syndicate should go core, and for completely wrong reasons

The only time you do anything of your own free will is to go clear the passage into the flooded caverns. Meanwhile, Tarkleigh or Nessa are constantly telling you to kill things. Tarkleigh wants you to clear a way to the mainland by cutting through Brutus and when you do, Piety cuts off the path inland. You continue following Tarkleigh's objective by seeking an alternative route by killing Merveil, trekking through the woods, and unblocking the passage.

In act 2, you're told bandits are terrorizing the villagers, so you're tasked to go deal with it. You do, in a fashion, by either killing them all or sparing one of them. Meanwhile, Gruust tells you to investigate old ruins where blackguards were spotted. In there, you rescue Helena who tells you Piety is up to no good, so you need to make your way to Sarn by going through Vaal ruins. You unleash a dark entity in the process, so everyone guilt trips you into fixing your own fuckup. You make your way up the pyramid and kill the sun-eating monster which somehow breached into Sarn during the time you were there.

In act 3, you're told to rescue Tolman, but were too late. As you head into the sewers, Maramoa tells you to kill Gravy Sauce. Several hitches in the journey lead you to the gemling queen who helps you get around Gravicius's barricade. After murdering him, you're then told to deal with Piety. After murdering her, you're told you still gotta kill the guy responsible for her being here in the first place: Dominus. After you climb the tower and murder him, Dialla shows up and says your ass is still not done murdering.

In act 4, your job here is real simple: Kill Malachai and the beast. You do it, killing Voll for access to the mines then Kaom and Progresso the Soup King for access to the beast. As you murder Malachai and the beast, you're told there's a portal to return to Oriath.

In act 5, you wind up in the middle of a clusterfuck of a rebellion, so you slaughter your way through the carnage. When you get to town, you're sent off to go murder more high-ranking templars because freedom. You do that, and it turns out one was harboring a god with not-so-Innocence intent. You beat the purity out of him before the antichrist shows up and says you fucked up, and now an apocalyptic hunger god is nomming everything. Of course he wants you to fix your own fuckup. You go find a staff to reach him, fight a living statue who beats you by realizing that shiny stick = bad. You're then rescued by the antichrist who says you haven't fixed your fuckup so you gotta go back to Wraeclast and buff up by taking something from the dead beast.

In act 6, you're immediately told to kill undead rich people and Tarkleigh goes back to giving you orders about finding Nessa who fucked off somewhere. You find out she's been corrupted by Mr. Krabs and now you're on a whirlwind adventure to save her and commit deicide. Oh yeah, and collect the soul of one of Malachai's BFFs along the way. You kill the oversized crab god, but you're not done playing Cuphead and collecting souls for the devil, so you hitch a ride with a sassy pirate ghost who's now your best friend.

Act 7 is still the same, go find the next BFF and steal his soul. Oh and by the way, the village went to shit while you were gone, so you gotta kill a god and his puppet who gave you shit the whole time you were in act 2, so that's fun. During the soul stealing adventure, you find out the strange poet in act 2 has a severe case of arachnophilia so Eramir tells you to go slap some sense into him. You find the black widow's lair and discover that Yeena takes "hot fox" very literally and burns you a passage inside. When you get to the bottom of the spider-infested hellhole, you're once again too late to save the mad poet who gets nommed by the overgrown spider. The antichrist is still breathing down your neck about your mission, so you take a fragment of her power and fuck off back to Sarn.

Act 8, Hargan tells you the town, just like the village, turned to shit and there's a deflated balloon of a woman causing it. Turns out it's Malachai's 3rd BFF, so you kill her and steal her soul contract for the devil who tells you to return to the beast. Cool. By the way, two divine twins who control the sun and moon are alive, and vying for control over whether to turn the world into an easy-bake oven or a dark ice cube, so Maramoa tells you to murder both, because that for some reason won't fuck anything up. I forgot to mention Grigor is missing and surprisingly, it's not because your slow ass didn't rescue him in time. You go to praise the sun and moon before killing them before Totally Not Satan tells you to proceed forward.

You reach act 9, only to discover the town has become TOTALLY FUCKING METAL! The embodiment of your closeted demons tells you that you need to go back into the beast, but you can't go back in the same way you did in act 4 because fuck you. Fetch quest time! Sin Nye the Antichrist is gonna teach you how to make a bomb! Also the leader got abducted by a power-hungry traitor, so rescue her or something. Also more fetch quests by the obligatory twinsies, and a request for revenge by a lady who loved petting an armored reptile-thing 24/7 in act 4. You make your way to the core of a rotted beast, after fetching a gland from a monster that wins staring contests by turning contestants to stone and some powder in storage room guarded by a walking electrical pylon. Satan tells you he's going to make your soul-collection efforts a complete waste of time by freeing them, so you gotta go and kill them again in their own little realms of delusion. You do that, but that's not good enough, so now you gotta go into the corest of cores and kill the trio yet again, except now they're essentially a balloon animal made by an amateur. You kill it, dead beast shits you out of one of its pores, and somehow pirate lady and her sassy granddad were already there waiting for you.

Finally, you're at act 10. Hey look, the town turned to shit while you were away. Who'd have thought? The guy who shouted at you for beating the purity out of his god now needs help, so you're told to go rescue him. After you do, he says he wants to awaken the god lurking in his guts, so you gotta fight your way through Hell City to find the staff of head honcho templar who previously harbored him. Before I forget, Sassy Granddad pirate wants to get his bone on, so he asks you to fetch him a love potion, and his granddaughter wants to go on a pirate adventure and tells you to get her a map, but you don't have to do it or anything. Oh, and the lady-who-totally-wasn't-gonna-betray-you in act 5 totally betrayed you when you left, so you're asked to kill her. You get the staff, dude goes super saiyan and vaporizes himself because this isn't DBZ, and his god thanks you by opening a passage to Hungry Man. You fight your way through the water channels and face the giant once-statue again, but not before the antichrist and his brother admit they're both weak as shit and hide it by saying you're the hero of the story. When the fight's over, it turns out you are a real heartbreaker!