Do not forget the happy endings ;)

[Tagaziel]

Oooh, you must've loved Gothic and Gothic II.

[okkoko]

okey here is my endings they are all done to bits the knight who fight the dragon and get the hole kingdom the dragon that terrorize the kingdom a troll is slain by an unknown hero and there by saves a hole village a holyman have gotten mad and is kidnapings holy kittens and nons how will  the people react

[Kjaamor]

The impression I get from P:E is that its going to be quite a bleak setting, and I'd expect the ending to reflect this. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about it, but that's the style they seem to be going for and fair play to them.

 

To be perfectly honest, gritty and bleak has become something of its own cliche in terms of media art - at least in terms of what I've been exposed to. I've said before that the writing in F:NV was at times breathtaking, but often extremely unsatisfying. Star Wars got brought up in this thread as a joke earlier, but aNH and tESB are good examples of how a story can be extremely involving and retain darkness without having to rely on either shock value or nihilistic 'you can't save people, just make them suffer slightly less' thinking. The obsession with making fantasy increasingly gritty seems peculiar to me.

 

Having said all that, the happy endings and moments that Okkoko seems to be referring to don't generally exist within western rpgs, and tend to be the stock of their more melodramatic japanese counterparts (and KotOR). I'd said before that I love that stuff, but it is not something I expect to see in P:E, and I'd rather Obsidian stick to what they're happy doing.

[Lephys]

I think there's almost sort of a balance to strive for with the results of endings. If it's "too happy," for lack of a better descriptive, then it kinda sucks. It feels silly. "Don't worry, no one was really at risk, since this artifact we recovered granted a single wish, and healed the whole world, and everyone gained telekinesis and there was world peace! 8D!". But then, if it's too unhappy, it's a bit ridiculous. Like the game's telling you "LOLZ! No matter what you do, everything can still go completely to crap. Everything! HAVE FUN WITH THE LESSON! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!"

 

Now, I don't mind the ASPECT of something going to crap despite all your effort. But, I'd like to think that at least something ELSE will go to happiness, or at least go far less towards crap, because of your efforts, as well. You know, "Well, that city was destroyed, but at least we saved the world!" Or "Well, the world was largely destroyed, but we did manage to save that city!", for a realllllly simplistic example. Sure, you can't save both. Maybe there's something really important and/or personally emotional regarding the inhabitants of that city. Or something really terrible has to happen to them (as opposed to simply being killed/destroyed) to save the rest of the world, whereas to save THEM, the rest of the world is simply destroyed (quickly and painlessly). Maybe there's something really valuable in that city, so it's a tough decision aside from the people numbers. *Shrug*.

 

I think that a certain amount of saddy crap that can happen should bear definite happy results in some way (that couldn't happen without that specific saddy crap happening), and vice versa. A certain amount of happy stuff shouldn't be achievable without the sacrifice of some other happy stuff.

 

Basically, you can't have your cake and eat it, too.

 

A lot of times, this gets WAY overly simplified to "if this character dies, their life force will power this thing that saves everyone else," etc. I don't think they need to be quite that simplistic. And it's not always a 1:1 thing. Sometimes, just plain sad things should occur. Whether it's something you had control over, or something you were powerless to affect.

 

Once all's said and done, at the very end of the game's narrative, you should have the opportunity to change SOME things for the better. If you can't, it's purely depressing.

 

What I really hate (related to endings) is when some main character scriptedly dies for pretty much no reason at all. Like "Oh, you decided to go with THIS plan instead of THIS plan? Then Sara dies. No questions asked." First of all, if someone's going to die, it should MEAN something to the story and the gameplay experience (if they're going to STORY die... not talking about "you took too much damage in combat and had perma-death activated in the options" here). It should significantly affect things, as opposed to their remaining alive, or some other character dying instead. Secondly, you should probably generally, at the very least, get to AFFECT who has to die. You know, kind of a "everyone's not gonna make it out of this, probably, but you still have different plans of attack on getting out of here, with varying amounts of risk to various characters." I just hate it when the story just seems as though the writers said "Welp, at this point in the story, I think we really need an important character death. Things have felt too un-sad/dire for a while."

 

Anywho, I slightly digress.

[evilmiera]

So what we're all saying here is we'll pay 500 dollars each for more endings? I can get on that bandwagon.

[lomifeh]

Myself, I want an ending that makes sense and is internally consistent to the story most of all. I don't need a super happy ending but I want an ending that isn't all gloom and doom.  If I have a goal I want to achieve it.  I'd prefer to see a mixed bag of results based on actions versus a dark ending just to be dark or the reverse.

[okkoko]

well there are many kinds of happy endings but they rarely happen in real life . world war 2 take this war many many humans died doing that war , a lot of down hill but the end of the war was good but what happent in that war was not that great so a happy ending i dont know if you can say something can have a happy ending after million on millions died.

but the more complex a world is the more happy endings happens but also dire consequences for the whole planet if thing go bad.

[NOK222]

 

 

well there are many kinds of happy endings but they rarely happen in real life 

 

I play games to escape real life sometimes. 

[Nonek]

The impression I get from P:E is that its going to be quite a bleak setting, and I'd expect the ending to reflect this. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about it, but that's the style they seem to be going for and fair play to them.

 

To be perfectly honest, gritty and bleak has become something of its own cliche in terms of media art - at least in terms of what I've been exposed to. I've said before that the writing in F:NV was at times breathtaking, but often extremely unsatisfying. Star Wars got brought up in this thread as a joke earlier, but aNH and tESB are good examples of how a story can be extremely involving and retain darkness without having to rely on either shock value or nihilistic 'you can't save people, just make them suffer slightly less' thinking. The obsession with making fantasy increasingly gritty seems peculiar to me.

 

Having said all that, the happy endings and moments that Okkoko seems to be referring to don't generally exist within western rpgs, and tend to be the stock of their more melodramatic japanese counterparts (and KotOR). I'd said before that I love that stuff, but it is not something I expect to see in P:E, and I'd rather Obsidian stick to what they're happy doing.

 

I wouldn't say that this is a new occurence in media, Medea's actions towards her own children was rather horrifying, The ancient Greek heroes didn't exactly show their fallen foes much respect as evidenced by Hector's fate. Grimm's fairy tales often had absolutely horrific moments in their earlier incarnations, the Norse saga of Brennu Njal features an entire family being burned to death in their own home, Egil Skjallagrimsson puts an axe in another childs head at the age of eight, etcetera. There have always been extremely dark and horrifying elements in fantasy media, it's hardly a recent innovation.

[Kjaamor]

I wouldn't say that this is a new occurence in media, Medea's actions towards her own children was rather horrifying, The ancient Greek heroes didn't exactly show their fallen foes much respect as evidenced by Hector's fate. Grimm's fairy tales often had absolutely horrific moments in their earlier incarnations, the Norse saga of Brennu Njal features an entire family being burned to death in their own home, Egil Skjallagrimsson puts an axe in another childs head at the age of eight, etcetera. There have always been extremely dark and horrifying elements in fantasy media, it's hardly a recent innovation.

 

I was speaking rather more of popular media created around my lifetime than literary works from the lifetime of humanity. Even within that scope, of course, there are obvious exceptions on both sides.

[Tagaziel]

The impression I get from P:E is that its going to be quite a bleak setting, and I'd expect the ending to reflect this. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about it, but that's the style they seem to be going for and fair play to them.

I'm getting a different impression. It's going to be a complex setting, without an overriding tone for everything like in Warhammer or My Little Pony (yes, the fundamental rule is the same for both). I expect there to be a more bleak tone in the wilder areas, such as the ruins of Eir Glanfath, to a more modern, Reneissance atmosphere in Defiance Bay and the more technologically advanced kingdoms.

 

The world can be brutal and merciless, but still not stray into GRIMDARK territory. Our very own history is a good example (though you might say that in the grim reality of the 14th century, there was only war).

[Nonek]

 

I wouldn't say that this is a new occurence in media, Medea's actions towards her own children was rather horrifying, The ancient Greek heroes didn't exactly show their fallen foes much respect as evidenced by Hector's fate. Grimm's fairy tales often had absolutely horrific moments in their earlier incarnations, the Norse saga of Brennu Njal features an entire family being burned to death in their own home, Egil Skjallagrimsson puts an axe in another childs head at the age of eight, etcetera. There have always been extremely dark and horrifying elements in fantasy media, it's hardly a recent innovation.

 

I was speaking rather more of popular media created around my lifetime than literary works from the lifetime of humanity. Even within that scope, of course, there are obvious exceptions on both sides.

 

 

Sorry if I came across as pedantic and picky Kjaamor, I just believe that a certain amount of horror and tragedy have been present in fantasy from the Saga of Gilgamesh onwards. Even the Ultimas, as bright and sunny a setting as one could ask for, where one is playing as an avatar of what is best in humanity, had some extremely disturbing scenes.

 

Edit: As Tagaziel points out there have been eras which one would curse to be born in, when if the Mongols weren't slaughtering you then you might very well be one of those unlucky enough to see the Black Death arise. Still I agree that a satisfactory ending should be achievable at some cost and effort.

 

2nd Edit: Then again i'm a pessimistic Englishman, so one suspects a certain cynical bias is present.

Edited October 21, 2013 by Nonek

[Juneau]

I don't care about "good" or "bad" endings. You know whether we run away happily into the sunset OR if we all die in a final battle defeating the ebil weezles before the tower blows up. As long as everything is tied off. No loose endings and makes sense of the story.

PLEASE DO NOT DO A MASS EFFECT 3!

For reference and I've spoken about this in great detail before, I Beta tested ME1, Have read the books, comics and played the games (all except the mobile one) it was a fantastic arching story, with so many side stories all interlaced wonderfully. To just end in a fashion that not only broke cannon, lore, game saves and sense (space magic) it caused the most legitimate outcry in gaming history. Not because people felt entitled but they were invested. A level of detail and grandeur had been maintained throughout the entire story. Until the last 20 minutes when everything went out the window.

It wasn't that everything you did in the end was pointless. It was quite simply that the ending ignored everything you had done, it was an unfinished book.

As long as PE ends in a full filling way (which it should as they have a great team of writers and JS has said himself that the story is just as important to the player then the mechanics itself) i'll be happy

[jethro]

 

Why should all large quests follow the same mould? WW2 had a "happy" ending too. The worst Obs can do is to limit the variation in quest structure and tone.

WW2? I assume you mean Witcher 2 and there is no happy ending in that game. Just degrees of ****ing up the world, with any happiness being derived from the player's own interpretation.

 

No, I really meant World War 2. Even in reality there exist happy ends. Sure, it also was the beginning of the cold war and not "all is well and they lived happily ever after". Nobody wants cheesy unbelievable fairy tales. But the player has to get the feeling he achieved something. For himself (as in Torment) and/or for some part of the world (many other RPGs).

 

 

I played Witcher1 and my choice between the two warring factions was to not choose a faction because I didn't like both of them. If the choices are between pest and cholera the danger is that the choice becomes ulitmately meaningless to the player and he looses the incentive to choose at all. Hard choices are necessary but only as one ingredient of many.

That's life. You can only do so much to make people happy. Hard choices should be the only kind of choices available for large quests that change the world. Inevitably, someone will suffer as a result of your actions. Obsidian captured it quite well with Fallout: New Vegas. You can orchestrate events to create a least horrible scenario, but there is no way to save everyone or make them happy.

 

I'm not speaking about extremes (as in save everyone). If for example a war is on the horizon and you set out to prevent it and achieve only to shorten the war by a few years because you helped one of two equally despicable sides to win fast and eradicate the other side together with the innocent population, THAT is not what I would consider a satisfying ending. If instead all you wanted to do was rescue your small sister it could still be a satisfying end even if meanwhile and after a lot of bad stuff happened. But at least in a game you should have the sense of having achieved something that is not just the choice between two evils.

 

well there are many kinds of happy endings but they rarely happen in real life . world war 2 take this war many many humans died doing that war , a lot of down hill but the end of the war was good but what happent in that war was not that great so a happy ending i dont know if you can say something can have a happy ending after million on millions died.

You say "but the end of the war was good". See, that is a happy ending. It says nothing about the beginning or the middle where lots of bad stuff can happen.

Edited October 21, 2013 by jethro

[nikolokolus]

Screw "happy" I just want a plain ol' good ending.

[Valikdu]

As long as it doesn't suddenly and inexplicanly introduce a completely new major character out of nowhere and swap the game's central conflict for a different one in the last 10 minutes...

 

Yes, I'm unoriginal. And bitter.

[Darth Trethon]

I think the key is all endings need to be satisfactory and the path up to the player.  A good example would be from back when BioWare used to be good(some 10+ years ago before they went to complete crap): the Knights of the Old Republic endings were both incredibly amazing and I'd more often than not go for the dark ending because it was well done, it fit the game and it wasn't designed as a FU to the player.

 

Too many "bad" endings are designed to mock the player as if saying: "hahaha you douche, you should have stuck to cliche notions of good, go back and try again!! Make sure you don't screw up on selecting the correct answers this time!!"

 

So yeah...put happy endings and bad endings and everything in-between but they all have to feel satisfactory for the player....give us a real hard time deciding which ending we will go for every single playthrough.

[Darth Trethon]

As long as it doesn't suddenly and inexplicanly introduce a completely new major character out of nowhere and swap the game's central conflict for a different one in the last 10 minutes...

 

Yes, I'm unoriginal. And bitter.

Hahahahaha....I don't think BioWare will ever hear the end of that one. Personally I think it really marks how far they've gone from their golden days. Selling their souls to EA was always going to be a bad idea, but that's when they decided to really say: f*** the gamers, we want money.

[Lady Evenstar]

The game ending that has probably engaged me most is the ending of Oblivion. Martin, with your character's help, removes the immediate threat, but after the denouement my character wandered the Imperial City stunned by feelings of personal loss and (rightly) apprehensive of what the 4th Era might bring.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Lady Evenstar

[Wintersong]

Screw that. Super dark **** only. Like, everyone maimed or dead, the world falling into chaos and anarchy, world war on the way. This needs to go beyond grim dark. This needs to be so fundamentally soul crushing that no one comes out of this game without having considered suicide at least once. Because life is ****. 

Life is life. People are ****. Except those who aren't.

 

We should get realistic (within the Pillars of Eternity universe), fleshed out endings that match the possible consequences of their storiline. Not cliches added just to cater some folks.

[Rosveen]

As long as it doesn't suddenly and inexplicanly introduce a completely new major character out of nowhere and swap the game's central conflict for a different one in the last 10 minutes...

 

Yes, I'm unoriginal. And bitter.

Aren't we all? That ending left a scar.

 

I only care about happy endings when my character has a love interest who can potentially be left behind with a broken heart. I do so hate to see this happen. Any other time all I need is a meaningful conclusion to the story. Ideally, there should be several endings based on our previous choices with different, but not necessarily better or worse consequences for the world/my companions. I prefer my character's fate ambiguos, but I'll be okay with a more defined ending as long as it makes sense in context of my previous adventures.

[Darth Trethon]

The game ending that has probably engaged me most is the ending of Oblivion. Martin, with your character's help, removes the immediate threat, but after the denouement my character wandered the Imperial City stunned by feelings of personal loss and (rightly) apprehensive of what the 4th Era might bring.

I thought Oblivion's ending was complete and utter crap. You end up being some random errand boy/girl to a sad noble that barely bothers to get out of bed in the morning but does some cool stuff and turns into a gigantic statue at the very end in order to get all the credit....oh and you're a nobody, did I mention that? I played Skyrim for a bit and there was nothing wrong with the game itself but I ended up just abandoning it....largely because Oblivion's ending was complete and utter crap....so I figured why even bother with this crap anymore?

Edited December 14, 2013 by Darth Trethon

[Wolfenbarg]

I don't care about "good" or "bad" endings. You know whether we run away happily into the sunset OR if we all die in a final battle defeating the ebil weezles before the tower blows up. As long as everything is tied off. No loose endings and makes sense of the story.

 

PLEASE DO NOT DO A MASS EFFECT 3!

 

For reference and I've spoken about this in great detail before, I Beta tested ME1, Have read the books, comics and played the games (all except the mobile one) it was a fantastic arching story, with so many side stories all interlaced wonderfully. To just end in a fashion that not only broke cannon, lore, game saves and sense (space magic) it caused the most legitimate outcry in gaming history. Not because people felt entitled but they were invested. A level of detail and grandeur had been maintained throughout the entire story. Until the last 20 minutes when everything went out the window.

 

It wasn't that everything you did in the end was pointless. It was quite simply that the ending ignored everything you had done, it was an unfinished book.

 

As long as PE ends in a full filling way (which it should as they have a great team of writers and JS has said himself that the story is just as important to the player then the mechanics itself) i'll be happy

 

Honestly, despite what a lot of people think, doing a Mass Effect 3 isn't easy. In fact, it's kind of difficult. The problem wasn't that they ignored lore at the end, the problem was that they ignored lore at the very beginning and turned their setup into an impossible scenario where only space magic could possibly be the cure. You trap the Reapers in dark space in the first game, then end their attempts to make a new vanguard in the second, essentially trapping them again. That's an important action, right? Well not really, because they just fly to the Milky Way in 1 year with no losses to speak of. They didn't have to come up with a new way to only send a few ships through, or cannibalize their numbers to return, or even forgo returning and incite a civil war with indoctrinated agents in a final attempt to open the citadel relay. They come through with full strength and enact the hopeless scenario painted to you in the first game. Essentially, Bioware made the game unwinnable from the very outset. The crucible and the catalyst are necessary to have a conclusion at all because Bioware made the big actions you took in the first two games pointless. You can start on number three and not miss any details, because stopping Saren and the Collectors basically had no effect at all.

 

So as far as Obsidian is concerned, provided they don't create an unwinnable scenario in the premise of the game, then we won't end up in a situation where only deus ex machina or ancient magic will be the only cure. If the roots are good, the story can flow naturally. If they ignore the roots in an attempt to capture a new audience, then everything will be ****ed.

[CommentTater]

Honestly, despite what a lot of people think, doing a Mass Effect 3 isn't easy. In fact, it's kind of difficult. The problem wasn't that they ignored lore at the end, the problem was that they ignored lore at the very beginning and turned their setup into an impossible scenario where only space magic could possibly be the cure. You trap the Reapers in dark space in the first game, then end their attempts to make a new vanguard in the second, essentially trapping them again. That's an important action, right? Well not really, because they just fly to the Milky Way in 1 year with no losses to speak of. They didn't have to come up with a new way to only send a few ships through, or cannibalize their numbers to return, or even forgo returning and incite a civil war with indoctrinated agents in a final attempt to open the citadel relay. They come through with full strength and enact the hopeless scenario painted to you in the first game. Essentially, Bioware made the game unwinnable from the very outset. The crucible and the catalyst are necessary to have a conclusion at all because Bioware made the big actions you took in the first two games pointless. You can start on number three and not miss any details, because stopping Saren and the Collectors basically had no effect at all.

 

So as far as Obsidian is concerned, provided they don't create an unwinnable scenario in the premise of the game, then we won't end up in a situation where only deus ex machina or ancient magic will be the only cure. If the roots are good, the story can flow naturally. If they ignore the roots in an attempt to capture a new audience, then everything will be ****ed.

 

 

Basically what I'm getting from this is "don't take anything from Mass Effect at all," which I totally agree with. Mass Effect was a neat storytelling idea, but in hindsight, it was also a colossal failure regarding what it set out to do.

[PrimeJunta]

Yeah, they could do better than "the dungeon collapses and you're all dead, neener neener."

 

That said, a good ending doesn't have to be happy IMO. PS:T's endings were brilliant, and "happy" isn't a word I'd use for any of them.