Things Kymon didn’t do:
Destroy an entire civilization because of some members of it torturing him and condemn every last man, woman and child in said civilization to either eternal torment or life as a horrid mutant.
Both choices are morally gray as all get out but for all Father Kymon’s failings he wants to do good. Uroboruuk is a spiteful arse.
He was so shitter shattered he damned INNOCENT BABIES to harpydom. Those harpies you clobber in the Broken Hills region? Yeah, innocent Arkovian babies, or their descendants if the nests are any indication. Uroboruuk was such a powertripping spiteful dick he said “Fuck you, and you, and you, and your children too” to ALL OF ARKOVIA. Now, I’m sure there were some bad apples in Arkovia, but ALL OF THEM?
Kymon’s a serial fuck-up but he’s not evil, he’s incompetent, and you can fix incompetence (or at least clean up after it, usually). More importantly, his intent seems to be good, if misled. The man’s not evil. I don’t really think I can say the same for Uroboruuk. Uroboruuk is bordering on comic-tier villainy and edgelordery, and the ODV might have some decent folks in it who sincerely believe they are doing good but anyone who morally rubberstamps what Uroboruuk did to Arkovia is either evil or being a huge edgelord.
Also, in defense of Anasteria: many humans opted to be WILLING hosts for Aetherials. Whether they knew what they were getting in the bargain or not, we can only surmise in most cases, but for all we know Anasteria is a BETTER person than she was unpossessed. In general the Aetherials actually aren’t IMMORAL, they’re AMORAL. They’re evil in that they have no qualms about doing bad shit, but they don’t seem to do bad shit just for the sake of doing bad shit (as the letter to Krieg shows, they find being a dick just to be a dick a waste of time and energy).
Well true. The Death/Kymon choice is morally gray at best in either direction.
The difference I saw is:
If you choose the necromancers you get what’s on the label.
If you choose Kymon, you’re being horribly misled and will likely not be pleased about it.
(Also, to be honest, Kymon’s Chosen come off as old-tyme fundamentalist religion, which rubs me personally the wrong way just at this time.)
But that’s not the same thing as the rest of the list. Poor categorizing on my part.
So if this achievement was a thing - rather than an amusing flight of fancy - choosing Kymon should probably come off the Douchebag Achievement requirements.
When Kymon made his big reveal to me my first thought was “Alright, you fucked up. How do we fix it?” The player character kills 3-story-tall otherworldly stone behemoths and avatars of gods for shiggles, Korvaak will go down in flames the moment the PC gets a crack at him.
I might be taking this a bit too seriously but I see so many people rip on Kymon and praise ODV like it was the easiest black-and-white choice in the world to make and I honestly don’t understand it. It’s Grim Dawn, everything kind of sucks and you are desperately trying to un-suck it a bit, everything’s gray (except Barrowholm, probably) and every major choice that isn’t “bury axe in bad guy’s forehead, repeat as necessary” should leave you wondering if it was really the best choice.
For the record, I don’t think sparing Direni is necessarily a douchebag move either, though it borders on silly to trust him after what he did.
Either you buy his sob story and it turns out to be lies, or you take a bribe from the triple agent who tried to kill everyone in Devil’s Crossing by thirst. There is no third reason not to kill him.
That makes you a putz in the first case, or a corrupt prick in the second. Direni stays.
Sparing Direni is actually the harsher punishment, as you can then kill him over and over again for more Cronley rep.
Until the day that getting the correct MI roll isn’t complete bullshit, using GD Stash is justice. Why do I need to kill the same monster 1000+ times for one item? What am I trying to prove? I know how to kill it already!
The thing about Direni is that he’s difficult to take seriously as a threat because the PC pretty much promptly unfucks everything he fucked up without really breaking too much of a sweat. There’s no timer on getting the well back online and pumping drinkable water, and you get it up and working again relatively quickly because the PC is a golden god/angel of mercy and death. Direni comes across as a chump, and I could actually see players deciding the chump wasn’t worth killing. Even when he’s juiced up in Cronley’s Hideout Direni never comes across as more than an opportunistic chump who keeps betting on the wrong horse.
I doubt Arkovia’s downfall can be blamed on Uroboruuk alone
Attak Seru and Ishtak are equally culpable, last I checked they were supposed to protect their people. But nope, “fuck’em!”
As for Uroboruuk’s curse, it was extreme but he was tortured again and again and again, his followers were hunted down mercilessly. Bad shit did happen to him so his punishment to Arkovia isn’t a fitting example of him being evil
Him sacrificing millions of souls to attain immortality is though
He is actually a power hungry mad man, but a “man” nonetheless. Korvaak is a deity, and a primordial at that. There’s a reason why Loghorrean had to be stopped before manifesting completely on cairn, these otherworldly threats aren’t even in the same ballpark as the ones we’re fighting.
Even the Aetherial High Command including Theo whom we have faced are nothing compared to other high tier aetherials of the aether hold and even those guys have something they fear. There are bigger threats out there so siding with Korvaak (whose allegiance is unknown atm) even if not evil is completely and utterly stupid, and remaining sided with him (when our PC is switching difficulties) is most certainly evil. I’d rather side with a power hungry tyrant whom we can most certainly kill thanks to us befriending an ascendant than a damn primordial whom we can’t scratch even if we tried to (last I checked Chthon never got killed so doubt Korvaak can either)
The only real evil faction is Barrowholm, whether they’re inherently evil or have been driven completely insane isn’t an issue as whatever they’re doing most certainly is. But siding with them isn’t much of a choice as their augments are very important to me
And about Harvey the Drifter, putting out a man who has been completely detached from reality out of his misery isn’t evil.
