Finally finished Act 4 of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
Interestingly, act 4 does a change of pace by sending you to Hell. Or more specifically, the Abyss, the Chaotic Evil version of hell. It's handled interestingly in that you spend pretty much the entire chapter in and around one city there, which actually has been promoted by it's ruler as a trade and "tourist" destination, thus a reason why you can walk around without being attacked every minute, because guests are tolerated. That doesn't mean you won't be occasionally jumped by random demons, but it's treated as street crime because there's no law to speak of. Rather, the rules are generally 'There are no rules" but that also means everyone is generally wary of everyone else and generally either trying to attain more power and/or scheming against each other. In one instance you have to search out a beggar who was once a high ranking demon and actually ran the city for a while before being overthrown by the current leader. Which admittedly must be really shitty for him, to fall from "Living in a palace and running a part of hell" to "Begging for scraps in the gutter, deprived of any wealth, power or influence". OTOH, guy is a demon and it's hard to feel sympathy for him since demons don't show any empathy or kindness towards anyone.
Much of the action in act 4 is you trying to get an invite to talk to to the leader of this particular abyssal city and she won't talk to nobodies, so you need to build a reputation by either killing somebodies, working with demons in their schemes against other demons(often to kill them) or just causing a ruckus. And it's interesting, at least conceptually, of watching the different demons playing off each other and trying to use you as a pawn in their schemes. Amusingly, a number of them know you're the commander of the crusade killing so many of their brethren but in general they don't really care much because demons only care for themselves and other demons getting slaughtered in another world is either treated as "not my problem" or "good, less competition for me". It's been implied before that if Demons could work together for more then a few minutes they could conquer entire worlds but demons are so chaotic evil that cooperation with other demons never lasts long enough to matter much. It's even stated that the leader of this city has no particular stake in the crusade that takes up most of the game and none of her forces are involved in the fighting. At best, she allows another demon lord, Baphomet(who looks like the traditionally goaty depiction of Satan), to use her realm to move armies through but she also is more then happy to stab him in the back the moment she gets the opportunity because fuck that guy. Essentially, the whole chapter has a "What if game of thrones in hell?" vibe.
So it's quite an interesting side trip. Also notable that to reflect the chaotic nature of the abyss, the camera rotation feature of the map actually changes the landscape of the map in certain places, so rotating the camera to find new areas or link certain areas is required. And this is the only part of the game this really matters.
Interestingly, act 4 does a change of pace by sending you to Hell. Or more specifically, the Abyss, the Chaotic Evil version of hell. It's handled interestingly in that you spend pretty much the entire chapter in and around one city there, which actually has been promoted by it's ruler as a trade and "tourist" destination, thus a reason why you can walk around without being attacked every minute, because guests are tolerated. That doesn't mean you won't be occasionally jumped by random demons, but it's treated as street crime because there's no law to speak of. Rather, the rules are generally 'There are no rules" but that also means everyone is generally wary of everyone else and generally either trying to attain more power and/or scheming against each other. In one instance you have to search out a beggar who was once a high ranking demon and actually ran the city for a while before being overthrown by the current leader. Which admittedly must be really shitty for him, to fall from "Living in a palace and running a part of hell" to "Begging for scraps in the gutter, deprived of any wealth, power or influence". OTOH, guy is a demon and it's hard to feel sympathy for him since demons don't show any empathy or kindness towards anyone.
Much of the action in act 4 is you trying to get an invite to talk to to the leader of this particular abyssal city and she won't talk to nobodies, so you need to build a reputation by either killing somebodies, working with demons in their schemes against other demons(often to kill them) or just causing a ruckus. And it's interesting, at least conceptually, of watching the different demons playing off each other and trying to use you as a pawn in their schemes. Amusingly, a number of them know you're the commander of the crusade killing so many of their brethren but in general they don't really care much because demons only care for themselves and other demons getting slaughtered in another world is either treated as "not my problem" or "good, less competition for me". It's been implied before that if Demons could work together for more then a few minutes they could conquer entire worlds but demons are so chaotic evil that cooperation with other demons never lasts long enough to matter much. It's even stated that the leader of this city has no particular stake in the crusade that takes up most of the game and none of her forces are involved in the fighting. At best, she allows another demon lord, Baphomet(who looks like the traditionally goaty depiction of Satan), to use her realm to move armies through but she also is more then happy to stab him in the back the moment she gets the opportunity because fuck that guy. Essentially, the whole chapter has a "What if game of thrones in hell?" vibe.
So it's quite an interesting side trip. Also notable that to reflect the chaotic nature of the abyss, the camera rotation feature of the map actually changes the landscape of the map in certain places, so rotating the camera to find new areas or link certain areas is required. And this is the only part of the game this really matters.
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