Choice, Fate, and Free Will

[Strands Of Night]

The word "choice" in the LoK series always takes a back seat to the power-houses of "fate" and "free will." Indeed, "choice" and "free will" appear to have the same meaning. I often thought that they were the same, but recently I've been giving it more thought. Specifically a Youtube post (on Defiance) wondering why, since Kain is a slave to fate, is he allowed to often kill few or no enemies in sections of the game. My first guess was that it's just not their fate to die that day. But it just kept nagging at me for some reason. And so, I post.

Note: I think I should point out that to me, history/fate is as much a character in LoK as Kain or Raziel. And that it (or something controlling it) coul be (in a completely unfathomable Lovecraftian way) a semi-conscious entity, possibly "feeding" on the time stream (akin to EG). Everyone wants an easy meal, so it tries to fence it's prey in with fate. But the act of time being altered tears down the fate-fence of Nosgoth. So History has to scramble to reinstate everyone's fate, causing the "reshuffling" effect.
I will capitolize History or Fate when speaking directly of the entity, not history or fate in general.
Ok, now that I have that interesting bit out of the way, on to my actual post which probably won't be nearly as fascinating, and much, much longer.

The way fate is described in LoK, it sounds as though everything is cemented in history before it happens. That absolutely nothing is done without walking the path that fate has set before you. I believe Kain's exact words were, "free will is an illusion." But is choice?

While Raziel is the only character with free will, I don't know if it's accepted that he is also the only character with choice. As Kain, the player obviously chooses which enemies to bypass, and which enemies to send to the wheel. But does that mean that Kain, by extension is also making these choices? Or is the player the hand of fate, literally deciding Kain's every move? I believe that as Kain, I am making the choices that his fate has presented me with.

Did Kain have the choice to purify the pillars, and save Nosgoth from total corruption, or was it "the machinations of fate?" Say your feet are cemented to the ground (fate), and someone throws a ball at you. Even though you're actions are restricted, you still have the choice to reach out and catch it if it's a little wide. As long as the ball is in your arc of motion, you're free to choose how you interact with things in that area. I'll call it the "arc of choice." Anything ousdie that arc is fate, and it is impossible to choose to catch it. I think that Kain's choice at the pillars was in his arc of choice, and he chose to refuse the sacrifice, not because it was preordained, but because it was a decision (perhaps not conciously) to delay fate. But wouldn't it alter the timeline if he made a different decision? I don't think so, considering that if it is in his arc of choice, then history has "planned" for either eventuality, and has prepared the future for either decision. Because it is a big decision to Kain, and the player, doesn't mean it was any larger than, "do I go up the steps right foot first, or left foot first," to History, and just as easy to prepare for either outcome.

At William's chapel in SR2, Kain says that it is Raziel's fate to kill him there. And even though Raziel has free will, it takes all of his strength and willpower to keep from murdering Kain. Why? I think it's because Kain made a choice within his arc of choice. To convince Raziel to delay fate once again. Had Kain said nothing, Raziel would have murdered him, with or without the Reaver's insistance.

So why did Raziel stuggle so much with the Reaver? I mean, isn't it Raziel's soul inside? shouldn't it also have free will? Was it the will of the reaver to kill Kain?

I think that Raziel's soul lost any free will it had when it entered the reaver, and has become as much a slave to fate as everyone else, which is why it tried so hard to meet its own fate and impale Kain. This is the only time we see an actual physical struggle by Raziel to make a decision with his free will. Leading me to believe that for the Reaver, the choice to (or not to) impale Kain was ouside of it's arc of choice, and so had to impale him. So, either Raziel had to fight to stretch or extend the arc of choice for the Reaver, or had to tear it's "feet" from their bindings. I assume the former, as the latter would have given the Reaver free will as well.

My last conundrum I promise. When the time stream is altered, are everyone's fates potentially altered as well? Originally Kain is fated to die in William's Chapel, without having restored the pillars, or becoming the Scion of Balance. Was Kain's fate altered? Or is it really not his fate to restore Nosgoth?

I didn't really touch on a major question I have about free will and fate interaction, but it can wait. You've read more than enough.

A final thought on History: If History could be some massive omnicient entity like the Elder God, History and EG could be at odds. Both could be playing their hands against one another for Nosgoth. One siding with Raz, one with Kain. One with the Hylden, one with the Ancients. They could be the cause of everything.

Doh! I meant to post this in LoK General, not SR general. Move me? I apologize.

[Count D]

History is much, MUCH bigger than Elder God. Elder God is a very powerful being, but a vulnerable and not omnipotent one. The History is a force of nature, you can't fight it, you can't hide from it, it is what it is. Do not compare them.

[TheSquid]

It's not either/or. It's both.

Free will is real AND everything is predestined, at the same time.
They're both true.

I believe we all have free will (even the people of Nosgoth), so that's not what made Raziel special. When they said he had unique 'free will' in the games, what that really meant is he was unbound from predestination. (It's just easier and quicker to say 'free will'.) So that means only Raziel could have looked into his future in the chronoplast chamber and then simply decided to change that future if he didn't like what he saw. Whereas Kain was stuck with the chronoplast future he saw for himself and that's why he got all depressed and said "free will is an illusion." So, this story could have been over in a jiffy if Raziel had only been allowed to study the chronoplast long enough to figure out what he wanted to change. That's why they had to keep him ignorant, so all these other factions could have a chance (by tricking him!)


From our point of view, you and I are truly free to act however we choose. There's nothing artificially forcing us to make a particular decision like "Eat the green M&M first! It's your destiny!" It's totally up to us. Really. Our choice. AND it's also true that from the universe's point of view there are no "choices" at all, because everything is running on autopilot. It's all determined by clockwork. Tiny particles dance and interact and bounce off of each other in ways determined by physics. So there'd be no surprises for a godlike entity who was able to read this fate stuff like a book. They could cheat and read ahead in the book. Such a being could know in advance that you were going to eat the green M&M because all is deeply predictable, the same way we can predict exactly where the earth will be in its orbit on June 27, 2092.

And if you can time travel, that means all of history has to already exist to be ready for you to time travel to. Which means all decisions are already recorded, even though from your perspective that decision hasn't yet been made. Still, when you get around to making that decision to eat the green M&M, you'll make it freely, and you'll feel free because you are. There's no ghostly power in the universe limiting your decisions and funneling you down only one path. (That scene from SR2 where Raziel feels the forces of history pushing him to kill Kain? That's what doesn't exist except in LOK.) Only real factors can limit your choices, such as: dictators who outlaw M&M's, or not having the cash to buy M&Ms, or, God forbid, the store you go to only has bags of pink M&M's.

So we're living in freedom on our end of this reality. And predestination isn't a problem for us--only the universe is concerned with that........... until some fool goes off and combines these two things by creating a Chronoplast machine to show us what's predestined to happen in our future. If you look into the CHronoplast, Then you'd start feeling less free. Because you just cheated and read the last page in the book. LIfe (THe book) used to feel free because literally anything could happen each time you turned the page. Now you know how it ends so you feel trapped and at that point freedom has become an illusion for you. Because you messed up and looked into the time portals that weren't meant for mortal eyes to see.

(I don't think our real universe would allow this, either. It's an interactive universe where looking at an electron causes that electron to change its behavior in response. So if you looked ahead at your life's "finish line", just doing that would cause the universe to move the finish line and update your fate so that any intel you just gathered would be instantly useless and outdated. Otherwise, someone who knows they're "destined" to eat the green M&M first could then create a paradox soooooo easily! All they'd have to do is eat the red M&M first. And the universe would implode! No. It wouldn't. Because the universe wouldn't allow you to know your fate in the first place.)

[Strands Of Night]

Originally Posted by Count D

The History is a force of nature, you can't fight it, you can't hide from it, it is what it is.

To the uninformed the same could be said of EG. He (it?) claims to be the wheel of fate. But he is just a parasite, drawing energy from the wheel.

Why couldn't the History Entity (HE) do the same with the timeline? HE could try to manipulate time and fate to make him fat and happy. HE isn't history itself, but a parasite, manipulatng and plotting hstory's path to gain more power.

Everything else in LoK seems to have it's comparable adversaries. The Hylden and the Ancients, the Kain/Raz/Moebius love triangle. But what sits opposite EG keeping him in check? Not Raz who feeds him, not Moebius who helps him, not the Ancients who worship him, not Kain who pokes him with a toothpick. None of these people can do anything more than annoy EG. I see two possibilities, nature (the actual wheel itself) as EG's adversary. With less and less mortal souls to feed EG he becomes weaker as time passes. (Possible, but not very dramatic.) Or, there is an equally powerful entity opposing EG for dominance that has yet to reveal itself.

Originally Posted by TheSquid

So we're living in freedom on our end of this reality.

I never meant to mingle the Fate vs. Free Will questions of LoK with our real universe. I apologize if I led you down that path. But to be honest, I never really thought about it seriously. To me, I guess it is what it is. Fate or free will I can't change it. I definitely never looked at it from an electrons point of view.

Originally Posted by TheSquid

(That scene from SR2 where Raziel feels the forces of history pushing him to kill Kain? That's what doesn't exist.)

Wow! Never thought of it like that before. "A person will accept the reality they are presented with," or something really close to that. If your reality says history is immutable, and cannot ever be altered, then you are presented with the opportunity to do just that, I guess you would have the fight of your life trying to detemine what really is.

Originally Posted by Strands Of Night

I didn't really touch on a major question I have about free will and fate interaction, but it can wait. You've read more than enough.

My question regarding this is about Raziel. He has free will, but the manipulators seem to know what will transpire (to an extent) anyway. Does Raz walk a path of fate as well, even if he can jump off of it at any time? I think history assigns Raz a new "most likey" fate every time he alters the way things would normally turn out. With this "most likely" fate, the manipulators can see into the time stream and try to change Raz's decisions to get him to jump from one path, to a new "most likely" outcome. With this theory it seems logical that the Hylden and EG would be able to foresee some events concerning Raz (those on the most likely path), and yet still be in the dark and totally unaware for a time when he decides to think for himself. (Or at least he thinks he's thinking for himself, the poor rotten fella.)

But logic in LoK is often as solid as the breath it takes to point it out.

[Mr.Milky]

In the series Raziel only has the "free will" to either choose to come into the Reaver or to postpone it by living in the Underworld.

Kain says that Raziel's the only one without Free Will, but that's just because Raziel is the tool to acquire the truth. He's the key to the mysteries of Nosgoth and he remains the rightful Right Hand of Kain, regardless of how you look at his actions etc.

Raziel doesn't have the free will. That's an "opinion" of the Characters who do have their own "truths" and perceptions of Reality.

Kain proved that he could be wrong before. Basically, all the characters in LoK are trying to imply their opinions as if those are the true ones. This is important because we can clearly see the true parasitic nature of the EG who claims to be "A god" even thou he holds no power to do so. We can just say that he was feeding for so long that he acquired immense power regarding the Underworld, maybe even to say that he's the oldest parasite in the underworld. But a God of Fate? Not really. He's just another boss who needs to be swept away.

Anyway, Kain couldn't follow Raziel in the Underworld because time is ethereal in the Underworld. Neither could Moebius! The physical realm manifestations are beyond the reach of the spectral realm. That's why Kain believes that Raziel does have free will to do whatever he wants to.

There's always more to it.

---

"Fate" is when a person knows his future. It's often an individual perception of what "must be done", usually it's without any Choice to do otherwise.

Choices are illusions of the free will. There's no "Free will" in the full term because that would allow person to choose both ways, not just one.

However I doubt that Kain was thinking about that. Kain is a fatalist who appreciates the mechanisms of Astrology, even while it's slightly alluded at the beginning of the Defiance intro. In astrology there's a "free will", but it's connected with the mere actions of the individual. There's no absolute free will, only the illusion of the "Free will" that the individual perception realizes when it's in front of a choice. Regardless of how you look at it, you'll always choose one of the paths, not two. You don't have the "Free will" to choose both paths. You're predestined to choose only one due to the strings of time and you can't go back in time to chose the other one because that would create the paradox.

The series dwell upon the paradoxes, however I agree with Kain that Free Will is an illusion because whatever you think, say or do is already predestined and that's the mechanism of fate - a multiple strings of moments which flow like an animation, each time a bit different, but realistic and unchangeable. At least, for now.