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DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

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ZephyrBurst
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by ZephyrBurst »

They started out kinda low-key and I feel it was a case of him not knowing that the LP was going to be 150+ videos, and having to come up with more of that. It did slowly escalate at least.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Lostsoldier20 »

ZephyrBurst wrote:They started out kinda low-key and I feel it was a case of him not knowing that the LP was going to be 150+ videos, and having to come up with more of that. It did slowly escalate at least.
Which makes no sense when DT1 lasted 100+ too.

Let's go back to hating on the ending (well not in my case) instead of that guy. One thing I remembered thinking is that it was too easy the Bubbles cleared Jerry's poison with no effort, and Hex using these same words. I kinda feel that, unless Zephyr never introduced the poison in Ch.17, Jerry HAD to die. With how bad the poison got so quickly within the Warship, got worse even during the ending, and the Bubbles were killed already, there seemingly was no way to cure Jerry anymore. While having the Warmaster still be alive and go hero mode, and Jeremy taking the other generator, Jerry was still screwed as far as I can tell. With Hex outwitting everyone at every turn, Chao finding a cure doesn't seem reasonable either.

I can't find an excuse for Claire dying still, though.

Also, I am looking forward to the DT1 update to the controls.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Telamon »

maybe this should be renamed 'the neverending thread' now.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Omega Metroid »

ano0maly wrote:Just wanted to reply to the "Hexor wins at the end" comments. That's a good point indeed. But at the same time, if winning is defined as getting what you sought, it's not a zero-sum game. Hexor winning doesn't mean the good guys lose. They succeeded in rescuing the world from all of the major threats, albeit with implied sacrifices and casualties, which means they mostly won. And as heroes, the protagonists' goal shouldn't be to prevent the enemy from relishing in the outcome - their goal should be "Saved Game". They shouldn't care what Hexor thinks of it, since at this point he would be a sad loser that spins any kind of harm to the good guys as a victory.

That's the reason why I see this as a bitter but acceptable ending and not a bad end. Compared to the actual bad end, which doesn't even feel like you beat the game. For me, the true end resembled the ending of Megaman Zero 4. That been said, I still would have liked a normal end/good end as opposed to a bad end/bittersweet end.
In all honesty, I believe there's reason to suspect that it actually was a zero-sum game, and that the world was never in as much danger as it appeared to be, if you examine Hexor's actions and goals closely enough.
  • First, the Virus appears to be a threat to the world's very existence, but as is later revealed, Hexor modified it to look that way specifically to get Jeremy to reboot the world, so he could take over. This suggests that Hex designs things to appear more dangerous than they actually are, and to throw people off his actual plan.
  • Second, he originally claims he wanted to destroy the world, but later admits he's much less omnicidal than he claims, and merely desires his own death... and Jeremy's, after first killing everyone Jeremy cares about to make him suffer.
  • Third, if I remember correctly, Hex is the one that got the Warmaster to build the Warship. This suggests that it was planned by Hex as a tool, which leads back to the first point.
  • Fourth, CHAOS attacked the Hidden Village to drive home that the Warship had the power to cause large-scale destruction. This is ostensibly a warning to bots not to side with humans, but Hex doesn't really care about fantastic racism all that much...
Considering everything, the most logical conclusion is that the Warship was actually a trap, intended to get Jeremy to leave the fourth wall so he could be killed. Hex took over the Abomination so he could use it to help him escape, and possibly also because he was afraid that it would be able to oppose him; this is hinted at by the parasite taking the Abomination with it, which wouldn't be necessary if there was no chance that it would side with the gang. He infected Jerry with that paralytic poison so that Jerry would be unable to move during the escape, which would force Jeremy to make his move; he also removed Jerry & Claire's abilities as a backup plan, so that Jeremy would still have to come in even if they managed to cure the poison (because neither of them was capable of making their way through the corridors after the Warmaster's room). He attacked the village to guarantee that Jerry & Claire would make their way to the Warship, because he knows Jeremy's always where they are. He enticed the Warmaster both so he would have a workforce to construct the Warship, and so that when Hex was killed, the Warmaster would both unintentionally stall for time, and refuse to stand down, because now he thought he could use the Warship for his own "noble" purposes; both of these properties would prevent the gang from either leaving the Warship before the fun began, or refusing to destroy it. And finally, he set the power sources to overload when they put Jeremy's plan into action (remember, he's a dark copy of Jeremy, so he knew exactly what Jeremy would do in that situation), so that the gang would be forced to stand right beside them to make sure that they didn't take out the entire mainland.

And considering this, it seems liable that the Warship was created for the specific purpose of blowing up with the gang onboard, with everything else he did being done for the sole purpose of guaranteeing that they would be on the Warship, would think it was necessary to blow it up, and would have to stay onboard until it blew. Jerry's paralysis meant that Jerry and Claire wouldn't be able to split up and take care of a reactor each; this guaranteed that Jeremy would have to leave the fourth wall and take care of one of the reactors himselves. And if they managed to cure the poison, the loss of their abilities meant that Jeremy would have to leave the fourth wall anyways, if only to take out the enemies guarding the way. [Alternatively, Chao could've left the fourth wall and sacrificed herself; this would suit Hex just fine, as it would still mean everyone Jeremy cared about was dead.]


tl;dr: The world wasn't in any danger, the Warship was just a trap intended specifically to blow Jerry & Jeremy up; Hex added Claire to the plan when she proved to be a royal pain in his derriere, and paralysed Jerry to ensure her demise, too. The game actually hints at this, when it's revealed that the Virus was really just a trap intended specifically to make them reboot the world so Hex could take over.


There is one thing left unaccounted for, though: It would appear that Hex actually wasn't prepared to deal with Chao; this is evidenced by her consistently being a thorn in his side, and more or less immune to all of his interference. While it's possible that the protagonists could've used this to their advantage (perhaps if she was to talk with the Warmaster, her kinder personality would've been able to convince him to use the Warship to maintain a peace between humans and bots on equal footing, instead of to enforce segregation; this would've eliminated the need to blow it up, preventing Hex's tampering from forcing the gang to sacrifice their lives), by the time they got to the Warmaster, they were too frazzled to think about trying it, and/or hadn't realised that Chao was the one thing Hex was never able to predict, and just what the implications of this were.

----

There are a couple things I'm curious about, though:
  1. We know characters respawn in-universe if they die. Does this include cutscene deaths?
  2. Given the current state of the Darkness, since Chao left the fourth wall in the ending, is she able to go back?
Depending on these points, there's a lot of room for interpretation in the end. Maybe (as it appears) Jerry, Jeremy, and Claire are gone for good, and Chao either left forever or committed suicide. Maybe they're dead for good, and Chao just needs some time to clear her head. Maybe they're dead, but not for good (after all, death is cheap), and Chao went to look for a way to restore them. Maybe they're not dead, but lost, and Chao's gone to look for them. While the first appears most likely, IMO, who knows which is truly the case?
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Minus »

It's a dead horse that's been kicked a thousand times already, but man, that ending...

I'm not sure how I feel. On one hand, I really don't believe that a story/game should always end happily. When it connects to the themes raised throughout the story either in an emotional and logical way, a sad or dark ending can be a powerful way to end a story, and this game did raise a lot of darker themes, particularly during the final nightmare gate, and, actually, I think it's awesome that the game was brave enough to delve into that territory! But with the way the story played out, and that general fourth-wall-breaking lightheartedness and silliness that's been so prevalent in the series since the first game, it just felt really... unexpected and heartbreaking, like there was something missing, especially when compared to the really upbeat and cheerful way the first game had ended.

But, that being said: man. This was a fantastic game, and it always amazes me that a person can have the sheer dedication and imagination to put this kind of thing together when I barely have enough of either of those things to tie my shoes properly! This series was a joy to play/watch, and I hope that you tell us about whatever projects you work on next!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go hug something.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Money »

Omega Metroid wrote:long post
man this just sorta highlights my biggest problem with the writing of this game: shit ending up not being as big of a deal as it was originally introduced to be. that goes directly against the rule of increasing conflict and pacing, making the drama feel cheap and victories feel unearned. the virus hardly does anything but make some vine things happen, the abomination hardly does anything but glitch up a room in the desert, the warmaster hardly does anything antagonistic but fight the heroes at the end, the only one who ever really does anything is hex and a lot of his things are still "he was just making himself look impressive" (the big super attack in the vault, "killing" jerry) or "it wasn't really that bad" ("killing" kirby). and STILL, most of the things he actually did (poison jerry, overload the reactors) don't actually feel like he earned them, but that they were shoehorned into the plot so there could be BAD END. the one plot thing that actually had any real impact was the lead up to and subsequent destruction of the hidden bot village, and even that was mostly just killing off characters we'd just been introduced to (besides the bubble bobble dragons, who were pretty damn one dimensional all in all).
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by ACesspoolofHatred »

MoneyMan wrote:
Omega Metroid wrote:long post
man this just sorta highlights my biggest problem with the writing of this game: shit ending up not being as big of a deal as it was originally introduced to be. that goes directly against the rule of increasing conflict and pacing, making the drama feel cheap and victories feel unearned. the virus hardly does anything but make some vine things happen, the abomination hardly does anything but glitch up a room in the desert, the warmaster hardly does anything antagonistic but fight the heroes at the end, the only one who ever really does anything is hex and a lot of his things are still "he was just making himself look impressive" (the big super attack in the vault, "killing" jerry) or "it wasn't really that bad" ("killing" kirby). and STILL, most of the things he actually did (poison jerry, overload the reactors) don't actually feel like he earned them, but that they were shoehorned into the plot so there could be BAD END. the one plot thing that actually had any real impact was the lead up to and subsequent destruction of the hidden bot village, and even that was mostly just killing off characters we'd just been introduced to (besides the bubble bobble dragons, who were pretty damn one dimensional all in all).
Necroing for a moment to expand on all this. After a bit to stew over it, one of the bigger disappointments I had with Warmaster's pre-boss dialogue is that this was NEVER really brought up there in any consequential capacity or thrown in his face.

Sure, it was kinda indirectly mentioned in passing with how he said he'd lost control of his troops, but it's ultimately feels glossed over in favor of painting him as a wholly tragic visionary leader-type figure. It's a pretty big hole in that "doin' it for robotkind!" narrative he's pulling there, and I'm sad no one there really made much of an effort to call him on it.

Another issue: Pretty much all the bot-related character drama (bot sacrifices, Kirby getting straight-up murdered, the bot village massacre, the Abomination, Warmaster, etc.) is directly undermined by the epilogue. My best guess is that it came out of an attempt to pose a "of what manner is a machine" sorta question, but the plot up to that point was doing that well enough by itself. We didn't need that whole spiel about how the bots' programming worked, it reduced them to just lines of code restricted to following set routines and objectives, and I feel like it entirely robbed those previous moments of any and all of the emotional heft that they had before.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by ZephyrBurst »

ACesspoolofHatred wrote:Another issue: Pretty much all the bot-related character drama (bot sacrifices, Kirby getting straight-up murdered, the bot village massacre, the Abomination, Warmaster, etc.) is directly undermined by the epilogue. My best guess is that it came out of an attempt to pose a "of what manner is a machine" sorta question, but the plot up to that point was doing that well enough by itself. We didn't need that whole spiel about how the bots' programming worked, it reduced them to just lines of code restricted to following set routines and objectives, and I feel like it entirely robbed those previous moments of any and all of the emotional heft that they had before.
So I usually don't respond to these since I'd rather not chime in with 'word of god' shenanigans and let these discussions play out. I feel I'd kinda taint the discussion, but I did want to note something about what you said here. It's something I've certainly thought of myself and that, if there were anything I'd retcon from the game, it would be that epilogue. Actually my original build sent to the testers that had the end didn't even have that post-credits bit. A future update will most likely have that bit either removed entirely or very rewritten. I completely agree with that last statement.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by jaxter0987 »

Omega Metroid wrote:There are a couple things I'm curious about, though:
  1. We know characters respawn in-universe if they die. Does this include cutscene deaths?
  2. Given the current state of the Darkness, since Chao left the fourth wall in the ending, is she able to go back?
Depending on these points, there's a lot of room for interpretation in the end. Maybe (as it appears) Jerry, Jeremy, and Claire are gone for good, and Chao either left forever or committed suicide. Maybe they're dead for good, and Chao just needs some time to clear her head. Maybe they're dead, but not for good (after all, death is cheap), and Chao went to look for a way to restore them. Maybe they're not dead, but lost, and Chao's gone to look for them. While the first appears most likely, IMO, who knows which is truly the case?
I think they're dead for good but Chao refuses to accept that and went on a journey to find them. Probably vaguely clinging onto the hope that Jerry and Jeremy really did "figure out something".

My reasoning for why Jerry and Claire respawn is due to Jeremy's intervention. Since he was no longer on the 4th wall for that last segment, no respawning Jerry and Claire anymore. My question (kind of rhetorical at this point) is "Why did Chao leave the 4th wall?". She could have easily assumed the role of demigod and attempted to alter the world for the better. She was at least as apt as Jeremy was at peeking at things that shouldn't be seen, even if she didn't have the finesse to alter characteristics as well as Jeremy was able to.

Chao definitely didn't commit suicide. She would make Claire's final sacrifice meaningless if she ended her own life. So she must have left for SOME reason (if not to look for them) and whatever that reason is, I can't fathom why she wouldn't have been better off on the 4th wall while pursuing it.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Plutia »

is there a reason this is still stickied
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Grounder »

Nekoishi wrote:is there a reason this is still stickied
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by raocow »

I didn't realise it still was, haha.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by metasomnia? »

raocow wrote:I didn't realise it still was, haha.
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Even if it's not relevant anymore, I had many a giggle when I looked through the let's play forum and saw it still prominently displayed at the top
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ends differently

Post by Count Mohawk »

So now that a couple of years have passed since rao's playthrough of this thing ended, I have a question: Has raocow at least seen the "true ending" Zephyr added some time later? It ends on a significantly more upbeat note than the previous "good" ending.

I dunno that I'd want or need him to play it through for the channel as such, given that most of the new content is at least Chapter-19-tier difficulty and this is not the kind of game you should jump into the deep end on after taking a 3-year break. Nonetheless, after putting 60+ hours into the game and 100+ into the triloigi I would think it's be worth a watch at the least.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ends differently

Post by Chirei »

Count Mohawk wrote: 4 years ago So now that a couple of years have passed since rao's playthrough of this thing ended, I have a question: Has raocow at least seen the "true ending" Zephyr added some time later? It ends on a significantly more upbeat note than the previous "good" ending.
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Sebby19 »

You should take a look at the Unfinished LPs topic that I just created a few days ago. That will answer your question there.

Edit: Ninja'd
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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by ano0maly »

It wouldn't be blind if he saw it, would it? He probably wouldn't come back to the game if he already saw the epilogue.

I have a treat for people who know what the new content is. It's a teaser video for the epilogue. For those who don't know, I don't recommend watching it yet unless you don't mind spoilers, as it gives away some of the plot.


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Re: DT3 - raocow and the game that ended

Post by Sebby19 »

For anyone combing through the archives, raocow picked the game back up in July 2019, to play the added epilogue, thus extending the original LP. A new thread was created, so the discussion can be continued here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18701 :)
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