Hi Alarys,
I'm glad you've been enjoying the game! I understand your feelings about that route in Aurentin and I appreciate your perspective. I anticipated this might be controversial, and I don't expect to convince you, but I feel like I should at least explain what my thinking was for writing it that way.
(Spoilers ahead.)
One of the many historical inspirations for that route, and for the design of the Auric setting in general, was the fate of the children of Nazis whose parents were killed in WWII, many of who emigrated to countries in South America, changed their names, and disappeared into the local population. As I myself am a descendant of specific people who participated in crimes against humanity--which, without getting into detail, were part of a terrible historical moment absolutely comparable in scale and inhumanity to the Holocaust--the stories I found of assimilated immigrants rediscovering their lost heritage and discovering that their parents and ancestors had committed terrible atrocities in their homeland resonated with me. Revelations like this dramatically affect how people born within a diaspora internalize their treatment by local people in a new country, and how their heritage fits into their personal identity. Such context can change the theme of a person's struggle as an immigrant, and indeed the theme of their entire life, from self-determination to transgenerational atonement.
For this conflict to be reflected meaningfully in the game I needed to give Athena (and the player) options in how to process this information into her identity and her struggle against her own oppression, which accurately reflect both historical examples and my own lived experience. That meant leaving in the choice for Athena to become a Nazi herself...if only so it would actually mean something, with real stakes, if she refused it.
The Auric Riders are not Nazis, they are the children of Nazis. The communities that the historical children of Nazis emigrated to often didn't make that distinction, and the result was sometimes adults who became fierce opponents of what their parents stood for, and sometimes it was more Nazis. I am sorry for putting you in the uncomfortable position of empathizing with them, even though making people uncomfortable is exactly what this game is intended to do.
In the game's launch marketing I emphasized that this game would not just be a feel-good story about heroic immigrants rising up against the oppression of local bigots, because sometimes the context behind true immigrant stories is much more complicated than the origin myths that second-generation immigrants are told. That marketing never reached customers who bought the game through the bundle, and I apologize that this wasn't communicated well on the itch.io store page.
-K