u/DharmaBombs108 — reddlx

Only had a few hours to play tomorrow and sadly won't get to play again until Friday in the middle of my new fixation, but what I thought was me cleaning up a random questline ended up being my favorite part of the game so far. After finishing up the Clay Friends mission, decided to fast travel to some areas that still had side quests that I haven't done and figured this little mission to break into a warehouse to steal some documents would be a quick in and out one, no clue it was going to open up three more quest lines immediately afterwards.

I really liked the story of Agapios was interestingly complex with is feelings on being a slave and I did appreciate the game not being overly mindful of modern day morality and have an opportunity to make him feel like a real person trying to cope and deal with his circumstance. Investigating if the Dagger was really his brother was quite fun, getting small pieces from each quest. I went to the ships first and that was pretty straight forward, kill some sharks, get a ceremonial dagger, save the spy girl and be on my way. Never realized the next would involve a sort of moral choice at the theater. I was a bit bummed it didn't really seem to give me a choice on whether to choose to save the man at the house or kill him, but quickly realized that's no the real choice, the game sets you up with a false one only to give you the real one immediately after killing these children's father. I made the mistake of thinking I could save both and ended up getting both parents killed, I really appreciated the sort of mirror to killing the man in the house and having the kids run in for their father and having the same sort of thing happen at the theater with both of their parents. The farmer quest line was probably my favorite, the drunk wife, the fort, it was all varied and quite a bit of fun. It was also that moment in the field going up to the wife that I realized if you walked into the field, Kassandra puts her hand out into the wheat just like Crowe in Gladiator, which is a great detail.

I also think thematically it remained very interesting. Slaves were definitely the sort of throughline in the questline and I think all of them got an interesting vision. The slave girl on the cliff feels lost without a master, Agapios has accepted his place in the world, the famer's slave ends up dead on the road because the farmer wouldn't pay; it's an interesting way to approach a pretty dark subject in the game in a questline that does actually have a solid amount of humor. I ended the questline with Agapios alive, so I was happy about that, and he got to be free, which I thought was a nice way to end it.

I'm sure most have played it, but really wanted to just sort of vent my love of that. I hope there's more long quests like this going forward, but 20 hours in and up to level 18, I'm sure there's more great stuff like this coming. I also really loved the questline with the son who locks himself up in a cage so his parents don't die, but was much more straightforward compared to this.