I couldn't not sacrifice chloe because I am a sucker for tragedies where the protagonist tries but can't fix things, can't makes things right, and all that could ever happen is they sacrifice what they love most
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
Oh man, that ending... I somehow managed to make all the same choices as @Arteen except
I convinced Joyce to take David back and he did not. You cold-hearted monster! I'm also considering changing my ending choice to Sacrifice Chloe (Reddit is referring to these as "Save Bay"/"Save Bae") after choosing it in "Collectible Mode". Dat kiss doe.
Oh man, that ending... I somehow managed to make all the same choices as Arteen except
I convinced Joyce to take David back and he did not. You cold-hearted monster! I'm also considering changing my ending choice to Sacrifice Chloe (Reddit is referring to these as "Save Bay"/"Save Bae") after choosing it in "Collectible Mode". Dat kiss doe.
That result confused me because nothing in my playthrough suggested Joyce and David were going to split.
I mean, they're both dead from a tornado so it hardly matters now, but...
Hey I know this thread is hella dead but I wanted to talk about this
I didn't talk about it last time I beat the game because I was still puzzling out how I felt about it, but now that I've played through it again: boy I hate the ending to this game
Spoilers for my thoughts:
To start with, I know some people liked the ending so please don't take this as anything other than my own personal issues with it.
So there are a few aspects that really drive me crazy about this thing. The first is the idea that the game WANTS you to choose the let chloe die ending. The dream sequence where people tell you max only used her powers to get people to like her, the fact that you have to let thousands of people die to save her, the fact that the 'save chloe' ending is basically a nothing cutscene while the let her die one is much more fleshed out, its very obvious where they wanted you to go.
The problem with that is its predicated on the game's idea that using Max's powers was somehow wrong, and the 'correct' thing to do is to accept what you can't change and move on with your life. And I can honestly say I've not had a visceral 'fuck you' reaction like I did to this notion in quite some time. The idea that this girl is somehow wrong to save people's lives, to stop a murderer at great personal risk, to do EVERYTHING to help the person she loves most, is super gross to me personally. I genuinely hate the idea the game basically telling you 'everything you did up to this point was bad. You must now willingly erase it, or we will kill every character you've come to like except chloe'.
Something about giving a teenage girl this power who then genuinely tries to be the best person she can be and then showing she was only making things worse is viscerally uncomfortable for me.
Additionally, I feel the ending super cheapens the alternate timeline scene. Max visiting sick Chloe and agreeing to pull the plug is, bar none, the most powerful moment I have ever experienced in a video game. It is incredibly, insanely painful, emotionally draining, and bittersweet. Having Max realize "ok I can't mess around with time that much" felt like she already learned her lesson about altering huge chunks of the timeline, and was, again, super powerful.
Literally resurrecting her friend and then solving a murder mystery with her and then being told 'ok now you have to kill her again for real this time' felt... I'm not going to say 'emotionally manipulative', because of course its supposed to be. But cheap, and mean, maybe, is what I'm going for here. It cheapens that earlier moment, and to me cheapens the whole game, really.
I just.. man, the game is telling you that the world is better off if, instead of saving the woman she loves, max lets her die and curls into a ball over her dead body to cry. And ultimately I really, really hate that that's how this game ended.
I will say though, that I literally laid awake last night thinking about this. And I absolutely can't think of a game that's made me this much of an emotional wreck ever before and this is the SECOND TIME I've beaten it. Despite how it all ends, I found the game incredibly affecting, and it will always have a special place in my mind for how real and effective it made its characters and relationships
I just wish with my whole dang being that it had ended differently.
firewaterwordSatchitanandaPais Vasco to San FranciscoRegistered Userregular
Yeah I agree with all that. Ending stuff:
Deciding to sacrifice the town was an instant choice for me. Fuck everything about the idea that, in order for things to go "right," Chloe had to live a shit life full of shit people and then die on a filthy bathroom floor.
Nah, not buying into that.
The ending itself was lackluster, but I really don't mind honestly. What it took to get there was pretty much one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in a videogame, and I'm really really glad for that.
All that said I would have been pretty mad at videogames if sacrificing Chloe was the only ending. Yeah the other one was basic, but at least it was there.
I watched the other ending on youtube, and it was pretty good (in a vacuum, mind you). It would have been nice if the other ending was at that level, but oh well.
Also posted this in the other thread, but there was a french interview with a co-developer, and he mentions working on the 2nd season. Rational minds would take it with a grain of salt. I (along with the gaming media, apparently) am taking it as gospel, and eagerly await more emotional flagellation.
Deciding to sacrifice the town was an instant choice for me. Fuck everything about the idea that, in order for things to go "right," Chloe had to live a shit life full of shit people and then die on a filthy bathroom floor.
Nah, not buying into that.
The ending itself was lackluster, but I really don't mind honestly. What it took to get there was pretty much one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in a videogame, and I'm really really glad for that.
All that said I would have been pretty mad at videogames if sacrificing Chloe was the only ending. Yeah the other one was basic, but at least it was there.
I watched the other ending on youtube, and it was pretty good (in a vacuum, mind you). It would have been nice if the other ending was at that level, but oh well.
Also posted this in the other thread, but there was a french interview with a co-developer, and he mentions working on the 2nd season. Rational minds would take it with a grain of salt. I (along with the gaming media, apparently) am taking it as gospel, and eagerly await more emotional flagellation.
Yeah this is something I didn't mention, but also Chloe's life being so awful and then giving her someone who loves her and will do anything for her and then asking her to give it all up and die does noooooot sit well with me
Chincy, my friend, you could not have picked a better time to bring this up, as the Super Best Friends Play of this just finished and I have feelings about this ending.
The whole nightmare scene where the time ghosts or whatever of all the people in her failed timelines were berating her seemed, to me, to be setting up a whole thing where Max was going to reject the notion that her attempts to fix things, to make things better for people, was wrong. For her (and the game itself) to take a stand for agency, for the notion that, when given an opportunity to try and improve people's lives, you should take it. The entire game has been her using these powers to help people, even if it's as simple as just telling someone to get out of the way of a football. The nightmare people called her actions selfish, when they were anything but, and I was sure the game was going to lead up to an overt rejection of that notion. But the actual ending felt more like it was saying "no, they're right. What you should do is go back and not use your power. Don't try to fight your destiny, not because it's impossible to do so, but because you don't have the right to reject what's been decided for you." It's an awful, almost nihilistic, high school psych student notion and it really upsets me.
It's also really lazy writing. Max did a lot of good, and the bad things that happen aren't "karmic" in the sense that her good intentions had bad natural consequences. The bad things are like a deus ex machina from an evil god. The universe is angry at you so it's arbitrarily punishing you for your actions. There's no satisfaction in that. "Meddled with time so much the universe broke" is a story that's been done before, and used to explore some interesting ideas, but this game doesn't actually look at any of those ideas.
obviously this is breaking it down fairly reductively but I still cant shake the feeling that, basically, I get to play a female character with an insane amount of agency.... And then at the end am told I/she was wrong for using that agency. Fuuuuuuuck that.
obviously this is breaking it down fairly reductively but I still cant shake the feeling that, basically, I get to play a female character with an insane amount of agency.... And then at the end am told I/she was wrong for using that agency. Fuuuuuuuck that.
I think that's probably reading beyond what the writers intended to say, but I also think it's a completely valid conclusion to draw from what they presented. And even unintentionally, that's a really crappy message to end with.
I honestly thought it was gonna turn out that like, friendship was the most important thing, and if you stuck to your guns and decided to save Chloe then you passed the universe's test (or whatever) and the tornado would blow over and everyone would be okay
Like, I was so sure that was what was coming, and then I just sat there and watched that tornado... not stop... at all
Because what's the alternative? What's Chloe's life like? She's a happy kid until her dad dies, at which point everything goes to shit and she becomes the angry, bitter teen who gets mixed up with some shit she really shouldn't be
She loses one best friend in Max, who in this timeline will now never reforge that bond with her, and then she loses another friend and possibly lover in Rachel, and then she gets shot in the gut and dies on a bathroom floor
I'm sorry, but that's a fucking garbage character arc for anyone that people have come to know and be invested in, and I'm honestly getting a little angry that the writers clearly somehow expect that to come across as the "right" ending
If the solution to your story is to go back to the inciting incident and make sure that none of your story ever happened, then I feel like you fucked up somewhere along the way
Yeah this too.
Basically I hate it for Chloe, I hate it for Max, and I hate it for the player
Max and Chloe kiss and the power of their sweet makeouts defeats the storm.
Credits roll to Huey Lewis' Power of Love
Looks like you didn't even need me to help with this
I wrote it as a joke but I actually think I'd kind of love that
Oh yeah, make it cinematic as hell, starting in with a close-up on them, then widening the shot to show the storm breaking up in the background, then just linger on that setpiece, the two of them embracing on the cliffside, silhouetted against the now-clear-skied sunset--it'd be amazing.
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masterofmetroidHave you ever looked at a worldand seen it as a kind of challenge?Registered Userregular
My biggest problem with the ending is it kind of invalidates what was once a huge strength of the story
There was no reason to explain the time powers prior to this, but the implication that she never should have used them in the first place? That brings all sorts of ridiculous questions into the mix even without being thematically unsatisfying
Normally i'm all about self-sacrifice, but i would pick saving Chloe every time just so the narrative would actually mean something
And no, stopping Jefferson in the other ending doesn't help because that never would have happened if Max hadn't saved Chloe in the first place. There is no interpretation of the story where Max did something wrong in that bathroom and the universe giving her the finger on that isn't just cynical or boring, it's outright nonsensical.
It only bugs me as much as it does because so much of the rest of the story was real good though
I like that they don't explain how Max got her powers (well, up until the end which runs into the abovementioned problem), but I like the implication that Matt and Liam stumbled upon that maybe Rachel was somehow the source of the powers. Max got them around the same time that Rachel died, and there are a few references in the game implying Max to have some sort of connection to Rachel, even though she never really knew her when she was alive. That would have been interesting to explore, I think.
A small complaint compared to everything else but still bugs me:
max and Chloe only kiss in the ending where she dies, even if you choose every 'romantic' option up to that point.
That's...bothersome
And maybe it's just a perceptional thing on my part, but I feel like the game gives you every opportunity to get close to Warren right up to the end, no matter how hard you try to shut him down.
+9
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firewaterwordSatchitanandaPais Vasco to San FranciscoRegistered Userregular
I'm pretty confident that the dontnod folks will take a lot of this stuff into consideration for the next go round. Hopefully with a bigger budget. I've bought it three times now - pc, ps4, and as a gift - so I've done my part.
Posts
ending spoilers...
XBL: Sans Gravitas, Steam, Destiny, Twitch
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I mean, they're both dead from a tornado so it hardly matters now, but...
Ending
Tumblr | Twitter PSN: misterdapper Av by Satellite_09
when i am more coherent, i'll talk about how
when i am not obscenely worn out/emotionally drained
because let me tell you how damp my eyes is right now
You monster
"shut it!"
Are you cereal?
Tumblr | Twitter PSN: misterdapper Av by Satellite_09
A necessary monster.
Why I fear the ocean.
Tumblr | Twitter PSN: misterdapper Av by Satellite_09
I didn't talk about it last time I beat the game because I was still puzzling out how I felt about it, but now that I've played through it again: boy I hate the ending to this game
Spoilers for my thoughts:
So there are a few aspects that really drive me crazy about this thing. The first is the idea that the game WANTS you to choose the let chloe die ending. The dream sequence where people tell you max only used her powers to get people to like her, the fact that you have to let thousands of people die to save her, the fact that the 'save chloe' ending is basically a nothing cutscene while the let her die one is much more fleshed out, its very obvious where they wanted you to go.
The problem with that is its predicated on the game's idea that using Max's powers was somehow wrong, and the 'correct' thing to do is to accept what you can't change and move on with your life. And I can honestly say I've not had a visceral 'fuck you' reaction like I did to this notion in quite some time. The idea that this girl is somehow wrong to save people's lives, to stop a murderer at great personal risk, to do EVERYTHING to help the person she loves most, is super gross to me personally. I genuinely hate the idea the game basically telling you 'everything you did up to this point was bad. You must now willingly erase it, or we will kill every character you've come to like except chloe'.
Something about giving a teenage girl this power who then genuinely tries to be the best person she can be and then showing she was only making things worse is viscerally uncomfortable for me.
Additionally, I feel the ending super cheapens the alternate timeline scene. Max visiting sick Chloe and agreeing to pull the plug is, bar none, the most powerful moment I have ever experienced in a video game. It is incredibly, insanely painful, emotionally draining, and bittersweet. Having Max realize "ok I can't mess around with time that much" felt like she already learned her lesson about altering huge chunks of the timeline, and was, again, super powerful.
Literally resurrecting her friend and then solving a murder mystery with her and then being told 'ok now you have to kill her again for real this time' felt... I'm not going to say 'emotionally manipulative', because of course its supposed to be. But cheap, and mean, maybe, is what I'm going for here. It cheapens that earlier moment, and to me cheapens the whole game, really.
I just.. man, the game is telling you that the world is better off if, instead of saving the woman she loves, max lets her die and curls into a ball over her dead body to cry. And ultimately I really, really hate that that's how this game ended.
I will say though, that I literally laid awake last night thinking about this. And I absolutely can't think of a game that's made me this much of an emotional wreck ever before and this is the SECOND TIME I've beaten it. Despite how it all ends, I found the game incredibly affecting, and it will always have a special place in my mind for how real and effective it made its characters and relationships
I just wish with my whole dang being that it had ended differently.
Nah, not buying into that.
The ending itself was lackluster, but I really don't mind honestly. What it took to get there was pretty much one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in a videogame, and I'm really really glad for that.
All that said I would have been pretty mad at videogames if sacrificing Chloe was the only ending. Yeah the other one was basic, but at least it was there.
I watched the other ending on youtube, and it was pretty good (in a vacuum, mind you). It would have been nice if the other ending was at that level, but oh well.
Also posted this in the other thread, but there was a french interview with a co-developer, and he mentions working on the 2nd season. Rational minds would take it with a grain of salt. I (along with the gaming media, apparently) am taking it as gospel, and eagerly await more emotional flagellation.
It's also really lazy writing. Max did a lot of good, and the bad things that happen aren't "karmic" in the sense that her good intentions had bad natural consequences. The bad things are like a deus ex machina from an evil god. The universe is angry at you so it's arbitrarily punishing you for your actions. There's no satisfaction in that. "Meddled with time so much the universe broke" is a story that's been done before, and used to explore some interesting ideas, but this game doesn't actually look at any of those ideas.
I do feel better getting that off my chest
again, I have to give props to the game for literally making me toss and turn last night over it
I have certainly never done that before
Yeah this too.
Basically I hate it for Chloe, I hate it for Max, and I hate it for the player
Credits roll to Huey Lewis' Power of Love
Which is completely valid dude
I just know it made me feel kind of sick for the reasons I outlined
Its just an opinion though
Looks like you didn't even need me to help with this
I wrote it as a joke but I actually think I'd kind of love that
Oh yeah, make it cinematic as hell, starting in with a close-up on them, then widening the shot to show the storm breaking up in the background, then just linger on that setpiece, the two of them embracing on the cliffside, silhouetted against the now-clear-skied sunset--it'd be amazing.
There was no reason to explain the time powers prior to this, but the implication that she never should have used them in the first place? That brings all sorts of ridiculous questions into the mix even without being thematically unsatisfying
Normally i'm all about self-sacrifice, but i would pick saving Chloe every time just so the narrative would actually mean something
And no, stopping Jefferson in the other ending doesn't help because that never would have happened if Max hadn't saved Chloe in the first place. There is no interpretation of the story where Max did something wrong in that bathroom and the universe giving her the finger on that isn't just cynical or boring, it's outright nonsensical.
It only bugs me as much as it does because so much of the rest of the story was real good though
That's...bothersome