Finished LISA: Painful and Joyful. Ending discussion (MASSIVE UNMARKED SPOILERS, LAST WARNING)

[daevious]

Let me start by saying I absolutely adored LISA. I've never encountered a game that was so viciously, unrelentingly dark and yet still have me laughing my ♥♥♥ off. There's so much about this game I want to talk about, but right now I just want to discuss my feeling about the endings to both games and how effective (or ineffective) they are.

Painful's ending, starting from the boat trip to Marty's secluded island, was gut punch after gut punch of tragedy. It's basically one long parade of showing off how Brad's selfishness doomed the world, also seen in renowned Sad-Dad Apocalypse games Nier and The Last Of Us. When Marty Armstrong, a literal drunken ♥♥♥♥-stain of a human being, looks better than you then you've ♥♥♥♥ed up as a human being and man does Brad triple down on being a ♥♥♥♥-up. What's really impressive to me is that there are specific points, Buddy having her face cut up and your party returning after you'd abandoned them, that, in a normal work, would be used to redeem Brad's viewpoint and soften the impact of his actions. In Painful however, that redemption is denied to make it absolutely clear that Brad is not a good person, even if he has good intentions. Mind you, I don't think he's entirely wrong that everyone else was planting unrealistic ideas in Buddy's head but considering that he rebukes everyone else by murdering them he isn't right either.
The final fights were interesting to me because they were less about how well the player managed to manage their resources of healing items and party member and more about being a final resolution to Brad's character arc. For a game that billed itself on making tough choices, and actually making good on its threats to affect you, giving the player this massive stockpile of Rando Rations and Diesel Firebombs should, in theory, annoy me because it's betraying its own gameplay philosophy. In practice, it works because Painful understands that the story is the stronger experience than the gameplay here, even though the gameplay is still very enjoyable.
In any other game, Brad's powered up abilities would show how he had succeeded in becoming a stronger person, either physically or morally, while here it highlights how he has failed (literally, considering his title change to “failure”) and that after turning into a metaphorical monster he becomes a literal one. His transformation into a mutant was something I'd been spoiled on beforehand, but I had no idea that this was reflected in gameplay, (Brad's dial combos change into a bite, he eventually gains the ability to cry and scream like other mutants) and that surprised me in a very pleasant way. This also adds another dimension of horror to the fight against Rando's forces as it slowly devolves into a massacre where they start pleading for their lives and become scared of you. While that part is effective, it backfires somewhat during the Rando fight because he can't deal enough damage to make a dent in the mountain of Rando Rations you have. Seeing hime use several of Brad's moves was cool though and his scarred face caused me to jump, but otherwise it's the weakest part of the ending for me, even though it's still really well done.
Having the final choice be performed by Buddy was really touching because you have to think about how someone else should react to the Brad that you've interpreted in your own mind. I had Buddy hug him, even though I felt like Brad didn't deserve closure after everything he'd done. My favourite part actually has to be the credits sequence, because when it starts you're lulled into a false sense of security because you believe that the game has finished. As the credits became more and more corrupted you start to suspect that something is going wrong before the fleshy bindings reappear and Brad finishes transforming into a mutant. Having the game end with mutant Brad overlooking a sleeping Buddy is one hell of an image to go out on.

Joyful's ending is... a little disappointing, to be honest. Before people jump down my throat for that, I want to make it clear that I still like Joyful a whole lot. Having Buddy become a bloodthirsty psycho killer was interesting because it shows how Olathe in general was as terrible a parent as Brad. Her confusion over pacifism in particular highlights how Olathe couldn't be, and didn't deserve to be, saved because the people of Olathe had done nothing to better themselves and having Buddy produce more children would just perpetuate Olathe's abusive spiral towards destruction instead of saving humanity.
I just feel like everything after you finish the list comes off as rushed and unsatisfying as hell, although there are still parts of it I liked. Yado being a massive coward is fine because it gives him some humanity beyond his Mutant-worshiping God complex while the “fight” against Brad managed to get a tear out of me. That being said, my biggest problem with the ending sequence is that it throws too many events at you too close together, which is probably a symptom of Joyful being so short. I'm gonna throw up a list of what bothers me about the ending sequence, tell me if you feel differently:

- Everything about how Buzzo is used during the finale bothers me because it feels like he's only there to resolve his character arc. He dies saving Buddy, turns into a mutant because of his feelings of Lisa and then gets killed by Buddy because she's the only one around to stop him. This is especially annoying because both Painful and Joyful work really hard to make Buzzo sympathetic after every depraved thing he inflicts on Brad and I feel like he deserved a better ending than what he got.
- No proper Sweetheart fight. I could've taken her Buzzo, I literally just came back from fighting the most American being on Earth, a spider mutant ain't got ♥♥♥♥ on me. No? You're just going to march to your death trying to fight... Okay, whatever. Your funeral.
- Mutant Brad disappearing from the the game outside of hallucinations and the final credits annoyed me as well, but I can't really think of a way to have him show up without making this sequence worse.
- The final choice between taking the antidote or not is disturbing as hell and it's certainly a difficult choice from Buddy's perspective, but from a players perspective there isn't as much tension because it feels like there's an obvious good choice, which LISA had been efficient at avoiding until that point.
- The silent panning endings feel like there should be something more afterwards and the ambiguity of them runs counter to how the rest of the ending tries to tie up loose ends.
- The credits being normal is kind of a letdown after how effective the previous interface screw credits worked in Painful, but that's only a minor nitpick.
- The post-credits “two people talking over a black screen” scene lacks the impact of Painful's version of said scene because, outside of the LISA ending, they don't reveal anything particularly new or noteworthy about the setting or characters at large.

Where Painful feels like a complete resolution Joyful feels like it wants to tell more, even though it's supposed to be a conclusion to the entire Olathe storyline. Regardless, like I've said before, I still walked away from Joyful thankful that I'd played it and the last 20 minutes being a let down wasn't enough to ruin Joyful as a whole.
Wow, this took way too long to write. I did not intend for this to balloon out of control and this is after I'd cut out some things too.

tl;dr: Lisa the Painful had a great ending, Lisa the Joyful had an eh ending, both are cool.

[wcc]

I agree with your option about The Painful.
Regarding The Joyful I differ in some aspects:
- For me, Buzzo's remorse came to unmotivated and sudden. So I did not feel like he would have deserved a better ending.
- I don't get your criticism about "Mutand Brad disappearing". As far as I understand he is real at first and only dies later in the outro (while still existing in her imagination)
- For me the final choice regarding the antidote was not much easier than whether I should give Brad a hug or not. Both outcomes feel terrible (what's good).

But I agree with the other issues relating The Joyful.
- Sweetheart was disappointing weak, and besides it would have made much more sense if she had been Yado's wife (instead of his wife getting kiilled in this mundane black screen dialog)
- About the dramaturgical issues: while Brad's journey is a pemanent struggle that mixes hope and dispair, there is nothing equivalent in Buddy's story. She just gets her things done (in quite a static manner by working off a checklist). And then, after the game is almost done, everything culminates into endbosses over endbosses in a roller coaster of emotions. For the main part there was to little, and for the very last part too much development. Additionally, I could feel with Brad for the most time, but I seldom connected with the soziopathic Buddy. I even cared more about her in The Painful than in The Joyful, what's quite weird since she's the player character in the latter one.

[Shuno]

I honestly loved The Joyful. While the game had some issues, there were many aspects superior to The Painful. Dingaling definitely stepped up his music. Boss designs are also top-notch - Sindy Gallows and Big Lincoln are pure badassery. The Joyful has more professional feeling than The Painful, though the issues - not much fun gameplay, short, and kinda rushed (I mean, six rulers of Eastern Olathe are all in the two little crossroads?).

He's My Dad part also was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ beautiful. This is as good as party members fight.
Yado fight was a disappointment, but man, dat Brokentooth March.

[Ghin]

I think a lot of it comes from how unlikeable Buddy is. As horrible as Brad is, I wanted him to finish his quest. Buddy starts as a monster and only gets worse. She never had a chance to be human.

[Jerry San]

I felt complete satisfaction with the end of the joyful I really didn't like buddy as a character till about the last 20 minutes but I think it tied things up nicely and answered most of my questions about rando and buzzo

[Belmont]

Where Painful feels like a complete resolution Joyful feels like it wants to tell more, even though it's supposed to be a conclusion to the entire Olathe storyline

This is likely because it was just a DLC. I'm not sure if Ding intended for it to be its own game; maybe he wasn't sure how Painful would be recieved and had no plans for a sequel at all, but after seeing it do well he wanted to continue the story.

IIRC he has stated he isn't working on anything LISA related, but he could be lying. Maybe JOYFUL was just something to "resolve" the story temporarily and give fans a "closing" while he works on something bigger?

No real way to tell other than waiting for time. However, JOYFUL is just DLC, so naturally it does feel very short and concludes rather quickly. I personally believe JOYFUL deserved its own game, and anticipated the game to be much longer.