I didnt nuke blacks in 2033! Why this ending was retconed?

[v00d00m4n]

I have not finished game, actually just started, but from begining everything contradicts what i saw in 1st game, because i did not nuke blacks in the end and i was sure they are good guys and was misunderstood.
Now game tells me - you nuked, Artoym tells "i must finished what i started and kill last one" and blah blah blah.
What the point of makeing multiply endings if in sequal you dont give a crack about several possible consequences of 1st game and forcing everyone to believe into ending, some people never saw???
Its really dissapointing that game to have several different beginings without import of save from 1st game or at least some interactive dialog, where we have to select what we did in the end of 1st game.
And you know what? It was not really hard to make different dialogs and merge both story lines into one after introduction to keep rest of story solid.

Here i listed several mistakes and easy way how they can be avoided... i hope that maybe later some enhanced edition patch (Witcher anyone?) will be released that may take both endings into account:

1) Game starts vith prerendered video where Artyom states he nuked dark ones.

Easy to fix several ways 1) remove this video 2) remove statement that he nuked them and make speech more abstract or unfinished without statement that they dead or was killed by Artyom

2) Right when Artyom wakes up he heard that it was his mistake when he nuked dark ones

Easy to fix - change dialog, remove blaming artyom, ask him question about ending of 1st game, like "do you remember what you did on tower?" and then let player select 1 of 2 answers like "i nuked them all! so what?" "i left them alive? you think it was a mistake?"
and then according to answer or player answers of npc and their talks about dark people should change according to asnwer. For bad ending which already followed by game there is no need to change anything, for good alternate dialogs should be created. Loading screens, journal of artyom and his comments should be altered as well.

For example in coversation with general, instead of praising Artyom for killed darks, he should blame him for not killing them and, the "last suvived dark one" should change to "one of dak ones that lurking around", tone of general should change to something like "well you did not kill them when you had chance, and now they lurking around and im afraid they have something bad in mind, so you better shoot that one, to warn others that they should stay away from our turf".
Such a minor changes would not require to change cut-scenes or assets in game, and after introduction with that "last survived one" you can come to point where rest of story is same, maybe some minor points needs to be changed a little (again dialogs only, you still can have same situation just for different reason explained in dialogs) i havent seen yet what will happen in game after this.

As for 1st answer in begining of game, it could be done many ways. If you want to keep immersion and dont brake flow of games with answers and hud that have these answers, you can add selection of ending of metro 2033 in NEW GAME menu, right after selection of diffuculty, just a screen that asks players "Did you nuke dark ones or spare their lives in the end of Metro 2033?" or if you dont want to spoil the end... well im afraid begining of LL spoils ending of 2033 anyway so its not important and you are free to ask about ending of 1st game.

You see, its not that hard! So i wonder (its not like in Mass Effect 2 or Witcher 2 where you have to count so many sub-stories and change begining to be in sync with ending of 1st games), why its not in the game from day one and why good ending was ignored and choises of players and whole idea of 2 endings was cheapened?

Anyone feel frustrated that there is no alternate begining and dialogs for those, who had good ending in Metro 2033?

Looks like people dont understand why i use word blacks, so i decided to write this.

WARNING:
IN RUSSIAN version of Metro in its native language these creatures called BLACKS, not DARKs o DARK ONES, so i call them the way i used to call them in my native russian language with direct translation to english - blacks. Blacks was replaced by Dark ones probably to be polite correct to blacks afro-americans... but such replacments sounds to me like replacing Mother and Father with Parrent one and Parrent two.

In russian they called "Chernie" which translated as Blacks, Darks or Dark Ones does not mean "Chernie". it means "Temnie" and we have no constuction of words that have something like Ones, so we ignore that word during translation and translate it as "darks", but if you will do direct translation world by word it would be really weird name like "Temnie odni".
They are called blacks in russian, because their skin is black.
In soviet Russia Dark one just Black!

[Pixel Peeper]

I can't be bothered to read through the usual stupid arguments, so here it is:

Plenty of games with multiple endings pick one as the "canon" ending. Otherwise, you've got to realize, they'd have to make as many games as there were endings in the previous game. That's insane.

You didn't nuke the Dark Ones in 2033, but Artyom did.

[Donrenegade]

Why is everyone so over-protective about this game? I must admit, I have not yet played LL, nor have i spared the dark ones during my playthrough of the first game. But I do understand what Voodoo means.

Lets be honest, a game is not a book. A book tells you a certain Linear story, its a linear experience. You cannot change this at all. A game is a lot less linear in the way that you can perform actions different from the original story. For example: you can sneak, but you can also go in guns blazing. I dont know what the book is like but the game is already different just because you can choose how to play(heck, if you do it correctly you can spare entire enemy outposts and do not say you cant because theres even an achievement for this, which could possibly affect things you do in the future).

What if you are someone that has not read the book (you can think of many different reasons), but did see the game on the steam store during a sale because it looks unique to other games that are around or you just like the setting. You buy the game and play it your way, and it gives you a choice that you can make at the end of the game. This is how the game was for you and how you remember it, it leaves a certain impression.

And then 2-3 years later a sequel is released, awesome! You remember the ending you saw in the first and suddenly the second game says: no it did not go that way and this is what happened, deal with it. It sort of breaks immersion.

Voodoo did not say the game was bad or anything, just that its strange that the ending he saw is not how it resumes. No matter how the rest of the second game is, the story is different to what is supposed to happen if you got the other ending in the first one. Therefor I do agree that 4A should have taken this into account. They let the player make a choice in the first game, and should have designed the second game around that. Right now its just designed around 1 choice. The way it is now, they shouldnt have given the player a choice in the first game to begin with.

[v00d00m4n]

exactly - if you give player a choice in one game you should follow consequnces and take every ending into account any posible way in another game that follows 1st one, be it alternate stories, or new story build that way, so it can happen after both endings.
If you cant follow consequences of freedom of choice you have players in one game, and forcing them to single route, why bothering to give them freedom anyway?
Thats why its so frustrating - its like if mom sais to kid "candy or toy?" kid says "toy" and mom buys kids a "candy" ignoring his choice. This would frustrate kid much more than if mom did not ask him what he want and bought candy directly.
Same thing happens here. I wanted to see toy and 4A forced me to get candy, and thats after they asked what i want - its aint right.

This cant be fixed by dialogs only? really? Go play Mass effect and Witcher and sequels. They handled everything about consequences of choice (except for ending of ME3, 4 colorful explosions was big fail) half of witcher 2 absolutely different depending on side you selected- its not that hard to rewrite story and make alternate route that will lead to same consequences even without altering levels and animation. I did this many time at my job, so i know what im talking about.

[Pixel Peeper]

If it worked that way, game companies would simply remove the option of other endings so they can stick with canon.

Sure, if nothing significant happened in the endings, you can just mention it in a couple dialogues or replace a character who died with a new one... but that's lame.

At the end of Metro 2033, Artyom committed genocide on the strongest species in the game world. It's a huge event. You can't simply gloss that over with a few lines of dialogue in the next game. You'd have to make two games, then four games, then eight.

Plus, the canon story already exists because of the novels. Artyom always nuked the Dark Ones. The other ending was more of a "what if" scenario. It was a *bonus*.

You really do sound like a kid having a tantrum because he's not getting what he wants. YES, we do realize you would have liked a game based on the other ending and are disappointed that you didn't get it. But if you just stop screaming for a second and at least try to understand *why* you can't have it, you'll be one step closer to becoming a mature person.

[Jacob]

And to voodoo's credit, the Russian dialogue really does call the Dark Ones blacks. Its quite different from the English version if literally translated, actually, but I can only understand bits and pieces.

[Pixel Peeper]

Tapeworm a écrit :

And to voodoo's credit, the Russian dialogue really does call the Dark Ones blacks. Its quite different from the English version if literally translated, actually, but I can only understand bits and pieces.

That makes sense.

The French translation just calls them the "Darks" (Sombres).

[Donrenegade]

Maybe just because its a big event, its interesting to see what happens if you don't nuke the dark ones. Changing the game now is impossible, I agree with that. Again, the game is not the same as the book as it's based on it. Even better, check this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_2034 . The game is no longer the same as the original "sequel" to the original book.

So why would it be impossible for the devs to design the game around the 2 choices? I wouldn't really know what's the best way so I do understand that it can be hard but that's their job, not mine. The player should not be thinking about how the devs should have tackled this problem, instead the player should continue enjoying how the story played out for them. If the game was designed around the 2 choices, that would have been excellent game design.

[Felicity]

Dark Ones sounds so much cooler than Blacks. Blacks just sounds dumb.

And yeah, I mean; the devs don't cater to your personal needs. They used the ending they thought they could make the better game off of. If the Dark Ones were your buddies, where would all this conflict come from? The whole situation would be different, and probably more positive.

[mechanician]

chaps and chapess's one must realise that this is a GAME not reallity

[Lum]

Given that in the first game many of the moral points you have to find are only obvious to someone who has read the book (or is following a walkthrough) the chances are that the vast majority of people who played the first one will be aware of the "bad" ending, not so many aware of the "good" ending.

Then remember that this isn't Mass Effect, it's a linear FPS where the whole story is planned out in advance with only a single path you can take, aside from varying routes through certain levels. It's not really feasible to support both stories, especially as with the adult dark ones still alive the six months betweent he two games would have likely played out very differently.

As for Dark Ones vs Blacks. This is one of those areas where translating between languages gets "interesting". Voodoo states that this is what they're called in Russian and I see no reason to doubt him, however when translating it to English the translator has to deal with the fact that that word has racist connotations in English, and so changed it to something that gets the authors point across in the way originally intended.

Which sounds cooler, in English "dark ones" for sure. In Russian, who knows? Certainly not me, but I'd suspect that given things like the tendency to call communists "reds" that calling them "blacks" makes a lot more sense in Russian than it does in English.

[Cheechako]

Voodooman a écrit :

Anyone feel frustrated that there is no alternate begining and dialogs for those, who had good ending in Metro 2033?

Never played the first game, so don't know what to say. But...

Looks like people dont understand why i use word blacks, so i decided to write this.

Thank you for this. At a glance, the title of this thread could easily be seen as a racial slur. I never saw it that way - just thought it was an odd way of putting it, and the poster was either some non-English speaker or some jerk kid. Not to say that non-Americans are jerks or kids - just both groups often have the talent to basterdize (sic) the English language.

Actually, when taken in context, "Blacks" just seems a silly word for those mutants. Tthe word doesn't carry the sinister weight that "Dark" can. Sure, we have our black cowboy hats and Darth Vader all in black, but black always clarifies the thing. (Even "Darth" is kinda like "Dark".) Dark can clarify things too, but can stand alone much better.

Dark can also mean edgy, mysterious, and even indulgant - so sinful, too.

So I guess "Dark Ones" is: "Mysterious, sinister, possibly evil entities/creatures." Regardless of an potential slur, "Blacks" doesn't mean that in English.

So thanks again for the mini-Russian lesson. I found it very interesting.

p.s. Really, Steam? Basterdize, when spelled correctly, is a perfectly valid word. There is no reason to censor bastardize.

[v00d00m4n]

Lum a écrit :

Given that in the first game many of the moral points you have to find are only obvious to someone who has read the book (or is following a walkthrough) the chances are that the vast majority of people who played the first one will be aware of the "bad" ending, not so many aware of the "good" ending.

Then remember that this isn't Mass Effect, it's a linear FPS where the whole story is planned out in advance with only a single path you can take, aside from varying routes through certain levels. It's not really feasible to support both stories, especially as with the adult dark ones still alive the six months betweent he two games would have likely played out very differently.

As for Dark Ones vs Blacks. This is one of those areas where translating between languages gets "interesting". Voodoo states that this is what they're called in Russian and I see no reason to doubt him, however when translating it to English the translator has to deal with the fact that that word has racist connotations in English, and so changed it to something that gets the authors point across in the way originally intended.

Which sounds cooler, in English "dark ones" for sure. In Russian, who knows? Certainly not me, but I'd suspect that given things like the tendency to call communists "reds" that calling them "blacks" makes a lot more sense in Russian than it does in English.

In Russia (and ex-russian territories such as Ukraine) we dont have such thing as polite correctness, we are harsh and sincere in our nature so we call things and people the way we see them, the simple way - commies are red, so they called red, dark ones black - so they called black, nazy are nazy, but we used to call them faschists. If we see r.e.t.a.r.d.s. - we call them same way, we dont have to call them "brain-impailed people", if we see fat people, we call them fat people, not "big" or "vertically stretched". So for most of russians the way europeans and american consider every harmless word as insult looks quite weird and stupid. Steam is also good-bad example of USA polite correctness gone to extremes - censoring so many words, even another version of BOOBS that starts by T XD

[SirWolfgang]

Its the same as they did in Mass Effect, sometimes you just have to force an option. You as a player have to understand, that if you made the other option(not nuking the blacks), there would be very little need for this journy. So, enjoy not playing this game, you already won!

[Terrydactyl]

from what i understand the "good" ending to 2033 was a hidden ending. i finished the game on 360 and pc and ended up nuking them both times

[DrWoodcomb]

Lol their called "the dark ones" not "blacks." Makes you sound racist