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We're told about black boxes and that they contain damning evidence, we hunt for them and then we aren't even privy to the contents (not even indirectly like in Act 2). And with regards to the last story quest, what signifiance does a rainbow have to the story or game? Did you let the artist design that last level? And seriously, a letter from devs in the end? No credits so I could know who to blame? Yeah, I feel ripped off... Because this game had so much damn potential and you butcher the ending and nerf every challenge of the game.
The truth is, the devs sold out to the mass of potato players out there, as if there was going to be some "profit" in that. Are you happy with that decision guys? Do you see the endless requests for nerfs? Are you really happy with how easy this game is? How loyal were those guys in the end? Half of them have already uninstalled and many have talked about refunding... Smh
I wouldn’t say the ending is forever ruined, as the simple truth is he could just be outright lying to you in order to prevent you from killing him. As we can destroy anomalies and he is very much an anomaly himself now everything he worked so hard to achieve, all the people he stepped on, the lives he crushed would be for naught if you merely opted to destroy him. Really we walk up to the most powerful anomaly in the world without any precaution and just believe everything it says because it said so. When we know something can affect our ability to perceive reality.
What I assumed he was going to be was some kind of hive mind that infected everyone through the moss substance that is generated in the brain. Or that the moss was somehow important to his schemes going forward. The moss being the either a manifestation of the entity he made a pact with or the entity itself. As it grows inside a person’s head it becomes more pronounced and can have more of a pronounced impact on its host. The Madmen are a clear example of its capabilities.
The moss is the voice you hear earlier in the game and the second time and a lot of the game pointed to this being exactly what was going on, so it’s rather disheartening to see the story not taken to fruition. It would have been a better ending to kill him with a trap, but then be reminded that it really doesn’t matter because it wasn’t a singular person that caused the event in the first place which would then fit into the end narrative perfectly. For expansion to the world without him to keep the moss in check there could be new consequences, new enemies, and new disturbances that would begin emerging. At least that’s where I thought the game was going to go.
Rather a pity so many plot threads were just left unfinished like the little girl who is obviously a disembodied psyche, the mutagenic research which was tapping into the "mosses" power, whatever happened to I forget his number's wife. If the anomolies are a network of psyches then that is something that should have been explored further as well. Potentially as a way to weaken him (sorry I can't remember how to spell his name) before the final confrontation. Maybe some update will improve the game's narrative, I'd certainly would be willing to come back for that plus a level cap increase.
also i agree about the constant nerfing and developers giving up to the whiners !
also to many skills that overpowers you - 40 max level is to much !
It delivered an awesome experience that very few of the games i have encountered have.Despite that,i have some thoughts regarding the story of the game(not just the ending,but mostly the ending).
My thoughts on the ending are that it has an absolutely powerful meaning on its own.I definitely loved what the ending was trying to convey,it is deeply well-thought.However,i believe that,as others mentioned,it does not fit well with the game.It was supposed to be a plot twist with a strong meaning,but we did not have enough information to be satisfied with this ending.It is something that we didn't expect because everything seemed so real and,even though as Victor explained,i specifically and i think other players too were trying to change the world to what it was with so much passion,liberation after liberation,research after research.The only hint that i can recall that leads to this ending is the fact that the first time i hear the voice,it can change the world's colors on its own will.But that could have been mostly the Volunteer and what he perceives as real,not reality itself that could be altered.
Contradictory to other comments on this post and some other players,i do not believe that it was a lazy ending.I believe that it is a powerful ending that i don't like because it leaves my empty and confused.I truly understand the meaning of that ending,Victor's motives,the thoughts on war and how mankind's desire to fuel it despite the consequenses.However,i believe that it should have been perhaps a secret ending.It is much more fitting as a secret ending.For the normal ending,it should have been something that completes the story from all the other acts and that fulfills us.It should follow the logic of the story and the world as we know it.The surprise that the current ending delivers should have been an extra piece of information added to the main story.Regarding the message that the ending was trying to tell,it can still be conveyed in an another ending,perhaps a dialogue between the volunteer and a villain or something else.
-Something i really liked about the current ending is that the volunteer is experiencing endless cycles of events.Its as if he is stuck in something like purgatory,but it is fictionally created by Victor-
Other than that,I believe the stories of all the characters,creatures,anomalies and environments were cut short and throughout the game i thought i'd learn more about them.Perhaps i missed some information,but there are some parts of the game that i think have been,let's say,poetically designed,and i can't understand everything about them because i am not given enough information.
For example,i have the following questions:
-> What was the beast at the very start,when i opened the door?
-> I have many questions regarding 400.I want to learn more about what happened to his family and what he did next,all i get from him is a bit of help for me to infiltrate Victor's base
-> The Blindman!That creature was one of the most exciting things in the game in my opinion.Who was the one that knew him before he became The Blindman and what was that person to the original self of The Blindman?What is the location with stairs floating around?(Even though i think that it is the space that the volunteer crosses from a black hole to a location,i need verification!).why is his lair like that?I want to know why those things resembling humans are floating above him and i want to know what that tree like thing is.Which part of his original self was responsible for him being turned into The Blindman.A creature that cannot see but has what i think are visual echoes of people,perhaps victims.So much i want to learn!Say the conducted experiments on him,why is he specifically The Blindman,and not The Deafman or the Man who feels no pain,or SmellessMan?During the fight with him he rips out his eyeball(s) (i think),what has affected him so much into turning a former human,now a creature into willingly inflicting such pain upon itself?I want to know more!
-> The Butcher.If i were to assume that The Butcher was a former human,like the Blindman,how did he become The Butcher?Is his unsatisfiable hunger responsible for his endless hunting of human corpses/live humans and why only humans and not any other creatures on the island?What drives him to only kill humans and consume them,how does he drain some kind of energy from the corpses?(i am refering to the fight,where if he loses health,after a certain point,he is enclosed in a shell-like thing while utilizing in some way the corpses in its lair and you have to attack the corpses to expose him)
-> That one maimed girl-like creature that scares me everytime,was he the daughter of The Engineer?Or is the daughter of the engineer the girl that i either hear saying to me "I foouuund youuu..." or hear her giggling.
->What are those giant bones that i find throughout the world and to what did they belong to?There is a giant torso somewhere along the right edge of the island and giant hand with a hunter nearby somewhere else.
Everything i recalled could have had a much deeper meaning that i would gladly love to discover.I love Desolate,it fits perfectly to my criteria of what i love in a game(Survival Aspect,Horror,Crafting,open world and a nice trading and levelling system) and i would absolutely give it a 10/10.However i want to explore and learn much more about it.
Finally,a random comment that i want to make:
->The teleporting anomaly should be called a wormhole and not a black hole.By definition,what a wormhole does is what the anomaly does.A wormhole is a theoretical phenomenon devised by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen,that unites two points in space together,allowing you to go from one point to another instantly(If you could theoretically survive that transition).The two scientists combined the mathematical explanation -or something similar- of a black hole and a white hole.A white hole is a theoretical black hole that progresses backwards in time
And I think that the twist ending in desolate could have stood a better chance of drawing parity (in terms of poignancy) with the brilliant narrative design in bioshock if they had designed the story mission structure in a way that made players ask questions about the world, and themselves as a character. I think if this had been done in a nuanced way, then it would have provided the right amount of veiled foreshadowing to the eventual ending twist, to make it feel more cohesive as narrative whole.
But you can definitely tell the team were trying to go for a poignant ending, one of those endings that makes you think about your own life type deal. But my advice to them for their next game would be to higher an experienced story writer, and couple them with the guys in charge of mission structure / design. So the too can be interweaved in a way so as to complement each other.
Ultimately it was strangely satisfying as far as endings go if you're sufficiently nihilistic. It's a breath of fresh air for a game to forsake the usual power fantasies and make believe accomplishments and instead spit in your face and remind you just how pointless sitting at a computer for hours (or anything you do) is. It's also liberating in that it reminds you that though the game (or existence itself) doesn't owe you anything and will never be what you may want, you can still make your own happiness, find your own purpose and meaning. When you open your eyes and see nothing, consciously choosing to embrace the darkness makes all the difference over simply being blind all along. Knowing all of this yet persisting anyway, choosing to make something of existence is what makes you the master of your reality because after all, the blade of meaninglessness cuts both ways and whatever power others claim to have over you is just as impotent as anything else. That's what the game's end gives you: The knowledge that there is nothing for you here yet the opportunity to carry on of your own accord and make of the world what you will regardless. Just like real life. Bravo.
The problem here in the ending more just seems as if the developers didn’t understand their own story and concepts. The ending itself undoes the setup and premise, it unravels all your efforts as they’re superficially meaningless. It utilizes game mechanics that aren’t meta as if they are meta and it’s not witty nor intelligent.
“I destroyed reality.”
Except by the games own lore you’d never be able to know if you did or not. In all likelihood he is like his daughter, floating alone in some abandoned facility unable to die. A passage in soviet history of a failed scientific endeavor lead by a madman who committed massive human rights violations. From there he linked with the other failures/successes and constructed this reality to prevent himself from going insane as he sat there day after day listening the voices of those he had wronged, voices now damaged and broken from the experiment awaiting a final end that will never come as the facilities are locked away on the remote Island that no one ventures to anymore.
If the game’s narrative is to be believed, that’s the truth of the ending. A sad reflection of desperation set in motion by a madman who in essence killed himself and trapped himself in the hell he made for others. Only his daughter was ever clever enough to figure out how to escape the nightmare and she had you be the instrument that did so.
The twist is that none of this is real, it's a game (for Victor's amusement rather than yours). You buy and launch it as a fictional game on your computer so you know that before you even start.
Death isn't permanent throughout the game, you just come back right as rain. Just like you do when you shoot yourself in the head, nothing new there.
You can jump into different instances of the world yet maintain stats. A convenient multiplayer feature or Victor rearranging what amounts to be figments of his imagination for glorified fanfics whereby different heroes team up?
Victor points out that your memories are fuzzy and don't really have any detail. Your character never had a real back story in or out of the game, that one's pretty obvious. Consider also whenever you liberate a place, there's this whiteout effect and magically structures and people just show up instantly and yet both you and your character don't blink an eye at this time lapse or impossible feat.
Hell, the fact that you never see any NPCs really do anything or have much interesting to say isn't because they're boring, static people, it's because they're unimportant supporting cast only there to fulfill a role ushering you along. Reviewers have critiqued the devs for this but when you think about it, it's because they're not people, they're literal NPCs Victor conjured up and you just ignore it because you're driven.
Enemies and loot respawn at predictable intervals, in what reality does that happen if not a false one gamified to keep it entertaining longer? From the otherwise completely unexplained or fleshed-out events basically being mutators Victor turns on and off to spice your life up to the paranormal stuff that may as well be the equivalent of Victor being a troll-y spectator interacting with a Twitch streamer in a game with such integration.
Even consider the commentary that the ending isn't really an ending. That's the trick, it isn't and doesn't even pretend to be! The game doesn't actually end, does it? It doesn't take you back to the main menu or say new game +, it just picks right back up again as it always has when you die, your character and Victor even commenting on the fact and a new schematic magically in your book for more proof. If the narrative structure is poor, that's because it's not a story or book, it's a game and a world and neither of those require a story. Folks are free to project whatever they like on top of it as others in this thread have but it never was your game, your story. It's Victor's. The fact that many don't find that entertaining is the sort of thing he doubtlessly finds immeasurably so as evidenced when he chimes in when you wake up again after the big reveal. He wants to make sure you know it happened, to elicit that disappointment and revel in it. You (the player) are not important, it's not about you or your enjoyment and it never was. Few games do that and that's why it's a good twist "ending".
A tired old joke would say that in soviet Russia, game plays you! It's actually pretty spot on here. You thought you were playing a game when the whole time it was playing you all along. At the end, you're let in on the joke. Shall you grumble or laugh along?
They have done all this, and in the end, they have a special message for you. The story, just like the game, continues forever -- unlike our interest in it. All this other stuff that Kevin is adding is purely his own narrative, which I also believe is part of the dev's intent. It's maddening, isn't it? Maybe that's why the devs said we would understand their nature, when we see the things they saw -- the endless testing and manipulation.
I digress, I still feel they meant for us to experience the game personally, not just through the lore/plot of the game. They wanted you to feel fear, then they wanted you to overcome that fear, and turn into -- a madman. And then they drop a bomb on you and remind you of the animal you would have had to become to beat it.
That said, the only way to really win, is to stop playing. End the cycle -- and I hope the devs never attempt such ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ever again. Self-owned by their own design.
Or in Call of Duty's example people keep looking at you like your crazy even asking who the hell you're talking to. They're reactions that would be logical inside the environment. As I said he didn't end the world, he's just a failed experiment in some bunker like his daughter. The very same processes he claims exist exist externally of himself and would absolutely prevent him from ending reality.
As for any game that's meta narrative is don't play, that defeats the purpose of the medium and essentially boils down to: Don't give us money, don't play our product, because that's the point. From a business, writing, and logical standpoint the ending is poor attempt at being clever. Especially since the game gives you the very tool you need to kill Victor in Act 2.
No... Am done with this game/discussion. Good luck, Volunteer.