In Regard to Endings

[BubbleMuffins]

Spoilers for everything, obviously.

I need to talk about the endings, and specifically the new ending, and what I feel the game is sorely lacking. First, lets go over the endings. In the base game, we could;
1: Concede to The Shifting Mound, either because you the player agree with her stance on the world and its cycle, and our role in it, or from an in-world perspective, the passive and reactive nature of The Long Quiet falls into place in his role in the cycle, The Shifting Mound’s perfect other half.
2: Journey to the Cabin at the heart and Slay the Princess. Dialogue implies that, even though this kills The Shifting Mound, some part of her continues to remain with you, and you and your voices, the many aspects of yourself, create a new world, undying, but with just that hint of change and growth The Shifting Mound left you with.
3: Journey to the Cabin at the heart and leave with the Princess, casting off the shackles of godhood. I believe the implication here is that the cycle will continue in some way or another, since the you and her in the cabin are not the entirety of The Long Quiet or The Shifting Mound. What awaits you beyond, and what truly happens to the world, is unknown, but you are together.
4: The non-ending of simply staying together in the infinite loops of The Echo’s construct and not committing to a final solution.

Now in The Pristine Cut, we get a new ending.
5: By bringing 5 vessels to The Shifting Mound that we defeated in some way, we can break down The Shifting Mound. Included but not limited to;

Abstracting the Damsel, unraveling her existence with mere words.
Breaking free of The Cage’s chains, denying and persisting against what she perpetuated as an unevadable truth.
Slaying the Den, denying her instinct and putting down a savage beast.
Wounding the Apotheosis, bringing low a near-god with a single blow.
Striking down The Wounded Wild, cutting her down at her very heart.
Cast off the illusion of happiness and slay your Happily Ever After.

This results in The Shifting Mound breaking down, and you, The Long Quiet, triumphant. You erase her in her entirety in a single moment, and craft for yourself a new undying world, always moving, but never changing. You do not bring with you a piece of the Princess, you do not bring with you the pieces of yourself. You are alone. And the game says, “there are worse things then being alone”, and I feel that part of that is simply existing in this cold, deathless world. Its a neat ending, but I think its the worst outcome for the world, and from the looks of it, most people agree.

But that’s it, and this leaves me asking, there is still a single notable archetype missing from our selection of endings. There is nothing that lets us convince The Shifting Mound that our perspective is correct, that we can change, and make a new world together that doesn’t need to adhere to the current rules of the cycle that she holds to be so adamantly immutable. We either take her side, kill her, or abstain. And the weirdest part of it is, I think the vessel princesses are there to set this up. Much like how the new ending has us facing and defeating various princesses, there are the princesses that we distinctly cooperate with for our triumph. And, to name the ones that come immediately to mind, but there are most certainly others, are;

Escaping with The Thorn, overcoming the cycle and trusting each other.
The Wild, both choosing to exist alongside the Web of Nerves, and sparing The Wounded Wild.
Trusting the Spectre, and escaping together.
Offer your hand for a dance with the Happily Ever After Princess.
Leave together as The Princess and The Dragon, hand in hand.

With this, we could show The Shifting Mound that working together, we could create new things, break existing cycles, and create something new and beautiful together as gods. Being together without bending to her will and accepting an immutable existence, while also not running away from divinity, nor needing to slay her. Rather then being forced to accept her way, the old cycle, or denying her entirely, we convince The Shifting Mound to join us instead. It is her nature to grow and change, it should be possible for her to grow beyond the cycle and this purpose itself.
The Echo’s narration during The Wild chapter says that this experience will change us, a wound that will never heal, and even reborn, we would be different. And he could be right. We can learn from this experience, and grow, and change. As has been shown, as we’ve been torn apart in this simulacrum world, even us, the unchanging Long Quiet, can grow and change. Both we and the princess have mixed together, fragments of our existence seeping into the other, making something new. We can offer The Shifting Mound a new world, one shaped by our new perspectives, having indulged in the aspects of each other. Rather then being two cogs in a machine, two sides of a coin, life and death, we can come together to make something entirely new. What that is can be as ambiguous as any other ending, but we’re still together, and not forced into a choice under the weight of The Shifting Mound’s will, like the vanilla endings. We still get to “beat” the Shifting Mound like in the new ending, but in a positive way, or at least a way that doesn’t feel like we’ve gone out of our way for a strictly worse outcome.

If you offer your hand at the last moment in the new ending, she proclaims “You offer your hand as if you’ve proven me wrong! But I’m not wrong! I can’t be wrong! You just haven’t listened to me!”. I really think we should be able to have her listen to *us*. To prove that, yes, her thinking is wrong. That, as a god of change, she needs to be less stuck in her thinking and change into something that our new experiences have defined.

I know its probably a bit much to hope that Black Tabby sees this and adds a post-launch new ending, but man, I can dream. I love this game so much, but this absence really sticks out to me.

[Carnabrin]

Agreed.

I do love what we have but I wish there was some way to affect Shifty specifically.

[Havean]

Wow love how much you went into this. Haven't read it all yet but tagging to get back to.

[Floweramon]

Interesting read! That would be cool, to have an ending that parallels both the ending where you take the Sifting Mound's side (but instead she takes your side) and the new ending (which is dependent on bringing back certain vessels). Maybe some day, we'll have to see.

[Coqueiro Lendário]

Oh damn, we need the Pristiniest cut now

[Dallar]

I believe the big point is that you can't change the change itself, because...she's already everything. There is nothing else left to change into.

That aside, she doesn't really hold to any rules? 'Nothing is immutable' and all that. By leaving with her you already create an infinite amount of new and beautiful things, that can work in an infinite amount of ways. It feels a bit redundant to have another ending where you basically...do the same thing?

[BubbleMuffins]

Originally posted by Dallar:

I believe the big point is that you can't change the change itself, because...she's already everything. There is nothing else left to change into.

That aside, she doesn't really hold to any rules? 'Nothing is immutable' and all that. By leaving with her you already create an infinite amount of new and beautiful things, that can work in an infinite amount of ways. It feels a bit redundant to have another ending where you basically...do the same thing?

You do make a good point, for sure. And I agree that it does seem a bit redundant, when you put it that way. That said, I would still argue that it could be done, on the grounds that we are different now. As The Echo states in the final mirror, when he tore us apart, the tear was rough, and we contain bits of each other now. In both our aspects of near infinite potential, she should have the capacity to join with us, rather then us with her. Rather then, as she states, we create a new world, and that world dies, and then we create a new world, ad infinitum, I posit that we convince her, with our new state of being and understanding, to create a world as The Echo would have wanted, a world that doesn't ever die. A world that always shifts, always evolves, always changes, but never dies. A world beyond what was in our capacity to create with us as we were before, and we can convince her to see that. And that would be us leading her into the new world, instead of vise-versa.

And I'd also just kind of want to see it happen anyways, even if it does effectively result in the same thing, it always kinda bothered me, even in the OG game, that there was no way to sway Shifty in the battle of wills, rendering the whole thing just for show.