If you like skipping to the end of books read on. You've been warned...






So I just beat the game and agree the story is every bit as good as touted. I was very disappointed with the combat but then that wasn't the aim of the game it seems. I was thinking however once I was done that a small hole was left in me in terms of the story ending. I don't remember reading specifically why his mortality was split from his soul to begin with. Why was it split?

I can hazard a guess which follows. He was powerful at one point and didn't want to die. So he figured out a way to remove his mortality from himself to ensure his immortality. Along the way however he figured out that he lost his mortality and was slowly loosing his mind due to side effects every time he did "die". Nameless one then sets off to find his mortality and figure out his existence since he's slowly forgetting. His mortatlity gained some sort of awareness of his immortal half and thus started trying to prevent the immortal from finding the mortal and you have the game plot from there. Sound right? I never did get a clear explaination of the seperation. It's just what I can come up with from all the dialogue I read.

It was Ravel who did it, probably because she loves him and ... I'm not sure now. She either didn't want him to die, or he asked her to do it.

I'm pretty sure he asked for it, think that was the reason he went to Ravel in the first place

Must... Not... Take out of... Context...

IIRC you'll get the final pieces of the puzzle if you choose the right conversation paths when talking with the Good Incarnation. If you've got a save there, I suggest you go check it out, otherwise look down a few lines. Not sure if you need a certain amount of WIS or INT for it; try asking why there are only three of you, and then when you get back to the "main" level of the dialogue tree there should be another option where the first question was.



(Spoilers)


The reason he wanted to become immortal was because he, during his "first" life, committed an act so atrocious it doomed him to fight in the Blood War for all eternity once he died. Once he learned this, he *knew* himself as he had not *known* himself before, and he *knew* regret. *Knowing* regret, he *knew* one lifetime would not be enough to atone for his great crimes, and thus he sought out Ravel, one who both knew much and *knew* much, in the hopes that she could grant him more time. *Cough*.
What the atrocity was, we never learn, but it was great enough that it is unlikely he could ever have atoned for it, even had Ravel's spell worked as it should have. Whatever crimes or charities performed by the various Incarnations more or less balanced each other out, and even if they had not, even the greatest acts were drops in the ocean compared to the original crime.

That makes the ultimate fact that he goes there willingly (in the good ending), all the more moving, he gets what he deserves and would be the first to admit itI seem to recall it has TNOs True Name and memory of the first incarnation

IIRC, isn't is said or heavily implied that whatever the sin was, the entire multiverse is now slowly dying because of it? That's still vague, but I recall that being said, as a way to illustrate just how awful it was, whatever it was.

Yeah, the sphere reveals some more, in fact when he looks into it TNO has a brief encounter with his (disembodied) "true" self, and learns more about himself. He even remembers who he was and his name, but he cuts himself off and doesn't say it out loud.

The sin probably wasn't related to his betrayal of his friends, because his Pragmatic incarnation did those things, so they must have taken place some time after his original sin and the immortality spell.

Rememer that even his first trip to the Fortress of Regrets was taking place after he became immortal. All the people who died in his place (I'm supposing you are talking about the ones becoming shadows) died so that TNO could keep on living.

His great sin that we will never know of, happened before his immortality and was the cause of it.

Also, isn't it interesting that the Gods are still punishing TNO at the end even though we as players feel like we have been living a brief but moral life, and been carrying sins brought to us not by our recent incarnation but old ones which we of course have had no control over.

We get to ponder over the question "what can change the nature of a man" but it seems like even though TNO has experienced all there is to experience in the planes and holding a multitude of different personalities, the Gods see no change of nature at all.

I felt an injustice at the end but the feelings it stirred was fantastic. I have of course been playing this game from one biased perspective - that of the latest incarnation. But as he gain the minds of older incarnations and once again melds with his mortality, is he not once again his old self and should be punished thereafter? Very interesting questions brought up!

Pretty sure to do this successfully, you first need to talk to the Practical Incarnation and ask him what the sphere is, then talk to Good... one of the options there will reveal that Good was your first life, and that he was only good because regret for his sins caused him to change his nature. Yeah, I see your point about how it feels like we (as TNO) are being punished for things that we didn't do, but to me, at least, a big part of the game was the drive to find out who TNO was... and dealing with the consequences of it. If the game had been even more open ended, perhaps you could choose not to seek out the truth about the past, but frankly, I dove into it, and loved pursing the truth and memories even though I knew I might not like where the answers took me.

And as I found out about the actions that Practical and Paranoid took, and I realized what a jerk (to put it mildly) TNO had been... I knew this was not going to end well... realizing this, and accepting it as the best solution (as he says.. better I die than the planes suffer) was a major part of character development to me.. I don't think the game would have nearly the same impact if it had ended differently.

The Practical Incarnation is one of the more recent incarnations. What he did was still just a fraction of a fraction of the injustice the first one committed, however.

The comments about how the Planes are slowly dying are not references to the first act, but to the Splitting (we need to call it something). Each time The Nameless One dies someone else dies in his stead, and the Planes are slowly dying for it.

If you do something evil, and then forget about it, aren't you MORE culpable because you don't repent at all? If you forget about it through no fault of your own(which is not the case here, anyway) aren't you JUST AS culpable for the original evl?

The ending seems like a Christian message to me... Man can't forgive his own sin because he's offended God, not himself.

This discussion is obiously a huge one and I would need several pages at least to make my position clear :). One of the most important things to make clear when discussing this though is what a personal identity is composed of.

My personal thought would be that the latest incarnation of TNO (the one we are playing) is not to be held accountable for evils performed by earlier incarnations. That is because I believe identity is not of flesh and bone but rather a pattern of thoughts, beliefs and - indeed - actions. All these need to be somehow glued together into an entity, and that is made possible by memory.

Because TNO loses his memory when he dies (at least he did earlier), that to me means that he is practically a new identity each time he's waking up and should not at all be held accountable for actions he do not remember to have made.

So, does this mean that I think a murderer should be set free because he has forgotten about the deed? No. Chances are that he may gave forgotten about certain things in his life, maybe including the murder, but that he is still the same person in terms of personality. If the case however was that he one day woke up with no memory whatsoever, and displaying a totally new personality and outlook on the world - then by all means, do NOT punish this man for his earlier crimes. Though you may want to keep him away from the public still if he keeps changing back to his old identity, and you should probably check his mental health... ^^

And yeah, I agree with you that in some way the ending does remind me of christianity. But that also depends on which christian you ask. Some say that whatever you do or say, only God knows your heart. In that case, wouldn't God have seen the deep regret that already lies in TNO's heart?

I don't really feel it was a Christian message. Ancestral sin is not, as far as I know, a uniquely Christian concept, and it is interesting to consider from a philosophical standpoint as well.

That this takes place on the Planes is brilliant though. Due to the exotic nature of the place he can do pretty much what he wants. There are such a mash up of creatures and alignments there fighting for power that grudges can be held and his death/rebirth can be used to individual advantage. Look at Mort... Nameless one never truely forgets what he's done in the past hence the memories throughout the game. There is a threat however that he WILL eventually never remember what he's done which drives the plot to once and forever put the rebirths to bed...

There was such a profound existentialism (sp?) to this game that no game has ever made me think about before.