We list games with at least passable "grey" major conflicts

I don't think I can let you get away with New Vegas, the writers had a pretty clear anti-legion bias aside from the occasional "muh safe roads"

Had they let Obsidian actually publish on time, the Legion would've been much more fleshed out than it currently is. Even in its unfinished state, there's still a shit tonne to discuss about the best resolution.

The original intention was for them to be gray, but much of the Legion was scrapped due to producers wanting a villain and time constraints. there is enough information to rationally support the Legion even though House is best.

The geopolitics and the Dragon war history are two completely different aspects of the lore entirely. Check out >>>/tes/ if you want to discuss it in more depth.

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Son, I am disappoint, where is your ambition?
The only other feasible ending is Legion with Caesar alive considering you would make most sense as his successor.

Nigga what? You can only do that if you're a dumbass, and probably a Holla Forumslack.

The dumb God that created the Empire and became the personification of what a Human can do and become.

This is what we in the industry refer to as a "s'wit".

might've as well started your thread with:

This is what we in the industry refer to as "bait".

Nice.

I've had a few quests in Bravely Second where I felt both bosses had good points and I felt kind of bad for beating the one I didn't pick.

Dumb god.
iirc the imperials didn't even actively enforce the law. That douche priest in that one town never shuts the fuck up about it.

>>>/reddit/

My n'wah

Fuck off.

Argonia/Blackmarsh is a treacherous shithole - nothing exists there for anyone but the Hist. See "The Argonian Account" series of books.

Still got scared and could only flex on the outskirts about how great he was.

Pray tell, what would he gain from marching his men into the middle of a swamp when he already controlled all of Tamriel and had Numidium at his disposal? Not to mention that he achieved CHIM, reformed Cyrodiil, and mantled Lorkhan upon his death. There is quite literally not a single other person or entity in all of TES that measures up to him, bar Lorkhan himself. Even Vivec didn't achieve any feats as grand as Talos did.

Dark Souls, you can either side with a guy that has manipulated you into killing a bunch of things so you can use their souls into burning yourself to artificially prolong the age of light, or with the dude indirectly responsible for destroying at least two cities (Oolacile and New Londo) by corrupting them with the dark and wants you to hasten the end of the age of light so that a new age may begin.

Is it better to prolong the shitty world so that everyone's shitty lives can go on for a bit longer, or to make their lives significantly more shitty but for a much shorter time so that hopefully life is better in the age of dark.

Of DaS2 is shit and invalidates that last part because "huh well there's just gonna be a new age of light for some reason because fuck the entire theme of entropy and allusion to heat death of the universe in the first game
:DDDD"

Also in what way do you think Dagoth Ur's actions could be arguably justified?

He wanted an independent Morrowind, which is understandable, as his greatest love was that for his people. Even when you finally confront him in Morrowind he greets you as one would an old friend, as he wants nothing more than to be finally reunited with Nerevar despite what he did to him. Sure, it would suck arse to get corprus, but Dagoth was criminally insane and genuinely saw it as a blessing rather than a curse.

That, and one could argue that his return is part of some divine retribution against the ALMSIVI much the same way that the Nerevarine prophecy is.

There are at least two shrines of Talos in the game where you get ambushed by hostile Thalmors for going to. One of them even has a bunch of fresh corpses at it. The Thalmor absolutely enforce it but they aren't everywhere at all times.

I don't see how the MC's actions are justified at all. He is 100% the bad guy even though his intentions were pure.

Oh boy it's this thread again

The only reason there appeared to be a legion bias in FNV is because you were only on the NCR side of the river. They intended to have a lot of legion territory in the game but that was cut when Bethesda pushed up the deadline and went back on their decision to do QA testing. From the NCR's point of view the legion should absolutely seem terrible, Rome was pretty cruel on the borders and was absolutely not above raiding villages in order to expand, but the point is that on the inside there is peace and order which the NCR lacks.

Fair enough, but I think a better option would be to unite the houses before fighting the empire and not using ash/corpus shit on natives. Of course he might never unite the houses but trying to do so and failing is better than slaughtering innocent natives just to Make Morrowind Great Again™

That's not any complaint to the writing though, his actions make perfect sense even though they aren't justified because the dude is fairly crazy.

That's the beauty of it.

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You know, some of these games force you to take sides when a 3rd option makes better sense, but they need to make you feel like having tough choices, so they force you to pick between two equally shitty solutions.

Do we list those too?

Post it anyway. Theoretical discussion is almost always better than the actual implementation of these things.

Isn't Talos worship one of the only things that is keeping the world together due to the high elves' insane desire to end it and rejoin the Aedra?

The Witcher 3

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Aye. This is almost incomprehensibly convoluted for someone who understands a lot about the lore, but I'll try to simplify it. This is a very, very, very simplified explanation of it, so I suggest you check out UESP for more: uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dawn_Era

Lorkhan tricked/convinced the other Aedra into sacrificing parts of themselves to create Nirn, but was later killed for it. Which of the two scenarios actually occurred is perhaps the biggest difference between the Aldmeri and the human creation myths, but that's not important right now. What is it important is that Lorkhan was later killed for this, his heart ripped from his body and cast across Tamriel on an arrow from Auriel's bow, spilling his blood across the land until it finally landed in Vvardenfell, forming Red Mountain and helping stabilise creation as a whole. Because of this, and his involvement in creating Nirn, he and especially his heart have an intrinsic connection with creation. His goal in creating this new world, this "Arena" as it were, was so that lesser spirits could self-reflect and come to surpass even the spirits they originally descended from. Any beings which come to further this goal, such as the Heroes of the games, are considered Shezzarines (based on the Cyrodiilic version of Lorkhan, Shezzar), and Talos is the strongest of them, coming to entirely mantle Lorkhan and take his role as the god of men. The reason the Thalmor hate Talos so much is because they see Lorkhan's creation of Nirn as an unjust sundering of the Altmer's spirits from immortality, and Talos directly reaffirms this as a result of being Lorkhan's "replacement". There's also a lot to be said of the "Towers" which reaffirm creation much the same way as Lorkhan's heart does. In each of the main games one tower is speculated to have been "switched off", and resulting in a weakening of Convention and the Thalmor being one step closer to their goal. The TES wiki has a decent page on this, but the UESP is vastly more detailed (and accurate) when it comes to specifics. Be sure to check out the giant lore sticky on >>>/tes/ if you want to know more, and feel free to ask questions!

TL;DR - Pics related

Sure. I don't see the issue.

Not so much in the games themselves, but for the underlying lore and expanded universe.

The least shitty/most "good guy" faction is still a totalitarian military state that regularly abuses it's authority and refuses to allow the outer colonies to secede for no real good reason.

What's there to discuss? The Precursors are dicks for making the Flood, the Forerunners are retarded for going to war with the ancient humans, the Prophets are criminally misinformed, and the series ended at Reach.

Ah, there's the dumb bullshit shitposting I was talking about.

Are they, though? People act as if that the forerunner trilogy means that the flood is just actually evil vs. them just doing what comes naturally to them, but

This line from the primordial clearly shows that yeah, the flood is intended to bring suffering and agony to all living things and spacetime itself, but it also notes at the end "Unity again, and wisdom". To tie it back into bungie era lore, the Gravemind also asks himself if he "gives life, or takes it" and says "Defeat is simply the addition of time to a sentence I never deserved… but you imposed.". Depending on how you intrpet all of that, it could be taken to mean that while the flood is intended to cause pain while it's being fought off, it's also meant to unify all life in a sort of utopia where every intelligence is connected once it succeeds.

Again, though, are they really? Truth clearly knew more then he let on. There's all that stuff with the slipspace crystal from First Strike that hasn't come up again, and one of the Prophets in I think Evolutions mentions how it was known to some of them that the Halo Array didn't actually start the great journey. That hasn't come up again, but I think there's plenty of reasons why it could.

Well, all the stuff I just mentioned, for one. The forerunner triology removes a lot of mystery, yeah, but the Precursors themselves are still pretty vague and a lot of the stuff in those novels can be intypreted multiple ways. There's still a ton of open plot points from the bungie books, and contrary to what your "the series ended at reach" statemenrt says, there's been a number of other good novels since then that have stuff worth disscusing, Broken Circle, Last Light, and Shadow of Intent in particular. There's also all the shit with Halo Wars 2 which is likely gonna follow up where Hunters in the Dark left off, which was a decent.

Maybe if were's lucky Halo 6's story will actually be good; since, again, contrary to the "it ended at reach" thing, Halo 5's MP was great and they learned from Halo 4's MP issues.

I wouldn't say this is gray, considering his actions when he did win in Ocarina of Time. He didn't do shit for the Gerudo, all he did was render Hyrule a complete decadent wasteland simply for the sake of his own sadism.

"muh wind" is a bullshit argument. It makes him look more sympathetic, sure, but he doesn't fucking mean it in the slightest and players had already seen the proof.

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It'd be a massive loss of men for absolutely nothing at all. The Empire doesn't capture slaves, only God-tier House Dres does.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and FO:NV have a couple of factions developed enough to be grey.

You want my autism on Halo 4 then? Fine, have it your way. I don't even need to go over how fucking bad the gameplay is to make my point.

The Spartan IV's are little more than regular soldiers in special combat armour, running contrary to the entire point of the previous generations of Spartans. The name Spartan doesn't even fit them - they're not trained from a young age, nor are they sacrificing anything for their service. Also, the new Spartan armour looks like shit, and they even ruined the look of Mjolnir MK.VI with the impossible explanation that Cortana changed John's armour while he was sleeping. Would it really have been that hard to make it so he got his new armour after meeting up with the Infinity? The Spartans shouldn't look like fucking tanks anyway - they're supposed to be inhumanly nimble as well as strong.

The reception that the Chief receives on coming back in contact with humanity after all those years is pathetic. Sarah Palmer is cancer personified and her shitty backhand remark about John's height is the closest that the game goes to ever acknowledging that the saviour of the fucking Milky Way just returned after being presumed dead, or should I say M.I.A. He may as well have been just another grunt coming back from the pisser.

The entire narrative with the Didact is b-tier scifi movie schlock that reads like something straight out of Star Wars fan fiction. It's like every shitty big-bad-villain trope rolled into one character so that 343 could really emphasise "oh he's reaaaally strong and scary and evil and stuff", instead of giving him any layers of complexity and some proper motivations beyond "grrrr my people are dead because we're retards and picked the wrong fight so I'm going to take it out on these space-chimps."

Captain Del Rio is literally just the character archetype of the Turian councilor from Mass Effect - the asshole authority figure who doesn't care if you've saved the universe twice, you're still beneath him and unworthy of trust. Another shitty cliche, wonderful.

The Librarian "advancing" the Chief's evolution or whatever the fuck they called it is completely ludicrous. Firstly, that's a fucking HUUUUGE deus-ex-machina and comes completely out of left field without any prior warning; it's objectively terrible writing no matter which way you spin it. Secondly, you're telling me that a single Forerunner woman was able to plan out the existence of one particular super soldier who would happen to be fighting against her once-slumbering-now-rampaging husband after he got access to the Composer, and that she was banking on meeting him so she could perform her previously unheard of space-magic on him? Really? I wouldn't expect this shit from DeviantArt, let alone a subsidiary of Microsoft.

The fact that the story of the game is told almost exclusively through Waypoint terminals instead of through the actual fucking game just shows that 343 is a bunch of talentless hacks and can't write an interesting plot to save their lives. The terminals should be supplementary, not mandatory to understanding the game.

The whole effort to "humanise" John completely ruins the entire point of the main trilogy, as well as the books, in establishing him as little more than a killing machine. The fact that humanity's last hope was in the hands of an emotionless killer, a political assasin, stolen as a child and forced to undergo horrific procedures so that he would become the ultimate soldier, is an entire fucking plot point in itself. And Halo 4 ruined it. I saw the whole "man or machine" diatribe at the end coming from a mile away, and it was just as terrible as every other one of the overused cliches that Halo 4's story consisted of.

I'm done with having franchises that I enjoy be raped for shekels. If you seriously even acknowledge the existence of 343's contributions to the Halo franchise you should go suck Frank's dick and then kill yourself for being a good goy.

user, i'm not saying Halo 4 has a good story. I agree it's story is complete shit, though I take more issue with how poorly cortana's rampancy is shown and displayed as well as personality changes to her and john then with most of the stuff you mentioned.

What I was complaing about in terms of shitposting is the broader "everything after reach/everything 343 makes is shit or fanfaction" stuff. That's complete bullshit.

There's plenty of Halo media since reach that 343 has made that has been good. Evolutions, The forerunner triology, broken circle, last light, hunters in the dark, shadow of intent, and saints testimony are all at least in the same league as fall of reach if not better.

Also, Halo 5's MP is good even if the story and campaign are still ehh at best

There's plenty of stuff 343 has done that's worth bitching about, but bitch about that stuff in particular rather then everything, and give the other stuff a chance or at least let other people fucking discuss it if they want to.

You are misunderstanding this scene. She didn't advance his evolution, she just activated an immunity to the composer. He's not the choosen one, the specifics of the S2 program or MJOLNIR weren't planned out. It's just a Geas, similar to the one where all humans instinctually picture the Librarian as a mother figure as described in the forerunner books.

Halo 4's story is still shit overall, but that scene in particularly is more poorly explained rather then actually terrible

What is it they say about a fool and his money, again?

Nigga I didn't say you should go out and buy them,. I just said they are good. After halo 4, I don't blame you for not trusting them. Hell, after Halo 4, nightfall, and the Travis books, I didn't buy the newer ones: I pirated Broken Circle, I only bought it and read the other new ones after it turned out Broken Circle was great.

That said, you've read the forerunner books, what did you think of them? I thought they were very well written and they are among my favorite halo novels but I get why a lot of people don't like them since they ruin so much of the mystery.

I prefer it when my mysterious ancient races in fiction actually remain mysterious and ancient, so you're spot on with the second statement. It's been a while since I've gone through any Halo media, so I honestly don't remember enough to go off of.

Sorry mate.

The only argument for the empire is that they might stand a better chance against the Thalmor than the Stormcloaks but i'd rather take my chances with the ones willing to fight for their freedom. They did a decent job of making a fairly grey conflict though.

It ended at Reach. I hear the forerunner books are alright but I hate the idea of taking away the forerunners mystery instead of just leaving them as a mysterious ancient race. 3 had an alright conclusion for me so I just lost interest since everything else i've seen set after it has been so shit in terms of both story and gameplay.

I did really like how the human vs covenant conflict was handled in the actual series though. The Halo universe in general was one of my favourite video game settings because it was a well made and interesting setting.

I suggest you read and to get my opinion on what you said here. As with the other guy, I recommend you at least give broken circle a pirate, and if you like that, also trying Last light and Shadow of intent at least..

Broken Circle doesn't have anything to do with forerunner era lore either so you wouldn't have to worry about ruining the mystery; BC is about the formation of the covenant and the great schism/covenant civil war.

Honestly i've just given up on Halo. I was happy enough with how it concluded at 3 so i'm probably just going to leave it at that and not read anymore about it since it will just make me sad it's currently being run into the ground.

Suit yourself but you are missing out on plenty of things just as good as bungie era lore; "being run into the ground" just isn't accurate.

Even lore aside and just talking gameplay Halo 5 is actually great mechanically.

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Let everyone live happily
or
Destroy everything and move on to the next game knowing you've seen all the content the game has to offer

Not gonna post the game because it might derail the thread.

Hi user! I just heard Undertale!

I think you mean
genesis

I'm more of a Gentle Giant guy, actually.

but fam
Yes is best

plebs detected
none of your meme bands is good enough for (300) let alone (222)

we
did
it
reddit

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I wouldn't say so, how are they portrayed as any worse than the NCR? The true side of NCR is shown in the game many times. Insane laws and bureaucracy taken to the extreme, executions for minor things, consumption of alcohol is illegal. They're fucking gommies.

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did you cap the user who got baited for over an entire day nonstop?

For the record, I was pointing to the conflict between the Houses in Morrowind when I brought up the game.

Is it cheating to bring up EU4, CK2 and the like?

At that point, the dude earned his genocide.

You're wrong though. The true grey in Morrowind is found in the religious factions. The Houses are in subjection to the Temple or the Empire, mere tools for the grand spiritual warfare between the weakening Tribunal Temple, the sparse Ashlander Tribes, House Dagoth, and the Empire's Imperial Cult. Honestly, there should have been multiple choices to how the main quest ends. I would've loved restoring Vvardenfell and ultimately all Resdayn with Dagoth Ur, or merging the native Dunmer religions of the Ashlanders and the Tribunal Temple with the Imperial Cult. Bethesda couldn't do that though, they wanted sequels.

I wouldn't say that.

is that lost?

Which?

Skyrim's conflict as portrayed in-game isn't grey it's two shades of black. You can pick which shallow, unrealistic and frankly impractical side to back but that doesn't even come out to the lesser of two evils. Perhaps a third option of 'fuck both sides' similar to NV would have helped but I doubt it.

A well written grey conflict gets you to side with - and defend the actions of - a certain group out of conviction. Skyrim is babby's first attempt to write grey characters.