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Okay, just finished the game. Gonna finish reading through this whole thread, but I figured I'd write out my reactions about the game and the ending before I read any more, because I'm sure there's gonna be dozens of pages about it. I figured we'd be past spoilers by this point, but I see a bunch of spoilers scrolling back very recently, so I guess I'll do that. Whoah, what a ride. I loved the game. There were some off notes, I felt, in Ep5, but I overall it was damned good. The attention to detail, and rewarding me for noticing much of that detail, was incredible. Now onto to the ending: I chose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay, because I felt in the end there wasn't really much of a choice. I see it was almost an even split, and I understand how people could have chosen the other option, but I think I made the right choice. - I couldn't refute, couldn't destroy, couldn't undo everything I and everyone I'd gone through the game with had experienced. Everyone in the dream diner begged you not to kill them them again... but wouldn't that be what reverting would do? If I reverted, the people they were, the things they'd experienced, for every single one of them, that would be gone. The people I'd come to know, they would all be just as dead as they would be from the tornado if I chose to unmake them now. I still believe, having seen the endings, that survivors of the tornado were likely - the town was in better shape than I thought. Perhaps it is crueler to let them live after such a disaster, but... - Seeing how much havoc I'd caused with my attempts to "fix" the past, I couldn't imagine that going back "one last time" would fix my problems. "Just one more hit"? No. It's time to embrace the things I've done, the choices I've made, and accept that some things are out of my hands. The vision I had of the tornado happened before I ever altered time - could I risk going back and letting Chloe die, creating a reality where Max was unaware this tornado was coming (because I'd overwrite her memory of learning to time travel)? Going back to "fix" things seemed like a terrible temptation, a poisoned apple. And worse yet... - Assuming the stuff about alternate realities persisting is correct, not only would I have created a new reality where Max has to deal with everything without Chloe, without knowledge, and with a similar ending... I'd have left behind me yet another reality, and not just another reality but the only reality where we well and truly leave Chloe alone. Again. Forever. Can you imagine looking into that photo and disappearing from the cliff, leaving her to face the devastation of the tornado and it's aftermath, with many dead and injured including possibly what's left of her family, without you? I couldn't do that to her. I wouldn't just be choosing to let another Chloe die (no big deal there), I would have been choosing to abandon the Chloe that had grown over her time together and had a chance, at last, of becoming more than the girl who died in Arcadia Bay. Choose to save Arcadia Bay isn't the "good choice", it's the choice to run away from Chloe in her time and need and build a new life somewhere else without her, in some "new, better reality where Chloe is dead", and pretend that what happened never happened at all. It's repeating the exact same mistake you made at the beginning of the game, and I promised her and myself it was not something I'd ever do again. It's time to stick around and deal with the mess I've found myself instead of running away and abandoning those who are left. - Finally, despite Warren's insistence and the nightmare's insinuations... Warren doesn't know poo poo about what's going on, really, and the nightmare lies to you over and over again. Is the storm really the result of my time travel? Because like I said, we see signs of it before I ever go back in time, and if anything I feel like my time travel is the first sign of whatever is happening, not the cause, and even if I chose the good ending and it seemed like things would be alright... it's clearly not. On top of them wanting me to believe it was somehow my fault, they wanted me to believe it was Chloe's fault for living, and... I don't buy it. There's obviously correlation, but there's nothing in the game that sold me on causation, and plenty of reasons not to trust the sources that try to claim the first is the second. In summary: Sometimes things just happen. The choice in the end felt like a choice between the selfish running away and leaving someone else to pick up the pieces of their ruined lives while you pursue your own happy ending, or learning from everything you've experienced and deciding that this time you're going to stick around and be there for the people that need you, when they need you, instead of running away again. How could I have chosen anything but what I did? So ultimately, I was happy with the ending, even though I wish we'd gotten at least some more closure in regards to the aftermath, and I was glad I was given the option I was given. Edit:Hahah, I finally gave in and watched the bay ending on youtube. How could anyone think this was the good ending!? It closes with the blue butterfly on the coffin as it begins to snow! You didn't stop poo poo! GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 02:03
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Paladinus posted:But also snow? I had to check on youtube and either there are multiple Bay endings or you imagined it. It was in the top video for "save bay ending", plain as day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htpG3W7aTyw Starts around 11:00 minutes but is hard to see, starting around 11:30 it's pretty easy to spot if you're looking for it, and it's most obvious in the scenes that are looking up at the sky.
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Nov 16, 2015 15:44
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BobTheJanitor posted:I think that's intended to be flying tree fluff, like from a cottonwood tree or something. You see it in certain parts of the country. Tends to be more of an early to mid summer kind of thing though, so it would still be unseasonal in October. But I kind of doubt that's what they were going for. Eh, I don't know. They've demonstrated a pretty good attention to detail and leaving subtle hints throughout the entire rest of the game, I don't see why it couldn't be. I guess it could be tree fluff as well - I did spend a bit wondering if it might be pollen or seeds, but that would honestly be weirder than snow. Paladinus posted:Uhm, what makes you think it's snow? To me it looks like their graphic engine is glitching with how light goes through the trees. That's why you don't see it in front of characters. Or those are just some random specks, because they don't even fall, but only move horizontally and upwards. That's not how snow works. It felt to me like you bought some time, but didn't actually prevent the inevitable, only delayed it. It definitely didn't seem like a graphics engine glitch to me, and it goes behind some trees and in front of others so I'm not sure if that makes sense either. And it acts like how I've seen light snow act on windy days? I dunno, maybe it's not, but I do think it's intentional, and it seems like a weird thing to add if they didn't intend it to mean something also are we spoiling or not spoiling? GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 16:17
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Paladinus posted:You can see the same glitch in the other ending, too. It is not snow and it's not intentional. And again, it only appears in front of trees. Huh, you're right about it appearing in that ending too. But you're wrong about it only appearing in front of trees. It appears in front of the road and continues being visible when it floats past the truck as well.
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Nov 16, 2015 16:26
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He hits the post button, but his argument suffers a fatal gutshot. "Rewind! Rewind!" he tells himself, before going back in time and pretending like it never happened. 
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Nov 16, 2015 16:31
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Plom Bar posted:Y'all know that it snows in October sometimes, right? Generally not during weather where people are wearing skirts and sleeveless shirts and the sun is shining though! And the snowing in October is sort of specifically pointed out as a weird thing for the area.
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Nov 16, 2015 17:37
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Plom Bar posted:Never been to Canada, I see. If the game was set somewhere else I might buy it, but the game itself pointed out it was a weird thing for this region and climate.
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Nov 16, 2015 19:48
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So, I was thinking about even though I was happy with my ending (regardless of how I rationalized it), I was definitely unhappy with the end. I think there's problems with pacing, problems with writing, things get a bit too hamfisted and absurd and the stealth section was dumb, but my biggest complain was... Was there any other point in the game where they made you choose an outcome rather than an action? Because your options weren't "Save Chloe or Save Arcadia Bay", they were "Refuse to change the past again" or "Undo everything in the hopes that it will lead to a better future". I was trying to figure out why the final choice was really grinding away at me, and I think that's it. It stopped feeling like a game where I had agency and choice, and basically felt like the game was talking to me, as the player, and lazily saying "pick the one you want, I'm done". Replaying it in my head, just changing how the two options were described could have gone a long way to making the ending feel a little better, towards making it ending where I decided what to do and lived with the consequences either way, instead of being expressly told what the outcomes were. The person who described the ending as "hamfisted" a dozen pages back really had it right, I think - the only reason the game would have had to present it the way it did is they felt they hadn't actually communicated the situation (which they didn't) and that's definitely a failure in writing, but it's a failure in writing compounded by the choice they made to phrase the last choice the way they did. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 02:06
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Robiben posted:[spoiler]I also think it works because the end is basically "No gently caress you, you cant have a perfectly happy ending, now make a tough choice". I actually would have been happy with a bad/bittersweet ending if they'd committed to the concept instead of the half-assed attempt they made here. Imagine an alternate ending pair where: Sacrifice Chloe: You go back in time, you let her die, you come back to the future... and the tornado still hits Arcadia Bay, but this time you're alone at the lighthouse... just like in your vision. You get to deal with the aftermath of having hosed up the past and killed Chloe yet again, and since you don't have the picture this time you can never, ever change it. Sacrifice Arcadia Bay: You decide to stick with Chloe, and hope it's over, but as you leave the bay the strange weather and omens are obvious and it feels like no matter where the two of you go, the storm is going to follow, and more lives are going to be ruined. You get to deal with the knowledge that you've not only hosed up the present and lost your one opportunity to fix things, but it's going to be worse than you ever imagined. Now that might have been cool. What we got was just... weak.
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Nov 17, 2015 15:51
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Robiben posted:I can definitely see your point about the endings feeling weak. It could have gone in much grittier/darker directions and that's a valid story choice that could have made for some seriously thought provoking narrative. But LIS feels much lighter in general. Sure it deals with some heavy stuff like suicide and murder but it does it in a "teen fiction" kind of way. I don't think uber dark stuff would fit LIS even if it would be more interesting. It wouldn't have had to have been darker or grittier to feel stronger - it just would have had to commit to anything. Maybe without Chloe around, you still have the visions and can focus on convincing people to start evacuating, so a lot of people are saved from the storm. If you save Chloe, show that there were in fact survivors, and that they are rebuilding, and maybe to some small extent which people survive (or at least which ones you see) depend on your previous actions. Both of these are significantly more positive while still hammering home the message that there are some things you can't change, but you can still be responsible for your own actions and effect the lives of the people you care about. Or it could have committed to the "time travel can actually fix your supernatural weather problems" idea without the "but by killing people you care about for reasons we aren't going to actually explain" and gone somewhere completely different. Instead we get "it's better for everyone if you don't do get involved, but hey, you can choose to be okay with ruining everyone else's lives for your own benefit" as the only coherent message. The current ending is honestly way darker than what I proposed. Bad stuff may be happening, but at least you aren't directly responsible for it and can feel good about the decisions you made leading up to it as making the best of a bad situation. You seem to think the endings aren't crushingly depressing already, but the "growth" you talk about is the character either learning to say "gently caress the world, all that matters is what I care about", or realizing that the world is better off without them getting involved and intentionally removing themselves from the equation. That's pretty dark, way darker than "sometimes bad things happen, and you can't stop them no matter how much you try or how much power you have, but the things you can do still matter and it's okay to find value and fight for it even when times are bad". As an side, I would like to add that in every choice game I've played, the best ones where choices actually feel super meaningful have different endings, but don't let you choose them. The end of the game is often completely devoid of meaningful choice, sacrifice control at the end in favour of actual consequences, sending the message "You've chosen the ending you wanted through every choice you made throughout the rest of the game - now it's time to see the consequences" or something to that effect. Again, it's about commitment. If the game really wanted you to choose between Chloe and Arcadia Bay, it should have started doing it a long time ago, beginning at episode 3 at the latest and peaking at the beginning of episode five, giving you the options to try and warn people in power of the storm and get people to evacuate, or bonding with Chloe and helping her investigate Rachel's death and find the murder who drugged Kate. Rather than the weaksauce we got, give us an ending where we successfully evacuate the town and escape from Jefferson... but don't have the pictures we took of our bonding experience, so Chloe is finally killed as she visits the dark room by herself and we can't do anything to stop it VS an ending where we help Chloe and discover Jefferson's plans and gently caress him up with the help of David... but then we're trapped in the Dark Room by the storm as it ravages the town. It's the same ending choice - save the people of the town, or save Chloe - but without feeling cheap and weak and tacked on, and notably without any big "OH BY THE WAY NOTHING ELSE MATTERED WHICH ENDING DID YOU WANT AGAIN?" choice tacked on right at the end. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 17:30
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King of Solomon posted:Basically, one of the main ideas they expressed through chapter 5 is "time is fragile." If Max uses her rewind power to change anything, time freaks out and crazy things happen. She changed time a ton in episode 5, which is what created the nightmare world. When she only does a little bit here or there, or one big change - as in the rest of the game - you get the storm. If Max does absolutely nothing with her power - that is, you're following the natural timeline - nothing happens. Except that's not true - what fixes everything isn't doing "nothing" with your powers, it's changing the past... again. It's going back in time and preventing yourself from learning how to use them or that you have them, which unlike saving Chloe is actually a huge paradox of the sort "time is fragile" usually warns about. In most fiction, messing with your own origin story is the single most hosed up thing you can do to time! Getting your powers is what happens in the "natural" timeline, and you have to explicitly use your "overwrite the past" powers to prevent the natural timeline from occurring in order to prevent the tornado. It doesn't prevent the tornado-vision or you overwriting alt-Max's memory in that timeline or bringing along a bunch of weird junk. It's just... weird. I also thought the nightmare world was more a commentary on how much her power was damaging herself rather than "time", based on the headaches and disorientation and stuff it had caused in the past. (but I guess it wasn't, since that whole thing was dropped completely for the ending - you'd think going back and removing her ability to go back would be the sort of paradox that would give her a bloody nose at least!) LoseHound posted:We can't save Chloe because the universe conspires to kill her one way or another, but the universe doesn't care about wiping a town off the map? Would Max speaking up in the bathroom have ruined everything somehow? The game asks you to just go with it, and it doesn't work for me. [spoiler]Perhaps the game should've gone full JRPG and revealed that Max was given her powers by God in order to purge the human race. And then we fight God. and Kate Marsh.[/quote] Would have been a better ending than what we got. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 20:06
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King of Solomon posted:In the natural timeline - that is, the timeline that happened before Max learned about her powers - Max did nothing. By going back in time again and doing nothing, you're returning things to normal. Except Max didn't do nothing - she went back in time. There is no timeline where Max does nothing, Max going back in time after Chloe gets shot is in fact the 'natural' sequence of events, until we forcefully create one by overwriting a chunk of history. If you absolutely have to use time travel to make something happen or prevent something from happening, it's tough to call that thing "the natural timeline", imo, and that is literally the only way to get "dead chloe funeral" as an outcome. exquisite tea posted:I think the nightmare sequences are actual fractured timelines that Max's consciousness is phasing in and out of, in the same way I believe that the opening lighthouse sequence isn't a daydream but the remnant of a previously altered timeline from an ur-Max that we never see. I've seen this, and does this imply that we're going to get potentially "overwritten" at some point in the future ourselves if it's true? That seems to be how it works. That would really double down on that futility ending, wouldn't it? "Not only did none of that happened, but you won't even remember any of that happening, the person you played as the entire game will poof into the aether and disappear". GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 20:14
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King of Solomon posted:Let me clarify my terms, then. When I refer to the natural timeline, I'm referring to what would happen if Max never had her powers. No changes were made because no changes can be made. Before Max had her powers, Max sat in the corner of the bathroom and Chloe got shot. By returning to the bathroom and letting Chloe get shot, Max is returning to the natural state. That's why the tornado doesn't happen. The vision of the tornado happens before then, implying that the timeline where Chloe gets shot is one where she already has powers doesn't it? We don't erase the vision, after all. I mean, I think I understand what you're trying to say, but it doesn't make any sense to me at all. There is no timeline, none, that extends beyond the Chloe-in-the-bathroom scene where we don't use our powers, including the 'natural one'. It is absolutely just as dependent on us using our powers as the tornado-timeline, but it also involves creating a personal temporal paradox on top of it.
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Nov 18, 2015 20:23
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I think it makes sense, but it has some disturbing implications. In that case, Chloe dying isn't so much a natural timeline as a stable timeline somehow. Oh man, imagine if the storm really does happen on it's own, and it isn't because of us, but all of this is ur-max's attempt to stop it and we finally figure out how to do it. Maybe we "snap back" because she's been busy arranging things so that Chloe gets shot, and in the "original" timeline this never even happened. I'm imagining some 80-year old ur-Max finally figuring out how to set up a stable timeline after discovering her powers in old age, and deciding to go back and save the town from the tornado that struck it in her youth (remember in our original vision of reaching the lighthouse, we don't have any powers!), leaving hints so Chloe ends up in the bathroom, only for us to maintain a memory fragment of the lighthouse and allowing our younger selves to discover their powers early and gently caress it all up. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 20:54
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Pimpmust posted:In LiS 2, we play as ur-Max, trying to puzzle together a timeline that definitely kills Chloe, failing at the end of each episode. It would be an incredible inversion. Instead of it seeming like reality has it out for her and kills her at every opportunity, it turns out reality is actually doing everything it can to keep her alive up to and including giving younger you seemingly random time travel powers, and we're the ones who are trying to kill her off. You spend time sending texts to Nathan about how he should carry a gun for his own protection, then carefully nudging the car in the junkyard so that it causes the perfect ricochet when you hit the bumper, then messing with the rails so that Chloe will get stuck, then driving your own vehicle into hers as she drives down the road but only succeeding in paralyzing her, then sending Jefferson an anonymous text to immediately check the dark room tapes (leading to him murdering Chloe), and finally leaving a book in Warren's backpack of time travel stuff that prompts his stupid "oh you need to go back and kill Chloe!" outburst. Each time, you are foiled again!
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Nov 18, 2015 22:11
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Heck, we don't even know for sure if she breaks the loop in the "Save Arcadia" ending - after all, there's still that classroom photo and all it's tempting potential...
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Nov 18, 2015 22:36
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The plane ride borders were pretty normal? That was what it looked like from the very first time you polaroid jumped, there's always that background gunk indicating the edge of your influence.
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Nov 19, 2015 16:53
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That part of the dream was super dumb and that definitely would have improved it. (also featung a lampshaded bottle collection, except this during during a crappy nonsense stealth section, oh boy! blech)
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Nov 19, 2015 19:15
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Yeah the sound track for this game is amazing. Just getting to hear obstacles again was worth saving Chloe 
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Nov 23, 2015 02:16
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Beefstew posted:So, this game was a huge surprise to me. I don't think I've done a 180 in opinion on a game so hard since Deadly Premonition. I spent the first two chapters making fun of the hokey and teen-pandering dialogue, but wow, I loved how dark and hosed up it got as it went along. It's kinda clumsy, but it goes balls out and throws everything and the kitchen sink in there by the end. Episode 5 had more false endings than Return of the King and MGS4 combined. But Goddamn, it was a ride. Can't recall the last time I got so emotional over the game. I felt the same. I still wish they'd either gone for the gut punch and had sacrificing Chloe not only not prevent the Tornado but make you completely unaware that it's coming, and then a shared scene of at least some of the secondary characters surviving, maybe different ones for each ending, reinforcing that it's about the journey and your choices rather than the destination and trying to change things out of your control or introduced a third abbreviated playthrough that let you start again and was mostly the same but you have the option to focus on warning people and getting them to safety when things start going down, like how you can with the homeless woman, doubling down on "yeah, time travel can fix things, but only when you stop focusing exclusively on yourself and your own problems" or actually had a playable ending instead of going right up the climactic choice and then saying "and also some other stuff happened but you really don't care about that!" An few post-climax conversations on each choice would have gone a long way towards giving things weight instead of feeling cheap and could have been used to reinforce whatever themes they felt like. Or all of the above. All of the above would honestly have been the best. Ultimately it suffers because it uses the same cliche so many other time travel stories seem to use, except that in this case it works and fixes everything instead of also failing because you're STILL trying to fix your past and use time travel to escape the consequences of your actions except magically it works but only when it kills your friend and not any other time which really robs it of a lot of its power! GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 03:44
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The ending being a literal human sacrifice to appease either the gods or the force of nature is the first logical explanation I've heard of it. I'm going to run with that one because it actually fits the in-game evidence way better than the one they actually clearly intended. Looking forward to seeing the essay when it's finished.
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Dec 19, 2015 04:08
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King of Solomon posted:It's easy to get mad at the game and the ending and see it that way, but that's not at all what happened. The simplest explanation - which is supported by the game itself - is that Sacrifice Chloe works because Max goes back to that first change, undoes it, and never time travels again. Yes, this is an explanation. It's not a logical, consistent, or believable explanation. It's also not true, trivially speaking, from the evidence we have available, although it may be true in "reality" because the writers certainly break their own rules often enough that it may have somehow happened despite making no logical sense. All you're doing in that ending is creating a temporal paradox via time travel, which is traditionally the exact sort of thing to create nonsense like destructive time tornado's in traditional time travel fiction, and if time traveling damages the timeline I don't see how a literal time paradox with an impossible outcome is a 'more stable' solution. Plus, there's literally no evidence in game that letting Chloe die will prevent the tornado, and multiple pieces of evidence it won't, until it actually happens and somehow works. I'm not seeing it Beefstew's way because I'm mad at it, I'm amenable to seeing it that way because it's the first explanation that actually fits the events the game shows us. When we go back in time and let Chloe die, the following changes to the timeline occur: 1. Max has her memories of a traumatic event completely erased. 2. Max never discovers her time travel powers 3. The "vision" of a tornado still happens, but is no longer connected to an actual event, leaving it temporally displaced 4. Max is completely erased and replaced by a Max from an alternate timeline If it's really supposed to be a "avoiding time travel completely fixes the storm" sort of thing those problematic deviations from a natural timeline above are kind of an issue. And it's worth pointing out our visions of the storm happen well before this event! So we know from the evidence that a) it's not Chloe being dead or alive that make the storm happen, since it happens in timelines where she has died and b) it's not the existence of time travel in general that makes the storm, or any storms, happen, since we can time travel to fix it. c) It's not something caused by either the events in the bathroom or changing the events in the bathroom, since the storm is still coming in a timeline where there are no bathroom events to change, but despite being a timeline with major differences nothing about the oncoming storm changes in the slightest. There must therefore be something special about this particular situation that has he power no other bit of time travel does, and it being some sort of perverse human sacrifice is the first explanation I've heard that explains why that might be. I don't think it's what the writers intended, but when we've eliminated the impossible whatever remains, no matter how improbably, must be the truth. I have very strong feelings about this game. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 04:34
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You're contradicting your own points, like... three or four times in one paragraph there dude. You can't point to something as a reason I'm wrong and then argue the same thing I claimed as a core element of proving a different point wrong.
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Dec 19, 2015 05:03
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King of Solomon posted:I'm sure I'm just blinded to it because I wrote it, but the only contradiction I'm seeing is that I guess I might have said point 4 is incorrect, then used point 4 as an argument to explain my position? If so, let me clarify. Point 4 is incorrect because our Max still exists. She is not in control during the majority of the week, but she does return, memories (and presumably powers) completely intact. This is exactly what I'm talking about. We have the "no time travel Max" completely wiped from existence as a result of time travel. That's, uh... kind of a really big thing. She also overwrites a chunk of no-time-travel Max's past, since we know from previous conversations that alt-Max's have no clue what went down while Max-prime is doing polaroid travel,hence the explain thing
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Dec 19, 2015 15:19
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Thanqol posted:The ending was perfect. To be fair, even though I thought the execution of the ending was terrible, I actually appreciated that part of it.
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Dec 29, 2015 07:54
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ymgve posted:What do you mean? Being rich doesn't mean you have the ability to summon tornados, eclipses and double moons. I don't remember a single thing connecting the Prescotts to the weather getting all wacky in the game. Did I miss something that hinted at this? They kind of had a thing for building tornado shelters all over an area that never gets tornados. Other than that I dunno,
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Jan 15, 2016 17:16
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Accordion Man posted:they used Warren as a mouthpiece This was the worst part of the game for me in terms of just feeling sloppy and hamfisted.
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Jan 15, 2016 18:55
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Plom Bar posted:I personally am fond of the "no one knows how to write a loving ending and the writers at DONTNOD are no exception" theory. Recent Counterpoints: Undertale and Tales From the Borderlands
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Jan 20, 2016 02:47
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Plom Bar posted:Not familiar with the latter, but Undertale's endings' saving grace is the irresistible charm of its characters. "And then they lived happily ever after because everyone conveniently forgot about the initial war between humans and monsters while also forgiving Asgore for killing six kids" and "And then they all died because you, the player, are literally Satan" ain't exactly Shakespeare. That's the epilogue, and not really what I'm talking about, since none of that is actually particularly relevant to the story. Usually when people talk about the ending, they are talking about the bits that come before that. At least that's what I'm talking about. The ending of Undertale is alternately either the flowey fight and immediate aftermath up until the phone call (which is epilogue), the true lab/Asriel fight/final walkaround/cliff scene is the pacifist ending (the montage after that is epilogue). The genocide run doesn't have an epilogue,so the ending there really does happen at the end. Undertale had a really really good ending, for me, because it got 100% investment and paid off everything that had been put into getting it. LiS, on the contrary, had an ending that actively pulled me out and away from the story over and over again, then simply... cut off moments after the climax, with nothing else I'd done up until that point having mattered. Actually, you know what's a really good example of a great ending? The ending of the Kate Suicide story arc in LiS. Now that had everything that marks a good ending. Investment. Payoff. Meaningful stakes. Proper resolution. It was everything the ending of LiS wasn't. Caros posted:Life is Strange has an excellent ending, it just isn't the one people want. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 05:19
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Caros posted:I'm a little curious, what would you change? They have a moment of despair watching the town get obliterated, it cuts to nature retaking the area as they drive through wreckage where everyone is clearly supposed to be dead and then literally go off into the sunset as the background music croons about making your way through hard times. Honestly, we've talked about the epilogue and I've brought up the changes I would have made to it. Most of them would have made the game bleaker, but if we're gonna get an epilogue for the "accept our choices, sacrifice the bay" ending I would have liked to have seen at least a few followup frames on the people whose lives we spent the game interacting with, instead of reducing the whole thing to just Chloe and Max. That reduction was fine for the climax, but a proper epilogue really needed to broaden up a bit again, and even a second for a few of the other characters in the aftermath would have been really neat. David crying over the ruins of the diner. Kate with her fingers against the window looking down in the direction of the town. The principal resting his head in his hands with student files spread out in front of him. Basically, everyone we know didn't die because they just plain weren't in town when the tornado hit. But the epilogue wasn't really the problem. It was the ten or fifteen minutes leading up to the "Choice" that were really bad, and the choice itself, and that's what made the ending bad. Like I'm not even arguing with the plot or events here so much as the execution. I honestly don't know what I would have done to fix it. I think it would have been better if everyone had just shut up and let me make my choice instead of spending multiple minutes explaining that the choice was coming up and exactly how I should think and feel about it except with really stupid arguments. Also, gently caress sitting on the bench in dreamworld progressing the scene! Finally, I wouldn't have had a binary 'choose your ending' choice. That much I can say clearly. I choose your ending choices are stupid copouts. Can you imagine if the Kate climax had offered you "Let her Fall" vs. "Save Her" as choices? That's how I felt about the final "choice". I'd much have preferred no choice at all - let me make choices in advance, be subtle, that clearly define what I would do in that situation, and when it happens... just do it! Understand and trust the player and deal with the consequences. Make me feel like this is a natural outcome of events. I have never seen a binary "nothing else matters" ending choice that was executed well - I honestly don't think it's possible. It retroactively cheapens everything that leads up to it. And this was worse than most, because it wasn't even "make one last choice about what you do" so much as literally "choose your ending". Compared to the climax, the epilogue was a masterpiece, because at least it got me to feel emotions beyond "gently caress the devs". GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 14:27
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Deutsch Nozzle posted:As the player, you're encouraged to use the power to play the game to your advantage, and to have that culminate in Max unavoidably making the selfish "save Chloe" ending might feel a bit forced. Uh... it wouldn't been unavoidably that, and if you think that's what I was suggesting you may have misunderstood.
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Jan 20, 2016 17:55
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Deutsch Nozzle posted:If you were shooting for a "butterfly effect" series of endings which are influenced by your previous choices, I agree that that would be preferable. I just don't think the developers had the time or resources to really implement something like that. That makes me feel like we're forced to interpret how the ending might have been better only and insofar as it pertains to that binary final choice. At the very least I would have liked to have seen previous choices come into play in some way or another - change the things Chloe says, change the things you say, maybe add some minor variations that acknowledged what lead you up to this, instead of a pair of stupid OOC narrator info dumps trying to justify nonsensical plot choices. If it's supposed to be a moment that's about emotion and internal dynamics of the characters, that is a pretty dumb way to go about it! Instead, make it so if you treated her like garbage and things went poorly for her, have her dig into you and ask if after all this time you're really going to let her die, you really haven't changed. If you treated her well, convinced her people really do care about her and it's okay to trust people, let her make the impassioned plea that even if it won't fix thing, you have to try. Instead of choosing "sacrifice bay" or "sacrifice Chloe", let us choose "use photo", "tear photo", or "put photo away". Wouldn't even give different epilogues. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 18:15
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Deutsch Nozzle posted:Yea this is what the whole discussion really boils down to. The ending was at least decent---that is to say, it was leagues better than the endings to ME3 or Bioshock. That it wasn't a work of literary genius shouldn't be an adverse comment on the writers---it only feels disappointing since the rest of the game was so compelling. Bioshock had the same problem in that they had a really good ending but it was halfway through the game instead of the actual the end. ME3... well, I felt it had many of the same problems LiS did but worse, yeah.
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Jan 20, 2016 21:58
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Luckily there's still time for you to find an old ultrasound picture and go back to strangle yourself in the womb.
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Jan 20, 2016 23:44
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Quest For Glory II posted:The lesson is, never try to do anything good, or the universe will be destroyed This is why they had to give us the ending they did.
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Jan 21, 2016 01:38
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Heroic Yoshimitsu posted:Huh. I honestly didn't know so many people hated Episode 5 so much. I mean, even if you didn't like the ending I thought the rest of it would have been well-liked. The beginning involved a bunch of hamfisted dialogue that could have done with a lot more subtlety. I mean, it was okay, but it could have been a lot better. The going back inside of going back bits were pretty cool and were by far my favorite part of the episode, made things feel really intense and like things were getting progressively more out of control, and then the false end at the show was great. Then it really went down hill. The rescue was alright, but also a bit... annoying? Jefferson's super competent super evil abilities continue to strain disbelief, but fine. Going into town and saving people was incredibly confusing and was where I began to realize that I had no idea why I was doing the things I was doing anymore, or why these people decided to go to town upon seeing the hurricane. Wasn't I going to town explicitly to wipe these people out in favour of a better timeline? Why do I care about these people? If I do care, why the hell am I letting them just wander around town after I save them when I know some place safe they could at least try to go to!? Then Warren seems to become a mouthpiece for a particularly dumb writer, spewing a bunch of dumb stuff I can't even call out as dumb as if a brief summary has given him perfect knowledge of the entire situation. Actually, was this before or after the dream sequence? I don't even remember. The Dream sequence! Aaaah! What the hell was the point of all of this? I mean, there were some cool bits in it that I enjoyed, lots of great little touches like pulling out your journal and the stuff in the lockers, don't get me wrong, but some of it was so damned stupid. A walkthrough slideshow straight from epcot? A dumb stealth minigame in a section that makes fun of how poo poo their lastbottle hunting minigame was, with the ability to play the poo poo minigame again? Maybe everything that happened in this section was deep and symbolic and meaningful if only I dug for it, but most of it hit me as so stupid I doubt there is. Then I get in a fight with myself which was okay, and then it ends and... what? Oh now there is an important choice to make! Either way, the game assures me, nothing I've done up until this point matters any more, only this one choice. And the choice is... pick your ending! Yes, in a game about tough decisions, the outcomes here are explicitly laid out for us and fixed, as if to say "there's no need to think about this or involve yourself in this choice too deeply, just pick the one you want with absolute certainty!" Uggggh. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jan 21, 2016 |
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Jan 21, 2016 05:45
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Not that it proves poo poo, but I gifted the game to a bunch of non gamer-y people for Christmas and the ending got unanimous praise (all Baysavers incidentally). The only thing they didn't like was the bottle search. Even the people in the thread complaining about the ending still generally thought it was a great game. Oddly enough, the bottle search never really bothered me the first time I played through, and I only found out people didn't like it afterwards.
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Jan 21, 2016 14:31
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AriadneThread posted:weirdly, the only person we can be certain survives the gently caress arcadia bay ending is madison, since he's in the bunker I would imagine anyone who actually stayed at the school is perfectly fine, since that's a ways away from the town and also up on a mountain. No idea where Kate's hospital is.
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Jan 29, 2016 18:31
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See, now, here's the thing: I agree with every single part of this post except for the last part of the last line. I get all that, but at least for me the ending seemed to stumble and trip over itself to the extent that it completely failed to sell it in lots of important ways. Just a difference of opinion, I guess.
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Feb 3, 2016 20:29
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Robiben posted:And although people disagreed with me, I still think fact that the ending split was really close to 50/50 is a great example of there being no "right" ending. Unfortunately, these aren't the "real numbers", since it records every ending so what it really means is a lot of people went back and saw both. It was originally something like 70-30 Save Bay/Save Bae
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Feb 4, 2016 06:01
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