That Ending Is Horrible!

[Caulfieldd]

Danganronpa didn't deserve such an ending! (+twist)

EDIT: After having revisited the ending, I came to understand that it was in fact better than I first imagined.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

4quarters původně napsal:

I completely agree.

I mean, sure, at the time Danganronpa 1 & 2's endings felt good, and they satisfying albeit farfetched. Am I really supposed to believe that a single pair of high school twins could poison all of society, topple world order, AND have a cult on the side? But, I guess that's Danganronpa for you- crazy to that where it almost, ALMOST doesn't make any sense.

But even then, those endings made enough sense that I could buy into them. The V3 ending is straight up full of glaring plotholes.
example 1: If the V3 cast is fiction, as Tsumugi says in her own words, and Tsumugi's cospox means she can't cosplay as real people, then why can't she cosplay as her own fake characters? Furthermore, since the first two Danganronpa casts were presumably in the same situation as V3 in this timeline, why can she cosplay as them?
example 2: If the world really isn't in shambles after the meteorites (the world is watching the show after all), and therefore the virus could not have come from the meteorites, then why did Kaito die from the virus anyways?

In the past most of my qualms have been fixed when Team DR releases sequels that explain confusing plotpoints from previous installments. I hope that, even if it's just a one episode OVA, or an interview explaining these plotholes or something that Team DR will at least address these problems.

TL; DR: On the one hand, all of the past games have had flawed endings in my opinion, this one felt so egregiously flawed that I feel Team DR V3 had ought to produce a follow up just to fix it.

You do know that Team DR doesn't actually exists, right? Team DR is a fictional company made solely for v3, not an actual company.

[WizoDard]

Battler Ushiromiya původně napsal:

4quarters původně napsal:

I completely agree.

I mean, sure, at the time Danganronpa 1 & 2's endings felt good, and they satisfying albeit farfetched. Am I really supposed to believe that a single pair of high school twins could poison all of society, topple world order, AND have a cult on the side? But, I guess that's Danganronpa for you- crazy to that where it almost, ALMOST doesn't make any sense.

But even then, those endings made enough sense that I could buy into them. The V3 ending is straight up full of glaring plotholes.
example 1: If the V3 cast is fiction, as Tsumugi says in her own words, and Tsumugi's cospox means she can't cosplay as real people, then why can't she cosplay as her own fake characters? Furthermore, since the first two Danganronpa casts were presumably in the same situation as V3 in this timeline, why can she cosplay as them?
example 2: If the world really isn't in shambles after the meteorites (the world is watching the show after all), and therefore the virus could not have come from the meteorites, then why did Kaito die from the virus anyways?

In the past most of my qualms have been fixed when Team DR releases sequels that explain confusing plotpoints from previous installments. I hope that, even if it's just a one episode OVA, or an interview explaining these plotholes or something that Team DR will at least address these problems.

TL; DR: On the one hand, all of the past games have had flawed endings in my opinion, this one felt so egregiously flawed that I feel Team DR V3 had ought to produce a follow up just to fix it.

You do know that Team DR doesn't actually exists, right? Team DR is a fictional company made solely for v3, not an actual company.

Yeah I know, Team Danganronpa being a fake company flew right over my head until someone pointed it out to me a week ago. It's amazing to me how Kodaka pulled that off. ( PS. I really hate you 4quarters because you messed up one of the " [/i] " things in your coding to say, " [/] " and I had to go through your entire post to search for the one error that kept making everything be accidentally be quoted... )

[battler]

4quarters původně napsal:

I completely agree.

I mean, sure, at the time Danganronpa 1 & 2's endings felt good, and they satisfying albeit farfetched. Am I really supposed to believe that a single pair of high school twins could poison all of society, topple world order, AND have a cult on the side? But, I guess that's Danganronpa for you- crazy to that where it almost, ALMOST doesn't make any sense.

But even then, those endings made enough sense that I could buy into them. The V3 ending is straight up full of glaring plotholes.
example 1: If the V3 cast is fiction, as Tsumugi says in her own words, and Tsumugi's cospox means she can't cosplay as real people, then why can't she cosplay as her own fake characters? Furthermore, since the first two Danganronpa casts were presumably in the same situation as V3 in this timeline, why can she cosplay as them?
example 2: If the world really isn't in shambles after the meteorites (the world is watching the show after all), and therefore the virus could not have come from the meteorites, then why did Kaito die from the virus anyways?

In the past most of my qualms have been fixed when Team DR releases sequels that explain confusing plotpoints from previous installments. I hope that, even if it's just a one episode OVA, or an interview explaining these plotholes or something [/] that Team DR will at least address these problems.

TL; DR: On the one hand, all of the past games have had flawed endings in my opinion, this one felt so egregiously flawed that I feel Team DR V3 had ought to produce a follow up just to fix it. [/quote]
Tsumugi can't cosplay as the other characters because even though they're "fictional" in a sense that their identity was made by her and Team Danganronpa, they are still real physical people. Kaito got the got virus because Mugi gave it to him as part of his new identity. It's to make him desperate to escape but at the same time, not go as far as murdering someone due to the identity she gave him.

[battler]

RedBeard původně napsal:

I didn't plan on posting on this forum again, but a reply made me interested in explaining the reason I hate this ending so much, because I see so many people use the same defenses of it, and I feel like venting about why I hate this game.

So let's get some things out of the way: I understand the ending. I understand that Tsumugi's version of events, and I understand that it is possible she's lying. I understand that while she makes parallels to the real world Spike Chunsoft through 4th wall breaking, she is ultimately talking about an ingame company that doesn't exist in the real world. That out of the way...

Reason #1: The ending cheapens and invalidates DR1 and DR2. I can already hear the guys with their usual defense "But DR1 and DR2 are only fictional in V3! They may not be fictional in their own universes!"...yeah, but...is that really even good or a valid defense? It still cheapens those games by deliberately drawing attention to their fictional nature. It still completely undermines my faith in the writing in DR. It still makes me want to boycott this series permanently and encourage everyone I can to avoid the series like the plague. This was dumb in precisely the same way that yeah, you could point out that any television show is just a bunch of actors, but it would piss fans off because they watch it to be immersed and listen to a good story. It's not entertaining to draw attention to the fact that your entertainment is a work of fiction, it's just jarring and idiotic. The occasional 4th wall break can be fine, but there is definitely a limit, and this game went way beyond that. This is avoided for the same reason that a television series is not going to claim previous seasons were just works of fiction within the new season. It's stupid beyond belief and will anger any fans of the originals.

Reason #2: The characters don't matter. We, as consumers, are either watching AI randomly interact with each other with their made up stories and personalities, or Tsumugi was lying. Either way, we can't know, but the damage is done, because narratively we can't determine anything and what we are given undermines every single bit of backstory given to these characters and makes their interactions pointless and all of the reading we did regarding their backstories and personalities an utter waste of time. It doesn't matter whether they "felt it" or "it was real to them", what we are given from our perspective is the equivalent of a dream where nobody is acting like themselves. Just dumb.

Reason #3: The possibility of lying doesn't make anything interesting, because narratively the game does nothing to establish whether anyone is lying or not. It's just random. The game even tries to sell the randomness of it and says it doesn't matter. So there's no reason to even care. Introducing an unreliable character in stories is only good writing when the reader has some possibility of discerning their lies. If it's not able to be determined, it just means the entire narrative in the story is suspect and the reader has no reason to invest their trust or time in the writer. It doesn't help that Tsumugi randomly just turns into a 4th wall breaking machine in the ending, loses her entire character, and basically becomes an exposition machine with no real motivations to speak of. Her motives aren't even explored as the game just shifts to trying to explain the terrible ending and her actual character is ignored.

Reason #4: It insults fans. I know people think this isn't the case too because Kodaka claims he didn't intend it in some interview, but frankly it doesn't matter whether he intended it or not(and I honestly don't even see how he can claim this). The game ends with you LITERALLY destroying Danganronpa. The ending has you sit through an explanation that the series has become stale and just started churning out game after boring game to the point where Monokuma is sick of it and they've just automated most of it. They make obvious references to the real world development of DR, and the game encourages you to just metaphorically put the series out of its misery. As a fan, this pisses me off. I do not care that the audience was not intended as a parallel for real world fans, and I don't care that TDR is a different ingame company. The implications were clear enough. I wasn't sick of DR. I liked DR, and I did not want to be forced to destroy it, and I did not want to hear the creator whine to me about how sick he is of making the games after charging me 60 dollars just to get to the worst ending on the planet. It left me extremely pissed off.

Reason #5: Metafiction is trash. It is always trash when it is used as a major plot device. Stop using it. Having a character realize they are fictional in any capacity(including their personality or making comparisons to the fact that the thing you're reading is fiction) is never interesting. It is always stupid. Stop it. Permanently. Or at least put warnings on your games that they contain metafiction plot devices so I can avoid them entirely.

That's all. Feels good to vent. I think a lot of people felt this but they always run into the same excuses from fans about why the writing is okay and it isn't in my opinion. It is lazy, it deliberately avoids telling a good story and just tries to wrap everything up in such a horrendously stupid way. I hate it. I hate it more than any ending I've ever played in my life. Enough to write giant walls of text. But now I think I can move on.

Nice bait.

[Sepiablitz]

4quarters původně napsal:

example 1: If the V3 cast is fiction, as Tsumugi says in her own words, and Tsumugi's cospox means she can't cosplay as real people, then why can't she cosplay as her own fake characters? Furthermore, since the first two Danganronpa casts were presumably in the same situation as V3 in this timeline, why can she cosplay as them?

The easiest answer is very very simple: Tsumugi lied. (shock). If something does not fit together in a game centered around lies, don't you think it is far more likely that it was a lie rather than a plothole? Here are the things that could be a lie:
1. V3 cast being fiction. If they were Ultimates who were brainwashed twice, then they are real people.
2. V3 cast being fiction (again). If there are real versions of the Ultimates somewhere in that universe, again they would not
3. Tsumugi lied about cospox. It simply is not a disease she has.
4. The first two casts were real AND the cospox' effect works the other way around: Can't cosplay as fictional characters but disguise as real ones.

4quarters původně napsal:

example 2: If the world really isn't in shambles after the meteorites (the world is watching the show after all), and therefore the virus could not have come from the meteorites, then why did Kaito die from the virus anyways?

Neither the meteorites nor the virus were confirmed to be true. In fact, both were probably a lie too, as they are "memories" implanted with that flashback light which explicitly fabricates FAKE memories.

Saying "it was just a lie" in most cases would be a cheap copout to close plotholes, but in this case in particular there were lies all over the place, so it actually is reasonable to assume that if something does not make sense and it has no proof to back it up, it probably is a lie.

[Sepiablitz]

Nothing to descern a lie form truth? What do you want? A massive buzzer going off in the background every time someone lies? How about good ol' fashioned evidence and logic? I explicitely said "if something does not make sense and has no proof to back it up". People dying from their respective fatal injuries does both make sense and has proof to back it up (the bodies). Coughin up paint though does not make sense so if that was stated in the game, it would be a lie unless it could explain it somehow. The surivors being in on the production is contradictory on what we see in the epilogue.

What you are doing is like saying a realistic plot where no magic exists and suddenly at the end magic saves the protagonist deus ex machina is the very same as if the magic has been well established since the beginning of the plot and is then used at the ending again. It just is not the same. Lies were well established from the beginning of the game and any ending that would not have a bunch of lies all over it would just not fit in the overall story. It's all about foreshadowing. The entire thing being a gameshow was heavily foreshadowed in the prologue but there was no foreshadowing of it being a dream of Shuichi. Remove all that foreshadowing from the game and I would be right there with you arguing the writing was terrible.

And if you are that opposed to lies being central to a plot, I don't understand why you dragged yourself through 6 chapters, when already chapter 1 was filled with lies.

[BeastBox]

To be fair, the more the game lies the less the pleyer is inclined to trust ANYTHING. That's why a game like this being "open to interpretation", as some have said elsewhere in a poor attempt at defense, is a terrible idea. The game can't just toss out loose end after loose end .. eventually there has to be some strong, coherent plot tying it all together. And even then, you can't be surprised when there are some people who end the game thinking "huh, more lies". After all, the game went out of its way to set that expectation. Anyone ever read The Boy Who Cried Wolf? The truth doesn't even matter if you've conditioned people to assume it's another lie.

The funny thing is, the game calls its own BS. The killing game doesn't matter if Monokuma breaks the rules and the participants can't trust the game. And nothing in DRV3 matters if the game lies all the time and we can't trust the game. XD

Sepiablitz původně napsal:

And if you are that opposed to lies being central to a plot, I don't understand why you dragged yourself through 6 chapters, when already chapter 1 was filled with lies.

Maybe he was hoping for the aforementioned strong ending actually making sense of it all. You know, like the previous two games.

[Zaltys]

It was pretty bad, yes. Felt like the writers tried far too hard to be clever, and I kind of wish that I could get back the time I spent playing this. I found the cosplay gimmick in particular to be especially annoying.

Meta twists and ambiguous endings work in movies (sometimes, just look at Shyamalan), but that's only because movies are short.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

Zaltys původně napsal:

It was pretty bad, yes. Felt like the writers tried far too hard to be clever, and I kind of wish that I could get back the time I spent playing this. I found the cosplay gimmick in particular to especially annoying.

Occasional meta twists and ambiguous endings lwork in movies (just look at Shyamalan), but that's because movies are short.

Shyamalan? Twist that works? In the same sentence? No. Just no. Also, DR2's ending was meta as hell too.

[WizoDard]

RedBeard původně napsal:

WizoDard původně napsal:

I know you made all of that post, and it kind of justifies your reason, but it really doesn't. Just by reading your reasons someone can tell that you missed the point of the end of the game.
Especially Reason 2, the point of Shuuichi, Himiko, and Maki's speech was to prove that even if they were fake characters, everything that happened was real, emotional, and it affected and hurt all of them on the inside.

I've heard this multiple times, but nothing anyone has presented would lead me to believe that I missed or misunderstood anything. I got "the point", I just don't agree with it or like it. I even explicitly explained that I understood what you stated here, and that it still means that what they engaged in was meaningless to me. If it's not their personalities or them making the decisions, they are basically pre-programmed AI carrying out the will of their brainwashing. So any decision or interaction they have is meaningless because it's not really their own decision, but the pre-determined result of their brainwashing. That includes their catharsis following the realization that their personalities are fictional. That realization comes from a brainwashed, preprogrammed dummy essentially. So their own feelings were orchestrated and manufactured, which makes my investment in any of it a waste of time.

Trying to say this isn't the case because Tsumugi may have lied just falls into the other points I made about the writing being terrible. If it went into such a long, drawn out and convoluted reveal about the twist only to have it turn out to be all lies, it just means Kodaka wasted my time with terrible writing.

Your reason 4 is trash btw. I worded that pretty meanly, but the part about just putting the series out of it's misery, I don't think Monokuma ever said he was bored. In fact, the entire point of Tsumugi's end goal during the trial was to continue the Killing Games. And that's also the entire point of the Argument Armament with Kiibo/The World. They all wanted the Killing Games to continue too. ( if Tsumugi wasn't lying about particular things ).

You can say trash. I won't be offended. But your own post highlights why I was irritated and bored by the ending. Oh she may or may not be lying...about everything. Maybe none of it is true. Okay, so why should I care? Because I don't. I lost interest in the ending pretty quickly after the reveal started. It's not mysterious, it's just stupid. Nothing is holding the plot together if the main villain revealing everything is utterly unreliable. It doesn't help that what she does reveal is horrendously stupid. So either the ending is stupid, or she's lying and it's pretty much a non-ending with terrible writing that was like 3 hours of lies.

The boredom and weariness in developing DR games is implied. The desire for the killing game is supposed to reflect on the fans wanting endless DR sequels. Handwaving that away with the ingame audience is being intentionally obtuse to what message it was actually sending.

Reason 5 is your own opinion, and in hindsight, another reason that you can just write off the ending instead of trying to understand it. And with a UDG2 most likely coming out in the future, this series is definitely not being, " put out of its misery ".

I understand the ending. I just hate it. You guys seem to think there's only two possibilities. Either you love the ending, or you just "didn't get it". I both understand it and hate it. You're assuming all of your own personal interpretations of it are true, and since they differ from mine, yours must be correct and thus you can dismiss my opinion.

The last part of Reason 3 is reasonable, because it does kind of throw away Tsumugi's character a bit, but you also just wrote off what she was meant to be in the first place. She wasn't supposed to be an expositional character, more so the end bit of the game was telling you that everything you thought she was throughout the game, was, once again the theme of the game, a lie. She had evil intentions, and it sinks in more when you realize she killed Kaede for no reason and just for the fun of it. Then pretending to cry about everyone's death's when she actually executed them.

This would have been the case no matter who was behind the killing game, so it wasn't particularly "shocking" or interesting. If Himiko or Maki were behind it, it would have been the same exact scenario that you described. If she wasn't meant to be expositional, they screwed up, because she is. Exploring her motivation and character is ignored in favor of her delivering exposition, and ultimately I don't think Kodaka really cared about exploring that because this game was focused on ending the repetitive killing game and thus the mastermind is kinda irrelevant. Another reason I hate it.

And the beginning of Reasoning 3 is your own prejudice opinion that lying doesn't make a game fun. It's not random at all, and everything in this entire game is based off of truth and lies. All minor things like whether Kaede was lying during the trial, to Ouma's entire character, to the end of the entire game.

Oh this argument we're having? I'm just lying. I love the ending. I was just lying this whole time. Or am I? Wow. Deep. Now our conversation is so much more interesting, right?

First of all, all things are based off of truth and lies. Second...Yes, lying is a theme in the game. The problem is that the game doesn't care about discerning lies from truth and tries to say it doesn't matter. I apparently don't think lying is as interesting as you do, particularly if the game makes no effort to discern or provide information about what is a lie and what isn't. It just makes me disinterested when the writer leaves things ambiguous and uses lies to leave everything open ended.

And your first Reason, that this cheapens Danganronpa 1 and 2. That entire reason is based off of the fact that Tsumugi is telling the truth, and everything is fictional. I have a feeling she lied about almost everything that happened at the end of the game...

Either she was telling the truth and the ending is incredibly stupid or she was lying and the writing is terrible and wasted 3 hours of my time on a false reveal and completely ignored exploring the actual mastermind's motivations. Either way, I hate it.

In the end, it's ironic that you start your post with " I understand...I understand...I understand... " when you actually didn't understand anything about the ending or the game. In fact, it feels like you just finished the game. Have you actually had time to sit down and think about the ending, or the legitimacy of what Kodaka was actually going for? Because all of your points were completely off...And your post was just disgusting to me.

I understand it fine. You just dislike my feelings about it and my interpretation of it and assume your own feelings and interpretations are correct because you apparently feel about it how Kodaka wanted you to feel.

I've had plenty of time to let my seething hatred of the ending fester, and it hasn't changed, and it won't change. I hate this game's ending and story more than any other game in existence. If you're going to insist this is all because I somehow misunderstood the ending, you're going to have to provide actual reasons for why. I don't mean how YOU felt about it, I mean objective facts about it that I got incorrect.

You must've has such a fun Halloween typing up this entire piece of crap that I won't even read.

[Wadidujuscallme]

yup. ending ruined my favorite series ever. I'm so mad right now...

[Wadidujuscallme]

RedBeard původně napsal:

I didn't plan on posting on this forum again, but a reply made me interested in explaining the reason I hate this ending so much, because I see so many people use the same defenses of it, and I feel like venting about why I hate this game.

So let's get some things out of the way: I understand the ending. I understand that Tsumugi's version of events, and I understand that it is possible she's lying. I understand that while she makes parallels to the real world Spike Chunsoft through 4th wall breaking, she is ultimately talking about an ingame company that doesn't exist in the real world. That out of the way...

Reason #1: The ending cheapens and invalidates DR1 and DR2. I can already hear the guys with their usual defense "But DR1 and DR2 are only fictional in V3! They may not be fictional in their own universes!"...yeah, but...is that really even good or a valid defense? It still cheapens those games by deliberately drawing attention to their fictional nature. It still completely undermines my faith in the writing in DR. It still makes me want to boycott this series permanently and encourage everyone I can to avoid the series like the plague. This was dumb in precisely the same way that yeah, you could point out that any television show is just a bunch of actors, but it would piss fans off because they watch it to be immersed and listen to a good story. It's not entertaining to draw attention to the fact that your entertainment is a work of fiction, it's just jarring and idiotic. The occasional 4th wall break can be fine, but there is definitely a limit, and this game went way beyond that. This is avoided for the same reason that a television series is not going to claim previous seasons were just works of fiction within the new season. It's stupid beyond belief and will anger any fans of the originals.

Reason #2: The characters don't matter. We, as consumers, are either watching AI randomly interact with each other with their made up stories and personalities, or Tsumugi was lying. Either way, we can't know, but the damage is done, because narratively we can't determine anything and what we are given undermines every single bit of backstory given to these characters and makes their interactions pointless and all of the reading we did regarding their backstories and personalities an utter waste of time. It doesn't matter whether they "felt it" or "it was real to them", what we are given from our perspective is the equivalent of a dream where nobody is acting like themselves. Just dumb.

Reason #3: The possibility of lying doesn't make anything interesting, because narratively the game does nothing to establish whether anyone is lying or not. It's just random. The game even tries to sell the randomness of it and says it doesn't matter. So there's no reason to even care. Introducing an unreliable character in stories is only good writing when the reader has some possibility of discerning their lies. If it's not able to be determined, it just means the entire narrative in the story is suspect and the reader has no reason to invest their trust or time in the writer. It doesn't help that Tsumugi randomly just turns into a 4th wall breaking machine in the ending, loses her entire character, and basically becomes an exposition machine with no real motivations to speak of. Her motives aren't even explored as the game just shifts to trying to explain the terrible ending and her actual character is ignored.

Reason #4: It insults fans. I know people think this isn't the case too because Kodaka claims he didn't intend it in some interview, but frankly it doesn't matter whether he intended it or not(and I honestly don't even see how he can claim this). The game ends with you LITERALLY destroying Danganronpa. The ending has you sit through an explanation that the series has become stale and just started churning out game after boring game to the point where Monokuma is sick of it and they've just automated most of it. They make obvious references to the real world development of DR, and the game encourages you to just metaphorically put the series out of its misery. As a fan, this pisses me off. I do not care that the audience was not intended as a parallel for real world fans, and I don't care that TDR is a different ingame company. The implications were clear enough. I wasn't sick of DR. I liked DR, and I did not want to be forced to destroy it, and I did not want to hear the creator whine to me about how sick he is of making the games after charging me 60 dollars just to get to the worst ending on the planet. It left me extremely pissed off.

Reason #5: Metafiction is trash. It is always trash when it is used as a major plot device. Stop using it. Having a character realize they are fictional in any capacity(including their personality or making comparisons to the fact that the thing you're reading is fiction) is never interesting. It is always stupid. Stop it. Permanently. Or at least put warnings on your games that they contain metafiction plot devices so I can avoid them entirely.

That's all. Feels good to vent. I think a lot of people felt this but they always run into the same excuses from fans about why the writing is okay and it isn't in my opinion. It is lazy, it deliberately avoids telling a good story and just tries to wrap everything up in such a horrendously stupid way. I hate it. I hate it more than any ending I've ever played in my life. Enough to write giant walls of text. But now I think I can move on.

AMEN

[WizoDard]

Wadidujuscallme původně napsal:

yup. ending ruined my favorite series ever. I'm so mad right now...

You will get over the ending. As time passes and you hear more about why Kodaka created that ending it becomes very justifiable.

[WizoDard]

Wadidujuscallme původně napsal:

RedBeard původně napsal:

***SNIPPED***

AMEN

Disgusting...You guys misunderstand what Kodaka was going for in the ending.

[Caulfieldd]

WizoDard původně napsal:

Wadidujuscallme původně napsal:

AMEN

Disgusting...You guys misunderstand what Kodaka was going for in the ending.

It's still a trash ending, no matter how you look at it. Please stop being hardcore fanboys/girls and realise that this ending just sucks.