Why did I just kill an important person (spoilers)

I think its perfectly acceptable to choose the Loyalist option, in my opinion it is the correct and "heroic" option. Yes you end up killing Cleo, but this is a war don't forget, citizens lives are at risk, she plotted to have you killed, she would otherwise get off scott free due to her relationship with Praetor White. If it weren't for Washington, an upstanding and respectable member of the PPD, she would have succeeded as well.

The mission explicitly states that it is because of her relationship with White that is forcing your hands. What is the alternative, betray Washington, the man who went out of his way to watch your back?

Surely the unheroic option would be to betray Washington's loyalty and side with Cleo despite everything that has happened.

Like you Sam I have only played through the Nova arcs of Responsibility, but they seem to be very heroic to me. Much much more heroic then the crusader arcs which can involve feeding innocents to the ghouls.

Yes killing Cleopatra is perhaps a bit on the vigilante side rather then hero, but its still on the heroic side as opposed to villainous side in my opinion. That is a key distinction. Also you have to remember that the Resistance members are not just normal criminals in the eyes of Loyalists, they are terrorists and murderers. Washington is a good cop and is even a great ally to your character; saving your character's life when Cleopatra schemed to have you killed. I think people tend to forget that because they assume your character would have survived without his help, well lets follow the story and assume your character isn't invincible and would have died otherwise. I also don't think Loyalists are supposed to see a huge distinction between Crusaders and Wardens - to them the Resistance are all the same, and they get a bad rep from the evil things that the Crusaders do. Just like to the Resistance, all Loyalists are power hungry freaks who abuse their power for personal profit.

Baring that in mind, Washingston was absolutely justified in the actions he took, your character was absolutely justified in supporting his decision given Washington's rank and previous actions to save your life. From your characters perspective, you are totally in the right.

My last point is that pro-resistance folk are always playing up the distinction between Wardens and Crusaders, while trying to play down the difference between Loyalists of Power and Loyalists of Responsibility. Even in the Wardens own story arc, it is explicitly stated that Noble Savage was once a PPD cop of distinction who served the people of Praetoria with great responsibility. So even outside of Loyalist arcs it is stated that there are heroic Loyalists. Portraying all resistance as Wardens and all Loyalists as disciplies of Power is quite disingenuous I think. The Resistance Crusader arcs are some of the most evil and vindictive missions I've done, even worse then ego-heads of the Power arcs.

The distinction between Wardens and Crusaders is actually what the moral choice is, when I stop to think about it. Saving Cleo is an act of compassion, showing that I believe some Resistance members may be OK and trying to show them that some Loyalists aren't all that bad, in return. Unfortunately, this is accomplished by becoming a member of the resistance. Killing Cleo, by comparison, is an act of conviction, demonstrating that I do not believe anyone in the Resistance is worth saving and that Loyalists and Resistance can never work together. The hardline approach, as it were.

And you have a point - I'm mixing in a bit too much of my own beliefs here. As a player, and especially one who has been through the Warden arcs, I'm sympathetic to the Resistance, so I'm much more inclined to like them and make compromises for them. My character, however, would have no reason to feel that way. She just saw the resistance try to blow up a hospital practically out of spite, and now she's faced with a Resistance mole that's saying "Trust me!" This turns into a very classic animated movie scenario where a character who is truly sympathetic is exposed to be a traitor and is no longer trusted. Hell, that's basically half the plot to Avatar, only Jake Sully didn't get murdered in cold blood... Well, just about, anyway.

I'll probably have to give the greater struggle of freedom vs. safety more thought before I delve any deeper into this, because I suspect that's where the key to the answer lies. It's easy to sympathise with the Resistance's desire to free people's minds no matter the cost, but having run through the Wardens' arc all the way through and seen how much actual practical damage this does to the innocents they try to protect... Let's just say there's food for thought here.

To drop a few more spoilers, things I've done for the Resistance include disabling the Seer network almost entirely by freeing the Seers and destroying people's only source of drinking water because it was being spiked with "docility" chemicals. In both cases, this does SIGNIFICANT harm to people for the sake of freeing their minds, and one has to wonder if simply tearing the world down and plunging people into a dark age really is the superior decision. After all, Cole didn't build this police state for no reason. He built it because desperate times called for desperate measures. There IS something to lose by discarding it.

But then, that's just a sign that the writers did a good job. I don't have an easy answer, and that's quite impressive, coming from someone as introspective as me.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That particular mission takes an interesting turn if you call Calvin Scott and ask his advice. You know, if you are undercover too. I actually thought he'd say something like "Well, stall Washington and we'll get Cleo out of there", but no.

I think it's a good mission, myself. I like hard choices. To me it makes sense.

At least being a cop who doesn't like the system in Preatoria gives you a reason to come to Paragon. You get to do the job you wanted the way it is suppose to be done.

I think another way to view many of the Warden moral choices is in the context of short-term versus long-term. Many of the Resistance choices are about the immediate result, whereas the Loyalist options seem to view it from the present benefit and long-term effects of the decision. Get Arvin and his nephew out of Praetoria now, destorying part of the Seer Network and blowing up the water treatment facility end up being good things at the time, to bring freedom to those people, but people may suffer more because of the decisions. Dr. Arvin's research will never help other Destroyers, crimes from the Syndicate and Destroyers will be harder to prevent and, finally, the people will have to survive off tainted water for months. These are the examples provided from meta-text, so I believe their reliable. It makes you also think a bit differently about how heroic your decisions really are.

When I did the Warden arcs in beta, I did them as an undercover Loyalist. Provost Marchand really provides some interesting insight into the various situations too. For example, he actually tells you to help Dr. Arvin because he would love to stop their destruction, despite displeasing White and Duncan, and it is the Deputy of Information, trying to further his position, that rats Dr. Arvin out. Marchand seems to disapprove more of the Resistance's methods rather than what they're trying to achieve. Its the Crusaders he says he worries about, not the Wardens.

The more I talked to Marchand, the more I liked him overall. Not to say he doesn't ask you to do some disagreeable actions, but I still like him more than I'll ever care for Calvin Scott. He really is a Responsibility Loyalist, which makes sense since its along those lines of protecting the people and stopping the invasion that he encourages you to go to Paragon City.

You know, I was just going to come here and rant about Praetor Tillman and what the hell she was doing in the Responsibility arcs when she's clearly evil and clearly coocoo for cocopuffs. I just about did, but I kept telling myself "Dude! Chill! See this arc through to the end, and maybe it won't be so bad. Remember - you're still sore from the last time your head exploded!" And sure enough, right at the very end, what I would have otherwise described as one of the most vile arcs I've done in the game in quite some time turned right round right round and still let me come out of it clean.

To go on with the spoilers, Tillman's entire arc revolves around finding and capturing Vanessa DeVore. Well, that and Tillman being guano crazy. It was very clear to me that what I was doing had very little to do with my responsibility to Praetoria and much more to do with blindly following the orders of an obvious complete monster. I mean, seriously. This is Kelly Uqua levels of obvious. I'm not sure if this would be appropriate for the Power tree, either. It's not about responsibility, it's not about power... To be honest, it's the same brand of railroading servitude that turns most people off Arachnos. Mother says jump, I ask how high. No, thank you.

However - and this is what blew my mind - right at the very end of the arc, Vanessa, defeated and surrendering, makes a compassionate plea with me to let her leave. And unlike Beholder and the other psychics who were utterly pathetic, and not a little hateful, Vanessa manages to do hers with dignity, honour and, most of all, respect. And as I read through it, it killed me that I would have to bring her into "Mother's" care. Only... It turns out I didn't have to. "So, what, I should let you go?" says my line in the dialogue, and I'm thinking it's just creative writing, but no! Vanessa says "Yeah, you should." And I say "Yeah, I should. Go." And I go O.o

You know what the best part of it all was? This was NOT a morality mission, and it didn't change my alignment. I didn't have to abandon the Loyalists, I didn't have to join the resistance, I didn't have to flip the game on its head. For the first time in... Well, the ENTIRE Praetorian storyline, I was finally given a choice that I felt like I made on my own. I wasn't facing the pressure from my alignment, I wasn't facing the consequences of doing the "wrong" thing. It was just a choice, for me to make.

They say "character is what you are in the dark," and this could not have been more true here. It's interesting how much more... Personal a difficult choice can become when neither option has consequences. It is in those times that we are free to choose based on what we feel and what we believe, rather than based on what "must" be done. These are the kinds of choices I want to have more of.

Ironically, the entire alignment system and the morality missions which come with it are, in my opinion, their own greatest enemy. We can never have a grey-and-grey morality as long as there is an omniscient narrator always judging our actions after the fact, anyway. As long as we are hamstrung by consequences, our choices will always be difficult, but they will never be as satisfying. In my opinion, questions of morality need to be asked in a vacuum, determining people's personality and beliefs, rather than their ability to prioritise.

In a sense, I'm going to dread the ACTUAL moral choices in the future, the ones that matter, because those are simply never as much fun to go through. In the meantime, I will console myself with revelling in those other moral choices where it is not pragmatism, but rather ACTUAL MORALITY that decides.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You know, what... I just figured it out, at least in part. How is it that choices are always so hard and ambiguous on BOTH sides of the fence? Well, as I see it, because they are intentionally crossed. Resistance moral choices are designed such that they favour the Loyalists more while Loyalist moral choices are slated such that they favour the Resistance. Let me explain:

The final moral choice in the Resistance comes courtesy of Calvin Scott - do we blow up people's only source of fresh water to "free their minds" and let them "choke on dead air and foul water," as Muro would put it, or do we wait and find an alternate solution? If I want to stay with the resistance, then I have to kill people by taking away their drinking water. In this case, the Loyalist option sounds a lot more appealing.

The final moral choice with the Loyalists comes courtesy of Interrogator Kang - do I reveal the Emperor's plan to slaughter Primal Earth to the people, thus instigating open revolt, or do I keep it quiet and deal with it myself? If I want to stay with the Loyalists, I need to hide this horror from the people, and for what? To avoid upsetting the peace? To spite the Resistance? In this case, the Resistance option sounds a lot more appealing.

Clever, writers, very clever! To paint the moral ambiguity of Praetoria and make us less likely to entrench ourselves on just one side, you made each side's moral choices biassed towards the OTHER side, such that every time we feel like we are where we belong, the moral choice suggests the opposite. It's not how I would have handled it, as I'd probably have played it straight all the way, but that kind of underhandedness really does work. What do you know!

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.