Siding with Irenicus Mod Idea

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I have made a mod request to Spellhold studios, but somehow they do not find it so reasonable, I am quite curious as to how you guys at sorcerer's would think about this. The original message I send is below. Please write your opinions about the resonability of this mod. (Storywise)

Message is below and the link to topic is:

http://forums.spellholdstudios.net/index.php?showtopic=28139

Hello and good days,

Before divulging into details and WHY I am requesting this mod on the roleplaying sense I want to explain the main idea of the mod with a single phrase:

SIDING WITH IRENICUS MOD


Now to why I am requesting such a mod and some outlines that I offer to you:

While playing the game you should have noticed that each dialogue of yours wiht Irenicus shows considerable amount of hatred and includes no way of cooperation in the ways of understanding eachother; whereas in many parts of the game there are dialogue options with some half-witted characteres that makes you get along very well indeed.

As myself I always pitied Irenicus and felt that he deserved his so called revenge and always wanted to help him for this revenge to become all the sweeter. Especially if you are an evil character this is a reasonable behaviour. I felt that Irenicus is just too unlucky choosing the Player Character (PC) to steal the soul which this PC happens to be one of the special bhaal children who can resist the taint within. He could have gotten the essence of the bhaal child who teleports when he is afraid or anyother one. Also throught the game Irenicus pities you as well, and sort of dislikes what he is doing, simply put you both share the same horrible fate. So why should you always battle eachother.

Now what is on my mind is:

After meeting with the Suldanesselar elves you happen to learn some horrible secrets about Irenicus and how many things have been kept secret from you, especially after talking to Ellesime you have a dialogue option giving some right to Irenicus. So what I think is the plot change can occur just before you kill Irenicus and you both go to hell. It will be nice to have that battle but when Irenicus is near death a diologue option can appear.

Player character can say that "Irenicus, stop this madness. I know and deeply understand what is going on with you etc", or you can think that irenicus has your soul and if you kill him who knows what happens to you? The rest I leave to the modders or if they request I can provide further dialogues but at the end of a series of dialogues you can offer Irenicus this option:

First of all you understand his hatred and anger and support his revenge but on the other hand you need your soul(essence) back. And you fear somewhat about what happens to your soul if you kill Irenicus. So you can offer help against the Suldanesselar elves, and find him another powerful soul he needs and for this request yours back, then he can suck tree of life dead if he likes.

Now what modding options this can bring.

1. Fights against the elves, fight against Rillifane, a fight against a bhaal child, some cutscene with Ellesime and Irenicus (maybe he kills ellesime or steals her soul waiting for a bhaalspawn soul or cages her or somthing it is up to your imagination).

2. After all this is done you can have Irenicus as an ally (now as an avatar of a deity which is a nice ally indeed am I wrong), or leave him be(he can be a useful aly after you become the lord of murder) etc. of course some are in the roleplaying sense.

3. Now what about hell trials. I though something like this, After Irenicus gives your essence back the taint of bhaal in you can resist causing you to go to hell. You can take the hell trials as usual but then fighting with Irenicus would be meaningless right? So who you should fight against. I myself suggest the Taint of Bhaal himself or bhaal himself whichever you like. Anyway Irenicus changes to slayer in hell and if you just replace his ragdoll and dialogues there to bhaal and make him turn to slayer you accomplish the aforementioned task right.


That is all that comes to my mind right now, I do not know much about infinity engine modding, I can only create simple items or so, if I had the time and resources I myself would make this and would not request from you. My request may seem selfish but on the other hand I think many people may like playing through this option.

So what do you think.


Thanks in advance

[ July 21, 2007, 17:08: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

I struggle to see it happening. Good (and indeed Neutral) characters are unlikely to even consider siding with Jon. They may wish to help him attain redemption, but he has shown that he is unwilling to pursue that route.

Why exactly would an Evil character wish to side with Jon? By the time you are in Hell, you are aware that you are more powerful than him, so why deal with him when you can simply destroy him? He is hardly going to be the most reliable ally- he's very intelligent and willing to go to great lengths to achieve his goals.

Besides it was ambition that caused his fall from grace in the first place. I can't see Irenicus ever happily being second to someone else. He wanted power in the first place and now he wants power and revenge. The first leads to the second. He's not going to give up your soul (a large source of power to him, evidently), not ever. Besides, you thwarted him at the Tree, he's going to desire revenge on you now as well as the elves.

I could go on, but there isn't all that much point. Hopefully this will help you to see why an alliance between Jon and the PC isn't going to happen like that.

 

You defeat Irenicus at Spellhold and then at the Tree of Life. I suggest the dialogue to occur after he is defeated (near death) at the Tree of Life.

He knows by then that you are more powerful then him. He dies very dramatically at the Tree of Life

"you...killed me"

And you feel something terrible might happen to your soul if he dies. So I do not see a reason why PC should make such an offer. Besides I myself always liked Jon besides him messing up with me and always hoped there would be a way for both of us.

For natural and good character you can have the option to skip the whole plot and kill him.

 

That would be an interesting mod, but I think it would be a pretty difficult mod to make, and you would have to have more dialogs and such thoughout the game to make it reasonable.

 

Well, it certainly has its problems. Good and neutral characters, as stated, won't have any of it. And Evil, well, evil characters think themselves first. Almost any evil character would either see him as a threat or simply want revenge.

To put it bluntly, while it might be intresting, it would also require much effort, and is aimed for a very small amount of characters. And even then, it just doesn't feel right.


By the by, there is already a similar mod, even though it mainly deals with resurrecting Irenicus and joining forces with him in ToB. Ascension Redemption IIRC.

 

Yeah, Redemption deals with (unsurprisingly enough) the possible redemption of Jon at the end of ToB. There is a longer version called the Longer Road where you can take him through the whole of ToB with you. Have you tried either of them, guguma?

 

I tried Redemption and the Longer Road is offered to me at the Spellhold Studios.

What I do not understand is that alignments are only guidelines rather than rules. So they are not to be strictly obeyed.

After this point

**Please never take my words personal I am only debating**

Consider you are playing BG2 with an evil character, so you should not go to De'Arneise Hold, never help Umar Hills, Trademeet and you should never care about Saradush because you can leave anywhere with your pocket plane thingy (which the game offers no such choice). You may do anything as long as it seems convenient. According to what you guys state you should not do romances if you are evil because you cannot love anybody and I can state many other points like this. But alignments does not work like that (maybe except Paladins and even they can fall too) Alignments are guidelines for your general attitude and they can shift in minor or even major proportions alignment does not state that if you are evil you cannot feel sympathy towards another person.

I always syphatized Irenicus because he just wants power and wants to live forever just as you do or any other mystical and magical character would like to. His punishment is horrible and even though it does not seem so all throught the game there are hints as to him feeling sorry for you. Even though in your dreams he educates you for his own sake; he speaks true. "Life is strength" "See how easily you fall to the might of flesh and bone" etc...

If you ask me He is the wisest character in the game and you too are wise. So it is a twist of fate that reduces the problem into the non-existence of you or him.

If you offer Redemption it means you see redemtion possible. So if we are being very strict why would Irenicus want to be redeemed by YOU? Who doomed him to non-existance, who was a nuisance to him, the very person who prevented him to become a deity.

Another thing I want to point out is that we are not the coders of the game and Infinity Engine is not unlucked to its full extent. (Although it would be very nice for Bioware to open source it, because they will not be using it again I assume.)
So we canot do everything. But one can use his own imagination, thats what people do when they are playing PnP right? So what if the end game movie and in some parts of TOB irenicus' death is mentioned. I would not care. I know we cannot modify every aspect of the game.

I am tired now so I may have not been speaking clearly. But I hope that I could make my point.

I am eagerly awaiting responses to this. The guys at Spellhold Studios* came up to be very unreasonable and unimaginative. I like discussing here much better.

*They have released the Planar Sphere Mod and I really loved the mod, especially cutscenes, but it is too imaginative a person discovers to control the fabric of existance and kills gods, there is a new definiton of magic and you fight magic itself etc... I could not understand how they find it to be reasonable and fitting to the game but not the irenicus mod I am suggesting.

 

Irenicus is a colossaly annoying creature, with Olympian self esteem,. He needs to see all his plans turn to ashes, to be swept away by another when he thought he was calling all the shots.

He has proved he has no shred of 'humanity' left in him (humanity is not the best choice of word, him having once been an elf, but what else would you use ?).

Jon, your final destiny is to be the one others walk over, to be the dust under my sandals, to have the devils of the Abyss chew on your soul for time unmeasurable. You're going down, son, hard, and you are not coming back on my watch....

Sarevok's return I can live with, but for Irenicus, no mercy.

Now there's a nice bit of passion for my 100th post !

 

Actually, Guguma, evil characters would still go to quests that involved helping something, simply because there's money involved. While it's true that alingments are guidelines, it won't affect the fact that good characters wouldn't have none of Siding with Irenicus.
As for Saradush, evil character won't necessarily do it because he wants to help, but because the other Bhaalspawns are near. Killing them all equals power, and evil characters are all for power. If some city is save while he attempts to become a god, it's not even a bonus, it just happened. Also, if the other Bhaalspawns are not taken care of, they will be taking care of the character. Fleeing would be futile.
As for the Pocket plane allowing you go anywhere, that doesn't seem to be true, even though it's debatable.

Actually, If Irenicus only wanted to live forever and gain power, it wouldn't be a biggie, even though a few Inevitables (creatures from Mechanicus, one of the Planes, that are created to uphold basic truths such as "Everyone dies sooner or later" and "bargains must be kept" and all that) might mind. But you really can't say he's simply doing what's normal when he brutally slays hundreds (surely has, even if it's not shown in the game directly), steals souls, and attempts to become a god on the expense of huge amounts of lives. No, that is irredeemably evil (I don't believe in good and evil in that way, but in game terms he's very, very evil).
It all started when he lusted for power in wrong ways and was thus banished, for wanting something he later on went so far to get as to commit all the acts mentioned above.

Let's think up a situation: You're walking outside, and suddenly, some guy (let's say he's somehow really influential and powerful) comes, kicks you in the face, kidnaps you, tortures you, generally makes your life a living hell, kidnaps your sister, tortures her also, makes you travel all the way trough the land, and when you find your sister, he tortures you more and steals your and your sisters kidneys (Closest thing I could come up with) because his own and his sisters own have been damaged beyond healing.
Would you side with that kind of a guy afterwards? Even if he did hint that you could be even more powerful and influential than him? Sure, it's not entirely the same, but it's not that far either.

Oh, and he sure feels pity for you, like you would feel for a crippled cockroach. And all that speech is to make your soul ready for harvest if I'm not mistaken, not to educate you. He wanted Bhaal's essence to awaken in the character, so that he might steal his soul. Not because he was going to help him. In fact, were it not for Imoen, the character would have died, right there and then, when Irenicus took the soul.
And after he got the souls, he saw character as nothing but an empty husk. So insignificant and worthless that he didn't see himself fit to lower to the level of killing him.

Oh, and concerning Redemption, I don't, in any way, think it's any more possible. I just pointed out that there's a mod concerning this already, more as a sidenote than anything else. It's just as impropable IMO.

Also, the simplest point, which I believe settles this: there's but one soul. It's not shown in gameplay, but the PC is really getting weaker and nearer death with each passing moment. Without his soul, he would die quickly. And Irenicus has the same problem.
Sure, there's the farfetched chance that they might find a new soul for Irenics, but as said, good PCs will have none of it (stealing soul is utmost evil - again in game terms. And no good character would side with him anyway) and evil ones, again, think themselves first. Is Irenicus going to let you have the soul? No. Is the PC going to let him have the soul? No.
One soul+two that need it to survive=one too many.

 

As a side note, the Irenicus figure you see in your dreams is not really Irenicus. Just like the Imoen figure in the dream is not really Imoen (Bhaal tells you in Spellhold "Your soul . . . it has taken form to guide you from within!").

 

I agree with guguma. Using imagination, justifications can be found for the plot (s)he suggests.

Making such a mod (with a high quality), however, will take so much time and effort as it requires changing too many things in the game's main plot. Even if such a mod is made, I doubt that many players will want to side with Jon. That's why trying to work on such a big and difficult project isn't probably worth the attempt in practice.