I gotta wonder, was there a branch cut from the narrative?
I feel like I got railroaded a bit there. I absolutely would not have wanted to rat out Nines to LaCroix, and when LaCroix chucked me out on my ear, the only way to continue the game was to crawl back to him. This did not make narrative sense.
It feels like they intended to put a branch here, allowing me to switch allegiance from LaCroix to the Anarchs. I could've gone to Jack, Skelter, or Damsel (<3) with my intel about LaCroix's interest in the Sarcophagus, and they could then have taken over driving the plot, by sending me to investigate it in the museum. Nines' disappearance could've been handled by him finding out someone or something was impersonating him, and he would go underground to investigate that.
From there on out, the actual missions could've progressed just like they do in the actual game.
Speculating obviously, but it feels like this. I'm sure the writers are smart enough to have seen the problem at least.
Yeah, the lack of player agency there is disappointing, especially considering Nines saved your life twice (not to mention that there was clearly something off with him when you met at him at Grout's mansion entrance). Even the whole work for the Anarchs as a spy doesn't amount to anything save a bit of extra dialogue near the end, a missed opportunity. Probably lack of development time and resources.
It
is very rail-roady, but it's not true that you can't play loyal to the Anarchs. You can tell the anarchs early that you want to side with them, and they tell you to be their mole in LaCroix's organisation. If you do so, then LaCroix will comment on it later on.
It helps
a lot if you bear in mind that LaCroix is
not the 'Camarilla choice'. He's his own guy, willing to fuck over anyone to pursue his own aims. His whole plan is an absolute refutation of the Camarilla's laws and belief system - diablerising a fucking ancient, something a Camarilla prince isn't even supposed to believe in, and trying to take its power to leap from 'middle management' to 'major global player' by doing something (diablerie) that is the worst of the worst for transgressions against the Camarilla - instant death sentence stuff, even for a prince.
There
is a Camarilla ending available, involving an older, wiser potential leader who does have his own skeletons in the closet, but is nonetheless genuinely committed to the idea that the Camarilla's various laws and structures, sensibly and mercifully enforced, is the best way of running things. Having that as being separate to the LaCroix side fo things makes it less jarring to get rail-roaded into working for LaCroix (whether as his willing stooge, as a mole, or as a double-agent).
Also, note one very deliberate thing. Remember when the Malk on the beach tells you who you can trust ('the man on the couch' = Mercurio, 'the lone wolf' = Beckett') and who is using you (every other motherfucker who utters any line of dialogue anywhere in the game). Notice that Nines is in the second category.
Not saying that Nines isn't universally acknowledged in-game (save from the aforementioned malk) a stand-up guy. But he's got a revolution to run, and there's something a
little bit fucking hypocritical about him calling LaCroix's merciful sparing of you as a PR stunt (makes LaCroix look good, he gets to use you for his shitty tasks and you'll probably get yourself killed in the process anyway), when the
exact same thing applies to Nines. Good anarch propaganda, they get you to do their shit-work, and that work will probably get you killed, solving their problem.
Sure, it appears that Nines
also would like to help you anyway, simply because he's a decent guy. But again, that applies equally well to LaCroix - his stress and frustration with the pressures of ruling seems quite genuine, and it's clear that he wants to see himself as the kind of 'enlightened ruler' who would execute the law-breaking sire while sparing the innocent off-spring;.
Plus it does feel, on first playthrough, like the developers are pushing you toward the anarchs. But a lot of that is simply because most games train you to take quest-givers at their word. The game puts a hell of a lot of effort into showing the anti-anarch counterargument, e.g. that:
- the anarchs are failing even to control their own small territory, with vampire-born STDs, ghouls threatening the masquerade because their vamp has skipped town and no system in place for another vampire to pick up the slack, goddamn apocalypse cults setting up in the sewers...l
- For every Nines there's a Damsel who you really would not want running the place, and yet there's no clear succession strategy to ensure that doesn't happen (that sounds like bullshit theory-crafting outside the scope of the game, but remember that if you choose to side with the Anarchs it actually throws that issue at you by making it look like fucking Damsel has taken over running the anarchs until it pans out that Nines is still alive;
- the anarchs are giving leader status to absolute monarchs like the Hollywood guy, even though everything about that kind of barony should be 100% contradictory to the anarch's ideology. This seems deliberate. You hear all this great ideological stuff about how left-anarchism can work with vampires in a way that it can't with humans, fuck the man and all that. Then you go to hollywood, and the 'anarch' leader is an old-money absolute royalty who is no different to LaCroix. If that's the pragmatic compromise the anarchs need to make, then what's the point of the whole exercise - it simply proves the Camarilla's claims that top-down rule is necessary to preserve the masquerade.
That doesn't mean that the Camarilla (i.e. the wiser/older 'camarilla prince' ending, not the LaCroix side) are the 'good guys'. Just that it's a lot more balanced than 'Nines saves you twice' suggests on the surface of things.
She takes me to the top room, and then I can't talk to her.
