[SPOILER] [Rant] True Ending Requirements

[Oscar tG]

Major spoilers ahead.

Locking the 'best' or most complete ending behind a coin flip the player decides on at the beginning of the game feels INCREDIBLY bad.

I have scoured everything for the last Memorems and after literal hours of no progress, I decided to take a cautious peak at the internet to see where I missed them. Turns out they are locked behind the door I thought they would open. Also turns out I can't open the door, because I decided to destroy the key components, because my companion, literally told me to.

Sure the game tells me I should be cautious about him, but that is only AFTER I already picked the 'destroy' path at the very beginning of the game. I also didn't trust him blindly, I waged the pros and cons of keeping and destroying and figured, that keeping the boss essences would just yield an essence reward, which I didn't need. So I picked destroy in the hopes it would lead me to the true ending. Turns out, I chose wrong and now I lose.

This feels so stupid. In a game about exploration, the main reward is literally gated behind a single coinflip decission.

Am I just salty? Yeah, salty af. Putting in all the work for a secret ending and being stopped by almost random chance kills all my enthusiasm to even finish the regular ending.

Why is the option to destroy even there, if it only ruins your playthrough?

[ColdRage]

I actually see it the other way around. I fount that little guy way too suspicious. And when the options on the cardinal shards popped up I instantly knew to keep them.

Hi reactions on my choice proved it rather directly.

Not too much after the first time I had to choose another NPC pretty much told me that the little bugger is a liar.

The only thing I am kinda unsure about is if I want to give the shards to the key dude in the "nexus".

This is kinda similar to how Bloodbornes true ending is not obvious at all.

This does not at all ruin the first playtrough, at least not for me. After all if I wanna see all the endings I have to destroy them at least once anyways.

[Oscar tG]

It's not so much that a really basic decission in the early game decides the ending you get.

The biggest gripe I have with the system is, that my 'reward' for completing the game and putting in the effort to find all 21 purple rocks and the 18 Memorems is literally nothing, but incomplete lore and a tablet that tells me about the cool stuff I could do, if I only had picked the wrong side of the coinflip.

I loved the game, every minute, but the ending turned my mood twoards it real sour.

I have put in the work for the more difficult ending, why is it ALSO tied to the otherwise meaningless decission? To make people replay the game? It had the complete opposite effect on me. I worked for the ending, I found all memorems, but I missed my 50/50 shot and now I have to do it again. That's just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game design.

In short: Tying the reward for finding the memorems to the reward for picking the right dialogue option is stupid.

And don't say making the right decission is 'easy' in this genre. You have to make your first decission so early in the game, you almost know nothing about the world and the characters. Is the little guy suspicious? Sure. But I hoped at least for a different ending, and not just an incomplete one. The Bloodborne comparison falls completely flat, because there is not much of hard decission making, right up until the 30 hours mark. You just have to collect and explore. Here it is the complete opposite. You have to chose in the early game and exploring gets you nothing in terms of lore, or content.

Rant over.

[medion_no]

"The true ending" is underwhelming to say the least. Not proper for a game you invested 30h in. These kind of things kill franchises. Make a nice closed story and think about possible sequels later on devs.