English Translation of the Statement Made by Project Moon Regarding the Ending (Spoiler Warning)

[Starakira]

Translated by Cool Kids Club
Link to the full translation : https://fusetter.com/tw/keoa0Lcw#all

Hello, this is Kim Jihoon, director of Project Moon. I have decided to write a response to the questions and errors people have given regarding the ending.

The following contains spoilers for both *Lobotomy Corporation* and *Library Of Ruina*, so please read with caution.


----------


1. Narrative Inconsistencies and the Removal of Certain Dialogue
```
Zena: Subduing the Singularity was not our priority. If I had to elaborate, you, Angela, were the impurity that had to be cleansed.
Zena: The Singularity of manifesting the powers of the human mind and ideals physically?
Zena: Indeed, I won’t deny that said power needed to be attuned.
Zena: An art that brings the human mind into the physical realm is without a doubt an unpleasant idea. It was certain to be a subject of scorn.
Zena: Woe, we did not mind allowing it to foster.
Zena: It would eventually blend into the City in a fitting way, even though it may not be the most desirable for us to see. That’s how the City and its humans have always been.
Zena: On the other hand, the very concept of your design displeased us to the core.
Zena: Oh indeed. You were the definitive reason that caused us to make a direct move.
Zena: The sacrifices and tragedies that took place in that laboratory on the Outskirts were irrelevant. Those were not so different to the everyday occasions of the City.
Zena: With what we had a problem was the design that would lead to your creation. We could not overlook it, even if it was still in a conceptual stage.
```

--> We [Project Moon] acknowledge that these lines of dialogue contained errors. This is wholly my mistake and a failure on my part. I have no words to excuse myself. We originally intended to mention the process of Angela's creation which involved several Wings and organizations, but most of that depiction was omitted and jumps were made, which led to the aforementioned errors.


2. Where is the Realization of the Floor of General Works?

--> The battle against Roland [The Black Silence] is considered the battle for the realization.


3. Regarding Inconclusive Plot Points

* Concerning our statements from past Q&A sessions

--> As Lisa (Tiphereth A) is one of the youngest characters in the games, we decided to leave out any depictions of her death as we considered that it may be excessive. Lisa had passed away when the Arbiter [Garion] assaulted the laboratory.

--> The way the plot progressed did not leave us room for elaboration on the mechanisms of the execution bullets.

--> As for "moving on from L Corp's story", we meant that the Sephirot and Angela will not be featured as main characters in future titles. The pillar of Light featured throughout *Lobotomy Corporation* and *Library Of Ruina* will continue to play a pivotal role.

--> We rashly replied with statements such as "Please look forward to the sequel" in response to some questions whose answers might spoil our upcoming stories during past Q&A sessions. We're sorry to have disappointed you with the lack of actual answers. In the future, we will clearly state that we cannot give an answer if we're faced with similar inquiries.


* Concerning the "voice"

--> We have decided to leave it [i.e. what it is] unresolved, as there is still much to be told about Distortions and Abnormalities.


4. Regarding the Ending's Intentions

- We thought that the emphasis of the conclusion was placed on the choices Angela and Roland would make throughout their growth. In retrospect, we should have restructured it so that the ending plays out after the final confrontation with the Reverberation Ensemble, saving the Head's intervention for the epilogue.


- We acknowledge that the [post-credits] conversation involving the Purple Tear was an unnecessary addition. The reason the Purple Tear brought up money was to persuade the Association. We apologize for the lacking depictions that made you feel disappointed with the character.




We are once again deeply sorry to have disappointed all the people who have loved the world and settings we've built.

We cannot overstate how ashamed and regretful we are for failing to deliver on the ending, a vital part of the experience of enjoying a game.

We will strive to reflect on this occurrence and improve.

Thank you.

[Starakira]

My take on this, although I like the ending as it is, Project Moon will likely continue to change the contents depending on the feedback, so the contents of the ending might also change. Looking at this they may remove the Purple Tear epilogue at the end (although I'm kinda disappointed by this decision).

[Mastema]

Wow i was wondering about it the moment i heard about that post, thanks for posting it here, very appreciated.

[none]

they already remove it with the latest update (1.1.0 b) if i remember right.

[Starakira]

Originally posted by none:

they already remove it with the latest update (1.1.0 b) if i remember right.

Haven't got the time to check the game, but I've heard they removed the theme02 and the pictures in the credits as well?

[Taihou]

I sincerely appreciate these answers. Although I'm still full of questions, it does work to sate that need a bit.

[none]

Originally posted by Starakira:

Originally posted by none:

they already remove it with the latest update (1.1.0 b) if i remember right.

Haven't got the time to check the game, but I've heard they removed the theme02 and the pictures in the credits as well?

yup

[snek]

Yeah they removed the PT epilogue, you'll probably get it back when all General Receptions are done as a sort of tease just like the 100% resolution bit in LC

That thing about Angela's concept being what dropped the hammer on the lab was a big complaint of mine since it felt disproportionate in a bad way (concepts by a man in grief vs actual machine) but that addition mentioned gives it far more sense. The involvement of several extremely large groups turns the conceptualization into a direct ideological threat.

I'm glad that Tiphs fate is finally mentioned, she didn't need a depiction of it, just a "yeah I died when Garion turned up" which was the most obvious answer anyways.

I think people are also mad about the lack of 5th and EGO on Keter. The Head fight (with some deliberations and expanding on it heavily so it's not just a cutscene) could've been a great moment to finalize this, especially when they just suddenly mention that the Library is Angela's EGO, that felt out of left field and nothing came of that sadly.

I really don't think that the credits needed moving to between Reverb 2 and The Head, it feels like a bandaid (and also all the CG from that ending are gone now).

I'm of the camp that the ending could've been better if there were some clarifications in writing (which has been addressed here) and expanding on the fight so it's not just a glorified cutscene, make it a genuine fight, a chance to leave a mark on the face of The Head by leaving them bloodied before they leave. That and there's just more questions than answers (and we're basically back at square one, it makes the ending all "what was the point of all that really" but it's too late to totally rewrite an ending, you know).

EDIT: I know the ending is about Roland and Angela growing as people. But it's something I fundamentally disagree with in terms of writing to keep the main resolution as strictly local and personal when the conflict itself is far bigger than that. It ends up feeling like nothing really changed at all, but this turns into subjectivity of writing approaches of scaling conflicts and resolutions.

[Starakira]

Originally posted by none:

Originally posted by Starakira:

Haven't got the time to check the game, but I've heard they removed the theme02 and the pictures in the credits as well?

yup

Welp, I'm salty now. I will remember the ending as it was originally. It was heartwarming at the end. It could be presented better for sure, but now it's too drastic of a change. Maybe they will continue to improve it later down the line, who knows?

[Mastema]

I don't get why they removed the credit cutscenes and the banger theme, i really hope they bring it back in future update regarding general invitations or so.

[snek]

Yeah, I feel like it's a knee jerk reaction to move and change the credits. The additional lines about the lab destruction turn that whole dialogue from nonsense to perfect sense. The hammer was dropped on the lab primarily because of the number of collaborators turns it into a very real conspiracy and threat to the Head. This is why they destroyed the lab (major conspiracy that is ideologically opposed to them) and kicked The Library out (Angela is the unfortunate creation, not the creator, and she isn't heading a gigantic conspiracy against The Head).
The other thing really is just expanding on the final fight significantly so it isn't just a glorified cutscene, and maybe have an ending you can get if you deal enough damage you give them at least a good kicking before they leave. It may not look like much but it's a nice spit to the Head's face right before you get kicked out.

[bgammax]

Personally, I find this trend to be a bit worrying. I won’t go off about “artistic integrity” since that boils down to meaningless preaching, however I find it to be a real concern regarding community building, particularly the removal of the Purple Tear scene.

The ending was pretty mediocre, but it was no reason to be upset and start launching threats. By backing down so easily Moon unintentionally encourages this sort of behavior thus building a more toxic community.

At the very least the English Steam community is pretty chill. Yeah we have disagreements, primarily regarding gameplay and perceived difficulty, but there are enough levelheaded people on both sides for discussion to largely remain civil. However I do worry about the other communities, who have shown a willingness to be more destructive in their discussions and that efforts to please this hateful growth may negatively impact future decisions.

[snek]

Originally posted by bgammax:

Personally, I find this trend to be a bit worrying. I won’t go off about “artistic integrity” since that boils down to meaningless preaching, however I find it to be a real concern regarding community building, particularly the removal of the Purple Tear scene.

The ending was pretty mediocre, but it was no reason to be upset and start launching threats. By backing down so easily Moon unintentionally encourages this sort of behavior thus building a more toxic community.

At the very least the English Steam community is pretty chill. Yeah we have disagreements, primarily regarding gameplay and perceived difficulty, but there are enough levelheaded people on both sides for discussion to largely remain civil. However I do worry about the other communities, who have shown a willingness to be more destructive in their discussions and that efforts to please this hateful growth may negatively impact future decisions.

As many people have pointed out before, it's primarily only the CN community that's the problem community. Whenever an update came out that they didn't like they resort to review bombing and throwing death threats, I also noticed yesterday that PM's website was unreachable, so someone was probably DDOSing it too. If behaviour like that is the norm over there I'd heavily argue against giving them a separate board on here in the future, it reeks of entitlement and even I considered the ending a misstep in places. There really should be an effort over there to deal with their more unruly members else it'll just get worse.

It mostly needed some clarifications, which they've now provided for some of my more pressing questions:
Why attack the lab over just the concept of Angela (It's because it was a large conspiracy involving multiple Wings and Associations too).
What happened to Lisa (She died in the raid carried out on the lab, devs just weren't keen on depicting the death of a child).
What was really the point of the T Corp box (the box gets energy from the passengers, because some went missing, there was less than usual, this baits the W Corp employees into the Library which is what Blue Crew were aiming for, not stealing the energy themselves).

There's still a couple other really pressing questions of mine though, like the origin of Argalia and Angelica (and the significance of that poem, like come on now), the Voice in general (which seems to be the main point of the next game it sounds like) and so on.

I think just a couple tweaks were needed in making the fight more interesting and also for some of the writing in the ending. I just hope that there isn't a rush for a complete overhaul of the ending which would likely just be another misstep made in panic, it mostly needed some expansion to be a feature complete ending much like how LCs was on its own.

Already bad enough that they've changed where the credits are and in the process removed theme02 and all the CGs from it, on top of the Iori conclusion (which could've been fine with some rewording, maybe the confirmation of other previous guests also being alive too?)

[AritheReaper]

Ah, good, someone full translated it. Time to take down my Google translated post.

I still largely liked the ending, but I agree with multiple things prior replies have said (largely Snek and bga, lol) so I've got nothing else to add, aside from the replies to their Twitter post I already made on the subject before the official translation dropped.

[JustACorpse]

Originally posted by snek:

*snip*

The game has a massive issue with scale. I was going to say "it was small scale, but large consequences" but then the Hana association was treating it as a large scale threat. Which does fit with the ending where Angela makes the Library massive, but at the time, it came off as one of those horror movies where the monster is a possessed elevator or the like. Just don't go in. Angela isn't sending out monsters (on purpose), she did have a doomsday plot, but they had no way of knowing about it at the time. My minor complaints aside, it does get kind of confused as to if you are doing nothing of importance or a lot of damage.

Angela not realizing that she had EGO before that point is very, very dumb. It is made from the light that is meant to give people EGO and make them more honest. It is breaking from reality even more than singularities. It conforms to her desires; she hated seeing people die, so now she has her own world where even if people die, she can bring them back. She has almost complete control over it and its various functions. A pity we don't have a good scale of it; then we'd know just how big her ego is.

A minor complaint I'd like to add is the aftermath of the guests. We know the R corp guests are screwed. There are more than one of each person in the city, and both are marked for death. Unless one group, or both, hitched a ride with the Nest (and whoever else) on the way out, they are going to get killed by the Head or the Ravens. Yan is a monster and unless he got shanked immediately, that is a nice power boost the Index got from him getting released. At least if I understand power levels correctly. Knowing what happened to the guests might lessen the feeling that nothing was accomplished, at least if they ended up in a better spot than what they were, but that is highly doubtful.

EDIT: I looked back at my post and realized I was only complaining. Really, I don't have an issue with the ending. There are some tweaks that could make it better, but some of the things that led into issues with the ending are things where it was the lead up to the ending that was more important for sticking the landing they wanted to.

[【Silver】]

Same, there's a huge concern when development gets backtracked in such a way out of panic or threats from a vocal minority. I personally enjoyed the lack of info involved with the scene of Hana and Iori, it left a lot to be speculated upon. The credits roll also felt much more fitting being after the library essentially getting yeeted out of the city too, made it feel suitably heartwarming. Even with the conflict with Zena and Baral being the way it was, I was still really excited and enjoyed all the touches it had (I really hope their cards have proper artwork now though).

All in all, I still have questions left unanswered like others, but I wasn't expecting perfection either. I was pretty satisfied with what they provided and was more than welcoming for more in the future. Like yeah, what did they do with the T Corp box? Could we perhaps have gotten EGO and realization pages after Roland's fight, especially now if they make the final encounter into an actual fight somehow or for players who enjoy playing at post-completion? Were we not getting more symbols or general receptions or is tat something happening after this update?

Like this is a digitally produced title, changes can be made if the devs see fit to do so, there's no need to threaten them or other pathetically crappy stunts for it. Am glad I was able to at least see the originally made ending myself at least...