Ooh, someone mentioned this a while back and I think it's worth repeating. We've been over Fallout 3 before, but in hindsight the finale could've been considerably improved by the following, logic be damned:
During the assault on the purifier, Liberty Prime breaches the final Enclave barrier and stops dead. After a few seconds of silence it rears back up, turns around to face you, and readies its weapons. Before anybody can do anything you hear it broadcast directly to you.
"I don't recall authorizing the use of experimental hardware," says a subroutine that sounds suspiciously like President Eden, who's especially miffed if you turned the modified FEV over to the Brotherhood.
Ooh, someone mentioned this a while back and I think it's worth repeating. We've been over Fallout 3 before, but in hindsight the finale could've been considerably improved by the following, logic be damned:
During the assault on the purifier, Liberty Prime breaches the final Enclave barrier and stops dead. After a few seconds of silence it rears back up, turns around to face you, and readies its weapons. Before anybody can do anything you hear it broadcast directly to you.
"I don't recall authorizing the use of experimental hardware," says a subroutine that sounds suspiciously like President Eden, who's especially miffed if you turned the modified FEV over to the Brotherhood.
Logic. Be. Damned. I want this.
Brilliant. Though I would have been screwed since I chose guns.
I thought he point of the second game was to stop the collectors from killing all humans, not to actually make a dent in the actual reaper invasion. I mean, they only say that (stop the collectors!) a dozen times over the course of the game. When you go through the ship, your teammates comment on how the collectors would have to hit earth to fill up all the pods on the ship. I don't know if the collectors were planning on doing that on their own, or doing it when the reapers get there, but the end result is that you take away the human pulp machine, no? I was never under the impression that I was doing anything more than taking away their reaper factory (and maybe stalling them a bit in the arrival DLC).
Anyhow, I have my complaints about the terminator reaper too, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the whole mission was pointless.
I thought he point of the second game was to stop the collectors from killing all humans, not to actually make a dent in the actual reaper invasion. I mean, they only say that (stop the collectors!) a dozen times over the course of the game. When you go through the ship, your teammates comment on how the collectors would have to hit earth to fill up all the pods on the ship. I don't know if the collectors were planning on doing that on their own, or doing it when the reapers get there, but the end result is that you take away the human pulp machine, no? I was never under the impression that I was doing anything more than taking away their reaper factory (and maybe stalling them a bit in the arrival DLC).
Anyhow, I have my complaints about the terminator reaper too, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the whole mission was pointless.
Except
Doesn't ME3 supposedly start with the reapers invading earth?
I thought he point of the second game was to stop the collectors from killing all humans, not to actually make a dent in the actual reaper invasion. I mean, they only say that (stop the collectors!) a dozen times over the course of the game. When you go through the ship, your teammates comment on how the collectors would have to hit earth to fill up all the pods on the ship. I don't know if the collectors were planning on doing that on their own, or doing it when the reapers get there, but the end result is that you take away the human pulp machine, no? I was never under the impression that I was doing anything more than taking away their reaper factory (and maybe stalling them a bit in the arrival DLC).
Anyhow, I have my complaints about the terminator reaper too, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the whole mission was pointless.
Except
Doesn't ME3 supposedly start with the reapers invading earth?
Yeah, I mean, let's think about it:
What did Shepard do to stop the Collector threat? Blow up the base? Well, no, the base wasn't hurting anyone. It's the Collector ship that's causing all the trouble, and every indication seems to be that the only reason it wasn't blown apart before Shepard ever got revived is because it used hit and run tactics against undefended outer colonies in the Terminus systems that the Alliance didn't go through the effort of defending. Heck, how do you drive the Collectors away from Horizon? Turn on the defense batteries and they have to run away with their tails behind their legs! The threat posed by the Collectors is to human colonies on the periphery, and yeah, it sucks that all those people are being turned into Reaper goo, but honestly stopping that sort of thing barely matters considering the fact that once the Reapers come back, they're going to exterminate all organic life more advanced than labradoodles, so maybe Shepard should think about stopping the Reapers at some point. And how much of that do you do in Mass Effect 2? Uh... nothing until the DLC, really, and even that's just a delaying action. The end of Mass Effect 1 was Shepard going "ya'll can go screw yourselves, I have a galaxy to save!" and then it turns out that in ME2 you spend all of your time trying to protect some human colonists while largely neglecting the Reaper threat.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I thought he point of the second game was to stop the collectors from killing all humans, not to actually make a dent in the actual reaper invasion. I mean, they only say that (stop the collectors!) a dozen times over the course of the game. When you go through the ship, your teammates comment on how the collectors would have to hit earth to fill up all the pods on the ship. I don't know if the collectors were planning on doing that on their own, or doing it when the reapers get there, but the end result is that you take away the human pulp machine, no? I was never under the impression that I was doing anything more than taking away their reaper factory (and maybe stalling them a bit in the arrival DLC).
Anyhow, I have my complaints about the terminator reaper too, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the whole mission was pointless.
Except
Doesn't ME3 supposedly start with the reapers invading earth?
Yeah, I mean, let's think about it:
What did Shepard do to stop the Collector threat? Blow up the base? Well, no, the base wasn't hurting anyone. It's the Collector ship that's causing all the trouble, and every indication seems to be that the only reason it wasn't blown apart before Shepard ever got revived is because it used hit and run tactics against undefended outer colonies in the Terminus systems that the Alliance didn't go through the effort of defending. Heck, how do you drive the Collectors away from Horizon? Turn on the defense batteries and they have to run away with their tails behind their legs! The threat posed by the Collectors is to human colonies on the periphery, and yeah, it sucks that all those people are being turned into Reaper goo, but honestly stopping that sort of thing barely matters considering the fact that once the Reapers come back, they're going to exterminate all organic life more advanced than labradoodles, so maybe Shepard should think about stopping the Reapers at some point. And how much of that do you do in Mass Effect 2? Uh... nothing until the DLC, really, and even that's just a delaying action. The end of Mass Effect 1 was Shepard going "ya'll can go screw yourselves, I have a galaxy to save!" and then it turns out that in ME2 you spend all of your time trying to protect some human colonists while largely neglecting the Reaper threat.
Indeed, lets think about it:
What exactly was he supposed to do about the Reapers? He has no leads, he has no where to strike. Sovereign is dead, and the rest of the reapers are in deep inter-galactic space, a place he can't get. The Collectors are his only thread to tug on. Even the Illusive Man says at the start of ME2 that this is the only lead to the reapers they have. I mean, it literally spells this out 20 minutes in to the game. By hounding The Collectors, he is fighting the Reapers, in the only way he can at that time.
What exactly was he supposed to do about the Reapers? He has no leads, he has no where to strike. Sovereign is dead, and the rest of the reapers are in deep inter-galactic space, a place he can't get. The Collectors are his only thread to tug on. Even the Illusive Man says at the start of ME2 that this is the only lead to the reapers they have. I mean, it literally spells this out 20 minutes in to the game. By hounding The Collectors, he is fighting the Reapers, in the only way he can at that time.
And yet, we still learned nothing.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
What exactly was he supposed to do about the Reapers? He has no leads, he has no where to strike. Sovereign is dead, and the rest of the reapers are in deep inter-galactic space, a place he can't get. The Collectors are his only thread to tug on. Even the Illusive Man says at the start of ME2 that this is the only lead to the reapers they have. I mean, it literally spells this out 20 minutes in to the game. By hounding The Collectors, he is fighting the Reapers, in the only way he can at that time.
And yet, we still learned nothing.
We didn't? I think we learned quite a lot that we didn't know at the end of ME1.
I thought he point of the second game was to stop the collectors from killing all humans, not to actually make a dent in the actual reaper invasion. I mean, they only say that (stop the collectors!) a dozen times over the course of the game. When you go through the ship, your teammates comment on how the collectors would have to hit earth to fill up all the pods on the ship. I don't know if the collectors were planning on doing that on their own, or doing it when the reapers get there, but the end result is that you take away the human pulp machine, no? I was never under the impression that I was doing anything more than taking away their reaper factory (and maybe stalling them a bit in the arrival DLC).
Anyhow, I have my complaints about the terminator reaper too, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the whole mission was pointless.
Except
Doesn't ME3 supposedly start with the reapers invading earth?
Yeah, I mean, let's think about it:
What did Shepard do to stop the Collector threat? Blow up the base? Well, no, the base wasn't hurting anyone. It's the Collector ship that's causing all the trouble, and every indication seems to be that the only reason it wasn't blown apart before Shepard ever got revived is because it used hit and run tactics against undefended outer colonies in the Terminus systems that the Alliance didn't go through the effort of defending. Heck, how do you drive the Collectors away from Horizon? Turn on the defense batteries and they have to run away with their tails behind their legs! The threat posed by the Collectors is to human colonies on the periphery, and yeah, it sucks that all those people are being turned into Reaper goo, but honestly stopping that sort of thing barely matters considering the fact that once the Reapers come back, they're going to exterminate all organic life more advanced than labradoodles, so maybe Shepard should think about stopping the Reapers at some point. And how much of that do you do in Mass Effect 2? Uh... nothing until the DLC, really, and even that's just a delaying action. The end of Mass Effect 1 was Shepard going "ya'll can go screw yourselves, I have a galaxy to save!" and then it turns out that in ME2 you spend all of your time trying to protect some human colonists while largely neglecting the Reaper threat.
Indeed, lets think about it:
What exactly was he supposed to do about the Reapers? He has no leads, he has no where to strike. Sovereign is dead, and the rest of the reapers are in deep inter-galactic space, a place he can't get. The Collectors are his only thread to tug on. Even the Illusive Man says at the start of ME2 that this is the only lead to the reapers they have. I mean, it literally spells this out 20 minutes in to the game. By hounding The Collectors, he is fighting the Reapers, in the only way he can at that time.
What could Shepard do about the Reapers? ANYTHING BIOWARE WANTED TO MAKE UP. I mean, yes, at the end of Mass Effect he has no leads, and he doesn't really get any in Mass Effect 2. That's why it was a stupid story. Someone mentioned this earlier in the thread: by the time we finish Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect 2 can basically be cut out of the whole plot description. Nothing Shepard did is going to matter on the large scale because stopping the Collectors didn't do jack shit with respect to stopping the Reapers. The "Arrival" DLC was at least sort of on point but the rest of just wasting time until the Reapers show up in Mass Effect 3 and the plot starts up again.
I thought he point of the second game was to stop the collectors from killing all humans, not to actually make a dent in the actual reaper invasion. I mean, they only say that (stop the collectors!) a dozen times over the course of the game. When you go through the ship, your teammates comment on how the collectors would have to hit earth to fill up all the pods on the ship. I don't know if the collectors were planning on doing that on their own, or doing it when the reapers get there, but the end result is that you take away the human pulp machine, no? I was never under the impression that I was doing anything more than taking away their reaper factory (and maybe stalling them a bit in the arrival DLC).
Anyhow, I have my complaints about the terminator reaper too, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the whole mission was pointless.
Except
Doesn't ME3 supposedly start with the reapers invading earth?
Yeah, I mean, let's think about it:
What did Shepard do to stop the Collector threat? Blow up the base? Well, no, the base wasn't hurting anyone. It's the Collector ship that's causing all the trouble, and every indication seems to be that the only reason it wasn't blown apart before Shepard ever got revived is because it used hit and run tactics against undefended outer colonies in the Terminus systems that the Alliance didn't go through the effort of defending. Heck, how do you drive the Collectors away from Horizon? Turn on the defense batteries and they have to run away with their tails behind their legs! The threat posed by the Collectors is to human colonies on the periphery, and yeah, it sucks that all those people are being turned into Reaper goo, but honestly stopping that sort of thing barely matters considering the fact that once the Reapers come back, they're going to exterminate all organic life more advanced than labradoodles, so maybe Shepard should think about stopping the Reapers at some point. And how much of that do you do in Mass Effect 2? Uh... nothing until the DLC, really, and even that's just a delaying action. The end of Mass Effect 1 was Shepard going "ya'll can go screw yourselves, I have a galaxy to save!" and then it turns out that in ME2 you spend all of your time trying to protect some human colonists while largely neglecting the Reaper threat.
Indeed, lets think about it:
What exactly was he supposed to do about the Reapers? He has no leads, he has no where to strike. Sovereign is dead, and the rest of the reapers are in deep inter-galactic space, a place he can't get. The Collectors are his only thread to tug on. Even the Illusive Man says at the start of ME2 that this is the only lead to the reapers they have. I mean, it literally spells this out 20 minutes in to the game. By hounding The Collectors, he is fighting the Reapers, in the only way he can at that time.
What could Shepard do about the Reapers? ANYTHING BIOWARE WANTED TO MAKE UP. I mean, yes, at the end of Mass Effect he has no leads, and he doesn't really get any in Mass Effect 2. That's why it was a stupid story. Someone mentioned this earlier in the thread: by the time we finish Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect 2 can basically be cut out of the whole plot description. Nothing Shepard did is going to matter on the large scale because stopping the Collectors didn't do jack shit with respect to stopping the Reapers. The "Arrival" DLC was at least sort of on point but the rest of just wasting time until the Reapers show up in Mass Effect 3 and the plot starts up again.
I didn't mind the lack of overall plot advances in ME2, for me it definitely felt that the aim of the game was more to build your team and learn about their characters rather than chasing the reapers again, it felt like you were getting the pieces ready for the reaper invasion proper.
But that's hardly unique in trilogies, the empire strikes back is pretty similar in that respect.
I thought he point of the second game was to stop the collectors from killing all humans, not to actually make a dent in the actual reaper invasion. I mean, they only say that (stop the collectors!) a dozen times over the course of the game. When you go through the ship, your teammates comment on how the collectors would have to hit earth to fill up all the pods on the ship. I don't know if the collectors were planning on doing that on their own, or doing it when the reapers get there, but the end result is that you take away the human pulp machine, no? I was never under the impression that I was doing anything more than taking away their reaper factory (and maybe stalling them a bit in the arrival DLC).
Anyhow, I have my complaints about the terminator reaper too, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the whole mission was pointless.
Except
Doesn't ME3 supposedly start with the reapers invading earth?
Yeah, I mean, let's think about it:
What did Shepard do to stop the Collector threat? Blow up the base? Well, no, the base wasn't hurting anyone. It's the Collector ship that's causing all the trouble, and every indication seems to be that the only reason it wasn't blown apart before Shepard ever got revived is because it used hit and run tactics against undefended outer colonies in the Terminus systems that the Alliance didn't go through the effort of defending. Heck, how do you drive the Collectors away from Horizon? Turn on the defense batteries and they have to run away with their tails behind their legs! The threat posed by the Collectors is to human colonies on the periphery, and yeah, it sucks that all those people are being turned into Reaper goo, but honestly stopping that sort of thing barely matters considering the fact that once the Reapers come back, they're going to exterminate all organic life more advanced than labradoodles, so maybe Shepard should think about stopping the Reapers at some point. And how much of that do you do in Mass Effect 2? Uh... nothing until the DLC, really, and even that's just a delaying action. The end of Mass Effect 1 was Shepard going "ya'll can go screw yourselves, I have a galaxy to save!" and then it turns out that in ME2 you spend all of your time trying to protect some human colonists while largely neglecting the Reaper threat.
Indeed, lets think about it:
What exactly was he supposed to do about the Reapers? He has no leads, he has no where to strike. Sovereign is dead, and the rest of the reapers are in deep inter-galactic space, a place he can't get. The Collectors are his only thread to tug on. Even the Illusive Man says at the start of ME2 that this is the only lead to the reapers they have. I mean, it literally spells this out 20 minutes in to the game. By hounding The Collectors, he is fighting the Reapers, in the only way he can at that time.
What could Shepard do about the Reapers? ANYTHING BIOWARE WANTED TO MAKE UP. I mean, yes, at the end of Mass Effect he has no leads, and he doesn't really get any in Mass Effect 2. That's why it was a stupid story. Someone mentioned this earlier in the thread: by the time we finish Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect 2 can basically be cut out of the whole plot description. Nothing Shepard did is going to matter on the large scale because stopping the Collectors didn't do jack shit with respect to stopping the Reapers. The "Arrival" DLC was at least sort of on point but the rest of just wasting time until the Reapers show up in Mass Effect 3 and the plot starts up again.
I didn't mind the lack of overall plot advances in ME2, for me it definitely felt that the aim of the game was more to build your team and learn about their characters rather than chasing the reapers again, it felt like you were getting the pieces ready for the reaper invasion proper.
But that's hardly unique in trilogies, the empire strikes back is pretty similar in that respect.
Except the whole "it's a game about building your team for the coming Reaper invasion" is completely undermined because of the option of losing all of your teammates in the suicide mission. Therefore, Bioware is forced to come up with an entirely new set for Mass Effect 3, so really you didn't build a team for the final fight.
And since I mentioned Fallout, I'll crosspost this from the New Vegas thread regarding Lonesome Road.
How it ended:
Upon confronting Ulysses in the Divide, he reveals that the Divide was once home to a thriving community built atop a prewar missile base. At some point prior to New Vegas, the Courier made a fateful delivery of a key piece of machinery. This activated the missile silos below town, utterly destroying it and creating the Divide in its place. Ulysses was one of the only survivors, and the event so shook him that he spent the next few years pursuing the Courier. This is referenced to some extent in the other DLCs, particularly OWB.
In a fit of revenge and/or despair, Ulysses plans to launch the remaining nuclear weapons at key targets in the Mojave. This would have the dual effect of cutting off a supply line for the NCR, eventually bleeding it to death, and depriving the Legion of enemies to fight, forcing it to turn on itself. You have the option of killing him or talking him out of the plan, then either cancelling the launch, redirecting it to one or the other target, or striking them both.
How it should have ended:
The nuclear weapon aspect can still work, but it needs some tweaking. Backstory: the Courier participates in a major salvage operation in NCR territory, revealing an important but unspecified device that makes its way into NCR hands. The nature of the device is top secret, very hush-hush, but the NCR was busy gearing up for the Mojave campaign and relied on civilian contractors to fill in additional roles; the Courier's exact role is to be determined later. Job goes off without a hitch, and the Courier leaves none the wiser.
Fast-forward some time, not quite to the time of New Vegas. The Legion discovers the NCR has some interest in the Divide, of which little is known except it used to be a prewar base of some kind. Up to this point, Ulysses' history has proceeded as normal: his tribe absorbed by the legion, he survived the integration process, distinguished himself and was promoted accordingly. Ulysses leads a team of Legion scouts into the Divide, investigating NCR activity. They successfully ambush and kill the troopers, learning little other than their officers believe control of the facility is, quote, a "game changer" regarding the Mojave.
Clearly there's something important in this old world facility, but nobody knows exactly what. Unfortunately for everyone, the topography of the Divide makes it easy to assault, but hard to defend. Only a few survivors from both sides escape, whereupon they call for reinforcements. This back-and-forth continues for some time, quietly bleeding NCR and Legion alike even as they more openly clash at Hoover Dam. The Divide earns a reputation as being a death sentence, with whatever prewar secrets it holds deemed not worth the cost in lives.
Finally the Legion catches a break, killing a group of NCR rangers protecting a scientist. Ulysses and a few Legionnaires corner him in the control room, installing some kind of device. As it turns out, the rangers themselves had finally learned what the facility held - an intact ICBM, primed to fire - but were attacked before they could get the word out. Pleading for his life, the scientist lets slip that the NCR didn't know what the facility was, and hadn't known about it at all until a Courier discovered it alongside the weapon's arming mechanism.
With the facility momentarily in Legion control, there's dissension over what to do with this discovery. Ulysses isn't stupid, he knows what these things did to the world. He really wants to find a way to bury the complex, but his subordinates opt to report back to Caesar, all thinking of ways to use the weapon against NCR. He tries to order them to help him conceal the place, but instead they stab him in the back, perhaps literally, and leave him for dead. He hangs on long enough to exact his revenge, killing his former colleagues, but he's shaken to the core in the process.
The betrayal is bad enough, depriving him of what life he had scraped together in the Legion. The knowledge that "the Bear and the Bull" had been killing themselves for a nuclear weapon is even worse; push come to shove, everybody goes for the biggest stick they can find, consequences be damned. Unable to seal the place, he gives up and escapes the Divide, battered and broken. He disappears into the Mojave, drifting aimlessly and barely functional. Stooping to menial work for food money, he's left a bitter, distant shell of a man.
By chance he discovers your name embroiled in the Platinum chip mess, and it all comes roaring back. Believing you ignorant of the chaos your discovery caused, he becomes determined to remind you, in the process deciding to demonstrate to all the Mojave the power of a symbol: not of the old world, which he carries simply as a reminder, but of the nuclear trefoil. In the end, after all, the reasons for the Great War were dwarfed by the weapons used to fight it.
Fast-forward again. The Courier arrives at the Divide, aware that Ulysses is in there somewhere. In dialogue the Courier is given choices to reflect what they remember. High science, they were headhunted as an expert to help decipher the device. High perception, they remember scouting the device's initial location. High speech, they convinced an NCR official to fund the expedition. High guns, they're the muscle that blasted through the base's intact security. One way or another the job wouldn't have happened without the Courier, and yet they were completely uninvolved in everything that happened afterwards.
Soon enough the Courier confronts Ulysses in the control room, where he urges the Courier to read one of the logs on display. The Courier's name is listed proudly as a pivotal figure in the discovery of the device. All you did was make a delivery, and it has cost Ulysses everything. He can barely sleep knowing he could just waltz into the silo, push a button, and change the world. It's nightmare stuff to him, but he doesn't hate you. He hates the fact that, but for a twist of fate, you were spared the lesson he learned: that allegedly strong nations will unmake themselves in pursuit of power.
Cue decision about whether to sabotage the nuke or leave it as-is, followed by a boss fight/speech check where you either encourage him down a path of self-centered nihilism or convince him he's misinterpreting things. Amidst the ending slides it's revealed that recording devices were active in the control room, and in the postgame word gets out about two Couriers in the Divide; a battle (or debate) over symbols and the secrets they hide.
As I mentioned in the thread it needs some refining, but something like that would've worked a bit better given the confines of DLC.
This thread make ame glad I skipped ME2.i wonder if there'll be an option to import directly from the original into 3.
The statements "its plot is entirely inconsequential to the overarching plot" and "it is a bad game not worth playing" are veeeeery different. You should absolutely give it a go.
This thread make ame glad I skipped ME2.i wonder if there'll be an option to import directly from the original into 3.
The statements "its plot is entirely inconsequential to the overarching plot" and "it is a bad game not worth playing" are veeeeery different. You should absolutely give it a go.
Agreed, and the plot in ME2 isn't "bad" by any means. The plot is mostly about universe-building and a group of (mostly) interesting character studies that happen to run into the overarching ME plot every so often. It's a really, really fun game that could easily serve as a jumping in point for the series, but I think it's a much more rewarding experience when importing a character from ME (which is also still very deserving of at least one run through).
It's hard to judge exactly how essential the game's plot is to Shepherd's tale of stopping the Reavers, but I really think ME2's plot would ultimately have been better off as a spin-off game with a different main character. But then you could argue whether or not it would have been as compelling without Shepherd and an existing emotional connection to some of the characters.
And I was fine with ME2's ending, especially the Renegade one. The only disappointing part of that ending was no literal middle finger.
Oh I totally agree with you. It may very well be my favorite game of all time, but man my hard difficulty run is stalled because the combat is terrible.
But especially with your avatar - you're going to love it once you get there. It's totally worth it. You forget how bad the combat ever was.
PSN: mxmarks - WiiU: mxmarks - twitter: @ MikesPS4 - twitch.tv/mxmarks - "Yes, mxmarks is the King of Queens" - Unbreakable Vow
My favorite "ending" of a game by far is the alternate ending of Shadow Complex in which you
take an alternate route and get back to the surface and your jeep without finishing the story or rescuing your girlfriend/spy. Image of you driving away while "Relationship status: Single" splashes over the screen in superspy dossier typeface. So awesome.
It became even more gratifying once I got to the actual end of the game. Fuck that bitch, seriously
also finished up human revolution, and god damn that was terrible
I was totally expecting to get to the bottom of panchea and meet the prototype daedalus or something, but instead it's zhou and the weird three-lady-supercomputer, and then when you win there's some screwy matrix revolutions-esque shit and it's revealed that eliza had the keys to the kingdom all along? Just like, what the hell game.
Also never really being able to tie off things with the sarifpeople was annoying (I liked pritchard and malik, and all of a sudden they're just gone? Stupid game
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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acidlacedpenguinInstitutionalizedSafe in jail.Registered Userregular
Deus Ex had so much potential. I bet the team was running out of time. The speed and deftness with which they closed out the title shows that. Personally, I think that it's alright for sequels and prequels to have possible endings that don't necessarily fit with each other. It's lame to think that nothing you did the entire game matters just so that the developers can feel happy that their games fit perfectly together. The fact that there were so many choices in deus ex was what made it so appealing. It's the lack of real choice in the end that crushes your spirits.
Here's how I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution should have ended:
If Adam saved Malik then after he stops the transmission he gives her a call for evacuation. Malik picks him and Sarif up while the rest of the folks are evacuated normally. While Adam is debriefing with Sarif about Megan Reed Pritchard phones in that Megan has gone missing from her safe house. Adam goes back, looks for traces of her and quickly finds his way to Bob Paige's lair. Adam finds out what he is planning and decides he has to take him out. After ending Bob Paige he meets Megan for the second time. She starts trying to make excuses, he just gives her a haymaker and drags her out of the building before demolishing it.
Deus Ex: HR needed a helluva lot of help turning into something decent.
I feel it's necessary to point out how it ended:
Regardless of game choices or what ending you choose, the whole mess is brought about because of this one guy who is super-smart and effectively creates augmentation, then turns out to be some petulant, utterly childish asshole who basically wants to screw everybody over because he's allergic to what he has created. This is soon after you spent hours tracking down Adam's lost ex and find out she's actually kind of an uncaring bitch and it wasn't worth finding her anyway.
Regardless of anything else, I felt that entire setup was a mortal blow to the story. Page was at least an epic asshole and it was a delight to destroy him; he had a vast, global plan reaching across decades. The "conspiracy" in HR is basically just a selfish prick being a selfish prick and the world suffers for it. He's not a villain, he's a minor annoyance with too much money and free time.
Making an effective ending out of that mess would've required rewriting basically the entire story almost from the very beginning; I doubt just tacking something onto the end could've redeemed it. At the very least
Megan should've turned out to be somebody worth saving and actually cared that she'd been saved and the "bad guy" should've, I don't know, been removed from the story completely or something. Cripes, having Adam's dead dog come back as the villain would've at least been entertaining and no more stupid than a self-centered rich old man with one arm and one leg out for revenge because life just isn't fair.
Honestly, I'd much rather have had the option right after
saving malik
to just say "Fuck this shit we're outtie" and then go live happily ever after on some remote island in the south china sea together.
I felt like the options given were either:
blow it wide open, killing all chance of augmentations ever
regulate the shit out of augmentation, killing all chance of augmentations ever
cover it all up, and let corporations fuck the world
suicide for no reason other than have the most feasible setup for Deus Ex 1.
where was my choice to tell the truth that some asshole just tried to kill all the augs while maintaining that augs are still safe and that they should require stringent regulations on how firmware updates are delivered to avoid this kind of tragedy in the future.
but nope, herpaderp everything has to be ALL THE WAY DUMB in either direction.
edit: I also felt misled by the whole
Illuminati and/or MJ12 stuff they were leading up to only to be like, "nope! just another father of invention mad that his invention became cooler than he ever imagined because people who weren't him continued to develop on his idea"
that said, I loved the game. . . makes me want to install DE1 and play through it again.
I've been wondering lately, how gamers would recieve a game in which, ultimately, you lose. No matter what you do, the big bad will win (you wouldn't know until the end of course). Take a game like God of War, you're running all over the place going through hell to obtain new abilities and OP weapons to kill Ares. You get to Ares, and have an epic battle, but in the end Kratos just can't quite beat him and is killed.
Or maybe Half-Life 2: Episode 2
You fight off wave after wave of Striders, but they never stop coming. You keep falling back, until finally they're overrunning the base. Gordon takes a blast to the chest and is knocked back, as his vision fades he sees a strider blast the rocket just as its taking off, and everybody getting massacred by Hunters
Of course if Valve did that, we'd never get Episode 3.
:rotate:
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
On the human revolution ending, since now I'm thinking about it:
The three 'choices' presented are more or less okay with me since that's the choice the series has always presented: 'freedom/democracy/anarchy,' 'great men directing history,' or 'humans build god.' I coulda told you we'd get that choice going in.
What I wasn't happy with is how adam's personal story ended; they went to a lot of effort to humanize him, and then at the end they just remove all agency from him and make him a cipher for the player. I would've been happy with one of two possibilities:
1) What I'll call the 'Good Megan' story, wherein she was basically the good person we met at the start of the game, and adam's outcomes are 'build the future at serif together,' 'take over for zhou/taggart as illuminati members' or 'ride off into the sunset and let humanity argue it out
or
2) The 'Bad Megan' outcome, wherein she's been a manipulative jerk all along and only ever met/kidnapped/grew? Adam to use him for his genetic material. In this version, adam either offs her and goes back to sarif to be the prototype augman for real, offs her and joins the illuminati for real, or offs her and rides off into the sunset with malik.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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Garret Dorigan"Why can't I be DLC for UMvC3?"Registered Userregular
edited January 2012
I always am annoyed when you have an ending that is good but could have been made better with just a little tweak somewhere earlier in the story. For example:
Broadly the same, but with one significant difference. The Modern Warfare series has become progressively sillier through its sequels, yet - unlike Treyarch's embarrassingly inept efforts - the main characters have retained enough resonance to mean they still matter to us. Making Soap an 'external' character rather than keeping us in his shoes allowed us to observe his relationship with Price as an extrusion of the one that many gamers had already formulated playing as Soap in the first game, whilst freeing up the scriptwriters to add some direction.
Thus, when Soap dies two-thirds of the way through MW3, we lose one of the main emotional pillars of the game. A decent proportion of that emotion is rechannelled into revenge, but some of it is lost where it should have transferred to Price. Hence why the castle level feels so lightweight. That's in the execution. Either way, Soap joins the not insignificant ranks of the MW dead, and indeed forms the bulk of its emotional weight. The deaths of the US marines, and the last-minute death of Yuri act as the capstone for this death toll. Just Price and Nicolai are left, and it is only Price who really commands the player's attention.
In short, you have a situation where there is only one character left alive who the player really cares about, and a litany of dead that is more dispiriting than anything else. Everyone else has died. That's why, when Price lights his cigar as Makarov swings silently in the hall, the victory feels more pyhrric than meaningful.
So this would be my change to that scene: when it comes to lighting the cigar, the player resumes control. They press X to use the lighter. Price flicks his thumb. It sparks, but doesn't light. They press X again. Still no light. So they try again, and then again. The player keeps trying, in vain, to use the lighter as the screen fades to black.
Bleak? Perhaps. But the last scene is not one of victory. There's no triumph to be had, just some relief that Makarov is finished, and reflection on the weight of the dead. Price's cigar-lighting is too Hollywood for me. Too action-hero. I believe that allowing the player to take control, and actively denying them satisfaction, would have reflected the underlying themes of the game with far more accuracy.
So, that's my ending. What about yours?
I like this, but I would change it just a bit.
During Soap's death scene, as Price pulls out his journal and such, he also finds a small soapstone box (Also giving a reason for MacTavish's nickname of Soap, to shut up the CoD grognards). Inside this box is a random picture of Scotland (or something) and is wrapped around a cigar.
Flash forward to the ending, Price reaches into his vest and pulls out the, now broken, box. QTE lighting of the cigar happens as normal, Price takes a drag, then another QTE pops up. When completed, Price stands, places the cigar on the railing to smolder, then walks away. The camera doesn't follow him, but instead remains on the cigar.
As we see Price in third person, the horrifying reality is shown, that trail of blood left on the floor as he inches up the wall to light the stogey? A large chunk of glass is impaled through Price's middle. He walks off for a few steps, then falls, and the lights slowly go out.
With this, you get the Hollywood ending that a majority of the fanbase expects and wants, it reinforces the pyrrhic feeling to the ending (which is what I think they were going for), and through emotional lampshading allows you to feel for everything Price has gone through in the last parts of the game in his seeking vengeance, and hearkens back to one of the greatest moments in cinematography in general (much less being the most impactful moment in CoD history) with the nuke cutaway in CoD4.
As well as reinforcing what your ending is seemingly going for, solace.
Your grotesque transformation into a Big Daddy should have mattered. Knowing you could never be human again, the last level should have involved buying time for Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters to escape to the surface. The final battle should not have required beating Fontaine directly, but should have rather involved you demolishing the structural foundation of Rapture, bringing the city down around you and Fontaine in a final sacrifice (or redemption, should you have harvested the Little Sisters throughout). This ending would have had a more singular conclusion to the game and the story of Rapture, and also would have prevented Bioshock 2 from ever occurring. Win-win.
Ryan built Rapture, and Jack (his genetic son) destroyed it. It's poetic, really.
This I like, to a point better than Tom's "Eternal Suffering for Atlas" version.
The only thing that I would change to bring full closure to Jack's story would be to fix the lampshading done during the Ryan scene (Oh yeah, Vita-chambers work for Jack because they're all keyed to Ryan and Jack is kinda close in genetics. And, uh, Ryan is dead dead because the chamber in his office is broken.)
So, let's mix the two between yours and Tom's endings. Tannenbaum isn't shot, and she's ushering the little sisters toward one of the two remaining bathyspheres in Rapture. Fontaine is pursuing them and it's your job to keep him away. The problem here is that this last bathysphere is in a place that has a high number of vita-chambers around it so you have to play it close to the vest to protect the little sisters and Tannenbaum from all sides. As the sphere is filled with the last little sister, it embarks.
Big cutscene, yada yada, boom, Fontaine takes the crazy drug and goes god mode as seen in the game actual. Last boss fight (keeping him away from the other bathysphere), Tannenbaum yelling on the radio at you the entire time saying keep him away and whatnot, deplete red bar and now cutscene. Jack-Daddy is on his last legs and Fontaine is about to end him and go do doomsday stuff in the world above, when suddenly he jerks. Over his shoulder appears the face of Andrew Ryan, shoving Little Sister Adam Extractors (TM) into Fontaine.
As Fontaine reels in pain, Ryan begins to speak. "A man exists for the achievement of his desires. You ruined my achievement, and I will pay in kind." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small control switch, a normal Hollywoodish detonator. He puts his hand out toward Jack, "A man chooses... son." Jack takes the detonator in hand.
Then, with the already in place choice=morality system with the little sisters you either have one of the two ending cutscenes.
Ocean Hitler: Jack throws the detonator into the water surrounding the bathysphere. You stick your drill through Ryan's chest and continue to suck all the Adam out of Fontaine before injecting yourself with all of it. You then get into the remaining bathysphere and become the God King Made Flesh. Because that's how non-canonical bad endings are supposed to be, way over the top.
Ocean Jesus: You take the detonator, and looking into Fontaine's pleading face, you press the button. Explanation on how Tannenbaum and the girls have lived their lives on the surface, explaining about the destruction of Rapture, etc. Then the camera pans down through the ocean to one remaining light that shines in the wreckage. Camera cuts to the light. This light is a slit of view into a still working Vita chamber trapped in said wreckage. The light brightens and we see an escape of bubbles and an arm shoot out of this small crack. Then, it slows, jerks, and stops (palm up to show that it isn't Jack). Then the camera pans away, and the wreckage that sits on top of this vita-chamber is the large stone globe seen earlier in the game, the camera stopping just as the chamber brightens again. Then a big-daddy is shown walking on the ocean floor in the background.
Well, that's what speaks to my sensibilities at least.
I've been wondering lately, how gamers would recieve a game in which, ultimately, you lose. No matter what you do, the big bad will win (you wouldn't know until the end of course). Take a game like God of War, you're running all over the place going through hell to obtain new abilities and OP weapons to kill Ares. You get to Ares, and have an epic battle, but in the end Kratos just can't quite beat him and is killed.
Or maybe Half-Life 2: Episode 2
You fight off wave after wave of Striders, but they never stop coming. You keep falling back, until finally they're overrunning the base. Gordon takes a blast to the chest and is knocked back, as his vision fades he sees a strider blast the rocket just as its taking off, and everybody getting massacred by Hunters
Of course if Valve did that, we'd never get Episode 3.
:rotate:
I can think of one game that this that this gen.
Halo Reach's final mission consists of fighting the invasion force until you fall. I thought it was a pretty cool part.
BosskingCommander PresidentKingdom of CastlefortRegistered Userregular
Metal Gear Solid 4. Now, I felt that there was all kinds of wrong throughout all of MGS4, but there was one particular moment that I feel was the biggest missed opportunity ever.
The graveyard scene with Old Snake. Snake kneeling by the grave, gun in mouth, scared, ready to pull the trigger. Then Big Boss shows up, they have a nice CQC hug and then Big Boss talks for forty minutes before keeling over to PlotDie.
What I wished was that they pulled a MGS3, where you pull the trigger on The Boss and end her life. But now, you're pulling the trigger on Snake. Can you imagine if they did that? Snake with the gun in his mouth, while you, the player, are in control of the trigger, taking the life of a video game icon and a hero you've grown up with for over a decade. Every player in the world would be more than hesitant to pull that trigger, and that would be perfect. At this point, if you wait long enough, then you hear a gunshot and the Big Boss scene happens. If the player pulls the trigger, then it fades to black and the credits roll, the Big Boss scene never happens.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
I only saw an LP'ers walkthrough of MGS4 and I loved that scene. Then again, I also liked Advent Children. I saw that LP twice and loved the cutscenes.
But that's the same as saying "I love war but I'm not a soldier I just play video games".
I've been wondering lately, how gamers would recieve a game in which, ultimately, you lose. No matter what you do, the big bad will win (you wouldn't know until the end of course). Take a game like God of War, you're running all over the place going through hell to obtain new abilities and OP weapons to kill Ares. You get to Ares, and have an epic battle, but in the end Kratos just can't quite beat him and is killed.
Or maybe Half-Life 2: Episode 2
You fight off wave after wave of Striders, but they never stop coming. You keep falling back, until finally they're overrunning the base. Gordon takes a blast to the chest and is knocked back, as his vision fades he sees a strider blast the rocket just as its taking off, and everybody getting massacred by Hunters
Of course if Valve did that, we'd never get Episode 3.
:rotate:
I can think of one game that this that this gen.
Halo Reach's final mission consists of fighting the invasion force until you fall. I thought it was a pretty cool part.
I forgot about that one, that was pretty awesome. You pretty much know from the beginning that you're not coming out on top no matter what in that game, though.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
I've been wondering lately, how gamers would recieve a game in which, ultimately, you lose. No matter what you do, the big bad will win (you wouldn't know until the end of course).
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Seen Kieron Gillen's suggested ending?
It's brilliant. Little insane, but brilliant.
Why I fear the ocean.
As much as we all want that, it can't carry a whole game.
"I don't recall authorizing the use of experimental hardware," says a subroutine that sounds suspiciously like President Eden, who's especially miffed if you turned the modified FEV over to the Brotherhood.
Logic. Be. Damned. I want this.
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Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Brilliant. Though I would have been screwed since I chose guns.
That alternative ending to Half Life by Alec is terrible. Really liked the alternative ending to Bioshock they linked to though.
Anyhow, I have my complaints about the terminator reaper too, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the whole mission was pointless.
Indeed, lets think about it:
We didn't? I think we learned quite a lot that we didn't know at the end of ME1.
But that's hardly unique in trilogies, the empire strikes back is pretty similar in that respect.
How it ended:
In a fit of revenge and/or despair, Ulysses plans to launch the remaining nuclear weapons at key targets in the Mojave. This would have the dual effect of cutting off a supply line for the NCR, eventually bleeding it to death, and depriving the Legion of enemies to fight, forcing it to turn on itself. You have the option of killing him or talking him out of the plan, then either cancelling the launch, redirecting it to one or the other target, or striking them both.
How it should have ended:
Fast-forward some time, not quite to the time of New Vegas. The Legion discovers the NCR has some interest in the Divide, of which little is known except it used to be a prewar base of some kind. Up to this point, Ulysses' history has proceeded as normal: his tribe absorbed by the legion, he survived the integration process, distinguished himself and was promoted accordingly. Ulysses leads a team of Legion scouts into the Divide, investigating NCR activity. They successfully ambush and kill the troopers, learning little other than their officers believe control of the facility is, quote, a "game changer" regarding the Mojave.
Clearly there's something important in this old world facility, but nobody knows exactly what. Unfortunately for everyone, the topography of the Divide makes it easy to assault, but hard to defend. Only a few survivors from both sides escape, whereupon they call for reinforcements. This back-and-forth continues for some time, quietly bleeding NCR and Legion alike even as they more openly clash at Hoover Dam. The Divide earns a reputation as being a death sentence, with whatever prewar secrets it holds deemed not worth the cost in lives.
Finally the Legion catches a break, killing a group of NCR rangers protecting a scientist. Ulysses and a few Legionnaires corner him in the control room, installing some kind of device. As it turns out, the rangers themselves had finally learned what the facility held - an intact ICBM, primed to fire - but were attacked before they could get the word out. Pleading for his life, the scientist lets slip that the NCR didn't know what the facility was, and hadn't known about it at all until a Courier discovered it alongside the weapon's arming mechanism.
With the facility momentarily in Legion control, there's dissension over what to do with this discovery. Ulysses isn't stupid, he knows what these things did to the world. He really wants to find a way to bury the complex, but his subordinates opt to report back to Caesar, all thinking of ways to use the weapon against NCR. He tries to order them to help him conceal the place, but instead they stab him in the back, perhaps literally, and leave him for dead. He hangs on long enough to exact his revenge, killing his former colleagues, but he's shaken to the core in the process.
The betrayal is bad enough, depriving him of what life he had scraped together in the Legion. The knowledge that "the Bear and the Bull" had been killing themselves for a nuclear weapon is even worse; push come to shove, everybody goes for the biggest stick they can find, consequences be damned. Unable to seal the place, he gives up and escapes the Divide, battered and broken. He disappears into the Mojave, drifting aimlessly and barely functional. Stooping to menial work for food money, he's left a bitter, distant shell of a man.
By chance he discovers your name embroiled in the Platinum chip mess, and it all comes roaring back. Believing you ignorant of the chaos your discovery caused, he becomes determined to remind you, in the process deciding to demonstrate to all the Mojave the power of a symbol: not of the old world, which he carries simply as a reminder, but of the nuclear trefoil. In the end, after all, the reasons for the Great War were dwarfed by the weapons used to fight it.
Fast-forward again. The Courier arrives at the Divide, aware that Ulysses is in there somewhere. In dialogue the Courier is given choices to reflect what they remember. High science, they were headhunted as an expert to help decipher the device. High perception, they remember scouting the device's initial location. High speech, they convinced an NCR official to fund the expedition. High guns, they're the muscle that blasted through the base's intact security. One way or another the job wouldn't have happened without the Courier, and yet they were completely uninvolved in everything that happened afterwards.
Soon enough the Courier confronts Ulysses in the control room, where he urges the Courier to read one of the logs on display. The Courier's name is listed proudly as a pivotal figure in the discovery of the device. All you did was make a delivery, and it has cost Ulysses everything. He can barely sleep knowing he could just waltz into the silo, push a button, and change the world. It's nightmare stuff to him, but he doesn't hate you. He hates the fact that, but for a twist of fate, you were spared the lesson he learned: that allegedly strong nations will unmake themselves in pursuit of power.
Cue decision about whether to sabotage the nuke or leave it as-is, followed by a boss fight/speech check where you either encourage him down a path of self-centered nihilism or convince him he's misinterpreting things. Amidst the ending slides it's revealed that recording devices were active in the control room, and in the postgame word gets out about two Couriers in the Divide; a battle (or debate) over symbols and the secrets they hide.
As I mentioned in the thread it needs some refining, but something like that would've worked a bit better given the confines of DLC.
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Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
The only redeeming part of it is the "Nah."
Agreed, and the plot in ME2 isn't "bad" by any means. The plot is mostly about universe-building and a group of (mostly) interesting character studies that happen to run into the overarching ME plot every so often. It's a really, really fun game that could easily serve as a jumping in point for the series, but I think it's a much more rewarding experience when importing a character from ME (which is also still very deserving of at least one run through).
It's hard to judge exactly how essential the game's plot is to Shepherd's tale of stopping the Reavers, but I really think ME2's plot would ultimately have been better off as a spin-off game with a different main character. But then you could argue whether or not it would have been as compelling without Shepherd and an existing emotional connection to some of the characters.
And I was fine with ME2's ending, especially the Renegade one. The only disappointing part of that ending was no literal middle finger.
the end of DtR was shockingly good. It really hit that whole Noir tone really well, and had great voice acting.
And I really loved Dead Space 2's ending.
It's funny, I can't think of any games with bad endings. Other than Fable 3, which had bad everything.
I'd love to get to the end of Deadly Premonition. Only I have to get through all that hideous combat first.
But especially with your avatar - you're going to love it once you get there. It's totally worth it. You forget how bad the combat ever was.
It became even more gratifying once I got to the actual end of the game. Fuck that bitch, seriously
also finished up human revolution, and god damn that was terrible
Also never really being able to tie off things with the sarifpeople was annoying (I liked pritchard and malik, and all of a sudden they're just gone? Stupid game
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Honestly, I'd much rather have had the option right after
I felt like the options given were either:
regulate the shit out of augmentation, killing all chance of augmentations ever
cover it all up, and let corporations fuck the world
suicide for no reason other than have the most feasible setup for Deus Ex 1.
where was my choice to tell the truth that some asshole just tried to kill all the augs while maintaining that augs are still safe and that they should require stringent regulations on how firmware updates are delivered to avoid this kind of tragedy in the future.
but nope, herpaderp everything has to be ALL THE WAY DUMB in either direction.
edit: I also felt misled by the whole
that said, I loved the game. . . makes me want to install DE1 and play through it again.
Or maybe Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Of course if Valve did that, we'd never get Episode 3.
and (speaking of deus ex) arguably every ending of invisible war is a "loss."
although I guess games don't normally personalize it the sense of the PC being killed at the end of the game
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
What I wasn't happy with is how adam's personal story ended; they went to a lot of effort to humanize him, and then at the end they just remove all agency from him and make him a cipher for the player. I would've been happy with one of two possibilities:
1) What I'll call the 'Good Megan' story, wherein she was basically the good person we met at the start of the game, and adam's outcomes are 'build the future at serif together,' 'take over for zhou/taggart as illuminati members' or 'ride off into the sunset and let humanity argue it out
or
2) The 'Bad Megan' outcome, wherein she's been a manipulative jerk all along and only ever met/kidnapped/grew? Adam to use him for his genetic material. In this version, adam either offs her and goes back to sarif to be the prototype augman for real, offs her and joins the illuminati for real, or offs her and rides off into the sunset with malik.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I like this, but I would change it just a bit.
Flash forward to the ending, Price reaches into his vest and pulls out the, now broken, box. QTE lighting of the cigar happens as normal, Price takes a drag, then another QTE pops up. When completed, Price stands, places the cigar on the railing to smolder, then walks away. The camera doesn't follow him, but instead remains on the cigar.
As we see Price in third person, the horrifying reality is shown, that trail of blood left on the floor as he inches up the wall to light the stogey? A large chunk of glass is impaled through Price's middle. He walks off for a few steps, then falls, and the lights slowly go out.
With this, you get the Hollywood ending that a majority of the fanbase expects and wants, it reinforces the pyrrhic feeling to the ending (which is what I think they were going for), and through emotional lampshading allows you to feel for everything Price has gone through in the last parts of the game in his seeking vengeance, and hearkens back to one of the greatest moments in cinematography in general (much less being the most impactful moment in CoD history) with the nuke cutaway in CoD4.
As well as reinforcing what your ending is seemingly going for, solace.
The only thing that I would change to bring full closure to Jack's story would be to fix the lampshading done during the Ryan scene (Oh yeah, Vita-chambers work for Jack because they're all keyed to Ryan and Jack is kinda close in genetics. And, uh, Ryan is dead dead because the chamber in his office is broken.)
So, let's mix the two between yours and Tom's endings. Tannenbaum isn't shot, and she's ushering the little sisters toward one of the two remaining bathyspheres in Rapture. Fontaine is pursuing them and it's your job to keep him away. The problem here is that this last bathysphere is in a place that has a high number of vita-chambers around it so you have to play it close to the vest to protect the little sisters and Tannenbaum from all sides. As the sphere is filled with the last little sister, it embarks.
Big cutscene, yada yada, boom, Fontaine takes the crazy drug and goes god mode as seen in the game actual. Last boss fight (keeping him away from the other bathysphere), Tannenbaum yelling on the radio at you the entire time saying keep him away and whatnot, deplete red bar and now cutscene. Jack-Daddy is on his last legs and Fontaine is about to end him and go do doomsday stuff in the world above, when suddenly he jerks. Over his shoulder appears the face of Andrew Ryan, shoving Little Sister Adam Extractors (TM) into Fontaine.
As Fontaine reels in pain, Ryan begins to speak. "A man exists for the achievement of his desires. You ruined my achievement, and I will pay in kind." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small control switch, a normal Hollywoodish detonator. He puts his hand out toward Jack, "A man chooses... son." Jack takes the detonator in hand.
Then, with the already in place choice=morality system with the little sisters you either have one of the two ending cutscenes.
Ocean Hitler: Jack throws the detonator into the water surrounding the bathysphere. You stick your drill through Ryan's chest and continue to suck all the Adam out of Fontaine before injecting yourself with all of it. You then get into the remaining bathysphere and become the God King Made Flesh. Because that's how non-canonical bad endings are supposed to be, way over the top.
Ocean Jesus: You take the detonator, and looking into Fontaine's pleading face, you press the button. Explanation on how Tannenbaum and the girls have lived their lives on the surface, explaining about the destruction of Rapture, etc. Then the camera pans down through the ocean to one remaining light that shines in the wreckage. Camera cuts to the light. This light is a slit of view into a still working Vita chamber trapped in said wreckage. The light brightens and we see an escape of bubbles and an arm shoot out of this small crack. Then, it slows, jerks, and stops (palm up to show that it isn't Jack). Then the camera pans away, and the wreckage that sits on top of this vita-chamber is the large stone globe seen earlier in the game, the camera stopping just as the chamber brightens again. Then a big-daddy is shown walking on the ocean floor in the background.
Well, that's what speaks to my sensibilities at least.
I can think of one game that this that this gen.
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What I wished was that they pulled a MGS3, where you pull the trigger on The Boss and end her life. But now, you're pulling the trigger on Snake. Can you imagine if they did that? Snake with the gun in his mouth, while you, the player, are in control of the trigger, taking the life of a video game icon and a hero you've grown up with for over a decade. Every player in the world would be more than hesitant to pull that trigger, and that would be perfect. At this point, if you wait long enough, then you hear a gunshot and the Big Boss scene happens. If the player pulls the trigger, then it fades to black and the credits roll, the Big Boss scene never happens.
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But that's the same as saying "I love war but I'm not a soldier I just play video games".
I forgot about that one, that was pretty awesome. You pretty much know from the beginning that you're not coming out on top no matter what in that game, though.
There's a pretty good SA Let's Play that goes over the insanity so you don't have to.
Start at chapter 12 of loop 4 for when it goes absolutely batshit insane at the last 2 endings.
Halo: Reach?