord should.  It’s honestly impressive that, after 4 chapters of being a demon-mashing superhero, the game could still manage to put just a bit of the fear of (anti) God in me with him.

...and then Nenio completely fucking dismantles this imposing lord of terrors and machinations with a single, innocent, hilariously demeaning scientific inquiry.  Just wrecks the man’s intimidation without even trying.  It’s glorious.  There are a lot of players who don’t like Nenio, and I don’t for the life of me get why.  She may mostly be a 1-joke pony, but that joke never seems to get old for me,* especially not when the sheer magnitude of its humor completely reverses the dynamic of personal power to make a godly villain the fool.


- It’s not all completely positive with this game, though.  They got a new tune for the character creation screen this time around.  And I mean, it’s fine enough...but if I’m gonna incarcerate myself for close to 2 fucking hours as I meticulously craft, re-craft, crash my computer, then re-re-craft a protagonist in this damn creation system because I’m a perfectionist madman, then I need something I LOVE to be playing the whole time, y’know?


- I like how smooth an advancement the Crusade minigame is of the Kingdom Management mechanics of Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  I mean...I can’t deny that I think I had a little more fun in PK with it, but the way the developer manages to adapt the originally sedentary system of kingdom-building into a system for advancing and managing a tactical military campaign is pretty impressive.  And although I greatly enjoyed running the Fifth Crusade, I nonetheless give kudos, as I did for the previous game, to the developer for the fact that there’s an option to skip the whole thing if you just don’t like this minigame.  Good Shelyn in Nirvana, do I EVER wish more RPGs afforded their players this courtesy.

...Although I do have to acknowledge that achieving the secret, True Ending of the game DOES require you to engage a little bit with the Crusade system, in order to research a couple of projects over the game’s course and attain certain necessary knowledge.  So it’s not quite as optional and hands-free as PK’s Kingdom Management was.  Still, it’s a very small amount of necessary involvement, and once you’ve done that research I assume you can just turn the Crusade system off again, so I still give full credit to Owlcat Games for being considerate.


- Can I just say that it’s very neat and refreshing, during an exchange within Sosiel’s character quest, to hear Regill actually give the side of Good real, genuine respect?  I mean, the man is a Lawful Evil soldier through and through from minute 1 of meeting him, and he makes no secret about disapproving of, even usually scorning, the impulses and instincts of those aligned with Good.  Yet instead of arrogantly viewing the side of Good as unworthy opposition, Regill will rebuke Sosiel, when the distraught latter expresses frustration and fear that he perceives Good seems not to be strong enough to overcome Evil without becoming Evil, thusly: “Don’t bring your metaphysics into this.  Stop blaming your own incompetence on cosmic forces.  The side of good isn’t weak, it’s you.”  I mean, yeah, he’s being harsh to poor Sosiel, but I still can’t help but be struck by a hell of a respect for an advocate of Evil who’s rational enough to recognize that the side of Good is, indeed, not weak at all--and who refuses to betray this valuable rationality just for the sake of trying to taunt and falsely confirm the doubts of a servant of Good on the matter.


- Thank you, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, for giving players on the Trickster path the option to get intimate with a real, actual poop monster.  This was just what my favorite genre was missing.


- I appreciate that Wrath of the Righteous generally lets itself be its own epic and only lightly references Pathfinder: Kingmaker.**  Nonetheless, I can’t deny that I was grinning pretty hard during the little cameo sidequest wherein PK’s Jubilost shows up to meet the Commander face to face and get a handle on who she/he is.  Juby was 1 of my favorite characters in the previous game, and the revelation that he’s secretly the Doctor Who of Pathfinder had me fanboying it up.


- While on the subject of homages to previous games, it’s neat how PWotR gives homage to many of the elements from previous isometric Dungeons and Dragons titles.  Arushalae was no doubt inspired to some degree by Planescape: Torment’s Fall-from-Grace, and Wenduag’s romance with the protagonist gives some definite Baldur’s Gate 2 Viconia vibes to me.  Then you’ve got Crynukh, who brings back fond memories of Neverwinter Nights 1’s Deekin, and of course, it seems fairly obvious that the paladin Irabeth is an homage to NN1’s Aribeth.  Irabeth even seems like she’s meant to be a case of PWotR’s theme of ascending beyond one’s natural limitations in this regard--Irabeth manages (in most playthroughs) to avoid losing her beloved and falling to the path of evil, overcoming the destiny that her semi-namesake implies will be her own.  That’s probably just me overthinking the matter, though.  Again.

But at any rate, through these and several more likely homages, we’re shown that just as Pathfinder is the successor to the heart and spirit of Dungeons and Dragons, so too does Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous wish to be the successor to the heart and spirit of the classic D+D games of the past.  Cool!


- While one’s alignment and choices made a difference very often to the events of Pathfinder: Kingmaker, it’s extremely impressive just how far that can go in Wrath of the Righteous.  As you’d expect, quests, endings, and the fates of various characters and communities hinge on how a player goes about progressing through the game, but the story as a whole can often look very different depending on what Mythic path you’ve chosen.  There’s enough variation between some of the paths that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous can almost feel like a different game.  As someone who was, many years ago, a bit disappointed at the fact that the variations between Paragon and Renegade in the events of Mass Effect 1 and 2 did not radically change the succeeding sequence of events in ME2 and 3, I appreciate it when an RPG really goes the distance with this idea and constructs substantially different narratives depending on how its player’s choices diverge key points.  You don’t come across games that do this very often (and in fairness, it’s not hard to see why not, as it basically involves writing and coding almost multiple whole games), but I think it’s fair to add Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous to the the likes of The Witcher 2 and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume on this matter.


- I fucking love Aivu.  If you only play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous once, play it as an Azata.  It’s fun and thematically solid all the way through, but most importantly, Aivu.

BE FOREVER, AIVU!



These stray thoughts rants are kind of fun, and easier than my typical huge-honkin’-blocks-of-text-type rants.  And best of all, they can be critical OR congratulatory!  Although I’m fairly certain I know which way they’re going to trend towards if I continue them.  I’m already formulating 1 for Shin Megami Tensei 5, so rest assured, we’re gonna be back to Predominantly Grumpy Arpy soon enough.  In the meantime, though, Wrath of the Righteous is pretty great, and I recommend it as heartily as I did its predecessor Kingmaker.  Peace out, Pathfinders!












* And really, she DOES have some unexpected depth as a character if you can stick it out through her character quest.  It’s actually quite cool.


** Granted, the Storyteller is a pretty significant character in both games, but I’d actually argue that his far greater relevance to PWotR retroactively makes him a character of THIS game that Kingmaker just happened to also use.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous's Summoning Circle in Areelu's Secret Laboratory

BIG TIME SPOILERS FOR PATHFINDER: WRATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS AHEAD.  So don’t read this rant if you haven’t played it to its conclusion.  Yeah, I don’t care that this means I’m gonna get a grand total of, like, 6 readers altogether over the lifetime of this article.  Y’all know I just write these things to amuse myself anyway.  Now, for all of the none of you left, on with the rant:



I wonder if I’ll ever make a Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous rant that’s about something actually important?  Well, if it ever does happen, it sure as hell ain’t gonna be on this day.

So, there’s a rather great and thematically perfect secret ending to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous which involves a practically labyrinthine requirement of specific actions taken throughout the game from pretty much the first 5 minutes onward.  Actually, “practically” nothing, 1 of the requirements for this ending is literally labyrinthine, because it requires you to backtrack through a labyrinth, with no indication whatsoever that you should do so.  It’s kinda bullshit, actually.  Anyway, in addition to the hard necessities to achieve the secret ending, the player also has to have said or done at least 5 out of 7 things over the game’s course, achieving enough moments of acting in a certain way that the protagonist can successfully argue to Areelu Vorlesh that she or he is, in fact, not a failed experiment, but actually a true representation of Areelu’s daughter or son manifesting herself or himself through the soul amalgamation that Areelu created the protagonist from.  Most of these factors are select choices of dialogue taken from various previous interactions with Areelu, but a couple points are specifically actions.

It’s 1 of these points of action that we look at today: the protagonist’s choice to use the summoning circle in Areelu’s secret lab.  This action is an odd and unique one in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, because it is, to my knowledge, essentially the only thing in the game that can be interacted with, yet does not give the standard visible indicator that an action can be taken with it.  Normally in a Pathfinder game--and, to varying degrees, a ton of other PC RPGs of this sort, like the Dragon Age series, Disco Elysium, and most Dungeons and Dragons titles--you’re able to press a certain designated key to make all objects on the screen that you can do something with (loot to pick up, things to examine, items to interact with, people to talk to, etc) highlighted, or to have their icons for interaction otherwise made immediately and plainly visible.  It’s a great tool that helps you get the most out of your experience with RPGs, probably 1 of the best features of the entire genre, and I should probably do a rant on it sometime, if I can think of any single thing to say about it other than that it’s a godsend that every relevant RPG should be equipped with.  And it’s generally this same indispensable assistant throughout PWotR, highlighting lootable objects on the ground (in and of itself important for getting the secret ending, considering you often have a limited time frame to grab those randomly placed Nahyndrian Crystals necessary for the best results in the ending), listing the names of NPCs so you can tell which of myriad townsfolk you need to speak to, displaying magnifying glass icons to provide you the chance to experience the game’s flavor text on its many involved settings, and presenting hand emblems on objects that can be used within the environment to accomplish goals and interact with puzzles and whatnot.  Handy, handy thing, the highlight feature.

But, as I said, this 1 summoning circle in Areelu’s secret lab, so very important to getting the true ending, does not submit to the highlight function.  Unlike every other usable object in the game, the highlight button will not show anything noteworthy about the summoning circle in the front of the recreation of Areelu’s old home.  The only way to know that there’s anything to be done with it is to happen to have your mouse scroll over it and only then see the cursor change to a Use icon.

A lot of people thought, at first, that this was a glitch.  PWotR, like its predecessor Kingmaker, released with a LOT of bugs, in fairness.  Like, halfway to Bethesda levels of bugs.  So they complained a bit about it, and dismissed it as an unintentional little error.  But unlike Bethesda, Owlcat Games makes an effort to fix their mistakes, and also like its predecessor, Wrath of the Righteous received a large update that fixed the huge majority of its glitches and goofs.  It was this corrected version I played, and I was surprised to discover, when reaching Areelu’s secret lab, that the summoning circle still existed in exactly the same state as it had before.  Even though I hadn’t encountered any other bug I’d read about thanks to the new version’s corrections, the summoning circle still hadn’t been fixed.

But on thinking about it, I realized that it had never been broken.  This is how it should be.

Because think about what the use of the summoning circle represents.  This isn’t just some random thing to do for fun, profit, or curiosity, like most of the other stuff you can do in the game.  The primary purpose of this particular point of interaction is that it will potentially be employed, later, as a piece of proof that the protagonist’s person is also partially Areelu’s progeny.  This is a moment of evidence that beyond the Commander’s heart and mind and body, the soul of Areelu’s daughter/son, whose greatest hobby in life was (for some reason) summoning demons, has manifested within the Commander’s own original one.

As a matter of course, then, the decision to use the summoning circle cannot be something that any old protagonist might make.  Using the summoning circle can’t be an idea that would pop into the mind of the Queen/King from Pathfinder: Kingmaker, or any other adventurer.  It can’t be the sort of consciously determined and enacted decision that is implied by an act denoted by the highlight button--that which this feature presents are objects and potential acts that the main character knowingly sees, as an adventurer.  The act of a soul must go beyond what can be conscious or even reflexive.  The soul must be a personality and passion beyond awareness, memory, or even the subconscious, a governing influence from a source beyond one’s physical entity.  For a video game character, the player him/herself takes upon the role of the soul.

And that’s why the summoning circle’s interaction is not made apparent to the player.  Its intended purpose is to demonstrate inscrutable instinct--the soul of Areelu’s daughter/son making herself/himself known by doing something, something that has no other purpose, no rational cause to be done by anyone else, but would have meaning to the soul of someone who, in life, was fascinated with the art of summoning and could not resist indulging in it whenever she/he could.  As the stand-in for the soul of the character they control, it is the player’s own responsibility to possess this same instinct of Areelu’s child to want to be interested enough in the summoning circle to prod at it even when there is no justifiable reason to.

It’s very elegant.  Many kudos to Owlcat Games’s developers for putting such consideration into such an ultimately tiny detail of its deeper levels of storytelling.  Seriously cool!

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous's Minagho's Ending

Minagho once trapped a man within a blessed fountain of healing waters, and lit a fire under the fountain.  The man boiled alive in holy water that continued to heal him as fast as it scalded him, kept in undying agony for days on end.  She kept the man’s subordinates prisoner and starving, and occasionally she would take a slice of his cooked flesh off of him, and tempt her ravenous prisoners with it.

Owlcat Games, it is not my place to tell you how to go about your business, but I think it might be a real good idea to do a round of psych evaluations with your writing staff.  There is at least 1 guy on your payroll who is not fun to talk to at parties.

Minagho the demon has also taken part in an aggressive war against all of mortalkind, ruthlessly manipulated the emotions of a man into betraying his cause which led to hundreds or perhaps even thousands of deaths, engaged in murderous games of intrigue against her fellow demonkind, and spoken unkind words to others with the clear intent of hurting their feelings.  None of which even come close to the vicious cruelty of the boiling holy water thing, of course, but it’s definitely worth establishing that that was not a lone act of evil in her long and industrious career.  Hell, we don’t even necessarily know for sure that that was the worst thing she’s ever done, although I frankly can’t imagine what could possibly top it.  And if you can, I don’t want to talk to you at parties.

Why am I coming at you with a villain’s laundry list that includes possibly the most sick and heinous act ever committed in an RPG, besides maybe that shit Kevin Winnicot pulled in Xenosaga 3?  Because I want to make sure we all know Minagho’s deal, and I’m not gonna be accused of not giving you the whole story so that my position sounds better.  Even if she’s actually still only mid-range at best on the evil tier list when it comes to the baddies of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Minagho’s certainly got the greatest individual act of evil locked down, and I’m not about to sugarcoat that fact.  While I generally am one to hold my ground on the opinions I post here, Minagho ain’t a hill I’m gonna die on.  I wholeheartedly accept and respect anyone who wants to hold this promising candidate for leadership at Ubisoft accountable for her cruelties with her life.

But I, shockingly, actually believe that giving Minagho a happy ending is the best course of action.

This sounds absolutely ludicrous, I know.  I’ve ranted and raved against forgiving other villains in the past who aren’t even on the same scale of malice as Minagho, even when they actually do far more damage than she manages.  But there’s 4 major considerations in this matter which, when all put together, convince me that the best course of action is for Minagho’s fate to be as good as possible.

Although before we get into them, it’d probably be best to clarify what Minagho’s happy ending even looks like.  Basically, Minagho usually has 2 potential fates: she either dies at the hands of the protagonist during their final confrontation, or the Commander spares her, and later on Minagho returns to help fight on the Commander’s side, and dies during the battle.

But, if you’re on the Azata Mythic path, which you totally should be because it's the best one, you actually can enable a much more favorable ending for her.  Upon meeting the demon Chivarro, it’s discovered that she and Minagho are associates, and though their association began as hatefully murderous rivals, it gradually has progressed naturally into something that Chivarro seems utterly unable to understand or even identify.  But the audience can pretty easily recognize that Minagho and Chivarro have fallen, or at the very least are in the process of falling, in love. Even The Hand of the Inheritor can see it as such, and while he’s a pretty chill guy all things considered, angels aren’t usually the most open-minded and optimistic folks when it comes to demonkind, so that means something.  Well, if you’re playing as an Azata and you’ve spared Minagho, there’s a path-exclusive option to tell Chivarro that Minagho’s out there alive but alone, and to urge Chivarro to go to her.  Chivarro does just this, uprooting her life on the spot and leaving her highly successful business behind forever for the sake of being there for Minagho (a telling indication in itself of how genuine their emotional bond is).  After this, Minagho will not show up later on to fight and die, and instead her ending slide will indicate that she and Chivarro eventually reunited and stayed together forever.

It’s very heartwarming!  As long as you try to forget the fact that the last time Minagho warmed a heart, it took on a very different form.

Anyway, now that we know what shape Minagho’s happy ending takes and how, let’s establish why I think she should have it.  NOT why I think she deserves it, mind you.  Because she doesn’t.  But why she should have it all the same.


Point 1: The factors of Nature and Nurture.  Now let’s get 1 thing very, very clear: a bad upbringing does not absolve a person of guilt and responsibility for their crimes.  And let’s get 1 thing more just as clear: having impulses to do wrong does not absolve a person of guilt and responsibility for submitting to those impulses.  As a general rule, even if one’s formative years taught one to act only in self interest and told one that harming others was an acceptable or necessary part of living, the fact of the matter is that, as an adult, a human being almost inevitably has enough exposure to the basic workings of lawful society, not to mention cultural philosophy and foresight through art, media, and interactions both personal and witnessed, to be able to reason one’s one’s way to knowing right from wrong to at least a minimal degree.  Similarly, by the time one is an adult, it’s only reasonable for the world to expect one to be able to separate which of their impulses are acceptable from which ones aren’t, and exercise appropriate self-restraint based on that discretion.  Mind you, I absolutely believe that matters of justice and sentencing should take factors like bad childhoods and psychological conditions impeding functional moral judgment into consideration when determining both sentencing and avenues for rehabilitation!  But those factors are, generally, NOT free passes.

But that’s how it is for human beings, in the real world.  In the case of Pathfinder’s demons...it’s a little trickier.  The demons in the Abyss exist within a society built upon nothing BUT evil and cruelty and self-interest.  There’s no external evidence for them to witness and learn from which could tell them that acts of evil are unacceptable.  Rather, every level and function of their world reinforces the idea that ruthlessness, manipulation, and pure power are the only ways to succeed--and cruelty in all of these qualities is the only way to enjoy having that success.  The Abyss is the plane of Chaotic Evil; there is no ebb and flow of good and bad within it the way there is with a “normal” world like Golarion (or our own), no havens or foreign lands to find or hear of where things are different and better that could inspire a demon to pursue and explore such an idea.  The majority of demons will only ever encounter beings of other planes as invaders, or in the capacity of using them as slaves or partners in wrongdoing.  While demon lords have enough power and position that they can observe the rest of the multiverse long and intently enough to learn better, most demons below that top rung simply do not have the option of prolonged exposure to other societies and other ways of thinking.

How can one ethically hold the average demon accountable for her or his crimes on the basis of laws and morality that she or he simply doesn’t even have the opportunity to learn?*

Similarly, demons are the very representations of the concept of Chaotic Evil.  Though it is possible for them to have the spark of something more within them, and though it is possible even for them to restrain themselves, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of their nature yearns to do evil at every opportunity, and it is very, very difficult for them to resist that urge.  Even when they actually want to!  Arueshalae, a succubus who has managed to refashion herself into an honestly very good person, struggles for most of the game to restrain herself from hurting those around her.  Her first instinct is still always to do harm, and it’s through conscious effort that this sweetheart does anything else.  Planescape: Torment’s succubus Fall-from-Grace, meanwhile, suffers constant torment from her internal war against her nature as she forces herself to be chaste and Lawful Neutral, going so far as to create a quasi-religious order dedicated to redirecting one’s passions from the physical to the intellectual, as a way of further destroying, denying, and agonizing over what every fiber of her being wants her to be.  While we may all have both good and evil within us in varying quantities, it’s safe to say that few humans, if any, are as starkly incongruent in their moral instincts as a demon is.

How can one ethically hold the average demon accountable for acting on her or his evil instincts when she or he effectively has no other impulses to choose from?

This doesn’t mean that Minagho or other demons should just be forgiven out of hand and allowed to do whatever the hell they want, nor that they deserve kindness or reward.  But at the same time, both rationally and ethically speaking, there is only so far that we can hold a grudge against them for their evil before our desire to see them punished is for no higher purpose than our own personal gratification.  The demons still are enemies and need to be fought and stopped, usually through lethal means--even Ember will freely admit to this, and she’s basically Pathfinder Jesus--but it’s significant to understand that for this act to be righteous and not just gratuitous, it must be to prevent the demons from committing more evil, not as retribution for the evil that they’ve already wrought.  Minagho sure as hell may not deserve joy, but if we look at the circumstances of her existence objectively, it’s only fair to concede that, once convinced not to continue attacking humanity, she also does not necessarily deserve punishment.


Before we move on to Point 2, we should probably clarify that Minagho’s happy ending is not just a case of her finding a pleasant fate for herself (and Chivarro) postgame.  It’s also representative of a potential for Minagho to ascend higher than the limitations of her demonic nature.  Because this is a new beginning for her (and Chivarro) that is defined by Love, an emotion that is supposed to be impossible for demons to experience and one which is most frequently and significantly tied to the Good side of the moral spectrum, it is, I think, only reasonable to see this moment as the first step on a path to redemption and ascension.  Whether she (and/or Chivarro) will be capable of continuing the journey past that first step is unknown, but that first step is the most monumentally difficult to make for a demon, the true breaking through of the barriers of her/his own limitations, so it’s damned promising.  Arueshalae herself speaks during the game’s course about the fact that Good is a far more powerful, tempting force than people credit it to those who have never known it before--it might even be, in Pathfinder’s judgment, nearly inevitable that the journey out of Evil will be completed once it’s begun.

Also, as a side note, if Point 1 hasn’t convinced you that Minagho shouldn’t be fully and completely punished for her egregious crimes, I do want to just add, now that we’ve established that her happy ending is also potentially the first step toward ascension, this thought: Arueshalae never suffered greater pain for the evils she had committed than she did when she was far enough along her journey to Good to feel remorse.  No typical demon will regret the evil they’ve done, not even at the moment you plunge a spear through their heart in retribution.  But the nightmares of what she’s done will always be Arueshalae’s burden to bear, because she’s become good enough to understand her wrongs.  If you truly can’t be convinced otherwise that Minagho (or any other demon) must be harmed for what she’s done, then at least consider that redeeming her, opening her mental state to the concept of regret and empathy, might very well be the only way of truly punishing a demon at all.

Anyway, on to the next major point.


Point 2: The factor of Our Own Hypocrisy.  For most players on the Azata route--really, for most players as a whole, I should wager--in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, to deny Minagho the chance at ascension that her eventual life with Chivarro represents is to be a hypocrite to our own actions.  After all, provided we’re pursuing her story to its intended, Good ending, we not only extend that very same courtesy to Arueshalae, but actually assist her along the way!  Arueshalae’s involved character subplot is a story of her struggling to overcome her instinct to be evil with her desire to be good, to complete the journey to ascension that the goddess Desna put her on and to find a dream for herself.  If we’re willing to give Arueshalae a chance of happiness and a future of personal fulfillment, how can we then turn around and arbitrarily say that Minagho doesn’t deserve the chance to go on a journey of betterment of her own?  Yes, Arueshalae is a darling sweetheart cinnamon roll who must be protected at all costs while Minagho is, uh, a little less sympathetic, but we’re only seeing Arueshalae halfway through her journey of ascension.  While our scope of knowledge of the old Arueshalae is limited, she was, by all accounts, a monstrously wicked being responsible for all manner of corruption and torment.  I don’t know if Arueshalae’s got any evil act in her history quite the equal of Minagho penning a new recipe for soup, but when you go walking around the Abyss in the game, Arueshalae’s a well-known figure on a first-name basis with just about everyone of any note you meet.  You don’t exactly get to be the Norm Peterson of Hell’s meaner big brother through kindness and generosity.

Not to mention that finishing Ember’s personal quest involves more of the same.  If you’re willing to support Ember’s beliefs and help her in her goal for a better universe, her simple but charismatic entreaties to her enemies winds up convincing a generous handful of demons to switch sides and give the ways of love and kindness a chance.  Much like Desna did for Aruehsalae, Ember has gifted these random demons the chance to become better and find a better existence, kickstarting them on their own paths to ascension.  While it’s doubtful that these rank-and-files have had the opportunity to give someone the worst kind of bath like Minagho did, they’re still beings defined by the evils they’ve done being given an opportunity they haven’t earned to become better.

If you can believe in Arueshalae’s right to ascend, if you can support Ember’s simple, indiscriminate kindness and belief in good...hell, if you can even just admire Nocticula someday becoming the Redeemer Queen through sheer determination to ascend from demon lord to outright goddess...then surely it’s not reasonable to shut Minagho out of a similar opportunity.


Point 3: The factor of Thematic Consistency.  Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is a game with a constant, powerful theme of transcendence, of the capacity of people to be more than the sum of their components and rise above what is supposed to be possible for them.  From Arueshalae working hard to shed her evil nature, to Ember convincing evil beings to do good through nothing more than caring about them, to Areelu’s reason for creating the Worldwound, to Regill the Lawful-fanatic employing guile and sacrificing his own position for the greater good, to Nenio becoming something out of nothing, to Anevia having been able to become what she was meant to be regardless of what she was born as, to Galfrey’s capacity to relinquish her duty for the sake of her love...and I could keep going with so many more examples...PWotR is absolutely filled with representations of this theme, both overt and subtle, as it underscores and defines the game’s greater plot and purpose, the majority of its substantial characters, and the very concept of its Mythic paths.  For the simple sake of symmetrical elegance, the fact that Minagho has the opportunity to perhaps one day follow in the footsteps of Arueshalae, Fall-From-Grace, and Nocticula, and ascend to be more than she was born to be, means that it’s our duty as witness and participant to this overarching symphony of ascension to permit her to pursue that path.

Also, we should consider what’s consistent to the path of the Azata, here.  After all, for all the inflated importance and time this rant is giving it, this option to give Minagho a future with her lover IS exclusively an act of a protagonist who has chosen to be an Azata.  And I would definitely say that it’s in character for an Azata to cut Minagho a break.  As an entity of Chaotic Good, an Azata really doesn’t get hung up on orderly systems like karma and justice--what matters to an Azata protagonist is what’s good and right in the here and now and in the future, and the freedom necessary to pursue that good.  The wrongs of the past matter nothing before what rights can be wrought now and in times to come for an Azata.  The act of allowing a demon the chance to live in love, the freedom to defy the bonds of her nature in order to explore something good and wholesome?  That’s definitely right up an Azata’s alley.  And it’s especially appealing to a being of Chaotic Good that betting on a demon’s ability to transcend her Evil nature is to act against the cosmic order and hierarchy that dictates what demons are meant to be.  So in terms of the game as a whole, and the path in which this option presents itself, giving Minagho her best ending thematically lines up.


Point 4: The factor of the Miracle.  To decide not to nurture Minagho’s ability to love Chivarro, and vice-versa, feels like a waste of something significant.  I mean, these are 2 demons who have on their own manifested the capacity to love each other, and unconsciously taken their first steps toward ascension.  It took the intervention of a goddess to bring Arueshalae to the point that she could recognize, appreciate, and desire any non-evil act or emotion.  Ember’s demons have only been able to dip their toes into a greater world of Good because they were lucky enough to have the Overcooked Elf Girl equivalent of Jesus sermonize in their direction.  But Chivarro and Minagho have somehow, miraculously, begun to feel love for one another entirely on their own, without any guidance from benevolent divine or charismatic external forces.  Even the Hand of the Inheritor recognizes and is slightly awed by the revelation that the redeeming light of love could independently bloom within demons in the middle of the Abyss--and while Pathfinder angels are generally less stringent and self-righteous than the ones over in Shin Megami Tensei, the shocked approval of an archangel for anything a demon does is an endorsement I’m loathe to disregard.

And beyond the fact that you shouldn’t just go sticking your nose up at miracles, allowing Minagho and Chivarro to embrace and advance their love is important for the precedent it sets.  The belief that demons can’t feel love is such a universally accepted one that Chivarro herself still clings to it in denial even as she struggles to explain how her feelings for and connection with Minagho could be anything but.  Giving Minagho her happy ending has implications beyond just her and Chivarro’s happiness and redemption--it allows them to be an example to the rest of their kind that such aberrations from the norm the universe expects of demons are possible.  The more examples like Arueshalae, Nocticula, the demons Ember converts, and Minagho and Chivarro, the more chances there are that other demons who learn of them can be inspired to follow their paths.


Jesus Christ I just realized I’ve spent 6 pages talking about whether or not a second-tier villain should be redeemed by an action that’s only available to players on 1 of 10 different story paths.**  I thought this was gonna be a quick rant.  Look, those are my points of argument, take them and do what the hell you will with Minagho if you even have the option to begin with.  In my estimation, there is little to be gained by insisting that Minagho pay for her crimes, the concept of justice isn’t really satisfied by punishing a demon for being the only thing she ever could have been to that point, and denying her the potential to someday ascend is inconsistent with the other actions most typically taken by players not to mention against the theme of the game and the path in question.  Instead, letting her have her happy ending may actually wind up adding some good to the world--it’s probably the only way to derive any kind of good at all from her having existed, really.  There you go.  This rant and I both have clearly gone off the rails and it is way past time to end this thing.

I have GOT to get this nerdy wordiness thing under control.











* Now, to be fair, Minagho’s role in the fall of Drezen means that she had to have at least a little non-combat interaction with the alien, non-Evil culture of Golarion over the course of her seduction of Staunton Vhane.  So she’s not quite as ignorant of alternatives to the Abyss’s ways as, say, a minotaur fresh out of the labyrinth.  Still, she probably wasn’t traipsing down main street hand-in-hand with Staunton every day for a year, delightedly taking in the sights and sounds of these quaint human folk as she set to manipulating his heart for her own purposes, so it’s still fairly safe to overall judge Minagho by the standards of moral ignorance that apply to most demons.


** Although admittedly Azata is totally the best Mythic path in the game and you absolutely SHOULD be playing it.  I mean there’s some great and fun content for several of the other paths, and the dedication that Owlcat Games had to making this a very different game if you’re a piece of shit Lich or Swarm is impressive, but it’s clear which route the writers had the most fun and devotion to.  The rest of them are fine and fun options for subsequent playthroughs, but if you’re only gonna play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous once, it should be as an Azata.  If for no other reason than the fact that Aivu is a treasure.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous's Galfrey Should Be Romanceable by Azatas

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is awesome.  It’s a grandiose epic built around a great, involving story, which deftly and consistently highlights a theme of the capacity for people to ascend to greater heights than should be possible, to transcend the limitations of their nature.  It’s got a strong cast, good pacing, fun humor, and so much complexity and variety to its narrative beats and triggers that I’m convinced that without data-miners, it would have taken the collective whole of this game’s players years, maybe over a decade, to suss the secret, true ending out.*  Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is an epic that does its predecessor Kingmaker proud, and that’s a high bar to meet.

So naturally the first rant I write about it is going to be a petty, nitpicking complaint.  Because I’m me, and I make that fact everyone else’s problem.

So here it is: Galfrey should be romanceable by a protagonist on the Azata Mystic Path.

Among the many love interests which one can pursue in PWotR, Queen Galfrey is an interesting case in being the only one who is not a party member, but rather a story-important NPC.**  Well, okay, she’ll join your party for the final dungeon if you’ve romanced her, but she’s in all meaningful ways an NPC.  And as a very enthusiastic paragon of her alignment of Lawful Good, she’ll only entertain a courtship from a suitor who falls comfortably close to her ideals--meaning that only a Protagonist on the path of the Angel (Lawful Good), Gold Dragon (Neutral Good), or Aeon (Lawful Neutral) are approved to acquire dat aristocratic ass.  Well, also the Legend path (Neutral Neutral), but presumably that’s mostly because Galfrey’s goddess herself endorses it, and the only Lawful characters who let heaven do more of their thinking for them than the D+D/Pathfinder crowd are the Shin Megami Tensei crowd.  Galfrey’s too good a woman to love someone evil (even in consideration of the fact that D+D/Pathfinder’s definition of “Evil” has enough interesting complexities in its take on the concept that we really wouldn’t view some of its Evil characters as truly bad people (cases in point, Daeran and Regill in this game)).  And she’s too dutiful an icon to allow herself to love a being, benevolent or not, who actively opposes the concept of order.  Galfrey’s open-minded enough to open her heart to those who are at least neutral on 1 or both parts of her moral spectrum--and good on her for that, seriously--but she’s not buying that “opposites attract” bullshit.

Okay, fine, you think.  That sounds quite reasonable, right?  Galfrey’s more than just some random hoodlum who got caught up in your party through conveniently unlikely cosmic circumstances, like the rest of the RPG party schmucks one tends to attract in these games.  She’s a fixture in the story meant to embody her role, and its virtues and flaws.  Why should she be an available love interest to a character who clearly is opposed to 1 of the 2 core tenets of her nature?

And you know, maybe, if that’s all there is to it, I might agree, stop typing here, and go work on a different rant.  I’d have to hope that I don’t later forget this is an abandoned rant draft that was never meant to be released.  Imagine if I accidentally published it without reading this last sentence and realizing it was left unfinished!





































But, you see, that’s not all there is to the matter of Galfrey as a love interest.  Because while they certainly and obviously are not unrelated, Galfrey the Woman is not the exact same person as Galfrey the Queen, and while the former still clearly holds her ideals of righteousness and order very dear, she is not personally defined by the Law thing nearly so much as Galfrey the Queen is.  In fact, when she is allowed to momentarily escape from behind her holy royal veneer, we see that Galfrey actually has an instinctive penchant for behaviors not in line with those of a strictly Law-oriented person.  In fact, honestly, just about everything we see of Galfrey’s actual, true personality implies Chaotic Good!

I mean, consider what we see of the Real Galfrey in the game--the decisions she makes outside of her role, the methods she uses for accomplishing Galfrey the Queen’s goals, and the emotions she expresses all along the way.  The first introduction we have to Galfrey is telling--she’s come to meet the woman/man who’s saved Kenabras, and get a measure of her/him, with the possibility of putting her/him in charge of the next crusade.  And to do this, Galfrey dresses down and secretly inserts herself into the revelries of the defenders, so that she can get a better, more honest impression of the protagonist, without being hampered by the pomp and circumstance of an arriving queen (and she’s good enough not to want to have her arrival ruin or lessen the festivities).

So right off the bat, the very first impression we get of Galfrey makes it clear that she’s not so stodgy and stiff in her pursuit of her duty that she cannot adopt a distinctly less Lawful approach to accomplishing what she wants to.  I mean, by the strict code of Law that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous displays throughout its course, Galfrey, if she were truly inflexible, would never have adopted any sort of subterfuge in this matter, insisting that all pomp and circumstance be followed appropriately, and accepting the respect and honor due to her from her subjects.  But instead, she is capable of recognizing that a less straightforward approach will accomplish what she needs better, and be most considerate of others’ needs.  There is no doubt that Galfrey is an entity of order, but she is not reasonlessly Lawful, and consideration of good people’s personal needs has respectable weight for her.

Also, frankly, she seems to enjoy the little bit of benevolent deception, and getting to momentarily take part in common festivities.

In spite of the commonly held wisdom, first impressions do not have to be defining ones.  But Galfrey’s is no incongruous anomaly to her personality.  Her next major roles in the story only support this initial perception of her penchant for kind mischief and open-mindedness.  She makes the decision to put the protagonist, a new and wholly unknown quantity, in charge of the next crusade, trusting her intuition that something new and unconventional may be the best way to break the stalemate that she herself has been unable to overcome.  While her goal of defeating the demons and preserving her world is at least partially an expression of Galfrey’s devotion to Law, there’s absolutely no debating that a gamble like that, a willingness to value the results for Good over the propriety of the methods to achieve them, is 100% an act of Chaos.  She’s right to do so, of course!***  But it’s a huge decision made at odds with half of her philosophical perspective, and a good chunk of her character development later on relates to her growing discomfort with the Chaotic nature of that decision.  Character development which, I'd like to point out, only underscores her personal nature having streaks of Chaos within it, as a truly Lawful individual almost surely would not struggle with feelings of jealousy at the Commander's success.  Inadequacy, certainly, that's a negative emotion that falls within the Lawful spectrum, but not jealousy.

Also, Galfrey amusingly outmaneuvers Daeran and politically tricks him into having to continue being a crusader.  And while that’s probably still an act more Lawful than anything (since she’s using established social protocols, both official and unspoken, to trap him), it’s hard to argue that the amusement she clearly (and justly) derives from finally getting one up on her blithely sardonic cousin is that of a satisfied trickster.  The action is Lawful, the cause for it (to assist the crusade) is Lawful, but the personal enjoyment, the part having to do with who Galfrey is instead of what, is definitely not.

She can (and must, for the romance) be convinced to actually take part in the march on Drezen, too.  Now, this isn’t necessarily a Chaotic decision, or even a Neutral one--it’s easy enough to argue that her place, as Iomedae’s Chosen and the woman entrusted by her church to protect Golarion from the Worldwound, is as a part of the crusade’s army, that her duty in those roles is higher than her duty as queen.  But it IS worth noting that she clearly appreciates the chance to be making a difference out in the field--her duty is to be a leader and a queen, but her preference and her comfort is to be doing good directly as a warrior.  Again, there’s a significant line between Galfrey as a figure, and Galfrey as a person.

And so it goes--further interactions with her as the story progresses continue to provide evidence to the idea that Galfrey, though a clear and outspoken proponent of Lawful Good, is not an orderly automaton, nor is she beyond recognizing when the Law part of her philosophy is not the best option to achieve Good, and when she can see that conflict, she prioritizes what’s Good over what’s Lawful.

Since a romance is a matter of the heart and thus inherently personal, considering the fact that Galfrey personally has a streak of practical Chaos to her, and that she’s able to recognize when a situation calls for an approach outside the strict parameters of regulation, and that she seems to care most about doing what’s Good and right first and foremost, it doesn’t make much sense for her to reject a protagonist on the Chaotic Good path of the Azata outright.****  Given who she shows herself to be in the game’s course, I think it’s hard to deny that, at the very least, Galfrey should be more open-minded about falling in love with a being of Chaotic Good like an Azata than with a truly Neutral being like the Legendary hero.

And beyond the fact that the true Galfrey clearly isn’t so stringent about Law...the direction that a romance with her goes in makes it all the less reasonable to exclude Chaotic Good routes.  Because regardless of what path you’re on, even if it’s as a Lawful Good Angel, Galfrey automatically views a courtship with the Commander as something not just outside of her duty, but in direct conflict with it.  That’s basically 1 of the 2 major parts of her romantic character arc--coming to terms with the fact that her feelings cannot be denied, and deciding to stop denying them and allowing her duty (or her perception of it, at least; I don’t really get why she’s so convinced that falling in love is something she’s not allowed to do) to dictate her future.  No matter what, a successful romance with Galfrey inherently involves her choosing to give up being queen for the sake of being with the protagonist after the war, because she cannot reconcile love with her duty.

So if, in Galfrey’s eyes, loving the Commander is in contention with fulfilling her Lawful responsibilities, even when the Commander is Lawful herself/himself...then what sense does it make in barring an Azata Commander from pursuing Galfrey?  To fall in love with the Commander is already, automatically a rejection of her Lawful duty, in Galfrey’s (inexplicable) judgment, so as long as the Commander is someone that she can love on a personal level--and as I’ve said, all prior evidence indicates that Galfrey has the capacity to accept and appreciate and even lightly be someone who’s Chaotic Good--there shouldn’t be anything holding this particular love story back.

I mean, hell, courting Galfrey ultimately causes her to choose, once the war is won, to relinquish her position in favor of the love and joy she finds with her beloved.  This is a romance whose destination is Galfrey turning her back, or at the very least significantly easing up, on her Lawful dedication (albeit once her greatest responsibility has been accomplished) for the sake of valuing what she herself needs.  That sounds exactly like the goal that a Chaotic Good person would have for Galfrey, a benevolent desire to free her from the miserable shackles of a position she doesn’t feel personally suited for so she can pursue the joys that an unrestrained life of Good can give her.  I contend that not only should Galfrey be a romance option for an Azata Mythic Path, a Chaotic Good protagonist is the BEST suited to be the catalyst of her love story!

Also, not for nothing, but this is a game whose major theme is the ability to transcend one’s limitations and ascend to greater heights than could have been imagined.  Galfrey’s romance is already a story of ascending above the bonds of obligation to achieve a personal, individual happiness she’d forgotten herself capable of, so it wouldn’t exactly have been out of character to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous if that story had also incorporated an element of transcending the limitations of alignment in love so long as her lover’s heart was in the right place.

Now, look, don’t get the wrong idea.  In spite of how much time and effort I’ve put into arguing about this, I know that this is a pretty small complaint.  Why, compared to the issues with 1 of the romances of the previous game, Galfrey telling an Azata path Commander that no Persuasion check on Golarion is gonna get these royal gams to open up is completely insignificant.  And hell, it’s not even like the Azata path is really missing all that much here; Galfrey’s romance may be well-intentioned, but it’s really just not compelling.  You want a compelling love story in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, go hit up Arueshelae.  Or Daeran.  Sosiel or Wenduag, maybe.  Hell, even Lann’s bland ass is a better option.  So this isn’t a major problem; it’s barely even a minor one, and to spend so much time whining about it in the face of such a grand, satisfying, and thoughtfully wrought work as Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous probably makes me look petty more than it does anything else.

Nonetheless, the facts of Galfrey’s character, the nature of her romantic subplot, and the very theme of the game are all there.  Even if it doesn’t really matter, even if I don’t even really care to do so, the decision to make Galfrey reject the advances of an Azata Commander is the wrong call.  Her character and the progression of her romantic story are, if anything, best suited for a Chaotic Good lover.

















* Admittedly not every layer of the secret ending’s complex requirements is laudable.  Making an unavoidable hinging point the act of finding Hepzamirah’s ghost in the Ineluctable Prison is such an obscure, counter-instinctive task that it’s honestly just kind of a dick move.  Seriously,  “Palm trees...and 8” is more fair than that.


** Well, the only romanceable NPC of any real substance, at least.  A protagonist on the Demon path can score, like, 2 lines of dialogue about getting to be Nocticula’s plaything.  And you can flirt a bit with some individuals like Vellexia and...the Fulsome Queen, for Tricksters who want their greatest and most cruel prank to be against themselves...but Galfrey’s the only non-party member love interest of substance.


*** Assuming you don’t go down an evil route for the game, but since we’re specifically talking within the context of an Azata Mythic Path run, that’s a given here.


**** Granted, it’s possible on the Azata path to lean much harder into the Chaos than the Good (and even to go rogue and start being pretty Evil), but at the very least, Galfrey could be designed to check to see where the protagonist sits, alignment-wise, on her/his Azata path.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker Unfairly Punishes You for Romancing Regongar or Octavia

I’ve made the claim before on multiple occasions that Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a great RPG for a number of reasons, and I will damn sure stand by that statement.  And I’ll also stand by the statement I made in an Annual Summary rant that the polyamorous romance that PK’s protagonist can engage in with Regongar and Octavia is well-written, romantic, sincere, and touching.  I genuinely applaud Owlcat Games for their accomplishments with their first Pathfinder RPG--their first RPG, period, even--and I’m looking forward to experiencing this level of storytelling quality in their next Pathfinder title with great excitement.

At the same time, though, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that there’s nothing significantly and distressingly wrong with the love interest situation regarding Regongar and Octavia.  And it would be hypocritical of me to criticize Fire Emblem 16 on its lack of gay romantic equality, and not complain about the same problem afflicting another game just because I happen to like the latter more.  So today, let’s talk about how incredibly shitty it is of Owlcat Games to punish players for romancing Reg or Octavia, rather than Reg and Octavia.

So here’s the deal: male or female, the protagonist of Pathfinder: Kingmaker can engage in a romantic relationship with Regongar, Octavia, or both of them at once.  And if you opt to be involved with them both at once, it actually shapes up to be a really great love story.  I said it best in that Annual Summary, so I’m gonna just quote myself because I’m super lazy:

“Not only is the romance that the Queen/King pursues with both Octavia and Regongar pretty solid on both sides of the relationship, but Pathfinder: Kingmaker manages to make it feel like an authentic case of three people finding one another to be mutual soulmates--Octavia and Regongar’s relationship can function without the protagonist’s presence (thankfully, since there are other romantic options and it wouldn’t be fair to hold these characters’ happiness hostage), but it’s only once the Queen/King gets involved, develops feelings for each of them, that both Octavia and Regongar come to terms with certain aspects of their own relationship by seeing it through the eyes of another who equally loves them. I’m reminded of Aika, Fina, and Vyse from Skies of Arcadia, in that any combination of 2 of them would work very well as a romantic couple, but none of them feel like they’re truly complete in love without both the others. Except whereas SoA’s trio just sort of naturally and almost surely accidentally developed that way and thus the game doesn’t ever overtly confirm (or even recognize) this, Pathfinder: Kingmaker has knowingly created such a situation. And it’s done it quite well!”

But here’s the other side of the coin with Reg and Octavia: if you only want to romance 1 of them, the other will die.

Yeah, for real.  At the end of the game, there comes a time in which you’re separated from all your party members, and things get real hairy for each and every 1 of them.  Depending on how you’ve treated them through the game to that point, they may or may not survive the individual trials that Nerissa has put before them.  Regongar and Octavia share 1 of these trials, and if you haven’t fully earned the trust of either of them, done all you can for him or her to be a friend and leader, then he or she likewise will perish.  But, if you’ve been a true ally and helped them each with their issues, both separate and shared, then both will survive, and rejoin you.

...Unless you romanced one, and not the other.  Then, regardless of all else you may have done for her or him, the un-romanced one is gonna up and croak.*

In and of itself, that’s kind of a lousy thing of Owlcat Games to do.  It’s absolutely true that Regongar and Octavia work best and are at their happiest as a package deal, there’s no denying that.  At the same time, though, I can fully understand and sympathize with a player who clearly finds Octavia more charming than Regongar, and doesn’t really find the aggressive self-esteem issues he brings to a relationship compelling.  And on the flip-side, I can fully understand and sympathize with a player who feels a strong connection to the way Regongar needs an open, understanding heart to help him work through his personal problems and be able to give and receive love on the terms of the one he cares about, not just his own limited ones, and doesn’t really care all that much for Octavia’s outgoing and sassy style.  It is very understandable that a player of Pathfinder: Kingmaker would want to romance 1 and not the other of this duo...and yet most of those players also don’t outright dislike Reg or Octavia enough to actually wish harm on them, so the fact that they’re punished with the death of the one not romanced regardless of any other factors is unfair and dismaying, and it comes across as mean-spirited on Owlcat Games’s part.

That’s honestly bad enough already that I would feel compelled to point out that it’s rotten, but that’s not where this ends.  In fact, I’m far more irritated by the next part.  To me, this is the part where what Owlcat’s done gets really shitty.

See, if you want to play a gay male protagonist in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Regongar is your only love interest.

This is already annoying, and represents an unfortunate trend in games that include homosexual love interest options: there’s always noticeably more lesbian options than gay male options.  I mentioned the inequity in my recent rant on Fire Emblem 16’s romances, and it’s an unfortunate tradition stretching as far back as the days of Knights of the Old Republic 1, which technically allowed the possibility of a female Revan and Juhani falling in love, but no possibilities of a male Revan and any of the male party members doing so.**  And don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see multiple options in a game for female characters to fall in love with other women, and I don’t want any less of that--I want substantially more, in fact.  But where possible, I want to see an equal number of options for male characters to fall in love with other men, too.  I mean, within narrative reason, at least.  If, say, Dust from Dust: An Elysian Tail had a gay romantic interest, I wouldn’t demand that the game also include an option for Dust to be a played as a woman, and subsequently able to romance a woman, because DAET is specifically set up as a story to be the personal journey of Dust himself, a character specifically designed to be, among other things, a man, so going to such extremes would be silly and detrimental to the story’s integrity.  But for a game like KotOR1, FE16, or Pathfinder: Kingmaker, in which the game’s entirety, including its love interests, is written around the possibility of its protagonist being of either gender, there’s no defensible reason to have such romantic imbalance.***

It doesn’t even make sense in PK!  Why in the world would Tristian not also be an option for a man to romance, when he’s a love interest for a woman protagonist?  The entirety of Tristian’s romantic subplot is his discovering what non-religious love even is, and how mortals go about it.  The concept of romance and passion are not just new to Tristian, they’re utterly alien to him, a function of mortality that he has to understand and feel from the ground up.  It ain’t like, say, Valerie, who’s a regular human with enough self-experience to know she prefers men.  Tristian is a romantic and sexual tabula rasa, a being who has to actively choose to pursue an understanding of mortal love in order to feel it.  His starting point is one at which romantically loving anyone is a completely foreign concept to him, so the fact that you can inspire and guide him to do so at all should, logically, mean that you can do so as a woman or a man.

But anyway, this case of only a single gay male love interest is especially problematic for Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  You want the queen of the Stolen Lands to be a lesbian?  Cool!  You can have her pursue romance with Octavia, but if you don’t want Regongar to die as a result, the queen has the option to find love with Kalikke and Kanerrah, or, if you’re up for a challenge, with the antagonist Nerissa herself.  Yeah, K+K are DLC characters and Nerissa’s very tricky, so it actually is still a bit of a problem that the most accessible lesbian romance option inevitably leads to another character’s death, but tricky or not, those options are there, at least.  But if you want the king of the Stolen Lands to be a gay man?  Cool!  Octavia is doomed.  Because Regongar is the only romantic option for such, Pathfinder: Kingmaker punishes you for being a homosexual man with the death of 1 of your team members.

And that’s pretty fucking shitty.

Look, as a whole, I applaud Pathfinder: Kingmaker for a variety of reasons, and far from the least of them is the fact that it makes a serious effort to include a polyamorous romance, and in doing so, also provides an opportunity for a player to very distinctly embrace and showcase his or her bisexuality.  That is unequivocally good, and it’s even better that the love story Owlcat Games created for it is of great quality, arguably the best the game has to offer.  And I applaud that they’re forthright about this being an actual polyamorous relationship--a few RPGs like Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 and Fallout 4 allow for the protagonist to court multiple characters, but only do so by largely having all the main character’s love interests ignore this fact; you’re never gonna see MacCready, Preston, Danse, and Hancock all sit down and discuss the fact that their shared husbando Nate may, in fact, have an addiction problem with man-meat.  That Queen/King x Octavia x Regongar is there, and that Owlcat Games isn’t afraid of the fact that it’s there, is great.

But the the way they handled romancing Octavia or Regongar individually, punishing you with the death of the other no matter what else you’ve done, is just plain wrong, especially so in that it punishes any player who wants to play as a homosexual man.  I’m willing to accept that this was an oversight, rather than a malicious act, but I sincerely hope we don’t see a repeat of a situation like this in the next game.



EDIT, FROM THE WORLD OF TOMORROW: We did not see a repeat of a situation like this in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and Owlcat Games did, in fact, seem to make sure that there would be multiple romantic options of both (main) genders available to a protagonist of either (main) gender.  So while my disapproval and complaints within this rant were and are still, in my view, fully justified, I do want to to make an observable note here that the developer learned from this misstep and corrected their future actions appropriately.

Dear Desna in Elysium do I ever wish that could be said about the average video game company.














* Actually, apparently there IS a very slight work-around for this?  From what I've been able to figure out with the assistance of reader Corelion777, you can sort of trick the game by initiating a polyamorous relationship with Octavia and Regongar, but not following through on it.  The way Corelion777 worked it, he/she got the point that his/her character shacked up with both Octavia and Regongar at the same time, but after that point, he/she only pursued the relationship any further with Octavia, and not Regongar.  As best as we can figure, this sort of tricked the game into thinking the polyamorous romance was still in progress, and thus the game didn't decide to arbitrarily kill off Regongar during the end-game, even though the only actual romance that was followed to its conclusion was with Octavia alone.

This is the only way I've ever heard of getting the game to allow both Reg and Octavia to live through a romance with only 1 of them, so I think it's fair to say that it's a case of gaming the system, not actually an intentional option created by the developers.  So my points in this rant are, I think, still fully valid and justified.  And even if it were a fully premeditated allowance on the part of Owlcat Games, it's still a work-around that requires the player to compromise a monogamous attraction to Regongar or to Octavia, which may be objectionable to how the player views and values Octavia's or Regongar's romance.  Additionally, it may also force a player to compromise the sexuality that the player desires for his/her protagonist, since this workaround puts the protagonist into a situation, early on, of being attracted to both Regongar and Octavia, even though the player may want their protagonist to very distinctly be gay or straight.

So yeah, even if there's a cheat to get around this problem, I think my problems with this situation are no less substantial than they would have been had it truly been, as the developers clearly intended, impossible to romance Octavia or Regongar separately without the other dying.  MAJOR thanks to Corelion777 for letting me know about this, though!


** I say “technically” because a glitch in dialogue flags made this gay Juhani romance very difficult to achieve.  I didn’t even know it was a possibility until over a decade later, in fact.


*** Yes, I know that canonically, regardless of how the player wants it to be, KotOR1’s Revan is meant to be male.  But if anything, that just makes it more questionable that the female version has more romantic autonomy, doesn’t it?

Pathfinder: Kingmaker's Nyrissa's Punishment

Just a short rant today (stop scoffing). This rant’s subject is probably something that many others have realized, of course, but it just occurred to me, and I really liked it, and my trend towards trying to only rant about things that are utterly unique to my own head in recent years has made it difficult to keep a decent cushion of rants on standby, so it’s time to start making some little ones now and then for whatever comes to my mind, regardless of whether others have doubtless expounded upon it before. The game itself does not (I think) specifically spell this out, at least, so that’s good enough for me.

It’s just occurred to me that the punishment inflicted upon Nyrissa by The Lantern King--or at least, her means to redeem herself--is a clever piece of symbolic irony. The so-called crime that Nyrissa is punished for, after all, is her ambition to join the Eldest as an equal, her pride at thinking that she could rise above her station as a queen to join the ranks of gods (or at least beings very close to gods). For her hubris, she was struck down by the beings she thought to join, tormented, and stripped of her ability to feel love, and told by The Lantern King that she would be forgiven once she had caused the fall of 1000 kingdoms, empires, and so on within the Stolen Lands. The long history in the Pathfinder universe of the Stolen Lands being impossible to settle, the innumerable rises and falls of communities within them, are all due to her influence, as she inspires the creation and then instigates the destruction of all manner of societies over the centuries, as penance to terrible higher beings.

What I find interesting about it is that it’s an atonement that echoes the crime that created it. Just as the Eldest stepped forth to punish a queen’s hubris at thinking she could become an Eldest, so now is a queen forced to punish the hubris of lower mortals thinking they can become royalty. Not only is Nyrissa forced to suffer for centuries the inability to feel love, twisting her into the very antithesis of what she originally was, but the terms of her sentence force her to witness her “crime” over and over again, and to take on the role that her own punisher took. It’s not enough for the Lantern King that she suffer--she must suffer while every single day being reminded of what brought about her suffering, and being forced to become the monster who destroys these ambitious mortals that represent herself. An elegantly sadistic, tragic punishment, indeed.

Understanding this also makes me really enjoy and appreciate the connection that Nyrissa and the protagonist of Pathfinder: Kingmaker have all the more. Because in many ways, the Queen/King (is there a more canon term for the protagonist?) is a living embodiment of hope and inspiration to Nyrissa, as a representation of her that shows the possibility of success, that represents everything Nyrissa hoped to be. After all, the protagonist of Pathfinder: Kingmaker is, like all the others that Nyrissa has struck down, a woman/man who reaches above her/his station to become more...and yet, each time that Nyrissa moves to punish that ambition, to strike the Queen/King down and destroy the reign she/he has built and earned, the attack is thwarted, and the Queen/King continues to rule in defiance of the higher being that would punish her/his daring. There’s even a parallel in that you can, with a hell of a lot of careful work, have the protagonist pursue a romance with Nyrissa--another act of being bold enough to reach above her/his station--just as Nyrissa once was the lover of 1 of the Eldest. No wonder Nyrissa can, once you return the capacity to love to her, fall so easily and deeply in love with the protagonist--not only is she/he the hero that saved who Nyrissa was from who she was forced to become, but the Queen/King is also an inspiring symbol of Nyrissa’s own past that vindicates her, whose success proves that Nyrissa’s own dreams and hopes were not wrong, no matter what her conqueror and tormentor tried to abuse her into accepting.

Really cool, Owlcat Games. Looking forward to quality like this in the next one!

Pathfinder: Kingmaker's Downloadable Content

Blah blah blah unnecessary intro, you all know what this is without me going on about it. Let’s just get to it.


The Wildcards: This DLC adds 2 new party members to the game (or 1, depending on how you look at it), Kanerah and Kalikke, a pair of sisters under the curse of a very unique and specific contract with 1 of the game’s deities, and a small set of character quests for them. Quality-wise, it’s a solid DLC. Kalikke and Kanerah are both good characters who interact well with the game’s events when they’re in your party, and their shared character arc through their personal quests is built on an interesting and creative idea, and makes for a decent story. Much like previous successful DLC characters like Mass Effect 2’s Zaeed and Dragon Age 1’s Shale, Kalikke and Kanerah skillfully tread a fine line between inclusion and separation--they’re a natural fit to the game and the party and never feel like an outside and unnecessary influence on the game’s story and cast, but at the same time, they’re kept just separate enough from the story and characters that the game couldn’t be said to be in any way incomplete without them (which is important for add-on characters; you may recall my anger with how important Sebastian was to Dragon Age 2’s core plot). The potential romance you can have with them is rewarding and genuine, and the side-characters that come along with them (the Sweet Teeth) are charmingly amusing, a welcome addition of minor humor in a game that otherwise has to lean quite heavily on Nok-Nok and the rest of his race for most of its comic interludes. I will say that I feel like Kalikke and Kanerah’s reconciliation towards the end of the game (if you’ve made the right decisions during their character quests) does seem a little spontaneous, but it’s not bad or anything, just something that could have been more developed.

On the other hand, more practically-speaking, this DLC has its flaws. It’s sold at $8, which isn’t exorbitant, but at the same time, you’re definitely not going to get 8 hours out of their specific character quests and dialogue. And no matter how well-separated they are, I can’t help but be more and more leery as time goes on of the ethics of any DLC that isn’t distinctly additional side-content to the main game. Still...the content is worthwhile, and Owlcat Games has clearly striven to implement The Wildcards in a morally acceptable manner, so while the price keeps this from being a must-buy with or without a sale, I’ll give my endorsement to it and say that it is, indeed, worth the purchase.


Varnhold’s Lot: Varnhold’s Lot is a self-contained side-adventure which details the events in the barony of Varnhold during Chapter 3 of the main game, and sets the stage for the main story’s fourth chapter (which takes place in Varnhold). It also subsequently adds a very small dungeon in the main game’s campaign, and a minor event during Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s finale.

There’s just a lot of issues with this add-on that interfere with its value. For starters, it’s $12, and you’re not likely to get even half a dozen hours’ worth of content from it, all told. And sure, I guess I have to admit that the dollar is worth less and less with each passing year, but I think we’re still several years away from an exchange rate of 1 hour of game time per $1 spent on a DLC being an unfair expectation.

That said, DLCs are like guys in bed: it really doesn’t matter if what they’ve got comes up a little short, as long as they’ve got the skill to do something great with it. Even if Varnhold’s Lot doesn’t have as much content as its price tag is, in my opinion, obliged to provide, all is forgiven if what it does have is of sufficient quality. But unfortunately, and also like guys in bed, DLCs are usually disappointing, and Varnhold’s Lot stays true to type on this matter. The plot of this adventure isn’t particularly compelling, and whatever your level of knowledge is with the main game, it works against VL’s favor: either you’re playing it before you get to Varnhold in the main quest, in which case the slow and at times aimless pace of this package makes it feel unimportant by comparison to the crazy shit going down in the main quest, or you play it once you’re familiar with Varnhold’s fate in the main quest, and what little suspense could have been had is lost. Or, I suppose, you play this DLC before you even start the main game, and its rushed introduction and setup fails to invest you in its events.

Likewise, the cast of this add-on is wholly unremarkable. Maegar Varn is a likable enough minor NPC in the main campaign, but he sure as hell has neither the personality nor the depth to carry his major role in this side venture, and the most that the rest of the characters and villains here can aspire to is There Because The Plot Needs Them. It’s also harder to feel a connection to the protagonist you create here, because you’ve got a much stronger connection to the protagonist you’ve made for the main campaign, the latter being a character you’ve had more time and far more choices in action and dialogue to form a personality out of.

Honestly, though, I think the real problem with Varnhold’s Lot is this: no one was asking for it. The summary of the events that led to Varnhold’s part of Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s story was adequate already, and it didn’t have the narrative pull and curiosity that other, successful explanatory side-story DLCs have had. Remember Dragon Age 1? During the course of DA1, you learn certain details of your companion Leliana’s dramatic past as a lover and protege of a master spy, whose subsequent betrayal once Leliana found out a little too much set into motion the events that led Leliana to join the church and cross paths with DA1’s protagonist. It’s a tale of the intrigues of espionage, mixed with a dangerous and unequal love, culminating in bloody betrayal that completely reshaped a woman’s beliefs and views of the world, defined the life that she was to live! Even if her summary of it in the main quest is adequate enough, that’s the kind of history that’s worthy of a more in-depth look; there’s good reason for Bioware to have created Leliana’s Song, the DLC that allowed us to watch her sordid backstory play out directly. By contrast, the Vanishing of Varnhold was merely a happening that unfolded as yet another kingdom-breaking event in a game filled by design with such scenarios, anchored by Maegar Varn, a minor character whose dramatic weight shakes out to no more than a neighbor you like well enough to greet with genuine cheer in passing, and the details of how the matter went down had been more than adequately explained by Vordekai and Varn in the main game. This DLC answers a question that players simply had no real reason to ponder in the first place.

And also, it really has to be said that even if there actually are players who really did want to see the Vanishing of Varnhold firsthand, this add-on still doesn’t satisfy. Varnhold’s Lot straight-out doesn’t do what it tells you it’s going to. While VL implies that you’re going to be seeing just how Vordekai’s return to power went down, almost the entirety of this package is devoted to the protagonist dealing with some semi-related side adventures, which culminate in a large dungeon at the end that turns out to be a red herring! Your protagonist winds up fooling around with the wrong villain in the wrong lair, so the only experience with Varnhold’s Vanishing, the event this DLC specifically exists to elaborate upon, comes from others mentioning it, because you aren’t there for it. Well what the hell is the difference between that, and just having had its events summarized to you in the main campaign?!

Varnhold’s Lot simply has nothing notable about it, there was no calling for it to exist, and it fails to fulfill even its superfluous purpose. Forget even getting it on sale; just give it a pass.



There’s a third DLC for Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but it’s basically an extended dungeon crawl with no plot, and I only cover add-ons with some form of story content, so I’m not gonna bother with it. So we’re done, since Owlcat has only indicated an intention to create these add-ons...although, I dunno, the way PK’s menu and add-on content integration is set up, it feels an awful lot like games such as Neverwinter Nights and Shadowrun, which have the kind of accessible architecture that’s designed for incorporating many additional content packs. That may just be an intention to allow for user-generated campaigns (which would be welcome), but I have a sneaking suspicion that Owlcat Games will be returning to this game with more content, after all.

At any rate, to judge it by what’s here...meh, I guess PK is alright, add-on-wise. I like The Wildcards enough to give it a solid thumbs-up, and for all Varnhold’s Lot’s problems, it at least feels like the writers just made several decisions that they didn’t really think through with it, not that they weren’t trying to make something decent. I’m disappointed that such a strong RPG as Pathfinder: Kingmaker wouldn’t have a likewise strong showing for its DLCs, but at the same time, I guess one has to allow it at least a little respect, for the simple fact that just being “alright” overall seems to be an accomplishment when it comes to RPG add-ons.

But I still miss The Witcher 3’s add-ons.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Hey, you know what I haven’t done for a while? I haven’t made a rant encouraging you all to check out an Indie RPG I recently played. Let’s fix that!

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is an RPG I backed on Kickstarter. It’s one of those isometric-ish tabletop-styled games, like the Dungeons and Dragons classics of the 90s and 2000s, or the more recent Torment: Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity. It’s based on the Pathfinder tabletop RPG, which is...basically just Dungeons and Dragons’s Third Edition. Seriously, I don’t know how Paizo Publishing legally gets away with Pathfinder, as I don’t think Wizards of the Coast is getting any money from it, yet it’s using pretty much all the same content, even down to the same spell names and deities and such. I’m someone whose only real experience with Dungeons and Dragons has been with the famous PC games set in its Third Edition like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, and I can tell you, settling into Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s gameplay mechanics after years of experience with Third Edition D+D games was as smooth and seamless an experience for me as going from Neverwinter Nights 1 to Neverwinter Nights 2.

Anyway, that’s what Pathfinder: Kingmaker is on (pen and) paper. But what it is to us as an audience, is the most perfect PC RPG adaptation of a tabletop game to date.

This isn’t to say it’s the best tabletop-based RPG, mind you. Torment: Tides of Numenera, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Neverwinter Nights 2’s Mask of the Betrayer DLC, and Planescape: Torment are all greater products, in some cases far greater. But, they are superior for the truly astounding quality of their storytelling elements, not necessarily for what they are as a whole. Basically, Planescape: Torment, and the others I just mentioned to lesser degrees, is utterly amazing as an intellectual and emotional experience, but that excellence only really connects to its tabletop basis in that it uses certain story concepts of the tabletop game’s lore as a basis on which to build itself. The planes of Dungeons and Dragons, its blood war, and the way that belief and divinity work within it, these are all foundations that Planescape: Torment uses to tell 1 of the greatest and most intelligent stories ever created...but the experience of guiding the Nameless One along his journey of self-discovery is a very different thing from the overall intent and experience of Dungeons and Dragons in general. And the same is true to varying degrees of the other titles I mentioned above as being better RPGs than Pathfinder: Kingmaker--they’re superior in terms of storytelling elements independent of the overall idea and experience of a tabletop game.

But as an overall adaptation of a tabletop RPG experience? Pathfinder: Kingmaker is pretty much the best title I’ve seen, by a wide margin. It rises to this lofty height of quality in 2 ways.

First, the game takes a truckload of the defining qualities and styles of the isometric RPGs that preceded it, and either recreates them, or refines and enhances them to be better. In terms of said recreation, the combat and overall gameplay mechanics are a fluid representation of the classic isometric D+D style, the dungeons and overworld capture the trademark tabletop atmospheres and aesthetics of PK’s predecessors (while also frequently having their own singular nature; the boggier parts of the Stolen Lands and the First World give the game’s settings their own identity), the spells and belief system and lineage and so on all come into play here and there in minor but satisfying ways during interactions, the lore and side-stories of the setting are all readily present and accessible, while never so overbearing that you’ll be lost without prior knowledge of the universe, a soundtrack featuring work by Inon Zur (and several others) that frequently captures the feel of several previous works of his such as Dragon Age 1 and Baldur’s Gate 2 (while still maintaining its own identity)...this game takes the signatures of its genre and brings them forth as a perfectly unified whole.

But Pathfinder: Kingmaker also recreates defining characteristics of its forebears that you wouldn’t expect, might not have even realized were there the first time until you experienced them once again! The search through the Shrike Hills for the Stag Lord in the game’s first chapter gave me the same feeling of exploring an unknown land’s wilderness that I had while traveling the forests of Baldur’s Gate 1, for example (although PK is much less frustrating thanks to having a decent map system to rely on), while the game’s use of kobolds and goblins (and, at times, party member Linzi) reminded me at times of interactions with Deekin and his tribe in Neverwinter Nights 1. Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s full of charmingly nostalgic little moments like that which you don’t expect, atmospheres and events that momentarily recapture a feeling signature to an experience from 1 of the games preceding it in this genre--but always, I want to stress, while maintaining its own identity.

But as I said, in addition to skillfully mimicking defining qualities and atmospheres of the tabletop-turned-PC RPGs that came before it, Pathfinder: Kingmaker also frequently takes signature elements from those games, and actually improves upon them, sometimes by surprisingly substantial degrees. The most notable example of this, I should think, would be the Kingdom Management portion to the game. Though not technically the first RPG to have something along these lines (Breath of Fire 2’s Township thing predated it by 5 years, and there might’ve been something older than BoF, too), Baldur’s Gate 2 introduced a little side-story of ruling over a medieval community with its de’Arnise Keep stronghold that became a big enough hit with the players that various PC RPGs for the next almost 20 years would bring the idea back over and over again, such as with Dragon Age 1’s Awakening expansion’s stronghold and Caed Nua of Pillars of Eternity 1, tweaking the idea here and there, adding mechanics like town-building and the like, but ultimately, even 18 years after, the really enjoyable and notable elements of these iterations of the community-ruling feature inevitably just come back to the idea of guiding a medieval-style community as its sovereign and settling the various domestic and governance issues that get brought before your protagonist as she/he sits upon the throne.

Well, Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s Kingdom Management component completely destroys every other game’s attempt at this idea. It’s a major, constantly present aspect of the plot (I mean, the title itself straight-out tells you the game’s about making you a ruler), never seeming like a side-venture or gimmick, and it’s got a massive wealth of content. Advisors bringing a wide variety of issues to your attention in all fields of government (from matters of community, to your lands’ economics, to local religious practices, to diplomacy and espionage in regards to neighboring countries), supplicants approach you frequently to aid in settling disputes, there are dozens of problems and opportunities of all kinds to send your advising council to deal with, you get to choose what direction to focus your resources and efforts in, you’re given the ability to determine where new towns will spring up and what services can be found in them...ruling your fledgeling kingdom is a massive undertaking, almost as big a part of the game as the actual adventuring is, yet it’s simple to pick up on and satisfying to go through with, a grander and more enjoyable stronghold experience than that of any previous game’s many times over!

And I must say, even though I found the whole thing to be very fun, I really appreciate that the Kingdom Management aspect of the game, in spite of how integral and sizable it is, is completely optional. You know how much I hate mandatory minigames--well, Owlcat Games was kind enough to give you the option to have the kingdom basically run itself, if you’re just not interested in that part of the Pathfinder: Kingmaker experience. I sincerely wish more RPG developers would value their players’ time, agency, and intelligence enough to give us a similar ability to opt out of shit like hauler beasts.

I’d also like to note that Pathfinder: Kingmaker also refines and better executes conventions of newer isometric RPGs, too, not just the classics. There’s been a narrative device I’ve seen in the recent Pillars of Eternity 1 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, in which certain parts of the game take place in the form of narrated, multiple-choice adventure stories similar to old text-based PC adventures from waaaaayyyy back (or, I guess, modern-day visual novels, sort of?). They were an interesting change of pace in PoE1 and TToN (and written especially well in the latter), but if I’m to be fully honest, they tended to be slightly dry and overstay their welcome in both games. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea and found them really cool most of the time, but there was room for improvement.

And that improvement was made in Pathfinder: Kingmaker! The illustrated book interludes of this game are more fun, and never seem to overstay their interest...partly because the narrator for these episodes is much more personally engaging, partly because you feel like you have more useful agency in your selections and can earn immediate rewards from making selections that successfully utilize the skills you’ve built into your characters, and partly because these little episodes actually seem relevant to the story, since they’re presented as excerpts from the book that Linzi (the party’s chronicler) is writing about the protagonist’s exploits. It ultimately ends up feeling far more natural and smooth than it did in Pillars of Eternity 1 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, at least to me. Just as PK manages to smooth over and refine many notable qualities of the old isometric RPGs, it also takes some of the features of newer entries to the genre and improves upon them, as well.

The second way that Pathfinder: Kingmaker makes itself the best example I’ve come across of a tabletop RPG adapted to the format of a video game, and perhaps the more important, is just how well it manages to impart the heart and soul of the pen-and-paper RPG experience. PK captures the spirit of its universe and the act of playing a tabletop campaign to a degree that I don’t think any other video game RPG has yet managed. I can’t pin down how, but the way that PK’s story unfolds and heightens feels in many ways like the way a long-term, many-sessioned pen-and-paper campaign would, with a lore and overall story in place, but a plot which gives a believable illusion of shifting and evolving as a result of the protagonist’s actions and successes, much like the flow of a D+D campaign whose Dungeon Master has an overall idea of the adventure and story in place, but adapts and grows that idea in response to the players’ actions and decisions as the adventure unfolds. I don’t know how to better describe it--where most RPGs feel like a writer’s story that he/she is dictating to you, Pathfinder: Kingmaker captures the feel of a game master taking you through the story of a campaign that he’s skillful enough to keep generally on track, while reshaping it as it goes according to what the story’s characters do and do not accomplish. That’s probably highly subjective and your mileage may vary, but it was how the game felt to me, at least.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker also sells its tabletop RPG theme in a variety of other ways, too, of course. There’s a tremendous amount of choices to make throughout the game whose consequences range from subtle to highly significant (and generally in appropriate measure to the choice’s weight); there was no part of the game in which I felt that my protagonist’s decisions didn’t have importance. The employment of characters’ Skills in both everyday explorations and in dialogue trees is flawlessly implemented, ensuring that every talent is important and opens up new options to the player, with a frequency similar to that which you’d find in a well-orchestrated session of pen-and-paper gaming. The map screen uses little tabletop-style figurines, and maintains an aesthetic as you move like you’re dragging a piece across a table. Details of your protagonist such as her/his patron deity or race are not brought up often, but do occasionally influence conversations to which they’d be pertinent (for example, in your early conversations with Valerie as she bad-mouths the Goddess of Beauty, Shelyn, your character can point out that she/he is a follower of Shelyn her/himself, if that was the patron deity you selected during character creation for a relevant class). The game provides a full, solid cast with which to make your party, but for those who want to have full control over the details of their entire party from the ground up, you also have the option from almost the start of the game to hire on some mercenaries, silent NPCs that you can yourself design exactly to your wishes. I find such a possibility boring and dumb, of course, because I’m all about story and character development and all this amounts to is having 6 dull silent protagonists instead of 1, but still, those who really liked that element of Icewind Dale can have it again.

The alignment system is just restrictive enough that you feel your character’s beliefs and morality matter, while being flexible enough that you can still play and make decisions mostly the way you want to, only very rarely being locked out of an action** by its consistency to your protagonist’s view on good and evil, and law and chaos. Also, your protagonist’s beliefs can change according to the morality of the decisions you have them make through the game’s course--regardless of what beliefs you initially select for your character, they will, eventually, change to better reflect the person you actually want them to be, according to your own decisions’ direction, which is a neat bit of roleplay fine-tuning.*** Also, Owlcat Games have, amusingly enough, made sure to include an option in the dialogue tree of pretty much every character not absolutely plot-essential to just go Chaotic Evil and kill whoever you’re talking to. Yes, even if you’re that guy in your tabletop friend group, Pathfinder: Kingmaker has got your roleplaying back.

It’s a ton of fine details like these that really bring Pathfinder: Kingmaker to life as an adaptation of tabletop gaming, capturing just about every possible signature to the physical role playing game experience that a single-player video game possibly can. This honestly is just the best RPG I’ve seen so far in terms of being a representation of the pen-and-paper genre.

And finally, I’d like to note that it’s a darned good RPG in the general sense, too! The story is inventive and engaging, enough so that it never felt like it was dragging, which is something impressive in a game as massively long as Pathfinder: Kingmaker--even a lot of the games I play that I really, really love have stretches where I start really feeling their length. I love Tales of Berseria, for example, but there were still moments during its course when I found myself contemplating just how extended its adventure was. The characters, while not amazing (although Nok-Nok is terrifically funny), are all solid and enjoyable personalities, and frequently quite singular. The lore and history of the game’s setting, and the ways it sets the foundation for the game’s events, is creative and fascinating. The overall themes of the story, of redemption and forgiveness, civilizational entropy, and the vital necessity of love within our souls, are all great and well-executed. The villains are captivating and unique, and while I only know for sure that he was involved in writing Nok-Nok, I daresay that the villainess Nyrissa in particular also bears the boon of Chris Avellone’s ever-masterful hand. Shelyn bless that man’s seemingly endless font of great writing and ideas!

Oh, and for what it’s worth: this may be a crowdfunded game and the first creation of its development studio, but it’s got all the polish and aesthetics of a pro, major developer’s work. Obviously an Indie RPG looking the part is not a problem for me (hell, I frequently find myself preferring an Indie game’s aesthetics and style to those of current AAA studios), but if you’re the type that usually cringes a little when you hear “Indie,” there’s no cause to let that put you off with this game.

If you like great RPGs, you should play Pathfinder: Kingmaker. If you like the experience of pen-and-paper games like Pathfinder, Dungeons and Dragons, and the like, then you really should play Pathfinder: Kingmaker. And if you like the classic isometric RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, or are a fan of newer titles of this style like Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera, you absolutely should play Pathfinder: Kingmaker. My history of backing RPGs on Kickstarter is one of several ups and downs, but this particular project is a solid success that I’m pleased to have helped make possible.****
















* Something which, I’d like to point out, I am quite fine with overall. As I’ve mentioned before, linear restrictions to an RPG’s storytelling method allows the writers more control and thus better ability to tell the story they want to.


** Rarely but significantly--the alignment-restricted choices are almost always big ones that affect major turns in the story’s course. But like I said, that’s the kind of uncommon but substantial restriction that makes your character’s beliefs feel important.


*** Hell, this may be a rare occasion in which a video game actually outperforms a tabletop in terms of role playing choices. DMs have a tendency, from what I’ve seen and heard, of using a character’s alignment to confine and deny a player’s choices in an unfair and frankly unrealistic manner. Stuff like, “You can’t show mercy to this vampire no matter how uncharacteristically benevolent she is, you’re a Lawful Good Paladin, it’s against your alignment” and such, as though a person’s overall beliefs can never be superseded by situational factors. PK, on the other hand, still allows an Evil character to make a Good decision most of the time, or a Chaotic character to stick up for Neutrality, and so on, simply adjusting your character’s standing on the Alignment chart accordingly. And hell, even the major options in the game that are Alignment-locked still feel more fair than the standard of real-life roleplay--the fact that your Lawful character doesn’t have access to an option to force a truce (rather than pick a side) between Brevoy and Restov almost feels, to me, like it’s simply not an option that would occur to a character who doesn’t already have a mindset of Neutrality. The result may be the same, I suppose, but PK feels to me in such situations less like it’s discarding your character’s ability to choose a moral stance, and more like it’s reflecting a character who wouldn’t have even thought of such a solution to begin with.


**** This doesn't really fit into the rant anywhere, but I would like to note that if you do follow my advice and get this game, it's worth checking out its mods at Nexus, too. There are quite a few that are good for just quality of life modifications, and I would heartily recommend the Kingdom Resolution mod, as it gives you a lot of freedom to experience all the events and eventualities that the Kingdom Management aspect of the game can provide, letting you get the most out of your experience.