Week 1: Experiencing Alternate Quest Solutions
11 February 2025
I didn't have as much time to play this week, I've been sososososososo busy and it's been kinda awful. Wish me luck on my math exam tomorrow. This week, I can't get too deep into it, but essentially I found a really great example of phenomenal quest design by the Pillars team. I played through a Quest that at every point could have been resolved with violence. As you play as a capable warrior with a team of other warriors to back you up, it's far and away the simplest solution almost all the time. Despite this, I was able to complete the quest not only without hurting anyone, but by making all of the groups friendlier to me, which is a rare and very enjoyable outcome to a quest like this.
There were street thugs harassing the people coming in and out of a whorehouse, and the owner asked me to stop that. After kicking some violent thugs' teeth in I encountered the person who primarily led them. She and her followers were upset about the whorehouse being located in the poorest district of the city, but only being priced appropriately for wealthy people from other districts. I said I would speak to the owner about the pricing issue. The owner (naturally) was incredibly averse to losing profits. She told me that, in particular, the price of bitter squash was an expensive operating cost. She told me I could go speak to one of the members of a wealthy family to see if I could get the price down. The wealthy woman wanted a man who rejected her to be "made an example of".
Which, as a side note, is an interesting decision by the devs. I love to see the less wealthy be so monetarily focused, but to see the very wealthy to recognize the immense value of goodwill and favors. Something i think hold to real life too.
Anyway, I went to confront the man, I told him to skip town because some wealthy lady was after his ass. Then, i returned to the wealthy woman and she was pleased to hear he was "dead" (thank god for my lying stat). I then returned to the whorehouse and the owner was over the moon, she lowered prices, and offered me free room and board whenever I would like. My positive reputation with the city is now very good, instead of threatening or killing the people I needed to sway, I simply found a way to make everyone happy. I could have threatened any of them, i love that the game made that clear. It made it feel more like a very deliberate and rewarding choice to NOT just start throwing hands whenever possible.