Ending story spoilers

[Slayer_Gauge]

So the whole thing was ultimately triggered by some random woman face changer? That felt very, very weak. For a fairly intricate plot, having it essentially come down to the most unassailable fortress in history and some women steals the secret and gets in and causes the whole humanity to blow up felt stupid and shallow.

Also, the omnis mentioned 'other lives' about if idaho didnt tell the location, but if he didnt tell the face changer they never would have unified and that would have been it. There is no story lore suggesting multiple time lines.

[Slayer_Gauge]

Another point to is they constantly say how humanity is going to die without the omnis, sure we cant use the folders but its not that hard to farm food, literally nothing stopping humans from living in a type of dark ages and starting over. What is the big danger supposedly? Sure humans lose a technologic life, but they would be forced back to our time, and here we are, just chatting away online.

Same with the ending choices, they say you have to rule with an iron fist...why? There is no reason you can't just start over and have people farming, living in harmony etc. Not like you cant live without the omni, we do it now. He could have a peaceful empire and actually be loved, no reason its forgone conclusion. Wake up rebecca and start over with the empire.

[MadArtillery]

Pretty much from the other thread the endings really were pretty weak. I liked the story well enough but man as always the pick from 3 ending was terrible, I don't know why people use it, it's always just an unsatisfying mess in every game I've run into it. It cheapens the whole plot up until that point and as always, the options don't make sense. Emperor of Misery is ALL the endings, with that life span he can wake his girl up, send a bunch of people on suicide missions to find earth for hundreds upon hundreds of years while working to rediscover how to continue existing with a majority of the population being useless drug addicts.

The set up for humanity being useless was actually pretty good, the omni religion taking over a majority of humanity to the complete overtaking of the population with drug abuse due to depression over their pointless lives. Honestly they really should have done more with that then just happening to lore bomb drop it as it doesn't feel that way in the actual gameplay as none of the npc's are drugged out or suffering withdrawl despite the supposed percentage addicted to it. If people aren't digging into all the dialog options most players probably don't even know that pretty much the enitrety of the population was hopeless drug addicts as it really is purely tell don't show.

[phenir]

The idea is that the omnis are so good at plotting that even if the face changer hadn't succeeded, they'd just switch to a different plan and no one would notice. They even specifically tell you one of their back up plans, Idaho's yet to be born daughter. And the end goal of their plans has to be extremely subtle to work around the Rubicon. The Rubicon prevents the omnis from sharing information in a way that humans can perceive. In the end it would always be basically some random person getting to the fortress and shutting it off or basically an accident.

[Slayer_Gauge]

Sure they mentioned a potential daughter, but it really comes down to if he didnt say anything at the jail the omnis were screwed. This part (among others) was a really weak writing. Sad because the entire story had a cool premise, but the more it went on, the weaker it was.

[phenir]

Originally posted by Slayer_Gauge:

Sure they mentioned a potential daughter, but it really comes down to if he didnt say anything at the jail the omnis were screwed. This part (among others) was a really weak writing. Sad because the entire story had a cool premise, but the more it went on, the weaker it was.

I'm saying that even if he didn't say anything there, they weren't screwed because they had already planned for that. He'd eventually have a daughter and he'd tell her the secret and if that didn't happen they had another backup and so on. It's really a 2deep4u situation which almost fits because the omnis' actions are supposed to be unfathomable for humans. It doesn't matter either way because it did happen; the omnis' plot was successful. That's just how powerful omnis were. They were able to engineer a situation in which a random face changer was able to find out the secret of the master terminal without any one of the billions and billions of humans realizing what they were doing and without sharing information with each other. What kind of ending did you expect?

[MadArtillery]

Ya it really came down to omnis engineering billions upon billions of little things to gently push things into what they wanted. Calling it a random event is like calling water going in a cup when you put it under a tap and turn the tap on a miracle that none who have experienced a sink could have expected.

[Angry Obnoxious Goose]

But still.. Humanity has been able to cultivate stuff since.... what, pre-stoneage so some basic degree. And that was in egypt, for example, where fertile soil is extremely rare.
The humans of that future in the game also have the knowledge of hindsight to a degree - how is plants supposed to grow, how can we manage to water them without machines then? oh we can try this or that!
The idea that humanity has made themselves complacent.... eh, no. There's still people doing things. If humans had literally neutered their on brains to not care about such things cuz the OMNIs were always that... then sure, I might be able to accept that, because then it's something specifically limiting humans to a point of not being able to do something what so ever.
Humanity might at most devolve into a pre-industrial era civilization for each individual planet, some might go further back cuz of much more hostile conditions, some might die out cuz temp-controlled planet freezes back over, but, in a lot of cases humans will adapt and endure, and eventually evolve.

Cool ending could have been maybe Idaho's cry for the OMNIs goes on deaf ears and it's just Kaliban that was taken there and you take 'control' of Kaliban in those final moments, and depending on what Idaho did (aka. your choices that Kaliban's been observing from the start, for 20 years non-stop), you might unlock different responses. If you never tried to recall an emotional memory, maybe Kaliban wouldn't have developed a sense of empathic understanding. If you always helped when possible with scrap or fuel, etc. etc. then perhaps Kaliban asks the OMNI-collective God thing to Absorb him and... well, see all that Idaho had done. One man, repeatedly dying again and again. If just one man can do that.... cannot more people do so as well? Maybe the Omnis would spare a micro-fraction of the near-endless eternity of time they have ahead of them to help humanity, slowly wane them off the dependency of someone else to care for them, become self-sufficient - keeping a warning in mind to not make use of Machines smart enough to create new machines that no one can understand or do the same tasks as.... and then leave humanity after that generation of people, maybe 2 or 3 generations if need be, able to act least function in a nascent capacity... then rest is up to themselves. Maybe show Idaho all old, dying and giving a final word to a daughter - learn from history, become better than we were.... <--- The end. Still sombre, uncertain, etc. but you have some spark if 'they have a chance'. Same with the Earth Path, maybe humanity still lived there and Kaliban could suggest that if Humanity can endure like Idaho did, maybe they could find earth, just maybe they could find the remnants of humanity still there. The fact the OMNIs won't tell if there's anyone there is just.... why? they are willing to tell that if Idaho becomes the 1000 Year Hitler of doom, then there's a chance that his ruthless rule might ensure humanity can start from a basic point and maybe continue to exist afterwards as well... and he's told this is a slim-to-none chance to begin with, and he needs to set aside 1000 years of lifetime for it. Yet 'are there still humans at earth, how are they doing? sorry we can't tell you cuz 'that is your choice'.... Nope, not buying it.