Is justice served? (End SPOILERS)

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First of all, hello everyone. It's been a while. Been busy and I have a kid on the way.

How are you all doing?


Now, for my question.
I played through PS:T once again a couple of days ago and I started wondering whether there is justice in The Nameless One being sent to fight in the Blood War in the end.
The first incarnation committed horrible crimes, certainly, but the current incarnation (the player) is, from a certain point of view, innocent, assuming he upholds a somewhat good alignment, and even if he is evil, he is still innocent of his original crimes.
He is the same person, and yet he isn't.
He committed great evils, and yet he didn't.

On one hand he deserves to be punished for the multitude of crimes he once committed, but on the other hand it hardly seems just that he is punished for the crimes of another person.

(For the sake of argument I only counted the original incarnation and the current incarnation, as the hundreds of other incarnations have been all over the alignment spectrum)

Do you think justice is served in the end?

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

The personalities of all past incarnations are present in the current incarnation.

 

I know, but at the most they make themselves felt by sparking memories at key moments.
I just think it is a little harsh that he must suffer the Blood War for crimes committed centuries ago by a former personality.

Of course, after merging with his previous incarnations and the Transcendent One, one could say that he is the "original" TNO.
Still, I'd say he has suffered more than a little bit over the centuries.
Personally, I think that "Justice" is served by TNO being sent to the Lower Planes, but justice without mercy is not perfect justice, and I feel he should have been let off the hook, so to speak, considering what he's been through.
Still, I just love his grim acceptance as he picks up the mace in the ending FMV with Ravel's "What can change the nature of a man?" echoing in his mind.

Man, I love this game.

 

Don't forget that the later incarnations only exist because the original TNO looked for a cheap way out, they don't really exist on their own right, their sole purpose is to atone for the crimes of their predecessor - with the irony being that they were not aware of their purpose and some of them added even more crimes to the bill.
We never learn what the original crimes were and I think it was a deliberate choice by the designers, otherwise people would start arguing that this or that punishment should have been enough for that particular crime. This way the question remains an abstract one: can you atone for your sins by being nice for a while ? ( at least that's how I understood it) and the answer seems to be : nope, it doesn't work like that.
The last incarnation only accepts what the original tried to avoid. Is it fair? Go ask the victims.

 

Indeed, the last incarnation is the one to accept the punishment, and it is, I think, the most fitting end to the tale.
Ultimately he's become a better person by his ordeal and doesn't try to escape his punishment as he once did.


Still, though, I can't help feeling bad for TNO for being sent to the Lower Planes for crimes that he did not commit. (At least he doesn't remember them.)

 

Having only read the wiki entry on the game, I'm not sure I grasp the entirety of the story.

But, as I see it, he committed horrible crimes. Then he attempted to evade his rightful punishment. Had he accepted that he had sinned, and then tried to right his wrongs, were I a god/gods, I would have viewed him favourably.

Instead, he used a risky spell that put other peoples lives in danger, caused his other incarnations to suffer needlessley, all because he didnt want to take responsibility for what he had done. Sure he suffered during all those incarnations, but in a way, thats what he deserved - he committed heinous acts and then tried to escape his punishment. eventually, he has to realize that sometimes you have to take responsibility for what you have done. had he done that in the first place, he probably still would have ended up fighting in the blood war, but maybe without going through so much in between.

 

Even before merging with the Transcendent One TNO can already remember almost all the horrible stuff he's done in previous incarnations, by reading between the lines when talking to the Good Incarnation and then using the Bronze Sphere. And when previous memories come back to him the game does hint that they're more than just stirrings of another personality - they ARE TNO's own memories as well. Remember how strongly the current incarnation reacts when he uses Deionarra's stone in the private sensorium. He knows that Practical is lying to Deionarra, and he cries for her, because he IS the Practical incarnation as well.

I would hardly call it "put other people's lives in danger". Every time TNO dies (and he has done so thousands of times according to the game) someone nearby dies and becomes a shadow. This is NOT a small crime that can be forgiven by just him suffering until he reunites with the Transcendent One. Also, during the course of the game, even as he is trying to put an end to his curse, the current incarnation dies several times - therefore adding to the ever-growing number of people who have died and become shadows.

Even disregarding the first and last incarnations, there's the rather long list of horrible stuff that "in-between" incarnations have done. Paranoid has killed a rather large number of people, most of them for no reason other than him being mad. Practical has caused the deaths of another large number, including Deionarra, Xachariah and Vhailor (and I'm not counting his lies to Dak'kon and the way he treated Morte). Other incarnations are also mentioned as having caused pretty horrid stuff to happen, even if sometimes very indirectly. Yemeth (by general consensus on the BoM) trained Ignus, thereby indirectly causing hundreds of people to die and a large portion of the Hive to become a wasteland (the Alley of Dangerous Angles).

Each of these by itself is a very serious crime. Taken together... You could argue that the very fact TNO ultimately accepts to return to the Blood War to atone for his crimes might be such a trremendously good and selfless act (especially added to others like redeeming Trias) that it can balance out all the above nastiness. However that still leaves the original evil of the first incarnation - and his act that led to this whole mess in the first place. It is only fitting, then, that the fate deferred for so many centuries would finally catch up to TNO.

 

Jesper:

Only because he attempted to cheat death, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of innocents in his place. The Nameless One forgot his crimes because of his own cowardice, not due to some external factors outside of his control.

 

If you did not feel sorry for him, he would have been justified to go down there now wouldn't he ? So either he goes down and you feel sorry for him, or he tries to not to, and you won't feel sorry for him anylonger. Interesting isn't it ?

 

Well, he does deserve it, but I wouldn't feel bad for him if he tried to avoid his fate again. (Though I probably would have were I in his shoes!)


By the way, I have never finished with an evil alignment, does the dialogue in the Fortress change to reflect this? Most of it seems geared towards a good character.

 

Ah, okay. I should try that sometime. Thanks.

 

I thought TNO going off the fight in the blood wars was quite a fitting end (especially if you were able to raise your companions and got their inputs). That TNO would indeed pay for his sins, commited in all his incarnations and as the Transendant One, did seem like justice to me and added to the overall feel of the game.

 

One thing you have to remember is that the way The Nameless One had these reincarnations was the shadows slaying someone else in his place. Stealing another's life to avoid one's own (well-earned?) torment is by definition evil; so no matter what the incarnations did, there was innocent blood shed countless times in his name... not something one can simply wash away.

 

One interesting point is that in the new 4th Edition, the Blood War is supposedly over. So would that mean TNO's punishment is over? It would be nice to think so.

 

Background changing aspects like these, is the one thing I so far dislike with the new 4th edition (though I actually like the sound of the actual game mechanics i've heard so far).

With the removal of the entire wheel system, entire planescape and thus also torment is invalidated. It makes the two editions incompatible in settings, thus it can not really be compared :-/

I am at least going to have to house rule in the entire wheel system, and entire planescape back into it when using 4th. It's part of what I enjoy the most with D&D.

 

I don't play D&D other than computer games but that does sound daft, changing lore to that extent. I guess groups of people adapt the game to their own liking anyway.

 

Supposedly only 10 years in the DnD world had passed between 2nd edition (which is what this game was based on) and 3rd edition, so only maybe 20 years altogether of punishment for an eternity of crimes is definitely a no. I can't believe they got rid of the planescape setting in the lore though, that's completely ridiculous. Are we just supposed so assume that the game just never happened in official dnd lore? How are they going to explain Zhjaeve in NWN2 mentioning Dak'kon and the Pronouncement of Two Deaths as One?

 

4th Edition is the one that got rid of the Planescape setting as it stood in both 2nd and 3rd Edition.

4th Edition jumped forward about 100 years as well, but then again apparently TNO was responsible for the Planes starting to die so maybe 4th ed is really all his fault