That…that was magnificent. It was so, so hard to choose, and there was so much I wished could have been different, and what there was instead was so perfectly right. I’d give real money to have that happy ending where I could save everyone, but I’m glad Failbetter won’t let me do that. In twelve years of playing this amazing game, this is by far the most emotionally invested and moved I’ve ever been, the personal and the large-scale both, hitting me in the heart and in the…whatever organ is responsible for reacting to great themes and resonance? This one is going to stay with me forever.
My excessively long in-depth reaction to the big decision/ending, cut so as not to inflict on the unwilling. Spoilers still covered inside.
I spoiled myself with the wiki so I’d know fully what I was choosing going into this, and I’m glad I did; I would have felt worse if I’d thought maybe I could save everyone and then lost the Shepherd or the Duchess. I let Tatterdemalion die and told Storm to change. But this hurt! Going through all of my past decisions, seeing mostly Transforms piling up and making me realize what I’d already decided from my choices up to now, which aligns with what I was already planning to probably decide (even though I really, really didn’t want to; I so desperately hoped I could save him, at least a little), and then that last one hit me like I guess Storm should - faced with a similar choice myself, I had chosen to die rather than be changed. Fuck! Can I really tell him now that everything should change!? Goddamnit, emergent gameplay came for my bones!
And I was still wavering until getting to make my case, where asking his own reasons lands up arguing against his case, and reaching out to him argues against his case, and I’m sure. I still don’t want to make it - though it sounds like he’d be destroyed along with Storm if I chose Cessate anyway, just maybe a little less decisively - but it feels inevitable, I’m just pointing out that what he wants is already impossible, the change has already happened and proven its value, and he knows it. And it’s so unfair, in a way. But it’s true. This was so painful, and so perfect.
Other good bits:
-running through the Stacks faster and faster, desperately trying to find an escape as the Duchess gets more and more frustrated
-Lost Burgundy’s echoes of happier cards
-meeting the Red Queen again, almost friendly, feeling almost fond. I landed up refusing, but I had doubts.
-the Marrow was super-cool. I’m looking forward to exploring it more! Normally, I’m not that into the Sunless Sky-type lore, too abstract for my taste, but here it feels both personal and important to the large-scale of things my world touches on.
-The Forlorn Shepherd’s loyal defense of Tatterdemalion
-Summer and Tatterdemalion’s rivalry still just as nostalgically, ridiculously, bittersweetly petty as ever even with her on the stand arguing about the fate of everything
-Tatterdemalion’s goodbye hit me in the heart so hard
-What the thunder says from now on, speaking of change. Feels like everything about the Neath, all my time up till now, has been arguing for this.
