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DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by NegativeZeroZ »

Oh man, the moment everyone I've disagreed with in this thread has been waiting for, where I write a wall of text defending the ending!

No.

I told Zephyr the ending was bad, and not because it's a poor choice to end an 80-hour game of obscene difficulty this way. It reminded me a lot of something Yahtzee said while reviewing Halo Reach. All of the characters are in too much of a hurry to win the "noblest self sacrifice" contest to do anything demonstrating the least bit of competence that could get me invested in their deaths. As with everything else, I only gave Zephyr suggestions on how his tragic ending could be better executed, and for a brief alpha update, a much better ending existed. But in the end, he changed it back to his "original vision," and all I can do is shrug. He made his questionably-sized bed, let him shit in it.

The Warmaster's pre-fight cutscene is the high point of dramatic tension for me and apparently a few other people too, but unfortunately, I have to take partial credit for the plot-armor-shattering moment. That was originally just my headcanon, as far as I know. The original cutscene didn't word it very clearly if that was the intent, but I saw the potential there, so I asked Zephyr to more clearly address it if that was the intent. I never got a straight answer to the question, but the "that rule doesn't apply to you" line made it in, so here we are.

The idea to use Kirby instead of Jeremy to deus-ex-machina the player's abilities back was also per my suggestion (it's a weak twist either way, I know). The music choice was also mine. (Zephyr chose the music for the fight though, despite it also being of Wild ARMs origin.)
Greader wrote:So, when's the sequel coming out where Chao breaks out of the program to go inside the recycling bin of whatever the program is stored on to save her friends
This reminds me. The epilogue sucks too. It ruins the mood by hastily addressing every lingering question nobody had. THIS is an important plot hole, and it's never addressed. Are Jerry, Jeremy and Claire actually dead? Yes they are, but because Zephyr says they are, is the answer.

The latter half of the Warmaster's cutscene kind of rambles on in the same way, again killing the tension with questions nobody asked.

All in all, the other 99.99% of the game, give or take a few more decimal points for the player being completely unprepared for the Warship's difficulty spike, is just fine, and the game does explore enough gameplay ideas to actually justify its length to me, enough for me and any other fan to play the game multiple times despite it rivaling sandbox RPGs for hours of game time. It's only really a problem for people who weren't going to play it anyway. It's a fine game nonetheless and anyone who says otherwise is being "Mass Effect 3 sucks" levels of petty.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by thatguyif »

NegativeZeroZ wrote:As with everything else, I only gave Zephyr suggestions on how his tragic ending could be better executed, and for a brief alpha update, a much better ending existed.
I'm curious to know what that ending was.

I remember how people once said of Lost that, after a certain season, it seemed like the writers had lost control of the plot by adding too many ideas into the story. Given the limitations they imposed on themselves, they struggled to tie up every loose end they could find in a way that was satisfactory. The end result was a convoluted, Gainax-like result.

While Zephyr didn't have as many plot threads to deal with, it still seemed like he wrote himself into a hole by making the game longer than it needed to be. I get the sense that this is the motivation of the endgame being what it was. He needed to conclude in a way that seemed satisfactory once he realized he went too far on the plot narrative. He failed to check his own writing ambition.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Friendly Dictator »

that ending sucked wow

i forget, what happened to the real world outside the program? was it destroyed or
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Count Mohawk »

Friendly Dictator wrote:that ending sucked wow

i forget, what happened to the real world outside the program? was it destroyed or
As best as I can piece it together, the Darkness performed some kind of technological miracle called a "Phase Distortion" at the end of the tutorial dungeon in the first game that allowed its own computer-based reality to overtake the organic reality that had existed previously. Games 2 and 3 kinda just roll with the idea that DT!game-land is the actual and true reality now.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Alice »

Friendly Dictator wrote:that ending sucked wow

i forget, what happened to the real world outside the program? was it destroyed or
The Darkness became God and then man and God's other creations kinda killed him. (Basically it's as Count Mohawk said.)
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Friendly Dictator »

most important question

what happened to rave mode from the first game why didnt that come back
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Razzling »

That ending was... disappointing I guess I could say, I was hoping for a "it looks like they're all going to die but look at this they actually survived!" kinda thing, a fakeout sad ending.

Honestly though, a vibe I was getting from the game for a while was a sort of "Its a video game that became more than a video game" kinda thing, as in it was more lighthearted and funny at the beginning because hey! Mario powers! stomp the goomba! fun! and as the plot goes on it gets more serious because they cant just Video Game their way through it for lack of a better word, and they actually have to try their best. Like with the abomination, its like, how would beating the ever living hell out of it break it out of mind control instead of killing it? Spending all that time doing the nightmare gates and fighting the abomination gave hex time to set the things to overload.

So I guess the ending kind of fit, they spent too long playing a Video Game and it gave real life a chance to fuck them. Honestly an ending where you ignore everything optional and just bumrush hex before he has a chance to even do anything would have been a cool ending, as in, you get the best ending by treating this as more than a game, and focusing on the actual threat instead of wandering around looking for trinkets.


Also how does dying when you fall off the ship work in the ending, thats like, the goal, fall damage has never been a thing before so I dont see why swan diving off the bow of the ship wouldnt have worked perfectly.
:trans_pride:
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Count Mohawk »

Razzling wrote:Also how does dying when you fall off the ship work in the ending, thats like, the goal, fall damage has never been a thing before so I dont see why swan diving off the bow of the ship wouldnt have worked perfectly.
I think the problem with doing that is that the ship then lands and/or explodes right on top of you. An escape pod would put you outside the immediate range of death from the ship's crash. As for Chao, she has wings, so she can just fly away in the same way.

Or, somewhat more importantly, if you just bail off the crumbling ship, the other power source next to Hex's room overloads and blows everything to kingdom come, yourself included.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Validon98 »

NegativeZeroZ wrote: This reminds me. The epilogue sucks too. It ruins the mood by hastily addressing every lingering question nobody had. THIS is an important plot hole, and it's never addressed. Are Jerry, Jeremy and Claire actually dead? Yes they are, but because Zephyr says they are, is the answer.

The latter half of the Warmaster's cutscene kind of rambles on in the same way, again killing the tension with questions nobody asked.

All in all, the other 99.99% of the game, give or take a few more decimal points for the player being completely unprepared for the Warship's difficulty spike, is just fine, and the game does explore enough gameplay ideas to actually justify its length to me, enough for me and any other fan to play the game multiple times despite it rivaling sandbox RPGs for hours of game time. It's only really a problem for people who weren't going to play it anyway. It's a fine game nonetheless and anyone who says otherwise is being "Mass Effect 3 sucks" levels of petty.
Yeah, this was something I sorta wondered myself but never really understood because the way death works in DT-land is the biggest plot hole of the game, it just took this comment to finally get me thinking about it again. When all the bots die... what, is their coding just gone? Is there such thing as a recycling bin? The Discombobulated sorta acted like one for buggy coding, but what about everything else? How does it work for humans? We game over a lot and Jerry/Claire comment on it like they actually experience a state of game over, and you can still game over and come back right before the Warship goes boom, so... isn't it just another game over? I guess since you'd just show up right back before the Warship goes boom anyhow, so that might not work.

But otherwise, I didn't mention it in my original post, but by no means did I think the game as a whole was bad. I disliked the ending, not the game. I mean, the ending sorta drained my will to finish the game, but from a pure gameplay standpoint, it's a nice game, the plot just has hiccups. Also forgot to congratulate raocow on doing it without dash buttons, holy hell I can't imagine doing that ever.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Money »

Pyro wrote:Image
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Money »

actually legit yeah thinking about it it would have been like 100 times better if the warmaster had a last second heel face turn and stayed behind to unoverload the reactors or some shit half because "from the start, my goal has been to protect bots. no one wins if these overload" and half "fuck you hex"

dunno about the second one, maybe that one jeremy would have to do a legit heroic sacrifice or something, but still. better than that.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by ano0maly »

Here's my thoughts about the ending.

I think a reason why people don't care much for this ending is because maybe they expected DT3 to have an epic finish and basically a wholly upbeat ending, just like DT1 did. I did, too. I was waiting for it: the epic final level, and the climax of a boss fight where you foil Hexor's plans and show the villain how you will emerge victorious. And the aftermath where we see a good outcome for the protagonists. I went in expecting those things, and the ending that I actually saw took me by surprise.

But after reflecting upon it, I can see what ZephyrBurst was going for. The epic ending that I just described, we already saw it in DT1. The breathtakingly exciting Primary Memory, the grand face-off against the Artist where he was thwarted, the long chatter afterwards where the characters look to the future with optimism. ZephyrBurst wanted to do something different this time.

A factor driving this difference is how Hexor contrasts with the Artist, who turned out to be a more typical villain. Hexor isn't quite a typical villain in a "generic bad guy" sense. During the later chapters, I really didn't understand how you keep foiling his plan, but by then, he's indifferent to that plan. Only in the final chapter it dawned on me: he doesn't care. He's not looking for a singular goal to outright defeat Jeremy and his friends; he just wants some kind of way to make them suffer. (Of course, he also aims to end this "miserable existence", the program, but he has many ways to do that, and they're just means to his desires, inconsequential to him if one of them is thwarted.)

This is why even when you do destroy Hexor, it didn't feel like a satisfying victory to me, because you didn't show him he was defeated. That kind of reflects the direction of the plot for me. It's meant to go down and arrive at a bittersweet end.

Now mind you, I still would have preferred an epic ending so that I can have a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. But I can understand what ZephyrBurst was trying to do.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Whimsical Calamari »

Validon98 wrote:Yeah, this was something I sorta wondered myself but never really understood because the way death works in DT-land is the biggest plot hole of the game, it just took this comment to finally get me thinking about it again. When all the bots die... what, is their coding just gone?
not to mention that "all those bots you killed" that the Warmaster talked about respawned as soon as you re-entered their respective rooms. the only ones that permadied were infected by the virus, killed by chaos/hex, or absorbed for their abilities without the humans' prior knowledge, after all.

and i guess some bosses.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by ACesspoolofHatred »

Pyro wrote:Image
I was wondering when someone would bring up Rock Force. I do think it's kind of an apt comparison.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Money »

true ending: you beat the warmaster and then shut the game off. uncommanded, the warship just kinda flies around doing nothing for all eternity. the end.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Dark Hunter »

Friendly Dictator wrote:most important question

what happened to rave mode from the first game why didnt that come back

The Virus removed all of Jerry's abilities at the start, remember? Rave Mode was one of those abilities.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by ACesspoolofHatred »

rave mode will be in the beta tester tower that might exist someday

justice man will be the secret boss
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Rednaxela »

I have to say... I didn't mind the end of this nearly as much as many people. Is it's execution perfect? No, but... I still enjoyed it, in a bittersweet way.

I'd also like to say, thanks for making this game Zephyr. It's been a heck of a time even as someone who's only watched it, and it stands out to me as something very unique.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Razzling »

Count Mohawk wrote:I think the problem with doing that is that the ship then lands and/or explodes right on top of you. An escape pod would put you outside the immediate range of death from the ship's crash. As for Chao, she has wings, so she can just fly away in the same way.

Or, somewhat more importantly, if you just bail off the crumbling ship, the other power source next to Hex's room overloads and blows everything to kingdom come, yourself included.
I was more or less joking with that comment, but I still think i'd be funny for there to be a joke ending if you fall off where it looks like everything worked out, and then the warship explodes and nukes half of the world.

Also I hope to see a video showing some beta versions of the warmaster boss among other things bc I think that'd be cool
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Ditocoaf »

I think the good ending is actually if you don't play? Think about it: if the player characters just sit on their asses forever, they never free Hex and the Abomination. And since the Virus turns out not to be world-destroying after all, and the Warmaster only went fully genocidal because of Hex's influence, things would have worked out much better for almost everyone if you just DIDN'T overcome all those incredibly difficult challenges.

The moral of the story is, if you try really hard and persevere in the face of failure, you can bring your near-omnipotent friend to the places where he can screw everything up royally and then later sacrifice himself to fix some of it. So don't.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Lostsoldier20 »

Ditocoaf wrote:they never free Hex and the Abomination
Only problem is, given time, Hex still would have escaped. We just speed up the process. And Warship or no, CHAOS still would have done a lot of damage, plus the Abomination being loose.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Ometeotl »

That, uh, that was not a good ending in basically any respect.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the neverending game

Post by Meowthnum1 »

WhattayaBrian wrote: Jerry - Sprite Rip - Dead
Claire - Sprite Rip - Dead
Jeremy - Sprite Rip^2 (his Dream Woods sprite is Kaiba from Yugioh) - Dead
Chao - Original Sprite - Alive
You can't spell "sprite rip" without "RIP"
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Ignoritus »

I'm ok with this ending.

I do like the suggestion of Warmaster and Jeremy making sacrifices instead, but there's one reason I'm still ok with this:

It's so totally in Hex's character.

Hex spent the ENTIRE game running circles around the protagonists. At every turn he was several steps ahead of them. Two of his most established character traits were his willingness to fight by any filthy means necessary, and his lack of ANYTHING to lose.

Then the Hex fight happens. Where Hex is finally brilliantly outmanuevered by... hitting him until he died????
This ending actually JUSTIFIES the hideously anti-climactic ending to the Hex fight. Where Hex seemingly lost all of his wit and trickery instead opting to just fight you head on until you killed him. Completely out of character.

In the end though, this is all just part of Hex's grandest scheme yet. Note how when shutting down the first power source Jeremy deliberately comments on how they don't have to worry at all now that Hex is out of the way. Hex knew he'd die, and let it happen so that they'd let their guard down. Hex displayed once again his established trait of having nothing to lose. Then, once their guard was down, he beat them using a twisted and filthy tactic. Once again, established in his character.

Outsmarting them like this was totally in Hex's character and made perfect sense. Granted, Hex probably would have assumed it would be Jerry and Claire on each reactor with Jeremy forced to watch his friends die horribly from the fourth wall, but that would have been good enough for him.


Honestly I too would have liked to see a different ending, but I don't consider this one downright bad. It's pretty much a "Hex wins" ending in my eyes moreso than a "trying to be deep" ending. The bad guy was smarter than them.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by FrozenQuills »

I've been watching this super on and off but
I guess you can say the plot and its ending was a distorted travesty :D
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