Why people didn't like the ending?

[Kain]

I mean, it finished the main case as as weird as the reasons were they somehow fit, or maybe it was just my high psych and insane character but it worked.

It lead some stuff for a possible sequel, something I'm glad because I think if they tried to fit everything in a single game it would water down everything.

By the end most of your biggest choices were acknowledged and you know, it had closure. What was lacking I don't get it.

[|)Е|>3|<|/|u* |-|0><40]

People just love fallout-style endings, where narrator tells how much you helped all those poor people for, like, five minutes. And this time they didn't get that ovation to their actions

[holy-death]

I think there are a few reasons:

1) The killer - as a person - is detached from everything else.

I didn't mind it that much myself, but that's mostly because I was able to trace a lot of stuff to him and made direct links during the confrontation, so it felt like I did some good detective job in the end, even though the killer was basically some random stranger.

2) The weird alien appears.

It appearing at the end, and "accidentaly" leaving you some items important for linking the killer to the killing, just in case you didn't find the "proper" links on your own (the bullet), feels out of place.

I really think it would have made much more sense as part of the cryptozoologist's quest.

3) How the game ends.

It presents no definitive answers when it comes to what happened to all the people (and places) you crossed paths with. I guess some people don't like that.

I was okay with it though. Mostly because we have our investigation (and Harry himself) summed up. And it's hinted that there is more awaiting for Harry, Kim and the rest of the squad in the future.

Everything else, every loose end (Ruby, Klaasje, Ervart, etc.) may resurface in some other story, so it does make sense not ending/explaining them on the spot.

[Kain]

Originally posted by |)Е|>3|<|/|u* |-|0><40:

People just love fallout-style endings, where narrator tells how much you helped all those poor people for, like, five minutes. And this time they didn't get that ovation to their actions

But it makes no sense, this game, if it eventually get a sequel doesn't look like it will be long after the first one, so it's not like we would see much into the future since we are bound to meet some of the same characters again. At least I got all the closure I wanted even for npcs after the shootout.

[Kain]

1 - Didn't bother me either, made sense even all things considered.
2 - For me there was not strange to it, we spend a lot of time talking about the creatures, it appearing in the end made sense to me.
3 - Yeah, sore, there were a lot of loose ends, but again, this is obviously the first game in a possible series, as I said I rather they didn't focus too much on it as not to take the focus away from what was already in the game.

[|)Е|>3|<|/|u* |-|0><40]

Originally posted by Kain:

Originally posted by |)Е|>3|<|/|u* |-|0><40:

People just love fallout-style endings, where narrator tells how much you helped all those poor people for, like, five minutes. And this time they didn't get that ovation to their actions

But it makes no sense, this game, if it eventually get a sequel doesn't look like it will be long after the first one, so it's not like we would see much into the future since we are bound to meet some of the same characters again. At least I got all the closure I wanted even for npcs after the shootout.

You didn't put enough points into purple attribute. They just want to listen how awesome they are and dont think of anything else. I think, you get some of it in the beginig, though. Imagine you just finished Fallout:NV and watching a real long ending slideshow. You don't have to do antything anymore. Never. Never ever...

[Kain]

Originally posted by |)Е|>3|<|/|u* |-|0><40:

Originally posted by Kain:

But it makes no sense, this game, if it eventually get a sequel doesn't look like it will be long after the first one, so it's not like we would see much into the future since we are bound to meet some of the same characters again. At least I got all the closure I wanted even for npcs after the shootout.

You didn't put enough points into purple attribute. They just want to listen how awesome they are and dont think of anything else. I think, you get some of it in the beginig, though. Imagine you just finished Fallout:NV and watching a real long ending slideshow. You don't have to do antything anymore. Never. Never ever...

No I get it my character was mostly Purple/Red. I just think it makes no sense for this game to jerk off to our accomplishments, just not that kind of game.

[Me]

What makes you think people didn't like the ending?

[Kain]

Originally posted by Me:

What makes you think people didn't like the ending?

Some threads about the ending.

[taciturn(o)]

People really want closure. They just want a story where eveything is told to you and nothing is left for interpretation. They are simply lazy.

Machado de Assis wrote an incredible book called "Dom Casmurro", where, 120 years later, we still don't have an answer for the biggest plot in the book and that is one of the many reasons to why the book was and still is so good.

[Me]

Originally posted by taciturno:

People really want closure. They just want a story where eveything is told to you and nothing is left for interpretation. They are simply lazy.

Machado de Assis wrote an incredible book called "Dom Casmurro", where, 120 years later, we still don't have an answer for the biggest plot in the book and that is one of the many reasons to why the book was and still is so good.

We also never learned who shot the driver in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. When asked about it, Chandler himself always just shrugged and said "I don't know".

[Wokelander]

I loved the ending

[Du-Vu]

I loved the ending too.

To be fair about The Big Sleep, and I say this as a huge Chandler fan, on at least one occasion Chandler did admit that the identity of the driver's killer kind of a plot hole that he hadn't noticed -- the characters most likely to have done it don't seem to have known about it. They could have been lying, of course, but they also don't seem to gain much by his death. But it's a pretty minor plot point in a believably confusing string of murders among petty criminals, the chauffeur included. It's not the central mystery, just a piece of the puzzle.

[jack_of_tears]

It's a matter of personal taste. I understood the ending, got all the clues, understood the metaphor, but don't like detective stories where you aren't introduced to the villain until he's caught. I enjoy trying to figure out who amidst the cast is the killer and then taking that plunge to see if I'm right. I was really hoping the game would let me choose 'the culprit' and potentially make a mistake, or even be left never knowing if I was right. Even so, I would have been just as happy if it had turned out to be anyone I had built a relationship with up to that point.

Making the villain 'random political refuge #9' doesn't appeal to me in any way and it made the ending feel meaningless, as nothing I'd learned during the week - aside from the trajectory of the bullet - felt like it meant a damned thing.

Again, personal preference.

Aside from that, I felt the introduction of the Phasmid at the end was shoehorned in, and the suggestion that its saliva had made the man insane made the ending feel even more meaningless. I liked the encounter with the creature, I just feel like it was poorly placed and poorly used.

Also, the 'breakdown' at the end, with the rest of your crew, felt like a set of bullet points placed there to fill in the blanks if I hadn't figured something out. It was heavy-handed and redundant for the most part. Also, I didn't appreciate a bunch of ashholes showing up at the end of the game to tell me what a worthless prick I was, after I'd spent the entire time solving mysteries and helping people. The only good to come out of it was Kim standing up for me and ultimately choosing to transfer to my department.

The ending felt so unrewarding that I couldn't turn around and play the game again, like I had intended to do right up until that reveal.

[Kain]

@jack_of_tears

Now, that is a reason for disliking the ending that I can get behind a good murder mystery should leave enough clues to at least somewhat direct you to the right culprit mid story.

For some reason it didn't bother me that much, maybe because I eventually understood that there wasn't any big plot point regarding the murder, not regarding the universe of the game in itself, at first I thought it was some outside force trying to start a fight between the classes, once I realized that was not the case the importance of the case became more personal. But i still completely agree.

The major events of the game end right after the big shootout, the rest of the days is just closing threads, after that point the city already made it's mind regarding you.

[Du-Vu]

That's fair, though I think it's a matter of your expectations. Somewhere after the first day, as you start talking more to Joyce, Evrart, the Hardies and especially Klassje, it became clear that this wasn't a simple whodunnit/police procedural, and the hanged man's death was only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, who killed him and the man himself didn't really matter, not nearly as much as the conspiracy running through the docks. And in that sense it was very noir -- who killed who and why was a lot less important than what the story had to say about our own humanity, dark and sordid as we often are... only to put another twist on it with the phasmid, Klaasje's hints about the Return, and the as-yet-unsolved mystery of the pale and (perhaps) its connection to your own memory loss and Dolores Dei (not Dora, the actual Dolores) being something other than human.

I liked that. It looks like a standard murder mystery or noir on the surface, but if you look at it as deliberately trying to break out of that and on the verge of *becoming* something more like a wide-open fantasy setting, I find that potential pretty exciting. That sense of anticipation can be very satisfying. Sort of like the Nameless One setting out into the Blood War without his immortality at the end of PST.