SPOILERS- So Alfira came and visited my camp during my DU playthrough and I chased her off, as I don’t really care for the character (RPing as a no-nonsense war cleric, get that hippie music outta my camp). Somehow, sending Alfira away from my camp instead brought her to my camp and led to her dying while I was asleep, with zero input from me as the player. The sequence straight up doesn’t even make sense with how much they railroaded her death into the DU storyline; I send her away hours ago, I wake up to her dead and her blood on me, and every one of my companions blames me despite me sending her away fucking hours ago. I didn’t even believe that I killed her until my internal dialogue options all confessed to her death. I feel these sorts of events that completely remove agency from the player have no place in an rpg. I mean, they give you a completely meaningless choice in that instance (happily let her stay, angrily let her stay, or force her to leave but actually she stays). If all of my choices lead to railroaded outcomes, just don’t give me dialogue options at that point. I have no desire to play DU if I’m just going to be forced into options that I didn’t choose. Not to mention, this death completely locks you out her questline and unique gear. Come on, Larian, if you are going to force a death on the player then don’t make that character a fucking quest giver. At the absolute least, there should be a DC for this shit happening. Shit, I kinda don’t even want to start a new game either because I don’t want to have to go through the 15 or so hours of early game that I just did.
The Dark Urge is an origin character just like the others, part of their backstory is going to be fixed just like Astarion or Gale or any of the others. If you want full customisation of how you want to play your character then play an evil custom character. I don’t see any issue with how Larian handled this, at it’s how they expose The Dark Urges backstory to you.
I’m not talking about his backstory. I’m talking about his story within the game. Larian provides you with a choice of multiple speech options in this situation, including the option to send Alfira away. If you choose that option, the game essentially decides to ignore your choice and railroad this death into the story in a way that doesn’t make sense. Personally, I play an RPG to make choices within a story. If the game then discards those choices, why give them in the first place?
Sounds like you don’t like the concept of the Dark Urge. The Dark Urge is literally about your character’s actions being out of their control. Just play a custom character.
Yea this seems like a complaint that the Dark Urge is an actually sometimes-difficult mechanic and not just some edgelord roleplay.
isnt the whole deal with this dark urge that you have no agency about it?
Fun fact: There is a way to save Alfira.
Once you meet the conditions for her to show up in your camp (usually when you trigger the auto-save after crossing the bridge between the Grove and Blighted Village), head back to the grove before Alfira shows up at camp, and knock her out by using a melee attack while the non-lethal passive toggle is enabled. If you can, do it in a single attack so you don’t lose approval or get the guards summoned. If she’s unable to make it to camp, there’s a rather amusing replacement that shows up instead to be slaughtered by the Durge. The replacement normally shows up if Alfira is dead, but by knocking her out, she’s fine and you can do Alfira’s later quests.
The Replacement
Quill Grootslang is a silver dragonborn bard, and her throat singing is amazing. She’s even more over the top than Alfira, in a horror movie this-character-is-so-going-to-die sort of way. Never shows up anywhere else, so no missed content with her.
That’s amazing. Durge is also great and I wish I had named mine that.
Shit… I didn’t even get that far with her. I made her commit suicide by breaking her lute the first time I met her.
Holy shit, I didn’t even realize that was possible
Just to clarify: It’s only implied. You break her shit, she gets mad, and then moves to the edge of the nearby cliff to cry. Later on, she was just gone from the game. I can only assume she jumped sometime between then and when we attacked the druids, cuz she wasn’t among those that died there.
You monster
I am but a humble servant of Cyric, sowing seeds of discord across the land.
🤣
I played through the game as a good-aligned Dark Urge trying to resist the urges and thought the experience overall was great. As far as I remember the Alfira incident is the only time where you have no agency, and it’s done that way to set the tone of the story. While heavy on shock-value, I felt it worked and was effective.
From that point on, you’ll have full control over whether to succumb to your urges or try to resist them (though there are consequences for both and resisting usually had dice tolls involved).
