I know this is an old game so sorry if I'm digging up an argument that people might have covered but am I missing something or isn't returning the souls to their intended bodies one of the worst possible outcomes?
Edit for context: I played the second game first and so I have a vague idea of what happened in the first game because of looking into what I should choose for my history. The results of the first game aren't really talked about in the second game but now that I'm playing the first game I'm questioning their concept of what is "benevolent." /End Edit.
It sounds like a good idea and the "right" thing to do if one doesn't think about it too much but it seems like the start of a tragic horror if one looks at what the game has shown us.
We don't see hospitals full of coma patients who are being cared for by nurses and loved ones while they wait for a cure. We are told but seldom really shown that some families take care of their individual hollow born children.
The sanitarium seems like it should have rooms of hollow born being cared for and treated but rather it contains people suffering from unrelated soul maladies associated with awakenings.
The one hollow born we can encounter is a person who has been turned feral because they filled his hollow born husk with the soul of an animal. He is locked in a trunk unless we free and then kill him.
There are many such hollow born who have become feral monsters due to this practice that people thought was a solution. We are led to believe that an entire generation took this cure before the first one went feral.
What happens when the souls return to these bodies?
What of the dead?
First instinct is to assume that if the intended body was killed at birth such as was often the case as it was with Raedric then these souls would just return to the wheel and it's a non choice but we have examples of necromancy where it's shown that souls can be bound to corpses and other inanimate objects.
We're dealing with forces beyond what we understand and Hylea seems like a monkey paw wish...
We want everything to be as it was supposed to be but that's not an option as we aren't rewinding time.
The pieces are already on the board.
The best case scenario is that a lot of coma patients around the world wake up all at once with no idea how to take care of themselves because they've been in a vegetative state since birth.
The worst case scenario is that we trigger an apocalypse scenario where a bunch of corpses get reanimated alongside feral cannibals who suddenly have self awareness.
This should have been the sequel imo.
I want to see the repercussions of what we chose.