[SPOILER DISCUSSION] Just finished the game...

[Elder Drake]

SPOILER ALERT!

DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT TO DISCUSS THE ENDING OF THE GAME



tl;dr version: Great game. Fun to roam the wasteland. Head scratching ending (see below)

I just finished the game and I have to say that overall I enjoyed it and I think it had a true Mad Max ending. Things got monotonous so I ended up not going for 100% but that is not to say I may not after a break. What I have an issue is is with how the story is written. I did not come to play the game for a deep story but I am one of those people that ask questions when I see things just not adding up. That is what I see here to an extent, even though the ending matched the theme of a lost Max that is a loner whom will never know true happiness unless it is in the solitude of the road.

Where things break down for me is Griffa presenting Max as an evolving character. Griffa says a lot of how Max is a good man basically and that "love" is the only salvation basically. I also beleive maybe Griffa was a phantom of some sort as he looks suspiciously like the corpse of the old man that was guardian to Glory. We see Max finally face his inner demons and ressurect the momories he suppressed of his dead wife and daughter. His wifes specter ask him to do it right this time and the chance is there. I think the ending was harsh as it should be for this setting but when you mix the other elements it is shallow in a way. That said I would like to have seen maybe an alternate ending that sees a chance at some form of redemption. 100% completion and tracking how often you help wandering thirsty people. Fully helping all the strongholds and maybe Pink Eye sends you out with another sail ship as guardian and with your new family.

He is the meat of it all. I can't reconcile a Max that goes out giving water, helping people, saving a child, doing the right things, etc to the Max that rams Chumbucket in a flaming car into a truck to maybe kill someone that he should walk up to and put slugs into the brainpan of. Why would Max after being a reluctant but still hero with a good soul decide a car (given all of the above, talks with Griffa, and his flashback) is more important that helping the child he just saved and a woman he can have a future with? My .02 and I still had fun playing the game, just not with how Max evlolved and then devolved.

[Malidictus]

Yeah, what really gets me is how contrived the story is towards the end. It's pretty clear the writers wanted everyone to die, then worked backwards from that decision to make it happen.

So we need Hope and Glory to die before the boss fight, so we have to take Max out of the location. Let's steal his car, but how? OK, let's have him leave the car and have Chum steal it. Cool, that moves him clear across the map and we'll just say the trip took longer than it actually did. So we need Scrotus to kill Hope and Glory, but we need a way for him to know about them NOW when he didn't BEFORE. Oh, let's torture Chum, but in such a way that he's still able to fire the harpoon. Oh, damn! We completely forgot about Stankgum! Eh, thoss him in there as a throwaway fight. Why did we put him in the game to begin with?

So we need to remove everything else that ties Max to this game. The car's too badass to get blown up, so let's have Max destroy it. We need him to be crazy, so we'll just say he lost all reason and, like, drove it off a cliff or something. Oh, that gives us an easy way to remove Chumbucket from the game, took. Kill the car, kill Chum because he'd kill himself to protect it. But he too is crazy so he won't be able to come up with an actual smart way to save his car and instead choose pointless martyrdom. K, that ties up all the loose ends. Run it through a few drafts, run it past the gameplay boys to see what they can do with gameplay and we're good to go. Phew! We made deadline!

The whole ending - indeed the last "zone" - has a distinct air of desperate last-minute dash to the finish line, like they had a whole other large-scale zone planned out, maybe inside Gastown itself. It feels like we were supposed to work with Deep Fryah to undermine Scarbrous Scrotus' forces, use Hope as an inside agent - get some raport going between her and Max, get a relationship going. And then they ran out of time or money or washing detergent or whatever and had to slap an ending together on the fly. It had to tick all the boxes and be accomplished with minimal use of the art team and supplementary staff.

Ever notice how the unique cars which only show up in the Dump aren't "collectable?" Ever notice how all the Scavenge Locations in Gastown double as impromptu Camps as though tey were supposed to be scattered across a large area? Ever notice how all of the Deep Fryah's compound projects take very few items and they're all found within spitting distance of his comploud? Or how almost all Scavenge Locations have a project part in them? Or how the Dunes and the Buzzards seem like they'll be important but end up not mattering in the slightest? How there's no mission which introduces you to Deep Friah and you instead just show up? How there's next to nothing done with Stankgun while he's built up as the "mid-game boss?"

To me, the ending feels like the developers were forced to abandon a good third of the game and cobble an ending together from whatever they'd already made. I say this because up until the end, Mad Max is a proper open-world game with a minimalist but still perfectly serviceable story and plenty of breating room. Then it starts to decline in quality VERY rapidly towards the end, with locations getting smaller, missions getting simpler and the story becoming more cutscene-heavy and railroaded. Almost like the game is shoving you towards an end as soon as you set foot inside Gastown's walls.

[ManwithNoname]

It makes more sense if you have REALLY seen and payed attention to the original movies. One of the things Ive always likes about Mad Max is the fact that he is who he is, he doesnt evovle or devovle. He is torn and tomented. In the first movie(pre apocalypse) Max is a cop fighting biker gangs with his partner goose. He loves fast cars and the thrill of the chase but loves his wife and kid more. Half way through the movie he decides to quite citing the fact that he is starting to enjoy the madness and violence. So he quites bu then his family is murddered by the very gang he was fighting. HE goes back dons his leather gear and his shotgun takes the Interceptor and goes ham on the biker gang until they are all dead. This Max torn between violence and peace, conflicted, loner or hero. He is both. There is no happy ending for Max, no ultimate progression.

[Saint Crowbar]

The ending makes sense.....to a point. mstangsvtcobra98 made valid point regarding the past movies, not neccessarily Fury Road, that he is a loner in the wasteland, as that seems to be his destiny, though I also agree the ending is dodgy at best since Avalanche/WB had the chance to create an entirely new, continuing story based around Max in games rather than a prequel story.

Parts of the ending could have been used in later games, or DLC, or take your pick. Hope/Glory/Chumbucket survive, Scrotus gets done in, if it has to be a prequel, Max goes to scavange alone in the Interceptor, there's Fury Road's story, returns back to them after Fury Road, Hope and Chum ride in the MO or Interceptor, maybe with different skillsets, man weapons/repairs/etc, Glory (who it mentions is ace at finding buried things, but you can't discover that) could also ride shotgun and point out various car bodies, scrap camps, etc. Eventually, possibly Hope and Glory are killed in a later game, Max loses it, rampages and leaves Chumbucket, the MO, and everything else behind, becoming the loner he always was.

[Malidictus]

Yeah, but a character who doesn't change or evolve is not interesting. Certainly not interesting enough to spend 40-50 hours with. To be honest, that's just bad writing. It works for a B-movie exploitation flick - we don't exactly go to those for the rich story and compelling characters - but it doesn't work for a franchise stretched a cross multiple movies and other media.

If we go by what you're saying, then the Mad Max license only serves to pull the game down from what it could have been with either a unique setting or really any other setting besides this one. Hell, I might have enjoyed this game more in the Carmageddon setting, playing as Max Damage trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, slowly realising he's enjoying it a little bit too much and eventually seeing ever bigger and badder things to take on.

Yeah, Carmageddon has always been silly and the original idea was to set it in modern day running over pedestrians, but censors shifted it into a post-apocalyptic future populated by zombies and insane drivers driving makeshift cars and bulldozers and buses and so on. Hell, that fictional universe - violent as it may be - would have ended up less wrist-slittingly gritty to the point where I started skipping Mad Max's melodramatic narration.

[Saint Crowbar]

Could also depend, if a page was taken from say, Mass Effect as an example, continuous gameplay, endings based on choices, then a seperation from existing stories and an ability to create your own Max, down to making him look like Wez or however you feel, would serve better in the game realm. Leave the choice to the player, to "Max", rather than trying to do a tie in.

Also, Carmageddon is badass. A Max Damage surviving the wasteland game? I'd play that to hell and back.

[b0yka]

Malidictus の投稿を引用：

Ever notice how the unique cars which only show up in the Dump aren't "collectable?" Ever notice how all the Scavenge Locations in Gastown double as impromptu Camps as though tey were supposed to be scattered across a large area? Ever notice how all of the Deep Fryah's compound projects take very few items and they're all found within spitting distance of his comploud? Or how almost all Scavenge Locations have a project part in them? Or how the Dunes and the Buzzards seem like they'll be important but end up not mattering in the slightest? How there's no mission which introduces you to Deep Friah and you instead just show up? How there's next to nothing done with Stankgun while he's built up as the "mid-game boss?"

Great point,
By this you can see it's just rushed,no camps in the Dump,project parts are too easy to get,you need 1part per project to complete it,not even a convoy roaming around the Dump,just 3 Stank Gum patrol cars that are not collecteable,and Stank Gum lol,they ran out of ideas and just ♥♥♥♥ over the ending.
WB did the same thing with Dying Light,they didn't rush it but man it is CRAP....Two great games with an EPIC gameplay but their story is dumb.WB killed 3 "firends" of the main character in Mad Max and they killed 3 friends of the main character in Dying Light,these 2 games need better writers and need re-writing... but what can we do...

[Gonf]

Well, I guess after the story mode finishes, everybody comes back to life, and same with your car.

[Colin]

Despite knowing the movies inside and out, the game still caught me off guard. Max isn't a hero, he's a man who's lost his humanity - this story fits in between 'road warrior' and 'fury road' as a kind of replacememt for thunderdome, and by all accounts it exceeded my expectations. Was a steal at 5 buckerooneys when I bought it, but was worth much much more.