Oh come on, you’re misconstruing everything people have said. Nobody has been advocating sunshine and lollipops for everything, and absolutely nothing about tragedy needs to be pointless. The pointlessness of the tragedy in this removed the tragedy from it altogether for me.
(minor old story spoilers here, I was vague but spoilering just in case)
I mentioned the Presbyterate Adventuress. She had a pyrrhic triumph, and the Disgraced Bandit Chief can have one, too. The Cheesemonger and the Comtessa dealt with moral quandaries. Romeo and Juliet mended their family through their death. Hamlet and Macbeth deal with morals and philosophy. What does this story give us? A vague glimpse at their backstory before a meaningless death and a shrug. Nothing was gained, not as a character development or for me as a reader. The emotional impact you’re talking about was just dead empty for me. I felt much more for my disgraced Rattus Faber bandit chief, the Cheesemonger, and the Adventuress. For me, it genuinely felt like “My daughter left flowers on my wife’s grave, guess I gotta murder her in Russian Roulette. Now time to grind until the dice roll.”
[quote=MidnightVoyager]I think I realized why, aside from some big speedbumps in the narrative that struck me as unconvincing and forced, this story just particularly rubbed me the wrong way. This is just me, but I prefer there to be literally any "sweet" with my bitterness. If I see a tragedy, I’d like it to be at least beautiful. This one’s just utterly pointless. Nothing is learned by any surviving parties. Nothing is gained by anyone for having this experience. Someone will die. Everyone is hurt. That is that, and nothing more. I can’t even really feel sad for it? It’s just a dull, nihilistic inevitability.
See: The Presbyterate Adventuress in Sunless Sea. Her storyline? I liked that. She dies in the end, yes. No, it doesn’t kill the Vake. But she dies a goddamn hero to the nuns, having made a mark on the Vake. I felt like I got something out of that. This just felt like "welp, life’s crap and then we die. The End." Even for the "good" ending. And maybe I feel like that’s true, especially after a year like this, but I’d rather my escapist media be SLIGHTLY more optimistic (or at least edifying) than a major depressive disorder.
But most of all, I definitely think it was harmed greatly by the long wait building up expectations and making people imagine theories for how it will end. I think building up expectations can be especially rough for a downer ending where there is no light or hope.[/quote]
But is there no light or hope in closure? The constable and the cheery man were already locked into their danse macabre when she returns to London: and at her mother’s tomb she seems to indicate that there is great importance in remembering and respecting the memory of those who, for better or worse, shaped us along our way. Seeing her through all the way to the end and letting her play the game (no matter the outcome) was I think my way of paying my respect to her friendship and trust, and to the part of my character that her story shaped. She may finally rest at the end, one way or another: in the place of tension and conflict, both of love and of principles peace is restored. And this, at least to me, did offer catharsis, perhaps even more from having refused to affect the outcome. This was her road to the end of her conflict, and the most I could do as a friend was to help her along the way. I don’t think there is any nihilism about watching, and not tipping the scales in her favour: to me it seems perhaps the most meaningful way you can help her earning the closure both she and her father has long desired.
It’s a geometric series. The average number of times a player who’s dead-set on getting the golden ending would have to reset the story is a grand total of one. So, it’d be 20 Fate. USFiG was 39, 19 to start and 20 to make amends. A regular ES is 45 to play and 25 to redo, presumably armed with spoilers, and that if the story even has an outcome you like. The devils are 50 Fate each and they’re 150 times worse than best in slot.
Look, I do extreme sports IRL. Friends dying is not fun or "refreshing", it’s in fact exactly like the story: they’re not around anymore and that’s it, the world is a little worse on average.
Players who don’t want to reroll their bad ending can just not reroll one. How is that even a problem.
Also, most stories in the FL have permanent outcomes, they’re simply not bad and no one’s complaining.
Not being invited to one of my character’s few friends’ funeral has let me a little morose, and wondering if anyone would attend my character’s funeral - or if there’d be anyone left, given their apparent aptitude for getting their loved ones killed.
(sorry, quoting doesn’t work for me anymore on the forums for some reason) @Christophe: There’s no light or hope or closure in what is merely an ending. The end of a story is no more catharsis than a period in a sentence, especially not if the rest of the story doesn’t satisfy or convince.
They both want closure, but does this REALLY give it to either of them in any way other than “the other person is no longer here”? It doesn’t feel like it does. The Last Constable still has her crusade. The Cheery Man still has his work. They both still have lost the mother/wife. Now they’ve both just lost more. At best, their bitterness towards each other can just turn inward now that they’ve killed its former target, but we’re unlikely to see much fallout since one or both could be dead.
And I don’t really feel like I’m being a good friend if I support them either. Generally speaking, when my friends want to do terrible things for terrible reasons, I try a bit harder to talk them out of it. It’s one thing to respect your friend’s choices. It’s another to just let them load a gun and aim it at their head.
I’ll admit, the ending is the hardest part of the story in a way, and I’d say a tragic ending is particularly difficult to nail. But I’ve loved many tragedies. This just wasn’t one of those. And I reiterate, the long wait really hurt it. But I (and others) did have what I feel like are legitimate problems with the unsatisfying nature of the story that I’d like them to at least consider the next time they go for a tragedy, specifically ways that other tragedies felt better than this one.
I’ll even add another tragedy that was kinda similar to this one that also felt better, from Dragon Age 2 of all the bloody things:
If you’re rivals with Fenris and help him kill his former master, he finds out how hollow revenge is. It solved nothing. It did nothing to stop him from hurting. He has to find out how to move on.
I would have liked something like that much more, honestly, but it wouldn’t allow for the whole random death thing. It would also make more sense for a character piece like this story was, where you make a friend and stick it out to help them.
Consider all players that are willing to reset the story until they get the desired ending:
50% will get it the first time.
50% of the rest (i.e. 25%) will succeed after one reset.
50% of the rest (i.e. 12.5%) will succeed after a second reset.
Etc.
The average number of resets needed will be 1 (though obviously something will need to try many times).[/quote]
There will still be a number of people who reset multiple times. So it would still be an exploitative system.
@MidnightVoyager: But I don’t think - and this may really be an imression gained from personal interpretation than from content - that this is simply about revenge. This is a family torn apart, but still secretly a family, bound by among other things, as you said, loss of a loved one, and yet they have struggled against each other without hope of reconciliation for years. My point is not that they wouldn’t blame themselves for their lives after the other’s death, but that they probably already have been bittered of their actions (against somebody whom they probably feel they should love) to the point that the game is the least painful course of action. The game, which, I must add, is not a duel. They both submit willingly to it to end their conflict: in a way they both accept death over whatever future they may have together. To me this signified that they both admit to having been dead now for a while, since what they have now, the conflict, in which every step must tear at their heart a bit, is not life. They resign this life for an end to their war: and maybe they will have to live with their memories, but both of them have shown a great capacity of doing so.
I have unfortunately never completed dragon age: but you have mentioned Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Macbeth, and all of these plays reflect extensively on the audience’s role as a medium which remembers and learns from the way their heroes choose to end their struggles. Thinking about this I was also reminded a bit of the death of Sirius Black in Harry Potter: when a friend of mine first read it, she was very upset with the novel and the author in general for killing Sirius: and my argument then, as now, was that he at that point has already been dead, most of all, to himself.
I mean, all that you’ve said kinda sounds like you agree with me but like it instead? You use words that make it sound pretty, but it’s just utterly dire and devoid of anything other than depression.
It’s not necessarily revenge, but the story to a point (on the Cheery Man’s side) made me wonder why they were so keen on this. It REALLY seemed like he was just going to murder his kid because she came back to London to put flowers on her mom’s grave. Maybe the Constable’s side made more sense!
I don’t feel for a second like one or the other dying will help even if they are dead inside already. Especially then. You might as well go for the double death in that case. Being complicit in the death of their loved one, even if they’re bitter toward each other, can only make things worse, even if they didn’t do it directly. Their war is ended, but the reason for that war is still alive in their heads.
What have I learned from it? Nothing, so I don’t really matter as a medium. I got absolutely nothing out of this story except for a vague sense of irritation, depression, and wasted everything.
(also sorry, I’ve never read or seen Harry Potter, so your example is going over my head)
Not sure if this has been answered since I see a lot of unhappy people but I have a question. I’ve been away and seeing 13 pages in this thread is daunting when skimming for an answer so I apologize if this has been covered but I seem to have gotten myself stuck. I went into Gathering Cantigaster Venom and backed out because I did not have enough actions at the time to prepare. I went back into it later to see that it wouldn’t let me click either option anymore. I figured since it mentioned a heist that I would head to the Flit and prepare for a heist that way. That didn’t work either. I am still locked out of this. Is this the block I face that FBG put in to prevent me from reaching the ending or am I missing something? edited by heavensdark on 10/23/2017
I think they took the block out when they made the change. You might want to e-mail support at support@failbettergames.com about it. Some people have had problems progressing the story/
I don’t profess to be even minutely as versed in FL lore as others who post here. Having reached a certain age, my brain no longer absorbs and stores information as well as it did in my youth. Frankly, I don’t give a fig that I can’t remember all the nuances of characters and events. The writing is lovely, and that’s all I really care about.
That being said, I am quite satisfied with the conclusion of this story. It was clear to me from the beginning that this story would not end happily. How could it? A father who raised a daughter to uphold and defend a code of honor, even when that code contradicted his own. He could not change her allegiance to upholding the law, any more than she could change his from flouting the law. How else should two family members who espouse two diametrically opposed viewpoints resolve their differences? I could not imagine a more apropos ending than the two facing each other in the manner that would be familiar, even honorable, to them both. Their tremulous relationship needed to be resolved - how else but through permanent death?
[quote=Anne Auclair]
There will still be a number of people who reset multiple times. So it would still be an exploitative system.[/quote]
Agreed (on the number of times, not necessarily about it being exploitative).
I just wanted to explain why the expected average number of reset attempts would be 1.
I think maybe a limit to one reset would be fine? I mean, some people might be like me and decided they wanted to swap sides at some point before the expansion even came out.
Due to being spoilered into the endings (of my own volition, mind!) and all the ruckus surrounding this story, I’ve decided to sit the whole thing out. I’ve seen the mirrored tomb with the Last Constable, agreed to help her out…and there that gold-bordered story will stay, at the top of Ladybones Road, unfinished while I saunter off back to Court to write novels and stories and so forth. I’m not averse to tragedies, per say, but it seems there’s a lot of confusion and mixup between the themes of the story, the mechanics of the story, and how those two relate to each other.
And seeing as I haven’t seen anyone else confess to it in this thread, I figure I might as well confess: part of the reason I support the ability to reset the story for Fate, as well as the choice to switch sides, is founded in sheer simple greed. I have the greedy need to run through this tragedy, finish the heartbreaking story whose first half I pretty much did…two years ago now, I think?, potentially lose my Stiff-Backed Young Lady in the process…and, if it happens, gain that sweet sweet Last Constable’s Cudgel (or whatever the name is).
…and then do it again, with the Cheery Man. And again. And again. Because nothing says ‘Treachery of Clocks’ like collecting the weapons of two fallen friends (who are mutual enemies), somehow gaining those fallen friends back as companions, and in general hoarding companions and weapons like nobody’s business. Terrible selfish reasons, I know. But there is still a hunger. edited by Hotshot Blackburn on 10/23/2017