This entire end sequence is just an amalgamation of the game’s worst characteristics. Let’s take it from the top: Literally every single trope and cliche that wasn’t yet covered makes an appearance here, from the evil general that was only lacking a white cat as he delivered that “as we did with your mother (mr. Bond)” line, to Nathan going mad over the possibility of bringing his loved ones back(Including a “we transcended death” speech).
Furthermore, I don’t understand why Cage lacked the balls to make Ryan a mandatory romance option, almost all the scenes with him fall either flat or are extremely creepy. In fact, what is the point of having so many choices when almost all of them seemingly have similar results. Hell, the game is literally a step back from Heavy Rain in that when you fail… you just succeed anyway, in HR you at least could lose some characters.
I don’t wanna even comment on the suicide scene, I’ve never seen something handled this poorly in my entire life and I played Road to Hell: Retribution.
Finally, this game really needs to explain it’s shit. “Let us die Nathan”. YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD. He isn’t keeping you there, it’s presumably been quite a while between Jodie acting as a medium for them and Nathan constructing that machine. If they can “pass on”, they had plenty time to do so. In the same category, the ending “choice” makes no sense. Why are we stuck between 2 “worlds”? Why does Jodie survive? Cole even says that once they blow up the reactor the explosion is going to kill them, but for some reason Jodie gets to decide what will happen to her when she pulls the lever? I won’t even comment on the whole “apocalypse” tease.
There were hints of a cool game there, but man this is a disappointment.
With all that said, this LP was AMAZING. The commentary was spot on and I doubt I would’ve been able to solider on through this game alone, thanks for doing this!
I just assumed that Nathan somehow found a way to find his family and trap them in that containment thing he had. Perhaps they were lingering behind because they were watching Nathan (even if they wanted him to move on), but now that he has them trapped, maybe the part that makes them visible is hurting them somehow.
Everything else you mention doesn’t make sense though.
[spoiler] So the various endings to this game rather irritated me. Particularly all the romantic endings, as most of them seem forced almost as much as Ryan is in the plot as an option. Seriously if David Cage wanted jodie to end up with his waifu Ryan so bad, i almost wish he had just had it mandatory.
The whole game’s story is a mess of potentially interesting plots that are not developed, and that would have done better being a focus instead just the next section. The whole thing with Ryan, could have done with far more screen time if we’re ever supposed to grow to care about him. In particularly alot of character development seems to happen almost spontaneously.
Not going to touch on the over use of evil CIA, and crazy general who made things worse by not letting go. All the negativity aside, i’m glad Cole made it because he was one of the few genuinely decent humans in the game. Also I know wish there was a game where the characters acted as a cleanup crew sent in by the military or some organization to contain and resolve situations like the black sun. Basically delta green staring someone like Jodie.
[/spoiler]
Anyone else think they missed a real opportunity in not giving Ryan a hook hand with the eyepatch?
It’s been quite a journey going through this game and with Detroit on the horizon (the game’s release, not an LP from me, god no!), it looks like Cage is going to get a ton more spotlight. I can’t imagine it’s going to go well… at all.
But!
Thanks to everyone who has followed this LP and everyone who finds it after the thread is closed. It’s been a ride but I’m glad for everyone who enjoyed it. I’m glad that this game sparked such dedicated discussion, either from everyone getting mad at Ryan or being confused as to why… everything, really.
Like I’ve said before, the stream will start at 12PM EST this Saturday, May 12th, and the VOD should go up by Sunday unless technical issues arise and it gets split up, in which case, I’ll handle it on my end in post. I’ll give the thread a few days and then it’ll close on Tuesday, the regular upload day because that feels appropriate.
If you want to keep up to date with anything LP-related or if you just want to chat, you can always find me on twitter, where I post when a new video drops, but mostly I lament playing this game. Or at least I did. Huh, looks like I’ll have to find something else to at least mildly complain about. Oh well…
Well, that ending was a huge clusterfuck. It feels like Cage needed some big epic climax but couldn’t think of one, so he just decided to have Dafoe be Dafoe.
I’m at a loss for words here (and others have already said it better). As soon as Jodi medium’d up DaFoes damily a while back I figured that would come back by the end but WOW.
Its really kind of funny as you can see Dafoe almost do his green goblin kind of transformation stuff, while showing Jodie the souls of his dead family. Right about when he’s got the back towards the screen leaning over his desk.
It’s ridiculous that no matter what you do Jodie can’t truly escape the generic hollywood romance and must kiss Ryan at some point and must always have to break up with him in any ending.
Also fuck Ryan for that 'i’ll wait as long as it takes" shit, you got dumped man please leave.
From a friend I’ve heard that you can actually get Nathan to shoot Ryan for you before he kills himself, though I imagine his death scene is just as obnoxious.
“Jodie before I die I just want you to know.
I kinda forgive you for the whole not making me dinner that one time. marry me.”
Okay so something I did like cause I don’t want to be super negative: I like that the canon ending was going to live with Zoe and the gang. Minus the whole end of the world hook thing.
Hard agree on that bit, like it’s really sweet and good. If they hadn’t messed it up with all the everything else it would of been a surprisingly good ending.
Choosing ‘Reason’ both times is what causes Nathan to simply shoot himself rather than Ryan stumbling into the situation at the very end like he did for me. We’ll be going with something… different for the stream. There’s essentially a worse outcome and a worst outcome.
Man, I forgot the endgame was so bad. From your inability to ditch Ryan no matter what choices you make in the game to the game glorifying suicide, I don’t know why this didn’t make enough of an impression for me to remember at least some of this. Considering this and the end of Heavy Rain, I don’t know why Cage keeps trying to make sympathetic villains. He’s very bad at writing them. And villains in general once you factor in Indigo Prophecy.
Anyway, clearly the worst outcome is being trapped between life and death with Ryan forever. I can think of no worse fate for Jodie.
My main problem with the little non sequel hook is just the fact that we were teased it earlier in the game. I thought the apocalypse was going to be something to deal with in this game. There was no reason for it to be shown earlier. Or instead, just show the actual big problem earlier in the game. Like, how do you mess up that badly.
I’m also really tempted to write a shot story to change the whole Nathan Death scene. I feel like it could actually be really good and was thinking about it all day at work. So close. But instead it’s just utter garbage. But I don’t think I even want to tarnish my FF and AO3 account with ties to this game.
I’m really curious if the part where were jumping through time in the black sun would have the scene with the guy throwing Jodie on the pool table to ////// her if you didn’t actually see that scene in the game. But I know the answer is most likely yes.
