Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
1 
Report this post
I actually covered a lot of this in long-for over in the other thread. If you're interested in seeing me get more and more pissed off at the endings, feel free to read through that :)
"Both endings are - not to put too fine a point on it - ♥♥♥♥ING BLEAK."
Darn right. I don't want to be part of a cosmic entity, I want my life and my home back!
If the QUBE entity means us no harm, why does it condemn humans to this hideous living death petrification thing just because they wanted to defend themselves?
Anyway, I wanted to love this game's story. I was a huge fan of the first game, story and all. This second game had great puzzles and environments, so I don't think I wasted my money. It's just that the plot gets to me. I'd really like to see more explanation/details, maybe added in future DLC? That would be great.
Reading between the lines of the script, I get the feeling that the Flawed Teacher ending was supposed to be the good one, where both Humanity was wrong to be an aggressor and the QUBE was wrong to be a destroyer. Now that both parties have understood each other, a new beginning can be had where all the sins of the past can be undone. Bringing up her pregnancy for no reason suggests this, as baby typically signifies the innosence of a new life.
Unfortunately, some pretty hackneyed writing instead paints it as a really uncomfortable abusive relationship, where the victim (Milly) is harmed, forced to apologise, then forced cede agency to her aggressor. While bringing up real-world counterparts to what's an alegory at best isn't advisable, I can't help but think of an abused spouse and the whole "It was your fault for angering me! / I promise this time it'll be different!"
That's likely not what the writers intended, but the game's "Indie Plot" tells us so little that we have no choice other than to interpret events on their face. And on their face, we have an alien aggressor who threatened humanity, eventually destroyed himanity, and is now demanding humility from humanity for daring to defend itself on pain of genocide. And it's frustrating, because the voice acting and technical writing really is top-notch.
I keep telling people - stop over-complicating your story. Intrigue, plot and hooks can be had in execution. The more you hinge your narrative on Shyamalan-level TWEESTS, the more you risk it blowing up in your face. The more you try to build mystery by not telling the audience ♥♥♥♥, the less the audience has to be invested in. Proper mystery is done by telling your audience most of the important information but holding out crucial facts such that we can speculate with the knowledge we've been presented with.
You know - like the actual puzzle mechanics. The game tells us how the mechanics work, but leaves us to figure in which way they combine to move us forward. Do the same with your story - give me the basic foundational facts and then let me piece together the sequence of events. Hiding basic worldbuilding from me makes the narrative so loose as to be meaningless.
Yeah, that's part of why I cited an abusive relationship. A victim pleading for her life is made to suffer until she's broken and willing to accept whatever it is the abuser wants her to accept. The only way to not die is to accept the abuse, learn to like the abuse and submit to the abuser. Only then do you get the ending which doesn't involve murder.
Think about it, though. If the QUBE is willing to grind humanity into the dust until they've essentially abandoned even the thought of agency... Exactly what kind of humanity is it going to "recreate?" Is it going to recreate the wilful, inventive kind of humanity with the capability to rise up against adversity, defy authority and - yes - wield power over others... Or is it going to recreate a docile pet who "understands" and is willing to submit to whatever whim the QUBE might have next?
Why is this game so depressing?
Which is odd, because Q.U.B.E. as a series hadn't established a reputation for being so depressing. Dark? Sure, the Director's Cut was dark. But it had an upbeat and wholesome ending. Outside of the Director's Cut dialogue plot, the game(s) was/were pretty chill. I liked that.
The story for Q.U.B.E. 2 hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm edging towards recommending a very minimal plot going forward (if there's any forward direction after this). I think that Q.U.B.E. is at it's best when it focuses on atmosphere over exposition and subtle plot "flavorings" over direct dialogue. You know?
the blue cable ending was actually pretty awesome and "good", but when you take both endings and really the entire game into account as a cohesive picture, it isn't awesome at all.
The entity, on the other hand, is clearly witholding information. It claims to have a full understanding of what is going on, but won't tell you everything. The only reason it would deliberately withold information is if it knew telling you the truth would turn you against it. The only reason you decieve someone is to make them do something they wouldn't do if they knew the truth.
Given that Emily, though xenophobic and vengeful, is not trying to decieve Amelia into doing something she doesn't want to do, she is more trustworthy than the entity.
Long story short, it's entrapment. The QUBE created a situation deliberately designed to push Milly into a punishable offence, then - in the "bad" ending - punished her for it. There's a reason entrapment is illegal in our primitive Earth law - because it can cause innocent people to be manipulated into committing crimes they otherwise woudn't have. By creating the Emma persona seemingly for the sole purpose of entrapping Milly, the QUBE heavily loaded its own test and thus corrupted the results.
The QUBE purports to be a being of reason and logic, yet its test design is inherently flawed. A proper test would have sought to minimise the variables involved and insulate the testing environment from outside biases. Instead what the QUBE did was it started with an assumption and built a testing environment specifically designed to confirm that assertion. Were this an actual peer-reviewed study, it would be discredited damn near immediately. I guess that's why it's a flawed teacher.
There's nothing wrong with having a flawed character in a video game, especially an atagonist. The problem is when all of your endings vindicate that flawed characer, instead of offering character growth. Worse, the only way for the player to not die is to submit to the flawed character's flaws, which makes the game extra depressing. Games which do that always end up feeling like they're pushing an agenda. Take the Swapper, for instance. That game has two bad endings, as well. The one it treats as bad is surviving in someone else's identity and the one it verbally and extensively explains is the good ending... Is committing suicide. The agenda that game pushes, then, has to do with the sanctity of our bodies and how our humanity is tied to them.
Honestly, I'm just tired of twist endings. Indie games have worn me down on this kind of stingy storytelling that ends in a vague twist. Not every story has to be written like a Shyamalan movie. By this point, QUBE is enough of its own thing to stop trying to be Portal.
I have to say that I preferred the way that the original game kept things simple. Bite-sized flavorings of a story - more like a backstory or setting really - without forcing anything down your throat.
And that's coming from a fan of Q.U.B.E. games. I love (or at least want to love) these games. The gameplay of Q.U.B.E. 2 was great. Subtract all the dialogue and WOW, that would have made the game 100% better. Oh yeah and scrap the red ending. :P
I think that indie devs may feel that they have to get deep and force twists into their story to stay relevant. It takes a really unique developer mindset and idea for a twist to work right. Otherwise, it just comes off as forced. And, in this case, way more depressing than the devs probably intended it to be.
I chose the red ending at first because although I suspected it was going to be bad, I totally agreed with your sentiment that distrusting the Entity was the most sensible course of action. I figured I'd rather go down than give in to this thing that had ruined our lives (and evidently murdered hundreds when you think about it)
If this was real and I was in Milly's shoes?
I'd like to think that I'd have the courage to do the same thing.
I honestly don't understand why Indie developers keep doing this. I get the surface-level appeal - a minimalist story requires only minimal development time to create while still being able to string people along through significant amounts of content on the unanswered questions alone. It's a labour-saving tool, essentially, and that matters for an indie studio. It's why Indies aren't known for those massive expensive AAA games with all the famous voice actors and face capture, etc.
The problem is that "writing" is one of the cheapest aspects of a game, in terms of equipment costs, consumables, staff, etc. It's the whole reason I used to do amateur writing, myself - because it costs nothing but time and is easily doable on the equipment I already owned (i.e. literally any PC or laptop). I get wanting to save money, but save it on stuff that's actually expensive. Skimping on writing is a bit like a Bitcoin mine trying to save on power by turning off the lights after leaving the room - yes, it saves some money but it's a drop in the ocean of the ACTUAL power bill.
Seriously, designate a writer, doesn't even have to be a professional one - just pick someone relatively imaginative. Sit down as a studio, hammer out an extensive fictional world with its own history, socio-geo-politics, technology and so on, answer ALL of the questions you intend to raise in the game, and jot it all down in simple shorthand. Then, let that writer write up internal documents - fiction about what the world was, how it came to this state, which parts of it might matter, do a bio on all the meaningful characters and hammer out a story in relatively full. That's going to take a while, sure, but it's the stuff you do before you go into production. Once you have THAT, then you have a pool of lore to draw on in order to populate your world and you don't end up writing yourself into a corner.
All of this is to say no - you don't need a Shyamalan TWEEST! in order to sell your narrative. Make your narrative actually GOOD and I guarantee you won't see people complain about not being surprised. Shock twists are the jump scares of storytelling - they're overrated, annoying and usually papering over a plot that's not strong enough to stand on your own. Make a good story and people will enjoy it even if they see the ending coming.