Disappointing ending [spoilers]

[wjousts]

Just finished the game, and wow, what a disappointing ending. Shay and Vella met (for only the second time) on the bridge formed by the melted remains of the two "spaceships" (quite why melting them down got them out of danger is not explained at all) and then...credits roll. No dialog? Nothing? No epilogue at all? Do explanation as to why they aren't immediately killed? Or how they've changed anything? And how did Shay's original ship even move after I dumped the power core out the garbage chute anyway?

And that last puzzle was just a major PITA. Why on Earth did anybody think it was a good idea to basically keep resetting the damn thing.

[Jack Ketch]

Agree that the resetting in the last puzzle was enraging. I must have re-wired that flashlight-swinging hexipal five times.

And then the game just sort of ended. What happened to the bad guys, exactly? We'll never know.

[JediEagle]

If you watch the credits, you can see pictures of what happens after ;)

[Cat]

Originally posted by JediEagle:

If you watch the credits, you can see pictures of what happens after ;)

Disappointing tbh

[wjousts]

Originally posted by JediEagle:

If you watch the credits, you can see pictures of what happens after ;)

What the credits? Who watches the damn credits?

[JediEagle]

Originally posted by wjousts:

Originally posted by JediEagle:

If you watch the credits, you can see pictures of what happens after ;)

What the credits? Who watches the damn credits?

I do.

[Ascension]

I found the entire Act 2 to be a disappointment. It was great to see more character interactions and hear more fantastic voicework, sure, I can tolerate the bizarre changes in the story, though they could've fleshed out some parts and cut others. But the puzzles themselves made little sense. In particular

1) The snake thing. Here's a simple fix: after Shay escapes the snake, have him say one line like "I bet it would pass out trying to strangle me" or something. Anything that implies he is somehow resilient to being killed by a deadly snake.

2) Tickling the navscarf. Okay, once you've gotten to this point, you know that you can use information from one person's view to help the other. Makes no sense, but it's easy enough to work with. But TICKLING? The movements don't look anything like tickling. Or playing the harp, but they directly tell you it can do that.

The game was obviously not playtested well. If you listen to Valve developer commentaries, you'll hear all about how they changed major parts of levels in response to players getting stuck or annoyed. Here, it feels like they just sat a couple of guys in a room and told them to look for bugs. Well a game can be non-buggy and still have some major flaws in the design.

[JediEagle]

lol, it's always a bad puzzle when somebody cant figure it out :) god forbid that that person simply couldnt figure it out. I played my share of adventure games, and puzzles in Broken Age Act 2 are still leaning toward the easier ones.

I really don't know why you need more clues for the snake. When I saw the picture with the snake, the first thing I thought: I gotta try that on the snake.

As for the navscarf, I got the tickling, took me a while to figure out it's also supposed to work for the harp, but that's the whole point. In act 1 I didnt even have to think, it was like playing a Telltale game. I play adventure games for the puzzles and stories, not just stories and dialog that doesnt change anything, really.

You should get stuck in an adventure game, you should figure it out. Hell, if these puzzles were really as obscure as in some other games (like the first Runaway), I would complain, but I all I had to do was think. And for this game, I can honestly say, that's not to hard.

[Ascension]

"I figured it out, therefore it's well-designed!" Lol okay kiddo.

[JediEagle]

Yeah, and saying: "I didnt figure it out, therefore it's badly designed" is a much better argument? :D
Funny man :D

Kids these days, they just dont wanna think :/

[wjousts]

It was a bad puzzle. There was no reason to think that just standing still (for a several minutes) was the solution to the puzzle. Especially since trying anything while the snake was wrapped around you would cause Shay to blow the horn. The fact that solving the puzzle required you to do nothing in a game, which is always about doing stuff is what makes it a badly designed puzzle. In that way it reminds me of a horrible puzzle in the equally horrible (to the puzzle, not to Broken Age) game Teen Agent that required you to do the same thing (IIRC) three times in a row (with no indication that anything changed the second time) in order to escape a prison cell, and that was the first puzzle in the damn game (it was all downhill from there too, I don't recommend it, even though it's free on GOG.com).

I didn't have any particular problem with the tickling navscarf bit, just with the whole fiddly way the rewiring was handled (and the totally nonsensical and unexplained bit about how Vela knew something that only Shay had seen and vice versa). The fact that when you first wire one of the hexapods you have to hook up the wires, then put it in the charger, then take it out, rewire and put it back in again, rinse and repeat, largely through trial an error (to figure out which terminals are which symbols) and it's just a needlessly frustrating experience. At first I spent some time just moving around wires expecting something to happen before realizing that I had to put it in the charger to see any result. That puzzle could have been streamlined (without being easier or dumbed down) just by allowing you to rewire it without first taking it back out of the charger.

[Curious Duck]

Originally posted by Old Rag:

The game was obviously not playtested well. If you listen to Valve developer commentaries, you'll hear all about how they changed major parts of levels in response to players getting stuck or annoyed. Here, it feels like they just sat a couple of guys in a room and told them to look for bugs. Well a game can be non-buggy and still have some major flaws in the design.

The game was fully tested by the team near the backer release. They alo spent quite a lot of time switching out graphics cards to try and replicate any bugs backers found as no developer has the manpower and money to test EVERY single hardware/software combination out there.

I suggest you watch the Double Fine Adventure documentary as it seems you are very misinformed as to how the game came to be.

[wjousts]

Originally posted by Matt ♠:

Originally posted by Old Rag:

The game was obviously not playtested well. If you listen to Valve developer commentaries, you'll hear all about how they changed major parts of levels in response to players getting stuck or annoyed. Here, it feels like they just sat a couple of guys in a room and told them to look for bugs. Well a game can be non-buggy and still have some major flaws in the design.

The game was fully tested by the team near the backer release. They alo spent quite a lot of time switching out graphics cards to try and replicate any bugs backers found as no developer has the manpower and money to test EVERY single hardware/software combination out there.

I suggest you watch the Double Fine Adventure documentary as it seems you are very misinformed as to how the game came to be.

I think you missed the point. Its wasn't about bugs, it was about badly designed puzzles.

[Isiforo.s]

Hi, i wanted to buy this game but due this information i'm not sure. I know it's quite stupid to click on spoilers in this case, but i couldn't resist. Is the story good overall?. I just want a complete story and not a open ending but apparently, you see some pictures on the credits which explains the after story.

[wjousts]

I wouldn't say the pictures at the end "explain" anything. You can look it up on YouTube, it really tells you nothing.

The game isn't bad and, a few really frustrating puzzles aside and the plot going a bit off-the-rails in the second act, it's quite charming.

[Clord]

I think that the story was supposed to be way longer but there was simply no realistic way to raise enough money without taking a huge risk.

I mean by adding in-between to make some things feel less "forced" like those two guys not being computers.

I played the game back when Act I was still the only act released and based on it, a lot of stuff was planned in advance to Act II. This is evident especially in a ship where many puzzle elements are already in place that are not used until Act II. Also you might notice that Shay's father is never shown in Act I enough to see if he has body or not and looks like he is busy. Which evidently supports him of being so busy at work that he even sleeps outside of the ship.

Now why those "nazilike ideology" beings are defeated so easily? They supposedly presented only small part of the overall people in Eluna. Basically they were either persuaded to see others viewpoints or were overthrown.