I think you should have the "option" of getting a happy ending, as well as other endings. There should be a multitude of possible endings in order to keep people playing the game.
Would you like an Ending that was Sunshine and Lollipops?
Débuté par
Maria Caliban
, janv. 15 2013 04:02
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#77
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:15
Kidd
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You pretty much need to romance Alistair(un-Cousland, no DR) or Morrigan(any) for there to be a sting in that ending. EDIT: Any US, especially unhardened Leliana romance, does its job too of course.Maria Caliban wrote...
I didn't find anything bittersweet in DA:O's ending.
That's only bitter if you don't trust Morrigan. I as a player trust Morrigan, so no matter what my character may feel, I don't really experience that feeling in the ending. My character's BFF making sure said character will survive what was otherwise a certain death while also furthering her pet project is a win/win scenario.Brodoteau wrote...
Dark Ritual (without Morrigan romance): Save the world, but potentially causing a greater trouble down the road by empowering the dark witch.
You answered your own question. How many will pick the darker ending on a first playthrough when they believe another is universally better? Probably none of us. If we do, we're not truly invested in the game imho. Our role is to push for a perfect victory. The writer's job is to make the journey perilous and interesting.Cimeas wrote...
I don't understand why they can't just make the happy ending AN OPTION.
Like all these people who want sad endings, when given the choices between a good one and a sad one, would probably still choose the best one.
I mean, I've got replays of games where I intentionally screw things up. But that's for replays, first playthroughs with 100% immersion of course strive for a sunshine 'n' lollipop ending. That doesn't mean the ending I want when playing is truly the one that will feel the most satisfying when I reflect on it after the credit roll has finished (and I've gotten to wipe any possible tears).
Modifié par KiddDaBeauty, 15 janvier 2013 - 10:16 .
#78
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:17
Lotion Soronarr
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Grimdark....extra grimdark 
#80
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:21
Pzykozis
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If you're talking about sort of happy endings I'd rather a more valium ending, stuff has been sorted some stuff has happened now the hero is going to get on with his life, doesn't fit with ancient evil stories but then those aren't exactly my favourite stories anyway.
Either that or my favourite would be the complete opposite wherein you accomplished something but whatever it is is simply too big and bad things happen regardless, maybe you averted armageddon doesn't mean that the world is all sunshine and rainbows now though.
Either that or my favourite would be the complete opposite wherein you accomplished something but whatever it is is simply too big and bad things happen regardless, maybe you averted armageddon doesn't mean that the world is all sunshine and rainbows now though.
#81
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:36
AshenSugar
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However it's depressing finding out that Shianni gets shanked in the epilouge, creators damn you Bioware, bunch of shems...
Heh, in my epilogue she didn't - She became the new Elder of her people, but continued to be outspoken as ever.
#82
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:36
Bfler
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Hero is on guard, paints a white dove on a sheet of paper, background narration how stupid war between mages and templars is and that they play with things, they don't understand.
Then we get a focus on the paper with the dove -> hero receives headshot
End
Then we get a focus on the paper with the dove -> hero receives headshot
End
Modifié par Bfler, 15 janvier 2013 - 10:37 .
#83
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:44
whykikyouwhy
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How about sunshine illuminating a now quiet battlefield, with the hero fallen, but victorious in his/her quest?
I'm ok with bittersweet. I don't really need the arms akimbo, hair blowing in the wind, populace giving homage ending. If the journey to the game's end was engaging, if I felt like my character had purpose and did her best to make things right (as she might see it), then that's the lollipop and raindows for me.
I'm ok with bittersweet. I don't really need the arms akimbo, hair blowing in the wind, populace giving homage ending. If the journey to the game's end was engaging, if I felt like my character had purpose and did her best to make things right (as she might see it), then that's the lollipop and raindows for me.
#84
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:52
Dean_the_Young
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Personally, my tolerance of a Golden Ending is inversely proportional to how easily it flows from a nice-guy play through.
I'm not against overly generous endings in principle, but I am definitely a firm believer of having to earn one's happy ending... and in the context of an RPG, that means earning through emotionally difficult player choices leading up to the ending, not what comes regardless in the course of the story.
Two flaws that I feel hamper Golden Endings for most Bioware plotlines is that they either simply require a modest amount of completionism and playing the game's intended content, or they flow directly from the already feel-good nice-guy options. When the Happy Ending merely requires playing the game and picking Happy Choices, I feel giving the player the happiest outcome from that only discourages people from the other playstyles.
In the first, such as the final EMS outcome enabling the Crucible in ME3, or ME2's Suicide Mission, the idea of earning your better ending through gameplay is undermined by the fact that the only people who would receive the bad endings are those who deliberately skip extended parts of the game... which, by their nature, are supposed to be part of the fun. The worst offender is ME2's Suicide Mission: given the ease of the choices, doing badly primarily depended on the player either ignoring blatant cues to upgrade the ship, or skipping Loyalty Missions. Given that both were key parts of the preparation narrative, and the game was built around gaining characters and their loyalty... it was less a reward for hard work and simply a reward for meeting the intended standard.
The second comes from the traditional bias Bioware tends to have towards nice guys doing just as well or better than the not-nice guys. The cases where this is not true are rare, and all the sweeter for it (Orzamar politics, Wreave Tuchanka), but the dominant trend in Bioware games is that the nice ideology is the best ideology: delimas of morality versus risk virtually always pay out better (in emotional validation, game content such as character recognition, in world effects) for those who spare the suspect/criminal/monster, or at least the player never does noticeably worse. In general, this creates an imbalance between the incentives to play anything less than a morally idealistic protagonist: when having a more cyncial morality concerned with greater-good and risk-mitigation is unnecessary because those risks never carry out, what's the point of not playing the Idealist?
When the Golden Ending builds off of that, of giving better results to the people who played more towards the dominant idealistic morality system, I feel the game gets even more unbalanced. It becomes a more laughable morality system, and the player (unless they actively dislike then nice guy roll) never has to particularly struggle: the best path is also the easy and emotionally positive and validating path, and it increasingly becomes illogical to NOT do that path. Which kind of defeats the idea of an earned reward.
I'm not saying that everything needs to be gloom and doom choices being rewarded and cynics should be rewarded. But there should be at least a balanced mix of such choices to open a Golden Ending: times when blind idealism is truly blind and leads to problems, or conflicts of interests due to putting sympathetic friends over justice, but these would also be matched by times when the happy outcome is only achieved BECAUSE the moral risk was taken, and it paid off.
I'm not against overly generous endings in principle, but I am definitely a firm believer of having to earn one's happy ending... and in the context of an RPG, that means earning through emotionally difficult player choices leading up to the ending, not what comes regardless in the course of the story.
Two flaws that I feel hamper Golden Endings for most Bioware plotlines is that they either simply require a modest amount of completionism and playing the game's intended content, or they flow directly from the already feel-good nice-guy options. When the Happy Ending merely requires playing the game and picking Happy Choices, I feel giving the player the happiest outcome from that only discourages people from the other playstyles.
In the first, such as the final EMS outcome enabling the Crucible in ME3, or ME2's Suicide Mission, the idea of earning your better ending through gameplay is undermined by the fact that the only people who would receive the bad endings are those who deliberately skip extended parts of the game... which, by their nature, are supposed to be part of the fun. The worst offender is ME2's Suicide Mission: given the ease of the choices, doing badly primarily depended on the player either ignoring blatant cues to upgrade the ship, or skipping Loyalty Missions. Given that both were key parts of the preparation narrative, and the game was built around gaining characters and their loyalty... it was less a reward for hard work and simply a reward for meeting the intended standard.
The second comes from the traditional bias Bioware tends to have towards nice guys doing just as well or better than the not-nice guys. The cases where this is not true are rare, and all the sweeter for it (Orzamar politics, Wreave Tuchanka), but the dominant trend in Bioware games is that the nice ideology is the best ideology: delimas of morality versus risk virtually always pay out better (in emotional validation, game content such as character recognition, in world effects) for those who spare the suspect/criminal/monster, or at least the player never does noticeably worse. In general, this creates an imbalance between the incentives to play anything less than a morally idealistic protagonist: when having a more cyncial morality concerned with greater-good and risk-mitigation is unnecessary because those risks never carry out, what's the point of not playing the Idealist?
When the Golden Ending builds off of that, of giving better results to the people who played more towards the dominant idealistic morality system, I feel the game gets even more unbalanced. It becomes a more laughable morality system, and the player (unless they actively dislike then nice guy roll) never has to particularly struggle: the best path is also the easy and emotionally positive and validating path, and it increasingly becomes illogical to NOT do that path. Which kind of defeats the idea of an earned reward.
I'm not saying that everything needs to be gloom and doom choices being rewarded and cynics should be rewarded. But there should be at least a balanced mix of such choices to open a Golden Ending: times when blind idealism is truly blind and leads to problems, or conflicts of interests due to putting sympathetic friends over justice, but these would also be matched by times when the happy outcome is only achieved BECAUSE the moral risk was taken, and it paid off.
#85
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:54
bleetman
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So people keep saying, and yet that hasn't been my personal experience with games that've done this. The times when something has gone wrong or characters died as a consequence of my actions in ways that I could've prevented had I done things differently still stand out in my memory as the absolute best parts solely because it could've also not happened. Alistair's self sacrifice at the end of my second DA:O playthrough is still my favourite worst part of that game, entirely because I failed and it's my fault it happened. To say it made that ending 'worthless' just doesn't fit with me.esper wrote...
Because make a 100% happy ending where the hero loses nothing on the way irrevocably makes the other endings worthless one were the hero failed.
Like I said, I don't especially want a super happy sunshine and bunnies ending in of itself. I want it as a contrast to whatever ending I get, to rub salt in the wound.
Modifié par bleetman, 15 janvier 2013 - 10:57 .
#86
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:55
AshenSugar
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You know, I think that the more people express the desire for a happy ending, the more the writers will be perversely inclined to give us a super-nihilism/grimdark ending just for the heck of it.
Maybe we'll end up with something like:
The veil is completely sundered, hordes upon hordes of bloodthirsty demons pour through, spreading carnage in their wake.
You can either:
a) Reproduce the magic that destroyed Arlathan, sinking Orlais and Fereldan into the ground, and killing everybody in the process but mending the tear... or...
Impose brutal Templar dictatorship over Thedas, resulting in the extermination of all mages, but providing an army with sufficient strength to fight the demons.
Maybe we'll end up with something like:
The veil is completely sundered, hordes upon hordes of bloodthirsty demons pour through, spreading carnage in their wake.
You can either:
a) Reproduce the magic that destroyed Arlathan, sinking Orlais and Fereldan into the ground, and killing everybody in the process but mending the tear... or...
Impose brutal Templar dictatorship over Thedas, resulting in the extermination of all mages, but providing an army with sufficient strength to fight the demons.
Modifié par AshenSugar, 15 janvier 2013 - 10:57 .
#87
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 10:59
bleetman
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I'm pretty sure there would be a great many people ready to declare that the destruction of Orlais makes that ending a happy ending.AshenSugar wrote...
a) Reproduce the magic that destroyed Arlathan, sinking Orlais and Fereldan into the ground, and killing everybody in the process but mending the tear
Modifié par bleetman, 15 janvier 2013 - 10:59 .
#88
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:07
Swisspease
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As long as DA3 doesn't have us running around gathering troops to build an ancient siege weapon that we found the blueprints for in the deep roads only to end the game by meeting Morrigan's godchild telling us to pick red, green, or blue.
#89
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:07
Degenerate Rakia Time
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i'd call it a happy ending....do i get to behead Alistair too?bleetman wrote...
I'm pretty sure there would be a great many people ready to declare that the destruction of Orlais makes that ending a happy ending.AshenSugar wrote...
a) Reproduce the magic that destroyed Arlathan, sinking Orlais and Fereldan into the ground, and killing everybody in the process but mending the tear
#90
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:11
Kidd
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Definitely. As much as I adore Mass Effect, I think we never got to taste the negative effects of being paragon. The main conflict you keep running into in ME is paragon/renegade, which basically becomes "morality on small scale" and "morality on large scale."Dean_the_Young wrote...
Two flaws that I feel hamper Golden Endings for most Bioware plotlines is that they either simply require a modest amount of completionism and playing the game's intended content, or they flow directly from the already feel-good nice-guy options. When the Happy Ending merely requires playing the game and picking Happy Choices, I feel giving the player the happiest outcome from that only discourages people from the other playstyles.
Renegades sacrifice small scale morality to ensure the greater good prevails over and over throughout the trilogy, but when paragons sacrifice chances of large scale victory there's just nothing being sacrificed. You save the people in front of you and the world doesn't take a bullet to the head because of it, ever. There's a single instance where you can argue the paragon route is less than optimal in ME3 (hinging on choices from previous games), aside from that it's more or less always paragon = best way.
I know, different teams and all that, just using ME as an example to show the idea.
#91
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:12
whykikyouwhy
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But...think of all the cheese that would be lost...forever! The horror!bleetman wrote...
I'm pretty sure there would be a great many people ready to declare that the destruction of Orlais makes that ending a happy ending.AshenSugar wrote...
a) Reproduce the magic that destroyed Arlathan, sinking Orlais and Fereldan into the ground, and killing everybody in the process but mending the tear
#92
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:12
Gibb_Shepard
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I don't care. If it's bad, like ME3's ending, then i'll dislike it. If it's good, like DAO's ending, i'll like it. All that matters is the quality.
#93
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:25
Wulfram
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I want an ending which makes it feel like I've achieved something. Rather than one that makes me think everyone would have been better off if my character had been eaten by an Ogre in the prologue. And I want my character to maintain their heroic status in my mind.
Otherwise, I don't mind. Though I'd probably prefer it if the game ends on an up - if it's snatching a partial victory from defeat, that's going to go better than if a perfect victory seems in your grasp and then the game suddenly snatches it away..
Otherwise, I don't mind. Though I'd probably prefer it if the game ends on an up - if it's snatching a partial victory from defeat, that's going to go better than if a perfect victory seems in your grasp and then the game suddenly snatches it away..
#94
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:48
DarthLaxian
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KiddDaBeauty wrote...
I prefer some amount of loss among the victories. Would love if said loss wasn't set in stone, however, but rather depended on your choices. Have a "choose your poison" choice somewhere in the game so that there will always be something that can make the ending feel like it's not all perfect rainbowy roses, even if you've had a mostly "perfect" run otherwise.
sorry but i don't get it:
what's it with people today being unable to like good (as in sunshine, rainbows and such) ending (even more if my/your/our character did everything in his/her power and did not fail?) if it is not "bittersweet" (i hate bitter-sweet-chocolate by the way)???
i just do not get that...
but yeah, i would love a sunshine and rainbows type of ending (it could even tell me that not everything worked (if it was minor) because that would not amount to "bittersweet" for me (even more if i expected certain things not to work out but did them because people (in game - NPCs) asked me to (that chantry in Orzammar for example))
greetings LAX
#95
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:54
thebigbad1013
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With what little we actually know about DA3's story, I'm going to say no. The reason being that if the game deals with an actual war between the templars and the mages, it would be counterproductive to have a 'super happy, nobody dies and everything is just awesome' ending because it would take away from the seriousness of the story. That's not to say that there can't be a happy ending at all, mind you, but it has to come at a price.
In the end it all comes down to the ending, or endings hopefully, fitting the story. Happy, sad, bittersweet...it's all about the context and the story that went before it.
In the end it all comes down to the ending, or endings hopefully, fitting the story. Happy, sad, bittersweet...it's all about the context and the story that went before it.
#96
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:56
fchopin
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I don’t want a sunshine and lollipops ending, i would like a realistic ending or endings depending on the story told.
#97
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 11:59
ThePinkFoxx
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Did somebody mention sunshine and lollipops?
#98
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 12:01
naughty99
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Maria Caliban wrote...
And rainbows?
Something like Knights of the Old Republic where you're the big damn hero who's saved everyone without a hint of bittersweet if that's what you're looking for?
Or even something Jade Empire where you can marry the Princess, rule the land, and everyone loves you?
I think I'd enjoy a happy ending more if there were also a depressing ending, depending on your actions during the game.
#99
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 12:02
Wulfram
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One thing I'd say is that generally the difference between a sunshine and lollipops ending and a bittersweet or even a dark one is a matter of presentation more than anything.
I mean, there are a lot of dead people in KotOR. And Bastila's been tortured. And it's all arguably the PCs fault. You really wouldn't have to change any facts to make it a dark ending.
I mean, there are a lot of dead people in KotOR. And Bastila's been tortured. And it's all arguably the PCs fault. You really wouldn't have to change any facts to make it a dark ending.
#100
Posté 15 janvier 2013 - 12:07
jkflipflopDAO
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I would like a SL&R ending as one of a host of possible endings. I would also like to be able to sit upon the Maker's tainted throne in the heart of the Black City and proclaim myself a Dark God.
