: Well, the reason why I was asking is that Durandal says with incredible
: nonchalance (which actually I suppose is more out of hubris than apathy) -
: "Yeah, I know that bitch sent you to destroy me, but here's my core
: essence - just do whatever the hell you want with it, I don't care."
: (I guess this could be construed as Durandal being in his Melancholia
: stage, but I'm not sure how this matches up with the series of events in
: M1.)
I was thinking of it more like that scene with the Oracle from Matrix Reloaded: the Oracle tells Neo to sit. Neo gets all 'you can't predict me! I'll sit if I want to, or not if I don't!' . . . "I felt like sitting." To which the Oracle replies "I know."
Basically, Durandal is telling the player what he (the Player) is going to do, because he knows what the player will do, of his own free will, before the player even does. (I guess my compatibilism is showing here). It may seem a little paradoxical that the player only does that because of what Durandal says, but if you think about it Durandal is just creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, knowing that saying the prophecy will cause its effect. So he can say "here's my core essence, do whatever you want with it" so nonchalantly because he knows precisely what the player will want to do with it in response to Durandal saying that, and he wants the player to do just that.
: But what if the player decides to not believe Durandal (especially knowing
: his self-serving duplicity in the past) and instead forge on ahead with
: Hathor? That would mean the player not taking the chip, and I'd presume
: Hathor pinching you on the cheek saying, "Awww, that's my big boy, I
: knew my little cyborg schnook-ums wouldn't turn against his little 'ol
: Jjaro dreamboat." - or words to that effect anyway...
Hah, that's a great Hathor impression you've got there :-)
And yeah, I guess storytelling-wise having one character predict another character's choices doesn't really work when any number of different people could be sitting in the place of the second person (the player) and *not* be thinking the way that the first person (Durandal) predicts. But... well, Eternal is already kind of separating the player from the player-character by giving the player-character a name, and this doesn't seem much worse.
