The Deponia trilogy is an homage, a tribute, a parody, a satire, a send-off, a eulogy and a "FUCK YOU!" to the adventure games of old.
Yes, I'm serious.
The most memorable adventure game protagonists we know are the charmable losers, the underdogs with the forgiveable character flaws. Guybrush Threepwood, Roger Wilco, Larry Laffer. They're kinda pathetic, but they somehow manage to save the day and get the girl, happy ending, everyone comes away smiling. Ben from Full Throttle is a tough guy with an attitude, but he also has a heart and a sense of justice. By almost total contrast, Rufus is designed
on purpose to be the way he is; Egotistical, self-centered and non-caring, except for the most base of reasons: To live in paradise and get the girl. His revolting persona not only drives the plot forward in fits and sputters, but also often brings it crashing to a screeching halt at times, while annoying everyone involved, especially the player. (I wonder how many people have ragequitted from Deponia because of him?)
The best example of Rufus's deliberate design is Bozo. When he's introduced he's just a normal guy with a home and a job that happens to run into Rufus and gets wrapped up in his "quest". By the third part he's a nervous wreck, having lost his home AND his job, been coaxed into seeing his violently abusive girlfriend again, moved back in with his parents, is seeing a therapist, and finally loses it when Rufus blindingly tries to "cure" him, clueless to the fact that it's
him that's Bozo's problem, who's ruined his life. And that's just one instance in where Deponia hammers in the fact that Rufus is insufferable.
The game also deliberately recycles puzzles and gimmicks from earlier adventure games, like the ability in the third part to switch between three characters at once like in Day of the Tentacle, or the time paradox puzzle from Escape from Monkey Island, or the Monkey Kombat abomination, or the Sierra On-Line "death prompt" (which Monkey Island 1
also made fun of, BTW) and many many more. I'm not saying that every puzzle in Deponia has been done before, the secret knock puzzle is a brilliant one, for example. The Deponia games take the LucasArts school of thought when it comes to punishing players for making mistakes: By not punishing them at all. In the Sierra games you usually couldn't go a whole minute without finding 3 different ways to kill your character and forcing a reload, in Deponia you can't screw up, you can't fail, and you can't kill off Rufus to vent your rage and anger, no matter how much you want to... except, of course, when you shouldn't.
Personally, I've always hated both these schools of thought. The Sierra one punishes you over and over for the simplest of mistakes, turning you into a glittering gem of hatred, while the LucasArts one doddles the player and leads him by the hand, preventing him from ever making a mistake. It's because Adventure Games were subjected to the extremes of both these schools that the genre died in the first place. Deponia is no exception, but it wouldn't be able to serve its purpose if it tried otherwise.
How the third part ends is a clear message to many players: Not every story has a happy ending, not every story ends the way you want it to, even in the fairy tales. Sometimes the ending is a kicker. Take the Quest for Glory series as an example. The protagonist's goal is clear: He wants to be a Hero. By the end of the series he is the Hero of Spielburg, the Prince of Shapeir and about to become the ruler of Silmaria after being one of two competitors to survive the Rites of Rulership. But then the game gives the player a choice: To take the throne, or turn it down. The game actually gives the player the option at the end to just walk away from the goal, when absolutely nothing stands in the way of the Hero and his Quest. Let me ask you: How many of you turned it down and passed the throne over to Elsa? I did, out of curiosity. You can imagine how that made me feel afterwards. But in this case I had a choice how the story ended, Deponia isn't so kind.
Sometimes. Things. Just. Don't. Work. Out.
One just has to let go. RPS's article on Goodbye Deponia clearly shows that they didn't get it (no surprise) and I'm pretty certain most people playing Deponia didn't get it either. But then again, you have to had played the Adventure Games of old back when they were new to see what Deponia is doing: It's reminding us just how annoying, convoluted, frustrating and outright messed-up these games used to be... but it also takes the time sometimes to remind us why we love these games. Some of the jokes from those games sit with us more than 20 YEARS after we played them. I just have to type "three-headed monkey" and EVERYONE familiar with the phrase knows what I'm talking about. Deponia has a few of these moments, but I fear that most of them will be lost to the impact that the ending will have upon everybody.
I want to write more, but it's 6 in the morning for me and I need to sleep. But I'll end this with
the emoticon that described the Deponia trilogy, and my opinion of it, perfectly: