So even if a choice is real rather than just cosmetic, the game goes out of its way to protect the player from the consequences. There are a bunch of choices open to you in the game that impact the ending slides, but they are always fairly obvious, and there are no real wrong choices that the player can be punished for. The only impact it seems to have is unlocking a kind of bonus option if your choices were "impeccable" throughout. No matter what choices you make, you are still capable of turning around and heading in a completely different direction at the end. Again, the storytelling here is really good, and unfolds at a great pace, but the choice and consequence mechanics are wonky at best. Similarly, the main plot has numerous occasions of you being tempted away from Avadon, and you can either respond to these attempts with interest or dismiss and even attack the enemy agent. But it is a game that often seemingly offers you a choice, but quick reloading discovers the choice is a fake, irrelevant one. These are some of the worst examples from the game, and it's usually more subtle or honest about choices. It only allows you to attack NPCs that it tags as hostile, never offering you the choice to deal with people that are clearly on the wrong side until it says you can. Yet when I wanted to side with him over the clearly lying NPC during the final confrontation, the game gave me no choice. The quest is clearly set up to hint something isn't right here, and the beast is a tortured animal more than he is evil. A third example: during my travels, I was sent to slay a beast. Another example I remember is in trying my best to turn away from a main quest, until the NPC almost literally told me "but thou must!" and just pushed me into the quest. That is exceedingly frustrating way to offer a player the illusion of choice. I tried one first, then reloaded and tried the other, and found that in both cases he'd stand frozen and ignore my command, because the story didn't warrant us having this confrontation right now. After a short cutscene (the game has a few of these, basically just taking control from you and playing out a scene in-engine), I had the dialog option to either egg him on to attack the group or tell him to wait. To give an example from the story: I bumped into a group I knew had an ugly past with one of my followers. Compared to Avernum, it feels very restrictive. There are some secrets to find, but for instance paths through dense shrubbery can only be found by quest-related NPCs opening them for you. Even within individual maps the entire experience of exploration is excessively guided, with frequent use of unpickable doors or impassable portcullises guiding you until the game feels the need to open them for you. Locations can not be unlocked before an NPC does it for you, and the only NPCs that can do so are typically main plot-related NPCs or followers, with the story structured to see you constantly return to Avadon to be sent to the next area of the game's choice. This is an understandable tradeoff, but I personally feel Avadon went a bit far in it. Of 4 Progression and Choices This kind of well-paced story is really hard to tell in anything but a linear narrative, which restricts some of the freeroaming known from Avernum and Geneforge.
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