I know this genre is light on plot and the plot is usually just an excuse for you to go out and spam AOE skills that wipe out screen fulls of monsters for the sweet, sweet, loot but the way Forgotten Gods is setup is quite strange to me.
So the Emissary shows up and asks you to visit the conclave of the three and help them out and…the thing is, there is no compelling reason for the PC to do it…since it becomes obvious very quickly that this is an internal dispute between a bunch of gods that got greedy X years ago and another god that wants revenge on them. Theres an entire continent full of Aetherials and Demons for you to save the world from and here you are, helping some greedy gods to clean up their mess. Of course they tell you that you need to save the world from Korvaak, but the source of that is obviously biased.
The witch gods are not remotely the “good guys”. Solael and Bysmiel were power hungry humans who murdered their way to godhood X years ago, and all three of them were responsible for destroying a prosperous empire who were just minding their own business (something that Dreeg either failed to forsee, or didnt care about). And after murdering their way to godhood, they achieved nothing, they did not usher in a new era of prosperity, they built no empire to replace the one they destroyed, and eventually their own followers became a tiny group of outcasts hiding from Erulan authorities…and they couldn’t even be bothered to protect them from persecution either, despite the fact that Erulan had no gods on their side. They just sit in their pocket realm scheming against each other and occasionally killing any mages who come close to harnessing the power of the eldricth realm, because they dont want to share.
And despite helping them to clean up their mess, they still have no intention of lifting a finger to save the world while Korvaak was at least willing to fight the aetherials and cthonians. Given that the world was clearly doing fine when Korvaak was around, and Korvaak’s empire wasn’t trying to conquer the world or anything (as evidenced by the fact that scholars from other lands had never even heard of Korvaak and were able to visit freely), I would pick Korvaak over the witch gods any day.
The expansion should have at least let you chose between both sides IMHO. So instead of starting in the Conclave, you start in the Tomb of the Eldritch Sun and fight your way south. Or just make you side with Korvaak from the beginning since it would better lead into the next step of the plot → defeating the aetherials and cthonians. At the end of the day, helping the witch gods doesnt help the world since they wont lift a finger to do a thing about them.
I think this is intentional setup. The fact that the Witch Gods are just ascendants that got chubby on all that Korvaak juice is something that we only fully discover once we’re in the Tomb of the Eldritch Sun. By that point we’ve not only gutted the majority of Korvaak’s cult (so that even if he is the good guy, he’s gonna have to go at it by himself rather than have an army pushing his agenda), we’ve also unsealed his tomb. Now, it’s possible sealing the tomb was intended only so that Dravis can’t enter, but it’s also possible that nobody could leave, including Korvaak. This is partly proven by the Steward only busting out the gate once Uro unseals it, not before. It’s kinda too late at that point to switch sides when we find out we’re doing the bad guys’ dirty work. We’ve already freed the asshole and if we stop there he’s gonna be free to stomp all over humanity to his heart’s content, which he very well might.
The fact that Korvaak was not only kept alive by the Witch Gods but was chained to their thrones (and his death breaks those thrones) I think means that the Witch Gods weren’t just keeping him prisoner for the funzies, but they were actively drawing power off of him. With his death, the Witch Gods could potentially be significantly depowered. This, I think, is intended as a setup for GD2 or whatever other continuation of the storyline there is. We know from the Shattered Realm that at some point, another world rebelled against its creator god and slew it (or did it just leave? can’t remember). With the world left unprotected, Yugol pulled out a niiiice big straw and just slurped that world up. Cairn is kinda in a similar situation. Empyrion is gone, we’ve no knowledge of the status of other protector gods like Vire or Menhir. Mog is not even a god and he’s too busy ranting about how fucked we all are and is just prepping the Rovers for an apocalypse. We’ve just killed a primordial and potentially depowered the three gods that have taken that primordial’s place. As far as we know Cairn is unprotected. Nobody stepped in when the Aetherials invaded and the celestial power structure is now even shakier than it was during the Grim Dawn. It’s just the perfect opening for Cairn to become another Shattered Realm munched on by Yugol. He already has a pinky in Cairn thanks to Morgoneth, he probably isn’t too far off from just coming over for a snack and the player has had a part in making that possible. As much as the Witch Gods may be selfish, power hungry assholes, they do seem to need worshippers. If Yugol came to devour Cairn they might have done at least a semblance of something to help. Who knows if they can now.
As an aside, it’s not like Korvaak was really a nice guy anyway. Just working off of what he did to Horran, he was a right ol’ cunt too. It’s likely his war against the Witch Gods would spill over to Cairn once he was free and he’s not the kind of guy to worry too much about collateral damage. So stopping him and maintaining the status quo still seems like the better choice from the player character’s perspective, at least in the short-term (since it’s questionable how much the player character knows about Yugol at that point, the key lore about him is found in SR).
Korvaak is not dead, just banished and stripped of all gained power from Kymon’s Chosen. The Emissary tells us so.
Rebelled, yes, but their patron god simply left the world after being denied. Like “So, you do not need my blessings, protection etc? Fine, I leave you to yourselves, bye”. And then Yugol came .
No deity is a nice guy, in my opinion. Even Kymon named him “the bane of Cairn”.
“forced dev design aside”
to me it’s more like, the Cults are the only ones that actually approach us
Korvaak is clearly not “interested” in us, judging by Kymon’s dialogue when we face him, so maybe Korvaak considers us too influenced by X to be able to join his side, or too hard to persuade (also messenger interaction in Kymon bastion) - either way we’ve been deemed not worthy to begin to join.
Like how Ch’thon’s forces might not be approach us because we’ve been “influenced”/taintend by an aetherial, so don’t even wanna begin to attempt extend an offer of joining up, since we’ve already “mingled” with their enemy.
and ofc we have our very doe eyed summer child nature of being so willing to immediately jump on anything that seems like it might be the “cause of good” →
combined with the Three getting their claws in us really really quick, and immediately sends the Emissary after us once we’ve been revealed to be slightly potential in power, thus potentially useful to them, as soon as the Korvaak threat is confirmed.
So even “taint”/korvaak not wanting us aside, it could simply come down to who reached out first, combined with our nature to be so willing to assist something that appears “good”/fighting baddies, so we jump on the bandwagon right away
Motivations/justifications aside (I’ll let you guys discuss that), this is not a CRPG at the end of the day. Creating multiple endings and story paths is major undertaking, not to mention it completely falls apart as soon as you introduce MP.
You can just look at all the MP conflicts and confusion that resulted from the branching choices of ODV vs KC and Barrowholm, and that’s on a much smaller scale than an entire storyline. Just imagine what an outright mess it would be if half the party needed to kill Korvaak and the other had him as a dialogue NPC.
The timeline in Grim Dawn assumes that your character is out to save humanity, by whatever means are presented to them. The alternative is just not going to work for an ARPG.
Don’t get me wrong. Having branching storylines and good and bad endings would be awesome for a setting like Grim Dawn; but we would have to make a CRPG, not an ARPG.
(Honestly, it could be a really interesting setup within the existing world with its gods, empires, history … and some really major development of the character fitting to the scenario could be possible, too [looking at Ulgrim, Kymon or Uroboruuk])
I sure hope it’s not RTwP because it’s one of the worst gameplay styles to me. If you are gonna have a pause feature to micromanage everything just make it turn based at that point.
Plus Crate could have some gruesome kill animations befitting the setting which would hardly be seen in RTwP because that gameplay style is a complete chaotic mess.
And to be more on topic. i actually don’t mind not being able to join Korvaak because he’s arguably the best fight in the game (and hilarious in high SR).
I think it is currently not the time for this “holy war”-like discussion but preferences differ and each of the two principles to manage combat has its own pro and cons
exactly. I’m currently playing Pathfinder Kingmaker and oh boy am I grateful for the turn-based combat mode that was patched in at some point. The original RTwP mode is unplayable for me.
I wouldn’t mind a CRPG (I assume the C is for classic) in the GD universe that is more about the story and the lore, I think the game world has enough to offer in that regard. But if such a game is made by Crate, I’d hope it won’t take any resources off the full-fledged ARPG that is gonna be GD2.
Korvaak just does not care if Cairn and its inhabitants perish during his epic war, destructing planets is not his main goal. This is what Kymon said: “Turn back now, hide and hope you will survive”.
.
