@dinobatacorn There isn’t a formal achievement guide in the game, but I can probably help you out - which ones are causing you trouble?
@Ghostfriendly I really appreciate your thoughts, I love when people do a deep dive like this - it’s one of my favourite things! It’s been many years since I read Crime and Punishment, and I haven’t read The Brothers Karamazov, so I can’t speak to those references very eloquently I’m afraid. (Though I feel very flattered by and interested in the comparisons.)
Re Danelak’s punishment, while their sentence is one that the average Jezhani citizen would raise their eyebrows and say “that’s quite harsh” at rather than be intensely outraged by, I disagree that it’s just. Their crime (jewellery theft) wasn’t “victimless” but it was nonviolent and didn’t cause significant harm, particularly as the items were recovered; eight years of servitude without pay is not, I think, a proportionate response, and there was no restorative or rehabilitative aspect to it. That contributes to Danelak’s internal sense of bitterness and injustice about the situation, especially because at the point of Noblesse Oblige they’ve been living like this for a number of years and have reached a point where they can’t bear it anymore.
I could have included a path where the PC convinces Danelak to stay and live out their sentence with them, and I did start sketching it out at one point, but I found it difficult to envisage Danelak choosing that, even with the push of an intense romance or friendship. It felt equivalent to the idea of trying to persuade Rys to stop investigating their brother’s death - they’ve reached a crisis point where they can’t see any other options.
By contrast Pascha has an ending where the PC persuades them to stay and that felt more possible for the character, as Pascha does feel a huge amount of remorse about what happened with Frantisek - whatever exactly happened there - and I could picture that bringing some peace, and together the characters perhaps gaining some equilibrium in a bittersweet sort of way. With Danelak, an ending remaining together on the island felt more bitter than bittersweet, and it was hard to picture Danelak actually wanting to stay in a romance or friendship with someone who thought so strongly that they should remain there.
With all that in mind, it became a case of scope: I wanted to focus my attention more on endings where there was connection in some way with the characters, rather than disconnect. Perhaps with more time and energy (at the time, I had a lot on my plate) I might have expanded into paths like that.
Sexual violence and coercion isn’t something I explore in my games, and when I talk about it outside of the game, I’d like to be very precise: the situation isn’t one between equals, and at the same time when Danelak talks about it they do not consider it violence or coercion. For Danelak, it’s a chance for them to have some excitement, but others might well see it differently (as would I, if I came across someone in real life in an equivalent situation).
I don’t think any of the paths/endings are perfect: various are enjoyable, certainly in the short term. Danelak and the PC (if they go with them) probably have a decent chance of disappearing and making a go of it, if they can be smart about their money situation; they don’t loom large in the wider Jezhani police interest.
I could see characters growing and changing over time in various directions, after the game is over. None of them have it together by the end, particularly, but at the start all of them were at a point where they were very desperate for change: how things were going for them wasn’t sustainable. Really the true villains of the game are “the justice system and lack of mental healthcare provision” but that is not very exciting-sounding.
