*Spoilers* The Torture Victims

[Miel]

I think that I understand the events leading up to Daniel drinking the Amnesia potion, but for me, this makes him more of an unbelievable character. My initial reaction when I first played the game and uncovered the entire plot was 'no one is this stupid!'.

Daniel is naïve, for sure, and at least as selfish as any other young male, but I can't believe that he would turn into a murdering bastard so quickly. Alexander had hundreds of years to become what he did. Daniel had about 2 weeks. And judging from Daniel's diary entries and from the loading-screen passages that show his devoted relationship to his sister, he seems like a reasonably kind and innocent young man, though perhaps too curious for his own good.

He is, in addition, a scholar. He is most likely a university student, since he is young and in 1839, archaeology was not a profession, but only a hobby for the rich and educated. Daniel comments that, after sacrificing a man for the warding ritual, he doesn't have the luxury of argument. This attitude seems inconsistent with Daniel's profession. The reason people become scholars is because they are curious: it is in their nature to ask questions. Would Daniel be so willing to substitute one horror (the Shadow) for another (murdering a man) without asking questions? Especially after he was so shaken by the deaths of all the men killed of the Shadow?

And if Daniel is a scholar and archaeologist, shouldn't he have developed some skills of observation? Didn't he notice anything amiss once he got to Brennenberg? Like the wealth of local lore about the Baron, the precarious and inaccessible location of the castle, and the obviously evil Baron who keeps a secret underground lair for the worship of heathen gods? The Mithraic altars and state of the prisoners should have at least roused his suspicions. If he was a good man with a sane mind, he would have booked it out of there after Alexander showed him the torture chambres.

Having been raised in England in the early 1800s, there is no way that Daniel could have seen torture as an acceptable method of disposing of prisoners, even those accused of the most heinous crimes. The last traces of torture were abolished in Britain over 70 years before the year the game is set in, and torture was abhorrent to the rigid Victorian morality of the era. The circumstances that could have created a monster like we know Daniel to be just don't exist.

In an attempt to rationalise Daniel's behaviour, I came up with a theory that the Shadow is destroying his mind. This explains his fragile sanity and his psychopathic tendencies. If the Shadow is eating away at his mind and his humanity, it makes sense that he would go mad in an attempt to save his life, forgetting himself in the process and not realising that he may actually be hastening his death. When he briefly comes to his senses, it is enough to make him want to forget what he has done, but not enough to make him see himself clearly for what he has become. This is why he focuses on murdering Alexander, even though he himself is deserving of no less.


...


Erm, I'm really sorry about the rant. I love this game, but it felt good to get that out of my system. I think I could go on for another few pages, though >.<