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Yeah, that ending is a bit of a disappointment. I get the idea that has been proposed for What's Really Going On, but that idea seems to be proposed entirely from out-of-game sources. If that is genuinely what Plotkin had in mind, I fear he's attained protection from editors.
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Jul 15, 2018 18:35
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As best I see it: Something happened to the Marcher, presumably as a result of the crew members skullduggery, and presumably related to the Alien craft. The alien's alchemic writing got inside the Marcher, where it reacted with Forsyth's simple sealing word, setting the game in motion. At this point I think the player character is still the actual Forsyth, just enhanced by / under the effects of the ritual. Despite his alchemic weirdness, he still appears to be biologically human, as he needs to breath, and not be on fire, and so on, and he seems to still look like himself as he doesn't react to his appearance in any way. So the ritual he carries out at the beginning creates the environment in the Marcher we see in the game, which gives Forsyth the chance to fix the dragons and place the ballast. If he does, the day is saved, and if he doesn't, it might not be. And then theres no ending. The day may or may not be saved, but it just ends there. This might not be a bad thing, any resolution would need to build out this world where a navy operates transdimentional manor houses and probably touch on the alien wreck and what happened to Forsyth, and that would be hard to do in a satisfactory manner. The world and the puzzles were built together, such that the world exists in service of the puzzles. Adding a conclusion would ask the world to make sense on a broader scale, done wrong you make your game end on a low note and risk harming the players prior enjoyment. Add that to the fact that conclusions are generally non-interactive and I can see why Plotkin would want to not write one. Great LP, Maximum Bromide.
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Jul 15, 2018 20:06
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thanks for the lp! the ending makes everything quite abstract but it doesn't seem very satisfying - but that's simply part of what I'll take away from this experience. the concept of this game in itself is something I've really enjoyed and I thank you for sharing it
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Jul 16, 2018 03:12
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