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[jbauck]

Some of the counter-arguments against the endings backlash involve the "happy endings are trite and have been done a million times" thing.  So, I was thinking about it, and one of the things that bothers me is that, well, the ending we got is also pretty trite, and it's been done.  I'm not familiar enough with the contents of tvtropes.com to know if they have this one covered, and if they do, what they call it, but I call it:

The Doom Pit Of Salvation

The Doom Pit of Salvation is, in some cases, literally a pit.  The protagonist jumps in, and is doomed, but by jumping in, everyone else is saved.

The three examples I can think of off the top of my head are Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5, the Black Cauldron (the book by Lloyd Alexander, not the disney movie), and the Heroic Sacrifice ending of DA:O.

There's a thread that covers ambiguous/bleak endings that you did like, here:  http://social.biowar...ndex/10161456/1  This thread is largely inspired by that one, because that one.

In the same vein, I'd like hear other people's examples of the Doom Pit of Salvation, and why the use of it did or did not work for you.  I'd even like to hear from people who liked the ME3 Doom Pits of Salvation, and why they felt it worked.

Because it's probably the most obscure, I'll explain The Black Cauldron one.  There is, very literally, a Black Cauldron.  It is magic.  If a corpse is placed inside, it is reanimated, and the bad guy is using the Black Cauldron to raise an army of the undead.  If a living person jumps into the Black Cauldron, the person is killed, but the magic of the cauldron is broken, so no more corpses can be reanimated and the army of undead will stop growing.

This use of the Doom Pit of Salvation worked for me, and was really pretty awesome, because the guy who ends up jumping in is an arrogant, selfish, jerkwad, and the whole situation actually has something to say about unlikely heroes.

The Doom Pit of Salvation in Buffy Season 5 worked because it happens in the last episode, and the entire season is written around that goal, thematically.

The DA:O Doom Pit of Salvation works because it's well-established that killing the Archdemon is a Doom Pit of Salvation, and the player has options: the player can send someone else into the Doom Pit, or, by making a "deal with the devil", take the doom out of the pit entirely before jumping in.  That worked really well because there was a spin on the doom pit, and by creating ways of getting around the doom pit, choosing to really jump in - doom included! - felt like a true heroic sacrifice.

The Me3 ending, by contrast, felt bizarre to me because Shepard's final choice is ... 3 different Doom Pits of Salvation.  For me, by making the options Blue Doom Pit/Green Doom Pit/Red Doom Pit, the heroic sacrifice is cheapened in a way that it wasn't in DA:O.  Instead of setting up a situation where a heroic, principled Shepard will choose the Doom Pit of Salvation because sacrificing him/herself is the most acceptable outcome for that Shepard, all Shepard's get railroaded into the Doom Pit.  To me, that's not Shepard making a heroic sacrifice so much as it is Shepard being sacrificed by the Guardian/Catalyst and Shepard just meekly going along with that plan.  That's why it didn't work for me, apart from the other issues I had with the ending.

Modifié par jbauck, 18 mars 2012 - 08:36 .