Thought I'd just add some of my thoughts on the subject... I'm on my third playthrough now, and last two times, I saved Abigail, just so you know. Although this time, I might kill her just of spite against the developers, who in this case went for waving a bloody huge sign saying "THE VILLAGERS ARE EEEEEEEVIL!!!!!" in my face all the time. So I felt uncomfortably like being pushed into saving her every time.OK, just a few thoughts. I might be a bit inaccurate, don't remember all the details right now, but here it goes:1) Did the Beast REALLY just appear because of the villagers' evil deeds? Because I remember that the very first short story about Geralt gives one of the main rules of the Witcherverse: magic doesn't happen by itself. If the devs decided to keep that rule, then someone must have summoned the Beast. And it seems like Abigail is the only spellcaster in the village...2) We really only seem to have Abigail's word for some of the "evil deeds". As mentioned before, it's unclear whether Mikul really raped his girlfriend... we DO know it was Abigail who gave her the poison, though... Odo and Haren are less ambiguous, although with Odo it still might be more complicated than what Abigail gives us.3) Olaf indeed mentions driving out the "filth" and drops it was their "kin"... And, seeing how the devs were pushing the "villagers are a stupid, murderous mob" idea, he probably really meant them killing or driving out their own... But this could be looked at from a different angle. The village is infested with undead monsters. Those undead are probably mostly former inhabitants of the village. Maybe, just maybe, dealing with the "filth" was in fact supposed to be fighting the undead infestation? Maybe the villagers were unwilling to kill the undead because they saw them as their former kin and the Reverend talked them into fighting? (*)4) There is also this ugly thing about Abigail belonging to the LHS cult...These are just a few of the things that went through my mind. Yes, there are arguments for saving Abigail. Yes, the Reverend seems to be a complete jerk. Yes, the game marks A. as "innocent". But it just irks me so much that in a game with some really well-developed characters, in a world of grey morality, Chapter I is so horribly black-and-white and cliche-ridden.(*) Just to be clear: the Witcherverse has some examples of citizens dealing with monster problems themselves without bothering to alert the authorities or witchers. This just in case someone asked how the villagers could have any way of fighting the undead.
