On the Emperor and *that* scene
so i went and looked at some of the branches of that conversation -he basically reacts by reflecting and amplifying whatever energy the player gives him. Whatever you say, he will not contradict you.
You reject him, violently? He'll show you how right you are, how much of a monster he is. You reject him, preferring to "stick to business"? so does he. You agree to see him as a potential partner? Not a one-night stand, you are "bonded and it is time to consummate love with war".
Something to keep in mind, however (pun intended) is that "to best protect yourself from illithid manipulation, pay attention to its actions, not words."
tldr: i think the emperor is a very neat character.
The first branch is the disgusted rejection - the one where the player calls him a freak. his reaction is to show you how right you are. a mind controlled Stelmane, how the partnership was puppeteering. "you are my puppet", he tells you. "You have no other choice, if I must, I will force you."
he does not force you to do anything, after that. the threat is there, of course, but it's hollow. empty.
should this be taken at face value? can we trust him, even now, that he is telling the truth? it is certain that he mind controlled stelmane, yes. But was he the one who made her ill?
two items put that into question. a) stelmane's portrait, hung up at his desk along all his treasured possessions from before and after he became an illithid (balduran's butter fork, to go with the butter knife. his old sword, a recipe for fiddlehead soup, his dog Rascal's collar. the emperor's outfit, container for brains, chains for his "meals".)
If he's a liar about everything, why does he have a framed picture of Stelmane? He would not have been able to physically go back and set things up in a Knights of the Shield secret hideout while he was stuck inside the Astral Prism in our pocket from the hells, down to the Underdark, unless i'm getting the timeline of this story majorly wrong.
and b) an account of stelmane's illness.
Stelmane's condition got worse *after* Balduran/the Emperor disappeared, captured by Gortash and the cult of the Absolute.
Make of that what you will. Is this an actual testimony, or something he somehow planted there for you to find, despite the logistical difficulties in doing so? You decide.
2. The violent rejection is the only branch where he does not tell you how big the elder brain has grown. I think that is because there is an actual reaction on his end; something vicious that he's unused to feeling. Not the cold, calculating pragmatism he was praising in the player character three lines ago. Compare the first branch to the following two paths:
What i think is: Balduran uses you. The sole thing he cares above all else is his continued survival, any power gained that way is a side benefit to his goal. If you even get the Orphic hammer, even "as leverage," even as you threaten him, he does not "force you" to do anything, as threatened above. Ansur died, yes, but is self defence murder? Neither Ansur nor Balduran deny that Ansur tried to mercy kill Balduran as he slept.
What I also think: you have to succeed at perception check, in the third guardian dream, to figure out that "the hurt runs deeper than they're willing to show you." then, an insight check (something that requires wisdom, what you use to resist, or lean into, the tadpole's hivemind) "beneath the resilient veneer, a touch of fragility. they need comfort." This allows you to hug them, if you desire - something they say "it has been a very long time since someone did that. for [me]".
Make of that what you will.
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One thing I really love about Pentiment is that like. For one thing it's very easy to play a very straightforwardly kind, compassionate, sympathetic Andreas who listens to the concerns his friends in Tassing are voicing and tries his hardest to do right by everyone and volunteers to help people a lot. As someone who always worries games are going to force me into making choices I don't want to (or that certain dialogue options will turn out to be harsher than I expected) it's sort of funny that Pentiment, a game that is about forcing you to make difficult choices, at least always let me feel good about Andreas' internal motivations and relationships with others, even when there were sometimes really upsetting consequences in-game.
(And of course, the idea that he's a good person trying his hardest and yet a lot of things go wrong for him and others over the course of the story is one of the things that sends Andreas spiraling, so this is very much something that's woven into the fabric of the game)
But I know on our first playthrough, we chose some of the background options that felt like they specifically lent themselves to that, which lead to playing a very like...polite, bookworm type Andreas. Who I adored as a character obviously, but figured was very specific to our run.
Anyways, I've enjoyed learning that while there are certainly background and dialogue choices that lead to him being brasher/more abrasive and some decisions that cross a bit of a line for me personally (there are a couple suspects I could never accuse, even with solid evidence and I know it's possible to make him a more unsympathetic to the peasants), even some of the more "unsavory" sounding background options really don't lock you into that at all.
I'm specifically thinking about the Rapscallion background because that's what the streaming gang had me choose but I love that the description for it is like "Andreas does CRIME and gets in FIGHTS"
And then in practice a lot of the options it gives you are like
"I'm going to STEAL MONEY from a wealthy abbey to help the NICE PEASANT FAMILY I'm staying with PAY THEIR TAXES!!"
or "I'm going to THREATEN YOU because you are cruelly and unfairly accusing my good friend the SWEET ELDERLY MONK!!"
And when you pair that with certain actions that he takes regardless because they're baked into like the plot or cutscenes, or certain actions he won't take or people he won't agree with because the game never even gives you the option, plus some of the other most popular dialogue choices it's like
Yeah this man does feel a bit like the antithesis of an edgy protagonist
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