The Ending (Spoilers)

[Xaphan]

So, I have some... issues... with the ending. And I'm going to explain them.
So obviously I'm going to spoil some stuff. Starting almost immediately after this paragraph. Seriously.

My issue is basically the ending can be summed up as 'it was all just a dream'.
Which is one of the classic 'bad ways to end a story for (IMO) three reasons:

1) It often comes out of nowhere.

That's not really an issue in this case. The protagonist can't fully explain how they got into the situation at the beginning, and after the first demon appears, we hear 'hospital'y sounds along with seeing the words 'patient condition stabilising'. At least to me, 'this is all just a dream' is the obvious conclusion from this point at the latest.

If anything, my complaint would be that it's too obvious, given that the game seems to take 'solving the mystery of what is happening' as its driving motive, and doesn't really appear to be going for dramatic irony. The reveal at the end is presented as a twist, despite the fact that it's been the obvious answer for most of the game.

2) It's a cop-out. It lets the author create a load of mysteries, then not actually have to solve them, because it was all just a dream. It is the deus ex machina of plot-resolution.

This is absolutely an issue in this case. Especially for people who don't see the ending coming (and, again, the game does seem to handle it like a twist).

H2DaMG introduces a lot of mysteries, wants us to care about them... and then waves them away with 'it was all just a dream'. It's unsatisfying, and it's more unsatisfying the more invested the audience was in the mysteries it solves. Which is an issue, because if I wasn't invested in the mysteries the game raises, I don't see why I'd keep playing. Especially because:

3) Why should I care about anything that's happening, if none of it is real (even in the context of the fiction)? Why should I care about these characters?

This is kinda the flip-side of the above. If I am invested, the dream ending feels like a cheat. But if the fact that this is a dream was something I worked out in advance... why should I care about the mysteries the game is setting up? Why should I care about these characters, when I know it's going to be revealed that they're not 'real' anyway?

Essentially, there's a dilemma here. If the reader figures out the twist ahead of time, why should they suspend their disbelief and treat the story as 'real', from that point on? If they do not, they've been cheated of a satisfying resolution to whatever it was that kept them playing the game in the first place (whether that be the mystery, or the characters).

A more metafictional story might point out, of course, that obviously this isn't real, because it's fiction. But this story doesn't dip its toes far enough into metafiction to really make that point.

Which I bring up mostly because it looks like it might be about to from time to time, and then it just... doesn't.

I think, honestly, the game is too wedded to keeping the mystery 'mysterious', and that that gets in the way of actually exploring the themes that it wants to explore.

Also, I have some questions about a treatment plan in which 'attempt to traumatise the patient' is considered before 'explain to the patient what is happening'.

Anyway, yeah, that's the best summary I could come up with for why the ending bothered me. Obviously, I'm not saying 'you should hate this ending too' - I'm just posting the issues I have here to see what other people think of them.

[Xaphan]

I'm really bored, so I'm going to suggest something else for the story.
This is basically fanfic, but hey.

So, say we remove all the 'dream' references. Which would actually be pretty easy, honestly. There is actually quite a lot of foreshadowing for a fairly meta-style game in which saving/loading is an important mechanic.

The main character's power is time-based. His one bit of magic in the game is freezing something in time. And after the first death, he dreams of the girl saying that 'it's never too late to save someone'.

For a character with time-based powers, that could literally be true. The MC has the ability to go back in time (by loading a prior save), and make different choices to prevent the girl being killed.
Added to that, the cult of nine's 'great truth' talks about a godlike being who has decided everyone's fate on a whim. Which could pretty easily be a reference to the player.

In which case, we then have the claim that the cult is the only group free of that being's will. And they actually have some evidence on their side there. Namely, the one blank space on your list of potential love-interests. Sure, in the actual game, Satomi is the one who goes there - but at the point at which Noriko makes that speech, it could very easily be that the cult actually *is* subverting how the game is 'supposed' to go, and that square should be filled either with Noriko, or with one of the cult's victims.


At which point the plot of the whole game is now a metafictional fight between the person playing the game, and characters who are destroying the game from within, in which saving and loading is a major mechanic used by the player to try and get the best ending.

Now you may say 'hang on saving/loading as time travel, the player as a major entity in the game... are you trying to write Undertale: The VN?'

To which I reply... yeah, fair point. And obviously there's some DDLC in there, too. If this was the actual game, I'd probably complain it was taking a little too much from those two. Because I am impossible to satisfy.

But my point is that if you pretend the obvious 'dream' stuff isn't already there, there is a *lot* pointing towards this in the game already. Even the twins glitching out plays into the 'this visual novel is actually... a visual novel!' idea pretty nicely. So little of the game would have to change to make it into this kind of metafiction. Especially if the save/load thing is a big reveal near the end - the MC has been using time powers unconsciously all along, and now they know about it they can go back and save everyone! Except obviously it doesn't go that smoothly because that would not fit the tone of the work!

I honestly don't even really know why I wrote this. I'm just frustrated that what seemed to me like fairly strong foreshadowing for what I would consider a much better twist ends up amounting to nothing.

[Courtflash]

I totally agree with you, especially your second point. I hate cop outs and there were so many things that I was trying to figure out in my head throughout the game, and then at the end it's just like... Actually none of that matters. When I saw the name of the achievement for the bad ending, I thought that the MC was going to accidentally mess up the world with their powers or something. Not to mention the endings themselves are based on ONE choice AT THE VERY END OF GAME. That ticks me off to no end. My actions in the game should affect the ending. I really hope they do better in the future. It was a great concept but the ending felt like they didn't actually know what they were doing with the story.

[jack_of_tears]

I don't feel like the ending was a cop-out, at all. Indeed, that's the only real objection I have to your list. I agree that the twist was too obvious, so much so that I figured it out within 5 minutes, but that wouldn't have been a problem if they'd played up the 'what is real' or 'choose between worlds' angles earlier in the game and made it a secondary plot point.

Which leads to the third point, that - because it was so obviously a 'dream' - I never got as invested as I would have liked. Indeed, at one point I had mostly forgot about my theory and then the game reminded me. I enjoy twists, and I'm very fond of the 'VR vs Real World' scifi stories, but I feel they misstepped with the delivery in this, a bit.

That all said, I still really enjoyed the game and liked the characters. I would have rather the PC turned out to be the killer, however, and the VR part not be involved at all. Instead, you could have been one of those 'unknowingly evil' witches who couldn't control her powers and, while that - too - would have been obvious, it would have been a more exciting twist, I feel.

Nonetheless, it was a solid enough experience and I'm glad I played.

[Xaphan]

2 and 3, to me, are two sides of a dilemma. If you didn't pick up that it was a dream, and (for example) cared about finding out who was killing everyone, then the ending avoids answering that question. Which I think is a cop out.

If you did pick up on it, then it's not so much a cop out, but you get problem 3.

You have to have either picked up on it or not, so either way the ending is flawed.

Given that the narrative questions this game presents are to do with things in the dream world ('who's killing people?'), and the ending sidesteps giving a proper answer (or even not giving an answer, and leaving the reader with some options to think about), I'm actually curious why you think it's not a cop-out?

Sure, if they'd played up the 'what is real' angle, sure 2 wouldn't be an issue. The big narrative questions would be about the nature of reality, so finishing with 'it was all just a dream' would fit the theme.

Though, IMO, the best VR/dream vs reality stories usually never actually really reveal whether 'reality' was real at all (Total Recall, Johnny Maxwell, Inception, Ubik, arguably Reality Check), but I'd be on board for one that just made it explicit right at the start, and then asked 'even if it's not real, can it matter anyway?' Which is kiiiiinda what Undertale does, actually.

Problem is, the story doesn't go in either of those directions.

And yeah, sure, the rest was... fine. Good, even. I tend to think the nature of the ending reduces the impact of the entire rest of the game, but that wouldn't matter if the game itself was just rubbish. That's why the thread is entitled 'the ending' not 'how dare you charge me money for this?!'.

You'll notice that the version I gave keeps the vast majority of the current game intact. That was on purpose too..

[jack_of_tears]

Originally posted by Xaphan:

, I'm actually curious why you think it's not a cop-out?

Precisely for the reason you mentioned, I had it figured out from the start and don't see that it was too difficult to pick up on, so I never expected anything but a variation on the ending we got.

[Xaphan]

That's fair.

I edited the OP to try and make it a bit clearer that the 'cop out' part only really applies if you didn't realise what was happening.

And to be fair, the 'what a twist' thread implies that some people really did get caught off guard.

[catman94]

Which ending did you have a problem with the most I know of three. And i do kind of agree none of them sat well with me but i still friggin loved the game. Though idk why seeing all our friends dead like that kinda made me sick. But thats irrealivant and it didn't really come out of nowhere sense i remember makeing a joke to my self about the unboxing part in the very beginning of the story "and then you're hit by a truck.". But there where other hints during the story like occasionally after a death things would be back wards like after shin died. or when i was talking to the twins at the festival and they kept glitching and phaseing in and out like a bug in a system. There where a lot of little hints through out the game. especially norikos last message about every one being puppets and that they wheren't truly free while some one is playing god with thier lives. I did like the creative thought about how satomi takes over your body and destroys your concouis ness. I didn't how ever like that your attributes had verry little effect on the out come of the game. But all in all i didn't like any of the endings because i felt the same as you i felt like everything was pointless. Satomi takes over your body 2. you re live the world and barry satomi away and live with your friends for ever and you die in the real world or 3. you fall in love with satomi only to have her litterally ripped away from you and you wake up in a world where you have no friends at all and a dog that ran away. I just feel like thier really isn't a good ending as the achivement calls it.

[Kjas]

To Xaphan--good point--thanks for the tip off.

[[HYBRID BEING]]

Something i didn't understood from the bad ending - what's the reason Satomi overtakes MC's body after getting him to wake up? Why wasn't she able to overtake his body while his consciousness was in a dream (she basically did the opposite of what Stem in Upgrade movie did)?

[Nicea]

First I was in the same boat with it’s just a cop-out “it was only a dream ending”. When I was writing argument why it was a cop-out ending. I started connecting the dots and turned 180 degrees around. No “it was only a dream” is complete misunderstanding of what happened in the story.

It was only a dream story protagonist is sent to a fantastic dream world where story ends when protagonist wakes up and realizes it was only a dream.
Protagonist A, story happens B, result after waking protagonist AB. (A+B=AB)
Objectively protagonist is still same person when he went to sleep and comes out from the dream world with knowledge that may or may not be useful to what happens after protagonist wakes up.
There are fundamental differences to this story that make it completely incompatible with it was only a dream story.

Lets bring out ship of Theseus because it is fundamentally what we need here to examine the protagonists two personas. Yes main character has two personas. The persona who we get to know as a player because we assume his role in the story and sleeping persona the coma patient who we never get to meet in the story. These two characters are not the same make no mistake about that. First clue that these two people are not the same comes from the opening of the story. Player has shed blood, sweat and tears so he can get magical girl manga. Call me crazy but that sounds like doing work. Small children don’t need to work in modern Japan at the moment. They need to cry to their parents until they give up and buy what they want. If protagonist started working as a child there would be mention of it in the story somewhere this story is not shying away from bad things happening to children. Also fact that others called protagonists interests childish indicates protagonist is at least late teen or young adult when story begins. Children are not usually interested if their interests are childish or not. It’s more problem young teens and young adults worry about. This is where two personas are divided. Player persona has memory's of Hikari from when they were really young children. Memory's that they were much younger than late teens.
I don’t know if player was thrown back in time in his dreams or if his broken mind filled in blanks that appeared after the accident with Hikari. No matter how it happened this is first thing that splits main character in to two personas. Player persona with childhood and past with Hikari and coma patient with past and childhood without Hikari. So we can examine differences much more clearly as a mathematical formula. Let’s say player past is A and coma patient past is B. Next player character enters the academy around same age when he was hit by isekai truck. Let’s say events of the game what ever path player chooses are marked by C.
Now lets go to the end of the game to the decision it’s simple thing RIGHT? If you choose wake up you wake up in a hospital and go on right? WRONG! All your memory's of your life in game world are erased and Satomi becomes part of your coma persona because she is chip inserted in to your brain. Lets say Satomi is D in mathematical formula. Now lets compare mathematical formulas side by side to make difference obvious to everyone if you choose to wake up.

AC-AC(B+D)=BD
A+B=AB

They are nothing alike right? That’s because Satomi is lying when she offers you the option. She says player persona is real but that’s a really smart lie. Player persona is not any more real than Hikari, Yui, Miyu, Kaori, Ame, Ami or any other character in the story. Lets bring back Ship of Theseus at what point when you replace parts of the ship it is no longer the same ship. In this case answer is simple what parts between AC and BD are actually the same? Two personas share almost nothing with each other. So what actually happens if player agrees to wake up is player persona gets eradicated by the process as well. That’s why when you choose to wake up what ever you answer to question what your name is it does not respond. BD persona is the one who wakes up.

Now after we have figured what is going on in the story we can deal with main arguments of this discussion.

1) No it does not come out of nowhere game gives hints that everything is not as it seems with regular intervals.

2) Most mystery's that are introduced in the game world have an answer. Large portion of them is Satomi working against the player in the game world. If something is dissatisfying or not it is also only an opinion it does not mean by itself anything was done incorrectly. Some answers just are disappointing but that does not mean they are bad or wrong.
Also no most mystery's like cult of nine, who killed shin, dog and so on had rational answer inside the Dream world. It’s only a dream Deus-ex machina was not used in this case. If you cut out the story before Satomi goes on a killing spree and eradicates all who are closest to player character you have really well self containing story that answers most mystery's it presents. Only some things dream world cannot explain are virtual world distortions and even some of them like water glass falling and glitching out dream world can still explain. Satomi just gives alternate explanation to most of the things that have happened and is part of the story because her AI background was foreshadowed by distortions in the game.

3) Because your character is on the same boat with all characters in the fiction with the exception of Satomi. Your character only exists in the dream world you are not real in this story. When you wake up it is not you AC who is going to wake up and walk in to the rehab. It is BD who is going to wake up and walk in to the rehab. If you need similar example where situation is basically the same all of H.P. Lovecrafts work and everything related to the same universe. All of it takes place in the same world where everything is just Azathoth dreaming. All of it is just dream all of it is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but we still care. Your character and npc’s in the story are not any less or more real than characters in H.P. Lovecrafts universe. For your character actual reality where Satomi comes from is higher dimension AC can never visit because when dream ends and BD wakes up AC will die permanently. More interesting question you should think is alright this world, me, my friends, everything I know and will know is just a dream according to that entity that is from the higher dimension and from supposed reality. It killed everyone I have ever known and loved. Now it wants to eradicate me as well and steal my body. Does it matter if another version of me that shares nothing with me wakes up in the higher dimension if it means I have to sacrifice everyone and myself for that to happen? Obviously it is not a fair trade for your character and that’s why Satomi needed to take down literally everyone in order to get to you and crush your spirit. Satomi has nothing to offer to you. Deal she offers is a one sided demand to kill yourself and everyone you love so person you have never met will wake up in another dimension. Fairy tale ending is the obvious correct decision where your character that only exists in dream world will win.

[Winged Archon]

Personally I think the game leaves a sufficient amount of ambiguity for you to figure out who's being the culprit.

There's 2 separate things to examine here and @Nicea covered one very important aspect here already in the post above. You basically play as the "virtual Magical Protagonist" who first breaths live when the virtual simulation is activated. The person who got his hands on the vol35 manga book and got hit by a truck is someone that we simply to not get to know beyond that point.
It is only explained at the end by Satomi that none of the people he knew in the simulation existed outside of that simulation in the way how the virtual magical protagonist got to know everyone. Hikari, Yui, Miyu, Kaori, Rei, Aya... none of them existed for real. Even Shin, only existed in reality as a name but nothing as the person virtual magical protagonist knew him as.
Furthermore: The only telltale that we actually have about the transition from reality into the simulation is a small sequence of green systems-lettering that you may overlook at first. And one of the greaters nominators that tears a rift between the then coma-patient and the virtual magical protagonist is how Hikari becomes this person with an elaborate background of how she and the protagonist have known each other for years. which creates a very fundamental change, but not just that, also the background where the protagonist believes he/she has been tossing his/her life away to the point where its one giant blurry mess of uselessness is one such fundamental change. Something we also have no idea on wether the coma-patient was like this at all.

So basically, as Nicea said, we're dealing with 2 completely different people here.

And then comes the second part. Now that we know which character we have een playing as, we can look at how the story has unfolded itself.
Up until the first death, the story presents itself in such a way that you are genuinely a person who got enrolled into an academy for magical girls, based on the finding that he/she just had his/her magical ability awaken in one instance where he/she manipulated time (or matter) It left extremely ambiguous as to what magical power the protagonist truly has, and what rules that ability might play by. Something you learn through how the abilities of all other character have a basis in something elemental: Miyu: passion/fire, Rei: earthily/kinetic, Yui: darkness/death. All these 'elements' have a fixed idea and grounding in the simulated world that are explained. However the time-manipulation powers from the protagonist aren't.
Through the story we also learn how all characters sooner or later come to hone their skills with their magical powers, but for some reason the protagonist doesn't. He/she still can't transform into his/her magical suit nor cast any spells. It also left ambiguous as to why this is like that. Questions you can ask yourself: are the protagonist's abilities of such nature that its extremely difficult to summon them? The Magical Transformation also can be viewed to hint at such: Its a representation of your soul, but is often depicted as a visual that traces back to that elemental affiliation. Again: Miyu: Red/blazing, Yui: devilish etc.
All those have relation to eachother, but what of the protagonist? His/her magical powers themselves are already vague as hell, let alone how they would be represented visually. The Protagonist (nor anyone else for that matter) has the slightest clue which can be seen as a reason why the protagonist has such difficulty progressing with the magic.

Then come in the various horrific events: several deaths and a demon, followed by a dubious dog, a cult all the while there also is that slightly too friendly informal teacher who maybe not be who she claims. The ultimate antagonist can actually be one of several 'people', such as Satomi or the dog who are actually evil demons. OR The protagonist his/herself in combination with Satomi as their negative counterpart where the core lies in the actual existence of the time-manipulating power. where Protagonist and Satomi/Dog may be locked in a fight for the Protagonist to save his/her friends and lover.
Because, I think that up until Shin dies, the story still allows for enough freedom to speculate about who the real villain is AND its still suffciently self contained. to concentrate on that.

Offcourse, the few times that we've experienced those distortions are already tell tales to something entirely different going on, but you can still view them as temporal ruptures within the simulated world, referring back to the magical powers (if they would/could exist)
Up until that point where Shin dies, I find the story to flow remarkably like the events of Shutter Island. The magical girl academy simulation can still be the real world and you simply have yet to face off against your true enemy, together with your friends.

Its only after the death of Shin, and subsequentially Hikari, Yui, Miyu, Rei and Kaori that the game kicks into 'obvious' overdrive where you are faced/forced into the devision that the world you inhabit isn't actually the real world, but just a computer simulation based on the magical girl-world from the beloved manga from the coma-patient-character.
At this point the story also becomes highly agressive and macabre since you see everyone die -or rather, dead- who you've come to love up to that point, including having found an actual 'true love' in one of your 5 friends. At this point its not just so much that you "must accept" that the world you've lived in isn't real, but its also extremely aggressive on the senses, something I think the game portrays very well with those death scenes, where the protagonist sounds delerious as hell in his/her speech and though coherency. Its visceral assault.
Partially supposed to be a sort of breaking-the-fourth-wall on the protagoist from the simuation (thin about it, his/her world gets shattered, litterally. And the game is now also actively telling you as player that you should adjust also.

And then comes the ultimate and most interesting point of the entire story to my mind: What is Real?
If you look at how you experiece the majority of the story, the magical world you inhabit together with your friends is your reality. And regardless of what Satomi says, who is she (or we) to say that isn't real.
The magical protagonist befriended 5 notable people. came fall in love with one if them potentially. survived several dangerous magical ordeals and with the defeat of the Cult of 9 were 'finally victorious'.
Ready to have their lives go back to normal.... And then some otherworldly 'device' destroys everyone you loved and cared for and says that you are an "imposter" of some completely disjointed coma-patient?!

If the discussion comes to revolve around: the only "good" ending is supposed to wake up.... Then I fully and fundamentilly disagree because that ending basically means sacrifice yourself after everything was taken from you, arguably for nothing (because we have no idea who you sacrifice for at that point)
To my mind the only good ending is where you choose to continue living in the simulation with your friends and lover and lock away that last evil in your life. Becasue that's the persononality which we've come to know about who the magical protagonist is.

The third ending makes even less sense to me. He/she doesn't want to wake up, but chooses to step into a romance with the antagonist? (And quite a vile one from the perspective of the magical world) The protagonist is basically stepping into a relation ship with the only other surviving 'person' in his/her world thats basically a sadist-serial killer something, which then suddenly no longer is said sadist serial killer person? because why?

No, in my opinion: We, the player-protagonist, for all intends and purpose is a magical boy/girl who lives and makes friends in that magical world and came to find love. And as such deserves to vanquish his/her final villain to the depths, to live happily ever after with his/her friends and lover (as I previously stated)