Drakron said:
Nope, it was finding out who he was and correct the whole flawed immortality deal.
And sorry, planes are of absolute aligment ... D&D is about absolutes and it does not matter if someone commited "many sins" and similar jewish-christian crap since as far the planes care what matters is what aligment is the soul.
There is no god or anything to go around punish and reward souls, what you *are* is were you get sent, not what you *did*.
Snicker. Told you he would ignore the game text. What a joke you are, Drakron.
@ DorrieB
What I think *you're* missing is that PS:T is a game, not a book, and in a game, you cannot have a Doomed hero without expecting it to discourage players from replaying the game. Especially when the Doom is so utterly horrendous. You're concerned primarily with what makes the best story. Well and good. I've not quibbled with the fact that the ending to PS:T would be the best ending if PS:T were a book. Heck, I think it's the best ending even though PS:T is a game. But it's just not an ending that invites replaying. It's an ending that discourages it.
Making Oedipus a game would be a collosal failure (for many reasons). The whole point of Oedipus is that no matter what he chose to do with his life, fate would turn his paths to ruin. Everything done to avoid fate in fact brought it inevitably closer. (From his father's actions to his own.) Turned into a game, that would basically play out like the most frustrating form of dialogue trees, where no matter what option you pick, you always go from Node 1 to 2 to 3 to 4.
PS:T is the same way. The ending spits in your face the fact that nothing you did mattered. But it does more than that. By making the final choice not a choice, it robs it of emotional force.
The better analogy, methinks, is to Hector, not to Oedipus. I wrote a poem about Hector once that contained some doggerel about "god-like Achilles in god-wrought armor" and that the wonder was not that Hector fled from fate, but that he turned to meet it head on. Turning to meet your Doom head on is what makes you a heroic figure (rather than just a doomed shmuck). But in PS:T, the *player* doesn't make that choice. So it's meaningless for the player, except as an outside observer.
I think the ending would've been vastly more powerful if we were given a choice. Or, alternatively, if TNO gets to make the choice, rather than the player (an outrageous, outrageous move for a game to make), then at least have that choice be shaped by the personality the player has crafted for his TNO throughout the course of the game. *That* would encourage replay. Can I make a TNO who will accept his doom? Can I make one who will reject it? Can I make one who will reign as a demidemon from the Fortress? Can I make one who will become a wandering hero? Etc.
My debate with you has never been about the *literary* merits of the ending. This arose from someone saying that the ending discouraged replay. I agreed.
Let me take one last stab at this for you. Say I wanted to write a story the point of which was the importance of forgiveness. So I write a story where Person A does so many bad things to Person B, and Person B has to go on some grand adventure to right them (rescue his children, resurrect his wife, rebuild his home, whatever, whatever). It turns out A had some grudge against B because B had done a minor wrong to A decades before. At the end, B faces his tormentor A, whom he has now overcome, and says, "I could avenge myself on you, but that would only continue the cycle of violence. I forgive you, and hope that my forgiveness will end this." A gets up and walks away. The end.
Maybe that's the best way to end the story if it's a book.
But if it's a game, having that ending, and *only* that ending, is outrageous. It's a slap in the face to the player. Because some players don't have ultra-Christian forgiveness powers. Some players are retributivists. Some believe in specific deterrence. Some believe that leaving a villain free to wander about is merely assuaging our own guilt at the risk of others suffering. That may have been the driving motivation for the player throughout the game. The game permits them to play with that justification. But then, when they reach the end, they're denied the opportunity to realize their goal. The game instead says, "The soul that you gave your avatar is not really the soul he had. Sorry. Go play Max Payne II if that's what you want."
That is outrageous. It's an abdication of what a *game writer* is supposed to do. A game writer is not just a story-teller. He's a story-facilitator. Sometimes it's hard to facilitate, so we take shortcuts and just tell stories. But an ending that presents a clear-cut moral choice is the perfect place where the writer has to step back and let the *player* decide what to do. That's because at the game's end, there are no design repercussions to giving the player freedom. Letting me choose to walk away at the end of PS:T, or kill the villain at the end of my hypothetical game, is just as cost-free as letting me choose from a list of 17 options when Ravel asks me what can change the nature of a man. It's challenging the player to make a moral choice, and *trusting* him to make *his* experience meaningful.
To be sure, you don't need to include frivolous endings, like TNO hosltering his axe, grabbing FFG in one arm and Annah in the other and crooning, "Now it's time you saw what my regeneration can *really* do!" The endings should be ones supported by the personalities you let the player develop throughout the game. But there PS:T permits at least two personalities -- a completely self-serving one and a completely save-the-world one -- that would be compatible with endings *other* than the one you like.
So those should be available.
Even if they aren't the ones Sophocles would've picked.
