Is there an alternate ending? [SPOILERS]

[Hardûn]

Can you choose not to get into the escape pod at the end?

[Srredfire]

I tried sitting around for a few minutes after all the dialogue has been exhausted, but nothing happened. So no, I don't think there is.

[Cold_ViCe]

If there is one, I couldn't find it even after active looking on how to trigger it for several minutes... it seems like the developers missed out on a great opportunity to inject meaning into the game...

[essen]

Let's just say that for a place that supposedly is just about to be pulverized, you sure can take your time before safely leaving it.

[Hardûn]

Shame, I was hoping the whole way through that there'd be a Mark-of-the-Ninja style moral choice at the end of the game.

[Armoxie]

Ok, maybe I misunderstood something, but that woman said that 919 is Jonathan Burns, yet in the end president calls YOU Jonathan Burns. WTF?

[python]

Originally posted by Skylight:

Ok, maybe I misunderstood something, but that woman said that 919 is Jonathan Burns, yet in the end president calls YOU Jonathan Burns. WTF?

Yeah, it's a bit confusing because the player doesn't have a name. The president talks about rescuing Jonathan Burns and then speaks to "you" directly afterwards.

[P-eLko]

Yep, I am too a bit sad. I thought there will be longer story and everything, but the whole storyline was for something more than 2 hours

[Hardûn]

I was actually preparing what I would do. I believed Burns, but I wasn't entirely sure, and I figured if I trusted the woman and she was lying my life would be forfeit, but if I trusted him and he was lying the entire earth would get wrecked, so I was going to do what she said anyway.

[Mikey]

It would be cool if YOU were Burns and you were in space for 2 years and went insane.

[TaLLa]

It was a tribute to Portal, but this time you did not end in the incinerator and the mission was real. One Problem I had, Burns was right everything with the arrows and signs was made that a human could understand everything. So this Q.U.B.E. must still be made by humans. Just look at the lifeboat at the end, made to be controlled by men to get them out. So we can spaculate more about it. But I'm also with the opinion that there should have been a second ending.

But one thing we should remember: The game came out without any story. It was added later with the director's cut edition to give the game some depht. So maybe it's just as it is.^^

[c]

I don't know... How do we know that the entire ending sequence isn't some illusion after you're dead. I believed 919 from the very begining, and that ending just didn't sit right with me. There definitely should have been some way to stay behind.

[Markus Aleksandr]

In addition, at the very beginning of the game, the woman verifies that they are unable to connect to your vid-feed: how, then, does she know that there's an "Escape pod dead ahead of you," or, even, an escape pod at all?

Addendum: I feel as though that, were the ending to coincide with what 919 tells you throughout the story, then it may be that the "window" at the helm of the "escape pod" is just a fancy screen, and you're still very much on your way to your death.

[DizzyChimera]

Originally posted by essen:

Let's just say that for a place that supposedly is just about to be pulverized, you sure can take your time before safely leaving it.

It doesn't explode at the end. You just fly away from it. (And this got rid of the problem why? If it was heading at the earth, why does breaking it solve ANYTHING? Hrm.)
I figured that 919 would figure out how to open the second "escape pod" and it would smash through into another section with more puzzles to solve. Also Yren I was thinking "All right, when does everything catch on fire? That's a screen."

[allseeingsalmon]

In the credits 919 is credited as such, not as Johnathan Burns, which is a bit odd.

[Megabrick]

I just read about how there was one ending because it was meant to be about a person changing.

As an event earlier in the game described, the player-character had killed a teenager he thought was breaking into his home, instead the teenager was trying to help him put out a fire that broke out.

The end of the game mirrors this: The lady talking to you was representative of that teenager, and the whole concept she told you about; the QUBE soon to collide with Earth, etc.

While Jonathon Burns, and the player-character, are one-and-the-same.


Remember how they said he was lost for 7 years?

That's also roughly the time estimate given to when the player-character killed the teenager.



So, the story was representative of how Jonathon Burns was the old, cynical version of the player. While the player, in-game, is representative of how he's changed; growing to trust people, and being less of a cynical person. Having faith in others.




I'm hoping this explanation has made the story a bit more... worthwhile.