A D&D story where the Heroes fail.
I was just watching my second favorite anime, Berserk, and really love the catch that Guts failed at everything. The hero failed to understand his friends, failed to protect his friends, and failed to protect this love in the end. I know this is kinda dreary, but I like a story that sometimes leaves you open to fail, or even is written around a failing mission. FF 6 did a great job with this, eventhough, in the end they succeeded in stopping Kefka, but the world was already destroyed by that point. I want a D&D game that tells all those stories about when hero's failed, their civilization was wiped out and either everyone or almost everyone died. I don't want the story after the fact, but to be in the middle of the struggle, getting to know the characters and then seeing them die, some like heroes and others like b******. Again, this maybe just me, but all these hero save the world stories are starting to get monotonous, and sometimes that is not the world works. D&D knows this best of all as by the current time line, thousands of Empires have fallen and people gone extinct.
Post edited by Coriander on
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Sure I've played games where the hero dies at the end, but still only after he has saved the day. The only game I can think of that does this is Divinity II, but even that ending turns good in the expansion.
In the end of FF6 (PSX) or FF3 (SNES) the world don't end, but by killing Kefka we destroy the magic of the world, FF3/6 has two sagas, pre-armageddon and after-armageddon. On the transition of those 2 sagas, Kefka absorb to himself the essence of the 3 godness of magic, making his existence a requeriment for magic existance.
If you want a bad end, just die and don't reload. FF3/6 don't have a bad end, FF3/6 have a sad end that stirs with our emotional* in a way i believe never agin a game will be able to, and I I state this by experience, cos Mass Effect 3 end is here to proof my point.
*Terra, the main char of the game, being a half esper lost her essence and fall from the sky at the end.
Conversely, I never get bored with Asian/Oriental cinema (where the hero is always too heroic for his own good, spends his whole life suffering urequited love, or one untenable situation after another and more often than not either goes down in a blaze of glory against insurmountable odds for honour, or looses his life in some nefarious way while NEVER getting the girl).
Regarding BG though (and I think this really involves BG3), I don't think the the Bhallspawn should be taken out of the picture. I created that character and he's my alter ego in the FR. But I suppose that's a discussion for another day.
Also the berserk anime is kinda bad compared to the manga, I'd guess guts will in the end get a slightly more happy ending. The anime is a bit of a loop showing the now/future at the first ep and then going back and never showing a conclusion to anything. Remake of the berserk anime will most likely be my favorite of all time, Arc I Egg of the Supreme Rule came out a few months ago but not seen it yet myself.
Would love to play some bad ends in games(don't count ME3 cause it was just plain bad and out of character) or even bitter sweet ones. Just really hard for game makers to do it good and few fans would accept that they can't end a game riding off into the sunset all hero like.
I kinda liked the ending of nwn actually with aribeth(spelling?) having to pay for her actions, not that much of a bad end for our hero but still in no way a glorious victory, in my view anyhow.
Oh and to not only trash ME, Ending the second game with EVERYONE dying was pure awesome!
Compared to ME:3 (which I haven't played but have researched well enough) - I'm just gonna leave my Shephard where he and his team were at the end of ME:2.
How many people on this board watch Game of Thrones? When Eddard Stark lost his head at the end of Season one, I was devastated. But, it was a fantastic ending that started a awesome war. When Winterfell was taken over, it brought a true understanding of harshness to the war. I don't consider the random civilian or group of heroes I don't know dying a heart wrenching event that makes me realize this isn't a game. IWD 2 tried to have heroes or characters die in the beginning but there was no real reward for saving a great amount of people, and you didn't really know the characters that well to care. Sometimes it is epic to die a hero that is not around to hear the story, those are normally the most epic stories, just ask Julius Caesar, the nation of Troy,the Battle of Thermopylae, and Attila Hun. These characters and stories are no less epic just because everyone died, or the hero failed. Actually, many of these stories are famous because of that failure, and the heroic efforts that occurred right before the end.
Now how you pretend to continue the game after killing the main char? This is possible in movies, books, series or games where exist more than one main char, but that's not applicable on Baldur's Gate, you don't have 12 main chars, you have only one. We're not watching a movie, the game ends with main char death.
When i first played ME:3 i fully believed my Shepard would die i even kind of felt that the reapers would just win not matter what you did because that is what they have always done. And i would have been happy with that, well not happy but i would understand and not be angry because they were surpassed to be unstoppable and they where.
I think different people will all be stratified with different things at the end of the game. I would personally love to always have a happy ending for my character. But sometimes a sad ending can still be enjoyable just for the emotion high/low it brings. And it would be interesting to see this in a game.
Being set up for failure isn't a whole lot of fun. I'm fine with a bittersweet ending provided it's satisfying, but being forced into a 'bad' ending isn't what I play videogames for. If I wanted to spend $60 to experience something akin to failure, I'd just use that money to buy tequila.
Remember kids, nothing good ever comes from tequila.
In films and books, the script writer/author determines the actions of the main characters and the outcome of the story.
In games, you have options. There are different outcomes, and your objective of the game is to steer the outcome towards the good end. Remember, every time CHARNAME dies, you basically have a bad end.
If the outcome is always bad, then why not just die at the start of the game? What's the point?
While in theory a 'let's do something new and have the hero fail' approach may seem appealing, just for the novelty factor... In the few books and movies where that actually happened, it depressed me like hell and I hated it.
Even the scenario when the hero actually saves the day but dies in the process can leave a bad aftertaste. The only case I can think of where the main character dies in the end and yet I love the ending to bits is in "Léon: The Professional". But this kind of ending wouldn't work very well in a game, I think.
All in all, most people play games for a feeling of satisfaction and achievement; if they want to be faced with depressive helplessness, they only need to wake up in the morning. :P
That's completely fine in my book. After all, you're not forced to steer in that direction. It could end up like that if you made certain choices, but you had the chance to avoid that by making different choices.
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You play a man who cannot die. Part of the game is a search for who he is and his lost mortality. He's looking for a way to end his nameless, deathless, amnesiac existence. Regardless of how you play the game he dies and goes to a D&D hell plane to fight in the eternal blood war.
However, the way in which you approach this ending puts it in context. If you've played a good character it's a redemption, a way of atoning for lifetimes of violence and betrayal. If you're evil then you've taken back your mortality from the powers who stole it from you, and have a chance to prove yourself in an eternal battle.
In all honesty it's one of the best endings in an RPG, up there with the bittersweet ending of Fallout 1. At the end of Fallout 1 you've beaten the Big Bad, saved the world and protected your home. But you've changed too much and would be a danger to those you love. The leader of your vault refuses to let you back in and the final cinematic is your character stumbling across the desert away from Vault 13, battered and bleeding, into a doomed world. It is truly brilliant.
If I find out a game im playing have no posibility of a somewhat happy ending.. then it can be the best game in the world.. I simply cant see a point in going on.. Because you might as well not reload next time you die/fail/get made into a kitten, because then you will get the same result as in the ending, and you wont waste time investing in the game.
Otherwise I like games where you can fail. Missing out on something and the game goes on. Something like having to bear with the consequences.