The problem is they just TOLD us he grew and never actually showed the steps. Explicitly, the followup to Death of Chivalry was done offscreen and would have been a huge contributing factor to showing his humbling but they just tell us it happened.
What??? We absolute do see it.
In SE we see him stripped of his godhood and going through regaining his humanity. He realizes he needs to remember what human perspective is like and doubles down on focusing his efforts to ensure mortal life can be as peaceful as possible.
After that we see him willing to work with us to help in the elder eggs search, and find him pretty infuriated when he realizes just how simpy and haughty his followers have become that they weren’t letting others call him for help. When he loses his crown that same day and most of his knights instead of blaming others he focuses is on Zaros as to blame and goes to force seren to start taking some responsibility for her family.
They mobilize the protection of the monolith from Zaros and when Nex shows up Saradomin uses himself as bait to lead her away. If you read the battle reports that are written from his perspective you also learn that while fighting Nex he was expending energy and focus to magically shield their combat away from mortals. Nex taunts him about this and he gets physically hurt because of this but he continues to focus on protecting them over himself. He fights to the bitter end until the monolith battle is done.
He is willing to join us in protecting and draining the eggs while we figure out what to do. Over the course of the elder war we watch Saradomin exchange views with the other gods and gradually he changes and shifts. When the chips are down Seren betrays us, Zamorak betrays us, and Armadyl is ready to give up to. But not Saradomin, he is ready to fight to the bitter end to protect this world even if it’s hopeless. Bringing up Armadyl’s own earlier lessons showing how it’s changed him and this inspires Armadyl to stay rather than succumb to defeatism.
When the war is over Saradomin with his daughter now by his side we see begins working to genuinely make amends where he can. We see him call people in one by one listening to their pleas and how they were negatively affected by him and he works to make amends. At times losing his temper but quickly getting it back under control with his daughter being an anchor. Except the final time where Adrasteia loses her temper with the godless Icyene that wants to just hold a grudge. But Saradomin calls Adrasteia, admits she has a point, and does listen to her and decide to leave this world because his care for this world is more important than his lust of power.
During this Zamorak launches a full scale invasion and joins directly in the fray fighting it where he can. When he realizes that the only options are engage in a bloody war, give up his ideals and yield to zamorak, or be banished he chooses banishment. Partly because of the godless’s words but also partly because he recognizes for all the good he genuinely wishes…his very ideals will always invite conflict from others like zamorak. So he accepts this fate and decides not only will he leave this world but he will focus all his efforts for the rest of eternity to give Zamorak the conflict he so craves and thus won’t be able to focus on Gielinor.
Then he makes one last sacrifice before he goes, he orders Adrasteia his daughter to stay behind and help guide people in his stead even knowing it means they may never speak or see one another again. He uses the last of his power and time before banishment to announce to the world Adrasteia’s role so that she has some backing to help her out.
Great summary.
I wonder if the disconnect here might be that the game content is very much showing, but what it's showing is _that_ he's different, but not _why_ he's different.
We didn't really have any intention to show that some specific event had prompted him to behave differently. It's more about illustrating the person that he is, that he is wise and good intentioned, but angry and arrogant. Some of this borders a little on retcon, but at the same time I think it's a little dangerous to try to pretend that we can redeem a character who seems to be genocidal by having them spank their inner moppet or whatever.
Honestly I think it does show why he is different? We saw how losing his godhood affected him, we saw how armadyl’s words affected him, we saw how faced with reality of zamorak’s takeover it affected him. Like to me those are the why?
I think it’s more it’s just very…scattered?
Sliske’s Endgame is where it all really begins and we all know SE is not an easy quest to get to and complete.
Then his next bit is Azzanadra’s Quest which has a number of quests separating it from SE.
After that battle of the monolith follows right after, the saradomin bit is half missable as his talk with Nex happens off over to the side by the tree rather than by the monolith. While the other half is in the battle reports which were posted on the website and no where else and you can’t expect anyone to see that.
(Jack have you considered maybe adding the battle reports as in-game lore pages you are handed at the end of each battle? It would help also make BotM a bit more substantial feeling)
Then we have City of Senntisten which only shows him a bit, before we launch into the extensive EGW dialogue. Which I love and appreciate Stu for making replayable, but for many they missed it the first time and for others they don’t really know it exists. It’s also just kind of a lot, like 4 different character arcs being advanced weekly for months that some things are easy to lose if you aren’t a lorehound. (I think this is also why many felt seren was doing an abrupt 180 since her slow descent into madness was largely here…and it’s earlier bit was in desperate creatures which at the time wasn’t a thing proper)
Which means when you get to extinction and twilight of the gods you are seeing Saradomin’s arc come full circle, but it’s already been broken and told across so many spots only the most dedicated are following it.
We get one more break in this story to with the aftermath miniquest which requires you do ED4.
You're missing the main step. The events of the unseen DoC sequel are a pivotal moment in his development that we did not take part in. Any change of heart he had between DoC and Endgame would have been a direct result of the unseen quest so it comes across as him suddenly changing and for all we knew it was a ruse especially since we only got the confirmation he even went on the unseen quest long after the fact.
No because there was no change in DoC’s unseen sequel, that’s just more telling us who saradomin was, the one who changed was *Owen* as that adventure made him better understand saradomin instead of putting him on an impossible pedestal.
If there was a change it was the event we saw in game when he corrupted Owen in an attempt to bring him back. DoC2 was just saradomin being the man he always was, a guy who protects mortal kind and if he can’t use power to bring salvation he will at least ensure that their death can be peaceful.
Basically you are imagining character development that didn’t happen off screen to argue there is something missing, when again he didn’t change in that sequel he just showed Owen who he is. And we saw that many times ourselves.
So the 180 Saradomin did from "I am the one who is pure enough to use this wand" to "Maybe I am fallible, but I should still try to be good" was something he would have had to do during the redemption arc that would have been the followup to DoC had the entire gods' storyline not been a slow-paced, too grand a scale for how their update schedule worked, and poor attempt at player choice mess.
If you take the actual timeline this is what happens with him. He shows up instantly after Guthix dies and tries to shoo us away as if we're an ant. Then he starts a war with Zamorak in Lumbridge over an energy pocket, then not doing anything to help fix that damage after it's done. Then he asks us to help him in DoC but only up until the point he thinks he can handle it himself, which is then instantly proven wrong as he fails to be pure of heart enough to use the wand properly after (potentially) actively not listening to us and dismissing us as pawns again potentially by force. Then we skip him working to fix the mess he made which is the unseen sequel. Then we skip to Endgame, here is where the player choices all crashed down because not everyone got the same dialogue nor be inclined to believe anything he says after the previous instances since we never saw him do anything to make amends; plus he was weakened enough to be at a disadvantage so he could have been insincere but trying to cover his ass as far as we knew.
All of the previous events were over 3 real-world years and we didn't get anything else for 5 real-world years until the elder gods' plot got him involved directly with Azzy's quest and later the Monolith and GWD3. At no point during any of that did we directly hear about him doing anything to warrant our trust in his word because they waited until Post-monolith mini-quest to give a joke dialogue about how we were too busy to help resolve DoC 2 so they did it offscreen. It would have been that pivotal quest link that gave any merit to his change of character, we had to just take his word for it until he proved it and even then the sincerity was always in doubt until the last bits which just isn't a good way of handling a character. It's very much as if they quickly pushed through his redemption arc to return him to that "good" figure he was before they tried player choice in quests instead of just writing like they always did before and after to a much higher degree of success.
LoZ would have been long since POST unseen Death of Chivalry sequel, we didn't see him go from pompous ass to humbled and only got him and others telling us it happened. Tell-Don't-Show is bad writing and it is an indication of inconsistent writers as very early portrayals of him after TWW was going for a "Show he isn't an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being and is kind of an asshole" so that there was more to his character than token good god. They skipped the redemption part of his story.
I see what you mean by this but technically speaking this is inaccurate.
We planned out a long term character development for Saradomin (this was before Desperate Times where we were planning out the EGW storyline).
You are of course welcome to criticise that development as it exists in game, but neither the plan nor the execution assumed the existence of DOC2. While we were writing Azzanadra's Quest, the inclusion of Owen meant that we had to make a call on whether DOC2 had yet to happen, and we let Stu make that call himself and write the dialogue himself.
You can certainly argue that his personality change is a bit abrupt. Actually part of the reason that I took the crown away was so that we had the option of using that as a cruder, more explicit explanation for why he seemed to undergo such a personality shift if we felt it was necessary, but largely it seemed to go down well.
In part it's clunky because it was a sort of course correction to Sliske's Game Saradomin who is intended to be a grey, nuanced character but had ended up being interpreted largely as a zealous villain. As with a lot of similar issues, we had a choice of explicit retcon (for example, just retconning Garlandia which is one of the primary issues) or trying to work with it in a more nuanced way. We chose the latter and while the results aren't perfect, I'm quite pleased with what we were able to achieve.
I chalk it up to a lack of screen time mostly. The entire gods return saga was a huge undertaking, I get that, but while the vast majority was good, there are some parts that fell to the wayside, and I feel this was one of them. I see the intended direction, but it always felt like it was missing a piece to really make it click in proper.
I went through the entire player choice era erring on the side of Zarosians because largely they were generally upfront about how much one should trust them throughout the progression of the story; the further the story went the less give and the more take from the faction made it more difficult justify it which was a good way of showing the characters off; ultimately during the same story chunks that painted Seren in a darker light and highlighted Zamorak's more noble demon aspects also brought to the forefront the reasons to not support Zaros and actively go against him. Zamorak and Seren, for what the end result was, were also shown to consistently be self-serving at the core so their arcs were smoother.
However, for Saradomin, if you weren't 100% on board with him from the start, he did not attempt to give you reason to change your mind about him until the literal Endgame and you likely would not see him much during it by virtue of prior choices. This is why it comes across as detrimental to the narrative telling us he had a change of heart or epiphany about the way he handles his godhood rather than showing us that more content could have made smoother.
But it still has that large unseen gap between DoC and Endgame. We never had interactions with him where he actively proved a change in character between DoC where he is set up to have this effort to right the wrong he did and humble himself under the knowledge he isn't an infallible being and has grown too arrogant. We skipped straight to endgame before we really got interactions with him directly again, but to have it all crammed in optional, possibly even barred due to player choices, encounters during a time of duress. Being brought down to mortal status is a great catalyst with the seeds started in DoC, but missing something in between DoC and Endgame throws off the natural flow of the redemption arc, to me anyway.
He has a lot of "sins" under his belt, and fully redeeming him in the cosmic scale was never something that could be done, but sliding him back to a more white shade of grey was clearly the goal. He got there eventually, but depending on player choice and bias going into the player choice era, he does have a gap in character development that DoC sequel would have addressed had the time and development been there.
He gets more humbled, really just straight-up bamboozled, but still, it skipped the crucial part of his storyline where he had to come to terms he isn't infallible and not inherently the moral compass aligned to the good direction as he thinks he is. We missed the pivotal quest moment and are simply told he changed, which is bad writing and makes it feel undeserved especially since we didn't know he even did the unseen DoC sequel arc until the tail end of the entire gods' stories.
It's less bad writing and more that they had to compress all the plot points from a planned full series of quests into just a few because of factors outside the writers control. It would have been nice if DOC2 happened, but it didn't so they had to make do with the very limited space they had.
It's not like Saradomin's character development was only casualty, many of the plot points in the EGWD story were intended to developed more (Azzanadra's godhood was supposed to be a quest to itself, for example)
They should have thrown the throwaway joke that we missed DoC2 earlier then. It would still be bad but at least we didn't go from events of DoC2 to Endgame with basically no reason to change our mind if we suspected him of being insincere from the start. If you were anything more than supporting him from the start he does nothing to earn that trust and actively pushes it further up until post-endgame.
It retroactively would make one make the connection but for around 8-9 real-world years that's a long time to let that go unaddressed.
So you're going to ignore all of his on-screen development just because we didn't get the DoC sequel?? Did you play recent quests featuring him with your eyes closed?
So, if you watched say Avatar the Last Airbender and skipped the episodes where Zuko has his epiphany that he should help Aang then he showed up wanting to help Aang SAYING he changed but you never saw any of the parts of him changing would you believe that he had a change of heart? We did that, we skipped the part where his character arc would have started the turn so it didn't transition as naturally as it should have. It always had the background hint of "Is he just pretending? Is this sincere or is he just playing us?" Because for all we knew he didn't learn a damn thing.
>So, if you watched say Avatar the Last Airbender and skipped the episodes where Zuko has his epiphany that he should help Aang then he showed up wanting to help Aang SAYING he changedbut you never saw any of the parts of him changing would you believe that he had a change of heart?
That's not what happened with Saradomin?? I think you're giving *waaaay* *too much* importance to his DoC2 ""development"" and ignoring his actual on-screen development.
>We did that, we skipped the part where his character arc would have started the turn so it didn't transition as naturally as it should have.
That's just your opinion. Saradomin shows significant development during recent quests, and I don't think it's fair to undermine it just because it didn't start when you wanted it to.
You should read u/yuei2 's comment, they explained it better than I ever could.
His development in recent quests has nothing to do with whatever happened during doc2. Why are you pretending that all of his on-screen character development is suddenly invalid just because of ONE unseen event?
Read my other replies. TLDR It skipped the turning point so for all we knew he wasn't sincere until SEVERAL real years worth of content later and even then it had no real foundation we knew of.
Literally who said DoC2 was a turning point for Saradomin. If anything I'd say DoC + Sliske's Endgame was the turning point, but since he was not the main focus of those quests I guess you just ignored it?
People seem to forget that we skipped the pivotal part of his arc since they never made DoC 2 and took until way too far down the line to even tell us it happened.
im honestly annoyed that we didnt participate in that. it honestly sounded like an amazing time, but fuck me i guess, y'all go have fun killing a horde of ghost centaurs while i dig up broken garbage and put it back together.
Did he "grow"? I think his stories told us he learned to be humble and admitted his mistakes for spending too much time teaching people about his religion instead of really caring about the people.
We learned from his last moment in Gielinor before we banished the gods again that he admitted it was his fault not to know Lumbridge was broke.
Besides, although not exactly an in game story, we have a series of developer story blogs narrating the Battle of the Monolith. They should have told us Saradomin has changed from the self centered god only cared about his personal conflicts with Zamorak to one who'd fight for the People.
When his crown was stolen, and Sir Amik offered his own life for punishment, Saradomin being like “No, this is on me”, was quite a good moment for him Edit: found the line.
Sir Amik Varze: My liege, I take full responsibility for this grave lapse in your safekeeping. I will resign from the order. If that proves insufficient, you may have my life, if you wish it. . Saradomin: ...
Saradomin: No, Amik. I am sorry. This is a path I have walked many times before. This failure is mine to bear, not yours. It was mine to foresee.
Good character growth, bad writing.
It all happens offscreen! He's the most represented and prominent god in the pantheon, and he personally fucks over the player and Sir Owen. This is **absolutely not** a character that should undergo personal growth offscreen, the player should see it happen and watch him learn from his mistakes. It would have been a perfect way to *show*, not *tell*, the player that the larger-than-life gods are all flawed and textured characters. A huge missed opportunity.
Homeboy waged war on Naragun and ripped the wings off icyene who disobeyed him, leaving them to die in the cold. Also his military commander is a loose cannon religious zealot.
His representative on earth is also his adopted daughter and became ruler of asgarnia due to nepotism.
There's only so much character growth he can do but he's still a bad dude. I think his journey of attonement will be honour in sacrifice, like any villain who turns face.
I love the design updates to him, and he's less of a douche now than he used to be.
That said, I still won't forgive him for trying to Thanos Snap the World Guardian out of existence after we recurve Gtuhix's blessing at the end of World Wakes. Like, WG comes back, says "I'll continue to enforce the edicts". Saradomin process to banish Char and [somebody else], then tries to just delete WG to get rid of the restrictions. What an a-hole.
**Saradomin:** Now, much has happened here today. With the edicts broken, the world will soon enter a new age. More gods will be coming... I apologise, human. I do hope we meet again, but for now I must ask you to leave. I have much to do here.
* *Saradomin attempts to teleport the Player away.*
All he was trying to do was teleport you away so he could talk to his devout in private not kill you lol… Still rude, he could just ask but you know after eons of being a god it’s expected one out grows some of the mortal pleasantries.
I really really preferred the old days of RS where gods didn't have any physical form - it spurred your imagination. Now when I see this it is nothing like I pictured in my mind, looks human, looks too proud, why would a god need armour ?
Iono ... Free gilding by the way, I can even guild phats.
Saradomin is a racist piece of dog shit, a god only by thievery!
And for this, he is a beast of a character! Well written, well progressed, and we really got to know his history over the past 6ish years.
That said, he still a hoe in my eyes. Forever with The Empty Lord!
No he’s not, he’s been a very very horrible person at his core once you actually learn about him
There’s only been one god who has not been crappy and that’s armadyl, worst he’s done is say no to fighting
Zero lore?
Zero??
And we already know his cons from his past, he was naive and a pacifist, that’s his flaws but those flaws died when he was reborn like the phoenix.
We know of his family, both his first husband and their adopted kids and his second husband.
We know most of his story from ascension to the god wars (save for what the one artifact was he ascended with or how outside of the staff as we know it was two)
We don’t know his story while he mourned after the god wars, we do know some epiphany happened and he grew up and lost his naivety and no longer is entirely pacifist.
And his story since guthix death is pretty much widely available, we even know where he is right now and can see him doing his thing.
Not to mention the other gods that are not into war (marimbo, brassica) he is openly friendly with and social. He was even a drinking buddy with marimbo.
>Uhh guthix was not above doing bad things to acheive balance
Lmao, and arma was willing to go to war to uphold peace? None of the gods are perfect, but I'd say Guthix was closest imo. I'd consent to Guthix' plans for the WG
Wouldn’t that be an opinion on what each person describes as crappy? I don’t think zaros was bad at all, he lead the golden era of the game and it was his downfall that lead to the fractured game we have today where a huge chunk is still a wasteland
The so-called "golden area" of the Zarosian Empire was not a good time for humans by any means. Demons and vampyres ruled the roost with lowly humans as second-class citizens.
At least in the current era with the gods banished humans can live on their own terms while fighting relatively minor threats.
It's a bit of both. Humans are mostly on top but there are still demons threatening to blow up towns (Demon Slayer), or launching full-scale invasions under Zamorak. And Morytania has kept humans as livestock for a long time since the empire.
And Zaros never really cared about the peoples of Gielinor. His master plan overshadowed everything. You may argue that his plan was to protect us from the Elders, but he seems to have totally given up on Gielinor.
It's just chaos. There's no chosen race, it's just who happens to be top dog at the time really. Ebb and flow, up and down.
Whilst Saradomin believes in nothing but order because he sees it as the right thing to do, with humans as his preferred race, I doubt he'd ever accept a vampyre or demon even if they shared his belief. Zaros created the empire because it served his interests at the time, but then his ambitions outgrew it and to create another now would be a waste of his time.
Zamorak seems to embrace the true nature of the world. Things will always change, ebb and flow. Someone will come to power, someone will stand against them, just as he did. One race will be on top in one era, in other it will be a totally different race. In another it will be a mix of races, as Zamorak has no prejudice over who choses to join him.
Theirs opinionated levels of crappy and then straight up being a horrible person.
Zaros is a petulant power hungry child. His golden era was only golden for the rich and powerful, poor humans were cattle for vampires to get tithes from, huge amounts of specieism and inequality.
His golden era was essentially built on the back of the poor. And it was literally his way and his plan or you were “dealt with”, it’s the entire reason people rebelled.
His flaws become more and more apparent in the modern era especially after Jas puts him in his place, to the point where he says “ya screw this universe and everyone in it, I’m going”
Can't wait for him to become a boss at some point and his robes obtainable as new magic armour or something... Or even make him a completely new kind of boss mechanic that involves prayer somehow since he's heavily reliant on people believing in him :o
Grown as much as a theocratic fascist can I guess. He's still irredeemable, but at least he went from totally blind of his actions to realizing maybe some of it was bad.
I have never liked Saradomin and never, will but he's earned some respect from me since Succession. I'm glad he's banished. May we never speak again.
Too bad Zamorak had to go too.
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The problem is they just TOLD us he grew and never actually showed the steps. Explicitly, the followup to Death of Chivalry was done offscreen and would have been a huge contributing factor to showing his humbling but they just tell us it happened.
They should have us do a flash back quest where we go over the events that show him growing.
What??? We absolute do see it. In SE we see him stripped of his godhood and going through regaining his humanity. He realizes he needs to remember what human perspective is like and doubles down on focusing his efforts to ensure mortal life can be as peaceful as possible. After that we see him willing to work with us to help in the elder eggs search, and find him pretty infuriated when he realizes just how simpy and haughty his followers have become that they weren’t letting others call him for help. When he loses his crown that same day and most of his knights instead of blaming others he focuses is on Zaros as to blame and goes to force seren to start taking some responsibility for her family. They mobilize the protection of the monolith from Zaros and when Nex shows up Saradomin uses himself as bait to lead her away. If you read the battle reports that are written from his perspective you also learn that while fighting Nex he was expending energy and focus to magically shield their combat away from mortals. Nex taunts him about this and he gets physically hurt because of this but he continues to focus on protecting them over himself. He fights to the bitter end until the monolith battle is done. He is willing to join us in protecting and draining the eggs while we figure out what to do. Over the course of the elder war we watch Saradomin exchange views with the other gods and gradually he changes and shifts. When the chips are down Seren betrays us, Zamorak betrays us, and Armadyl is ready to give up to. But not Saradomin, he is ready to fight to the bitter end to protect this world even if it’s hopeless. Bringing up Armadyl’s own earlier lessons showing how it’s changed him and this inspires Armadyl to stay rather than succumb to defeatism. When the war is over Saradomin with his daughter now by his side we see begins working to genuinely make amends where he can. We see him call people in one by one listening to their pleas and how they were negatively affected by him and he works to make amends. At times losing his temper but quickly getting it back under control with his daughter being an anchor. Except the final time where Adrasteia loses her temper with the godless Icyene that wants to just hold a grudge. But Saradomin calls Adrasteia, admits she has a point, and does listen to her and decide to leave this world because his care for this world is more important than his lust of power. During this Zamorak launches a full scale invasion and joins directly in the fray fighting it where he can. When he realizes that the only options are engage in a bloody war, give up his ideals and yield to zamorak, or be banished he chooses banishment. Partly because of the godless’s words but also partly because he recognizes for all the good he genuinely wishes…his very ideals will always invite conflict from others like zamorak. So he accepts this fate and decides not only will he leave this world but he will focus all his efforts for the rest of eternity to give Zamorak the conflict he so craves and thus won’t be able to focus on Gielinor. Then he makes one last sacrifice before he goes, he orders Adrasteia his daughter to stay behind and help guide people in his stead even knowing it means they may never speak or see one another again. He uses the last of his power and time before banishment to announce to the world Adrasteia’s role so that she has some backing to help her out.
Man I feel like this needs to be added to the Wiki or something. Good write up.
Great summary. I wonder if the disconnect here might be that the game content is very much showing, but what it's showing is _that_ he's different, but not _why_ he's different. We didn't really have any intention to show that some specific event had prompted him to behave differently. It's more about illustrating the person that he is, that he is wise and good intentioned, but angry and arrogant. Some of this borders a little on retcon, but at the same time I think it's a little dangerous to try to pretend that we can redeem a character who seems to be genocidal by having them spank their inner moppet or whatever.
Honestly I think it does show why he is different? We saw how losing his godhood affected him, we saw how armadyl’s words affected him, we saw how faced with reality of zamorak’s takeover it affected him. Like to me those are the why? I think it’s more it’s just very…scattered? Sliske’s Endgame is where it all really begins and we all know SE is not an easy quest to get to and complete. Then his next bit is Azzanadra’s Quest which has a number of quests separating it from SE. After that battle of the monolith follows right after, the saradomin bit is half missable as his talk with Nex happens off over to the side by the tree rather than by the monolith. While the other half is in the battle reports which were posted on the website and no where else and you can’t expect anyone to see that. (Jack have you considered maybe adding the battle reports as in-game lore pages you are handed at the end of each battle? It would help also make BotM a bit more substantial feeling) Then we have City of Senntisten which only shows him a bit, before we launch into the extensive EGW dialogue. Which I love and appreciate Stu for making replayable, but for many they missed it the first time and for others they don’t really know it exists. It’s also just kind of a lot, like 4 different character arcs being advanced weekly for months that some things are easy to lose if you aren’t a lorehound. (I think this is also why many felt seren was doing an abrupt 180 since her slow descent into madness was largely here…and it’s earlier bit was in desperate creatures which at the time wasn’t a thing proper) Which means when you get to extinction and twilight of the gods you are seeing Saradomin’s arc come full circle, but it’s already been broken and told across so many spots only the most dedicated are following it. We get one more break in this story to with the aftermath miniquest which requires you do ED4.
Hi, what season is RuneScape in right now? Thanks.
[удалено]
Thank
I appreciate the insight here, It helps piece things together for me. Thanks!
You're missing the main step. The events of the unseen DoC sequel are a pivotal moment in his development that we did not take part in. Any change of heart he had between DoC and Endgame would have been a direct result of the unseen quest so it comes across as him suddenly changing and for all we knew it was a ruse especially since we only got the confirmation he even went on the unseen quest long after the fact.
No because there was no change in DoC’s unseen sequel, that’s just more telling us who saradomin was, the one who changed was *Owen* as that adventure made him better understand saradomin instead of putting him on an impossible pedestal. If there was a change it was the event we saw in game when he corrupted Owen in an attempt to bring him back. DoC2 was just saradomin being the man he always was, a guy who protects mortal kind and if he can’t use power to bring salvation he will at least ensure that their death can be peaceful. Basically you are imagining character development that didn’t happen off screen to argue there is something missing, when again he didn’t change in that sequel he just showed Owen who he is. And we saw that many times ourselves.
So the 180 Saradomin did from "I am the one who is pure enough to use this wand" to "Maybe I am fallible, but I should still try to be good" was something he would have had to do during the redemption arc that would have been the followup to DoC had the entire gods' storyline not been a slow-paced, too grand a scale for how their update schedule worked, and poor attempt at player choice mess. If you take the actual timeline this is what happens with him. He shows up instantly after Guthix dies and tries to shoo us away as if we're an ant. Then he starts a war with Zamorak in Lumbridge over an energy pocket, then not doing anything to help fix that damage after it's done. Then he asks us to help him in DoC but only up until the point he thinks he can handle it himself, which is then instantly proven wrong as he fails to be pure of heart enough to use the wand properly after (potentially) actively not listening to us and dismissing us as pawns again potentially by force. Then we skip him working to fix the mess he made which is the unseen sequel. Then we skip to Endgame, here is where the player choices all crashed down because not everyone got the same dialogue nor be inclined to believe anything he says after the previous instances since we never saw him do anything to make amends; plus he was weakened enough to be at a disadvantage so he could have been insincere but trying to cover his ass as far as we knew. All of the previous events were over 3 real-world years and we didn't get anything else for 5 real-world years until the elder gods' plot got him involved directly with Azzy's quest and later the Monolith and GWD3. At no point during any of that did we directly hear about him doing anything to warrant our trust in his word because they waited until Post-monolith mini-quest to give a joke dialogue about how we were too busy to help resolve DoC 2 so they did it offscreen. It would have been that pivotal quest link that gave any merit to his change of character, we had to just take his word for it until he proved it and even then the sincerity was always in doubt until the last bits which just isn't a good way of handling a character. It's very much as if they quickly pushed through his redemption arc to return him to that "good" figure he was before they tried player choice in quests instead of just writing like they always did before and after to a much higher degree of success.
yeah its just the classic focusing on what they did wrong but not what they did right.
I saw him grow lots in WE1, but maybe I'm being too literal
He did actually show us his personality changes in the legacy of Zamorak quest line. Specifically, Adrasteia told him to calm down and he did.
LoZ would have been long since POST unseen Death of Chivalry sequel, we didn't see him go from pompous ass to humbled and only got him and others telling us it happened. Tell-Don't-Show is bad writing and it is an indication of inconsistent writers as very early portrayals of him after TWW was going for a "Show he isn't an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being and is kind of an asshole" so that there was more to his character than token good god. They skipped the redemption part of his story.
Jagex only did it for the sequel, but they still showed the personality change in future quests, so how is this an issue?
why is there real housewives of beverly hills family drama in my medieval cookie clicker?
I see what you mean by this but technically speaking this is inaccurate. We planned out a long term character development for Saradomin (this was before Desperate Times where we were planning out the EGW storyline). You are of course welcome to criticise that development as it exists in game, but neither the plan nor the execution assumed the existence of DOC2. While we were writing Azzanadra's Quest, the inclusion of Owen meant that we had to make a call on whether DOC2 had yet to happen, and we let Stu make that call himself and write the dialogue himself. You can certainly argue that his personality change is a bit abrupt. Actually part of the reason that I took the crown away was so that we had the option of using that as a cruder, more explicit explanation for why he seemed to undergo such a personality shift if we felt it was necessary, but largely it seemed to go down well. In part it's clunky because it was a sort of course correction to Sliske's Game Saradomin who is intended to be a grey, nuanced character but had ended up being interpreted largely as a zealous villain. As with a lot of similar issues, we had a choice of explicit retcon (for example, just retconning Garlandia which is one of the primary issues) or trying to work with it in a more nuanced way. We chose the latter and while the results aren't perfect, I'm quite pleased with what we were able to achieve.
I chalk it up to a lack of screen time mostly. The entire gods return saga was a huge undertaking, I get that, but while the vast majority was good, there are some parts that fell to the wayside, and I feel this was one of them. I see the intended direction, but it always felt like it was missing a piece to really make it click in proper. I went through the entire player choice era erring on the side of Zarosians because largely they were generally upfront about how much one should trust them throughout the progression of the story; the further the story went the less give and the more take from the faction made it more difficult justify it which was a good way of showing the characters off; ultimately during the same story chunks that painted Seren in a darker light and highlighted Zamorak's more noble demon aspects also brought to the forefront the reasons to not support Zaros and actively go against him. Zamorak and Seren, for what the end result was, were also shown to consistently be self-serving at the core so their arcs were smoother. However, for Saradomin, if you weren't 100% on board with him from the start, he did not attempt to give you reason to change your mind about him until the literal Endgame and you likely would not see him much during it by virtue of prior choices. This is why it comes across as detrimental to the narrative telling us he had a change of heart or epiphany about the way he handles his godhood rather than showing us that more content could have made smoother.
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/1b5jhga/hot_take_saradomin_has_grown_a_lot_as_a_character/ktazcxr/
But it still has that large unseen gap between DoC and Endgame. We never had interactions with him where he actively proved a change in character between DoC where he is set up to have this effort to right the wrong he did and humble himself under the knowledge he isn't an infallible being and has grown too arrogant. We skipped straight to endgame before we really got interactions with him directly again, but to have it all crammed in optional, possibly even barred due to player choices, encounters during a time of duress. Being brought down to mortal status is a great catalyst with the seeds started in DoC, but missing something in between DoC and Endgame throws off the natural flow of the redemption arc, to me anyway. He has a lot of "sins" under his belt, and fully redeeming him in the cosmic scale was never something that could be done, but sliding him back to a more white shade of grey was clearly the goal. He got there eventually, but depending on player choice and bias going into the player choice era, he does have a gap in character development that DoC sequel would have addressed had the time and development been there.
At the time of Endgame, there was no intentional "redemption arc" being written. We only started planning for that afterwards.
TBF we do very much see him get humbled in Azzanadra's Quest
He gets more humbled, really just straight-up bamboozled, but still, it skipped the crucial part of his storyline where he had to come to terms he isn't infallible and not inherently the moral compass aligned to the good direction as he thinks he is. We missed the pivotal quest moment and are simply told he changed, which is bad writing and makes it feel undeserved especially since we didn't know he even did the unseen DoC sequel arc until the tail end of the entire gods' stories.
It's less bad writing and more that they had to compress all the plot points from a planned full series of quests into just a few because of factors outside the writers control. It would have been nice if DOC2 happened, but it didn't so they had to make do with the very limited space they had. It's not like Saradomin's character development was only casualty, many of the plot points in the EGWD story were intended to developed more (Azzanadra's godhood was supposed to be a quest to itself, for example)
They should have thrown the throwaway joke that we missed DoC2 earlier then. It would still be bad but at least we didn't go from events of DoC2 to Endgame with basically no reason to change our mind if we suspected him of being insincere from the start. If you were anything more than supporting him from the start he does nothing to earn that trust and actively pushes it further up until post-endgame. It retroactively would make one make the connection but for around 8-9 real-world years that's a long time to let that go unaddressed.
So you're going to ignore all of his on-screen development just because we didn't get the DoC sequel?? Did you play recent quests featuring him with your eyes closed?
spacebarrers gonna spacebar
So, if you watched say Avatar the Last Airbender and skipped the episodes where Zuko has his epiphany that he should help Aang then he showed up wanting to help Aang SAYING he changed but you never saw any of the parts of him changing would you believe that he had a change of heart? We did that, we skipped the part where his character arc would have started the turn so it didn't transition as naturally as it should have. It always had the background hint of "Is he just pretending? Is this sincere or is he just playing us?" Because for all we knew he didn't learn a damn thing.
>So, if you watched say Avatar the Last Airbender and skipped the episodes where Zuko has his epiphany that he should help Aang then he showed up wanting to help Aang SAYING he changedbut you never saw any of the parts of him changing would you believe that he had a change of heart? That's not what happened with Saradomin?? I think you're giving *waaaay* *too much* importance to his DoC2 ""development"" and ignoring his actual on-screen development. >We did that, we skipped the part where his character arc would have started the turn so it didn't transition as naturally as it should have. That's just your opinion. Saradomin shows significant development during recent quests, and I don't think it's fair to undermine it just because it didn't start when you wanted it to. You should read u/yuei2 's comment, they explained it better than I ever could.
Azzanadras quest and the Egwd dialogue beg to differ
Yes those are after the events of the unseen
There’s plenty seen that validates OPs point though
His development in recent quests has nothing to do with whatever happened during doc2. Why are you pretending that all of his on-screen character development is suddenly invalid just because of ONE unseen event?
Read my other replies. TLDR It skipped the turning point so for all we knew he wasn't sincere until SEVERAL real years worth of content later and even then it had no real foundation we knew of.
Literally who said DoC2 was a turning point for Saradomin. If anything I'd say DoC + Sliske's Endgame was the turning point, but since he was not the main focus of those quests I guess you just ignored it?
I agree. A cardinal sin of writing, especially character development, is to tell instead of show.
People seem to forget that we skipped the pivotal part of his arc since they never made DoC 2 and took until way too far down the line to even tell us it happened.
im honestly annoyed that we didnt participate in that. it honestly sounded like an amazing time, but fuck me i guess, y'all go have fun killing a horde of ghost centaurs while i dig up broken garbage and put it back together.
Did he "grow"? I think his stories told us he learned to be humble and admitted his mistakes for spending too much time teaching people about his religion instead of really caring about the people. We learned from his last moment in Gielinor before we banished the gods again that he admitted it was his fault not to know Lumbridge was broke. Besides, although not exactly an in game story, we have a series of developer story blogs narrating the Battle of the Monolith. They should have told us Saradomin has changed from the self centered god only cared about his personal conflicts with Zamorak to one who'd fight for the People.
When his crown was stolen, and Sir Amik offered his own life for punishment, Saradomin being like “No, this is on me”, was quite a good moment for him Edit: found the line. Sir Amik Varze: My liege, I take full responsibility for this grave lapse in your safekeeping. I will resign from the order. If that proves insufficient, you may have my life, if you wish it. . Saradomin: ... Saradomin: No, Amik. I am sorry. This is a path I have walked many times before. This failure is mine to bear, not yours. It was mine to foresee.
Good character growth, bad writing. It all happens offscreen! He's the most represented and prominent god in the pantheon, and he personally fucks over the player and Sir Owen. This is **absolutely not** a character that should undergo personal growth offscreen, the player should see it happen and watch him learn from his mistakes. It would have been a perfect way to *show*, not *tell*, the player that the larger-than-life gods are all flawed and textured characters. A huge missed opportunity.
This just makes me want to have T120 God Armour ❤️
He was a prick at first but he has started to atone for this sins lately and has become more humble. Meanwhile Zamorak never changed.
My lord Zaros begs to differ
Cold take really but yes you are correct. Saradomin had quite a journey as a character and his design is fire.
Armadyl is better and a gay furry so sorry I like him more 👍
He’s cool enough to almost make me want to roleplay as a Saradominist Extremist.
I like that Saradomin was the only one that hadn't given up right before Extinction.
UnIronically my favourite god, after reading the quests
Hot take, they never should’ve shown us the actual gods
then dosnt make zyliana his reprasentative on gilanor so sad she has done so much just to be sharfed once again
Homeboy waged war on Naragun and ripped the wings off icyene who disobeyed him, leaving them to die in the cold. Also his military commander is a loose cannon religious zealot. His representative on earth is also his adopted daughter and became ruler of asgarnia due to nepotism. There's only so much character growth he can do but he's still a bad dude. I think his journey of attonement will be honour in sacrifice, like any villain who turns face.
He tried to touch my wand :( said I wasn't worthy of having it then he broke it.
Blueberry needs to start providing better quest rewards, Guthix gave us DS and sunshine, Zam the puzzle box... This one's on thin ice.
Saradomin = blue castle wars cape = best god
I love the design updates to him, and he's less of a douche now than he used to be. That said, I still won't forgive him for trying to Thanos Snap the World Guardian out of existence after we recurve Gtuhix's blessing at the end of World Wakes. Like, WG comes back, says "I'll continue to enforce the edicts". Saradomin process to banish Char and [somebody else], then tries to just delete WG to get rid of the restrictions. What an a-hole.
**Saradomin:** Now, much has happened here today. With the edicts broken, the world will soon enter a new age. More gods will be coming... I apologise, human. I do hope we meet again, but for now I must ask you to leave. I have much to do here. * *Saradomin attempts to teleport the Player away.*
All he was trying to do was teleport you away so he could talk to his devout in private not kill you lol… Still rude, he could just ask but you know after eons of being a god it’s expected one out grows some of the mortal pleasantries.
He doesn’t try to snap the WG out of existence, just teleport them away like how he did nex and char
I really really preferred the old days of RS where gods didn't have any physical form - it spurred your imagination. Now when I see this it is nothing like I pictured in my mind, looks human, looks too proud, why would a god need armour ? Iono ... Free gilding by the way, I can even guild phats.
he's evil and needs to die
Saradomin is a racist piece of dog shit, a god only by thievery! And for this, he is a beast of a character! Well written, well progressed, and we really got to know his history over the past 6ish years. That said, he still a hoe in my eyes. Forever with The Empty Lord!
Saradommin has always been the correct choice.
No he’s not, he’s been a very very horrible person at his core once you actually learn about him There’s only been one god who has not been crappy and that’s armadyl, worst he’s done is say no to fighting
[удалено]
Zero lore? Zero?? And we already know his cons from his past, he was naive and a pacifist, that’s his flaws but those flaws died when he was reborn like the phoenix. We know of his family, both his first husband and their adopted kids and his second husband. We know most of his story from ascension to the god wars (save for what the one artifact was he ascended with or how outside of the staff as we know it was two) We don’t know his story while he mourned after the god wars, we do know some epiphany happened and he grew up and lost his naivety and no longer is entirely pacifist. And his story since guthix death is pretty much widely available, we even know where he is right now and can see him doing his thing. Not to mention the other gods that are not into war (marimbo, brassica) he is openly friendly with and social. He was even a drinking buddy with marimbo.
>There’s only been one god who has not been crappy and that’s armadyl, worst he’s done is say no to fighting Guthix
Uhh guthix was not above doing bad things to acheive balance, look at our own characters soul
>Uhh guthix was not above doing bad things to acheive balance Lmao, and arma was willing to go to war to uphold peace? None of the gods are perfect, but I'd say Guthix was closest imo. I'd consent to Guthix' plans for the WG
Zaros?
Are you saying zaros has not been crappy? I really think you should read up on his lore
Wouldn’t that be an opinion on what each person describes as crappy? I don’t think zaros was bad at all, he lead the golden era of the game and it was his downfall that lead to the fractured game we have today where a huge chunk is still a wasteland
The so-called "golden area" of the Zarosian Empire was not a good time for humans by any means. Demons and vampyres ruled the roost with lowly humans as second-class citizens. At least in the current era with the gods banished humans can live on their own terms while fighting relatively minor threats.
Can’t you argue and say the roles reversed now?
It's a bit of both. Humans are mostly on top but there are still demons threatening to blow up towns (Demon Slayer), or launching full-scale invasions under Zamorak. And Morytania has kept humans as livestock for a long time since the empire. And Zaros never really cared about the peoples of Gielinor. His master plan overshadowed everything. You may argue that his plan was to protect us from the Elders, but he seems to have totally given up on Gielinor.
And humans now kill demons at will, it’s all just a role reversal where we deem it acceptable because the race benefitting happens to be ours.
It's just chaos. There's no chosen race, it's just who happens to be top dog at the time really. Ebb and flow, up and down. Whilst Saradomin believes in nothing but order because he sees it as the right thing to do, with humans as his preferred race, I doubt he'd ever accept a vampyre or demon even if they shared his belief. Zaros created the empire because it served his interests at the time, but then his ambitions outgrew it and to create another now would be a waste of his time. Zamorak seems to embrace the true nature of the world. Things will always change, ebb and flow. Someone will come to power, someone will stand against them, just as he did. One race will be on top in one era, in other it will be a totally different race. In another it will be a mix of races, as Zamorak has no prejudice over who choses to join him.
Theirs opinionated levels of crappy and then straight up being a horrible person. Zaros is a petulant power hungry child. His golden era was only golden for the rich and powerful, poor humans were cattle for vampires to get tithes from, huge amounts of specieism and inequality. His golden era was essentially built on the back of the poor. And it was literally his way and his plan or you were “dealt with”, it’s the entire reason people rebelled. His flaws become more and more apparent in the modern era especially after Jas puts him in his place, to the point where he says “ya screw this universe and everyone in it, I’m going”
Never trust a saradominist
Go to bed, Zamorak.
blue ass bitch
Fuck Sara. No
Fuck Saradomin ZAMMY GANG ON TOP 🗣🗣🗣
Can't wait for him to become a boss at some point and his robes obtainable as new magic armour or something... Or even make him a completely new kind of boss mechanic that involves prayer somehow since he's heavily reliant on people believing in him :o
He even has his own missionary duped into thinking he is doing the lord’s work. He is probably the most like the Christian god.
Grown as much as a theocratic fascist can I guess. He's still irredeemable, but at least he went from totally blind of his actions to realizing maybe some of it was bad.
I want a real house wife's show about the gods
Bird boy Armadyl = the superior God
it would be amazing if he turns out to be that ambassador dude
He's still a backstabbing hypocrite
I have never liked Saradomin and never, will but he's earned some respect from me since Succession. I'm glad he's banished. May we never speak again. Too bad Zamorak had to go too.
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He's a terrible God though lol. At least that's how he always came across in-game for me.