The Ending...

[gun totin' nihilist]

I had a great time playing this game! I beat it in about 5 hours (I suck at the game) and it was really fun! But (While the fight was action-packed) the ending, where (spoilers) you sit down with the Flame (in his "True Form") and he says "No- you need rest" then it goes black just seems so... eh... I feel like it could've had more. I mean, if it gives you literally ALL the special pistols in the same room, you expect more of a fight than what you get. It's just... eh. The ending makes you feel like there'll be some sort of DLC to continue the story, but there isn't! I'm not mad, just disappointed with the ending...

[Alex Pine]

I didn't really like it either, until I finally understood it fully(-ish).

Story-wise, this game has more than it may seem. There's plenty of details that are easy to miss, and a lot of extra information you can find in the tapes and the dev's Tumblr. Quick version: There used to be more reapers that ran the gangs of undead, but this system made the undead have worse morale - they were very weak compared to their leaders, so over time the system stopped working properly and most reapers disappeared. There are only 3 characters in the game that are or have been reapers - you, the main character (the only real reaper in the game), Ibzan (he is half-reaper and half-skeleton, and since he is running the skeletons, he is all that remains of the system. The undead aren't pissed about him running the gang because he is only half-reaper) and Timur (the tinkerer) is an ex-reaper.

The main character's backstory is intentionally left unxplored, which I think is great, because, first, I don't think he would be as badass with a backstory, second, it is interesting that the game (well, the story) doesn't revolve all that much around him and more around Ibzan. Obviously, the reaper is our main character and does all the action and all, but many games I've played make the mistake of focusing the story on a single character, as if the world was spinning all around him. In this game, I felt more as if the events were witnessed by the reaper, but not all of it was because of the reaper, and the main confilct isn't between the reaper and Ibzan, it's between Ibzan and the fireplace.

And this is where Ibzan's backstory comes in. In the 25th from 27 missions, you go to Ibzan's house. It's extremely easy to miss this, but there's a lot of interesting detail in his room. First, obviously, there's something huge in one of the walls that has been painted over. You can barely make it out, but it is a fireplace. There's also a small chair next to the fireplace, placed just like the reaper's armchair. The room's shape is similiar to reaper's room, and in the safe, you find something peculiar - a broken lighter. Now, the reaper himself has been seen using the lighter a lot - every time he turns to smoke, you can see him using the lighter to do so. In an earlier draft of the game, the reaper also used the lighter to communicate with his employer when in missions. All of this is evidence that Ibzan used to be a reaper.

So what happened? There are 2 final tapes that explain it. The secret tape (you can find it in the corner of the final battle on hard mode) is Ibzan talking about his life as the reaper. I highly recommend looking up the full version, but he talks about how he spends his days sitting in the bed and staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep because he's undead. He seems sad and lonely, and spends time waiting for the fireplace to talk to him. The fireplace gives warmth to reapers, but to Ibzan, his employer was also his friend. He would spend hours waiting for the fire to light, but it only lit to give him the next mission. The fireplace wanted Ibzan to be a soldier, but Ibzan wanted the fireplace to be a friend, and they both failed each other. The tape that you can get from Ibzan explains that one day, after coming back home, he would find that his employer had left, and you witness the sad moment as he realizes he is no longer a reaper.

To me, all of this made the final fight simply incredible. Ibzan isn't some evil bad guy trying to kill the reaper and his employer, and he isn't a great leader trying to get warmth for the undead. He is a sad man who was there for personal reasons (he only promised the undead warmth, because he needed their help too - he needed ash from the vampires and Timur's help to create the portal, and he needed undead to protect the project from the reaper). He isn't there to fight your employer, he is there to talk. Even one of the pages in his safe says that he doesn't want revenge anymore. He wants to apologize, to talk to his friend again, to feel warmth again. The lines "Please friend, I just want to talk" and "I'm sorry... friend..." aren't said to the reaper, those are said to his employer. To me, this context is what made the final fight much more dramatic to me, and there's even more interesting details in the game that I haven't talked about in this comment.

Otherwise, I really liked the final battle. The song playing in the background, Chris Christodoulou - Ashes to Ashes, to Ashes (to Ashes), was very fitting. But also I really liked the battle for multiple reasons. Many game developers make games where the final boss is just someone very huge and mindless, but Hopoo Games seem to really know what they are doing. Okay, both in Risk of Rain and Deadbolt you get a villain much taller than you, but Ibzan isn't huge and Providence is actually pretty small for a game where most bosses are hundreds of times bigger than you. And in both of these games, the final battle isn't with someone doing bad stuff out of pure evil, they have really sad motivations behind their actions. And Ibzan might have had a disappointing fight because he had his minions do a lot of the work and he wasn't even all that strong, but this made me even relate to him on further playthroughs - he isn't some magical ancient beast of ultimate power or a dark wizard, he is just a man. Sure, he could take multiple hits and he had damn fast reflexes, but, besides teleportation, which is something that even Reaper can do (-ish), his abilities weren't all that superhuman.

Either way, I'm glad you enjoyed the game, I'm a bit of a fanboy because of all this stuff so I like talking about it a lot.

[Square_Rabbit]

Just want to mention, the thing about the gangs' leaders being reapers isn't canonical information, it was a scrapped idea. Having each gang lead by an ex-reaper made the undead themselves seem less important, so they were replaced by the bosses we see today. Ibzan is the only ex-reaper we meet in the game.

Initially, those who died via suicide became reapers.

Originally posted by Hopoo:

The origins of who and how reaper(s) are chosen are left unanswered in the game, because I think its too important to tack into some log somewhere. Originally, before the skeletons were in the game, reapers were created from suicide - there used (maybe still is?) a small bullet hole in the back of the reaper’s head that you could only see if when you went down the stairs to the docks. Timur the Tinkerer’s icon was actually a repurposed icon from the first reaper you’d fight against, who committed suicide via shotgun (hence the missing chunks, jaw, and the bullet holes in the back of the head.)

Originally posted by Hopoo:

A long time ago each gang had its own reaper leader, but that ended up making the gang feel incompetent (the zombies are lead by reapers, vampires by reapers…). Ibzan is sort of the left over of that idea, and is half-skele reaper hybrid so he still feels connected with his gang.

Source 1[hopooo.tumblr.com] Source 2[hopooo.tumblr.com]

[Alex Pine]

Oh okay, thanks for pointing that out

[Jimbo]

Originally posted by Meulin:

I had a great time playing this game! I beat it in about 5 hours (I suck at the game) and it was really fun! But (While the fight was action-packed) the ending, where (spoilers) you sit down with the Flame (in his "True Form") and he says "No- you need rest" then it goes black just seems so... eh... I feel like it could've had more. I mean, if it gives you literally ALL the special pistols in the same room, you expect more of a fight than what you get. It's just... eh. The ending makes you feel like there'll be some sort of DLC to continue the story, but there isn't! I'm not mad, just disappointed with the ending...

to be fair they gave us a workshop so we canmake our own stories one guy made a continuation if im correct of the games ending maybe it iwll fit the missing spot for you https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1100054626

[Evans]

Originally posted by Alex Pine:

I didn't really like it either, until I finally understood it fully(-ish).

(...)

Either way, I'm glad you enjoyed the game, I'm a bit of a fanboy because of all this stuff so I like talking about it a lot. :mw:

Wow, I didn't expect such golden comment here. Thanks Alex, it helped me to understand a few things in game's plot.