Post by DATLC in Ending in failure

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Hello! I appreciate the feedback.

The way Game Over works in very similar to the original in that you won’t be getting much in the way of resolution if you “fail” to even bring the Divine to Serault. I wasn’t willing to change something as major and core to the original as an ending. You fail, you get the end-game passage and that’s it.

That said: you know you can rewind as many times as you want, right? Change a handful of choices until your Dignity (if you got the high Twilight ending), Prosperity (if high Peril) or Freedom (if high Revolution) are above 30, and voi a la - “bad ending” avoided. Fun fact: in the original, you had to pay real money to be able to skip the Game Over! Not kidding.

You can also use the Autosave to return to the start of Chapter 7, which should give you a ton of options to raise the corresponding Attribute(s) to a level higher than 30. If you tell me what your end stats were, I can help guide you out towards a better ending.

Finally: which difficulty were you on? Casual Mode helps a ton if you “lack the patience for failure”, as the start screen says! On Normal, it’s intended that you may get a “bad ending” almost half of the time if you do not carefully balance out your stats - rewinding if needed.

Seriously, rewinding is just overpowered.

PJOZeus62 days ago(-1)

The thing is though this isn't an arcade machine, you can't just pay to skip the game over, it doesn't even feel like a failure it's far more akin to a tape getting corrupted at the climax - again it's not like you and your lineage were destroyed, there was no finality in it (which there shouldn't be just based on her choice alone), just simply that the divine didn't feel like it and that's it - the forest didn't eat you, your kingdom didn't fall apart to pirates, and the peasantry didn't rise up - you're still there chugging along, it's only that the curtain was pulled on it

Yes I understood that choices can be reversed, this is the only way to even get out of your chronicle, and looked at some alternate text throughout the game.

I believe it's fair to say that most people play these kind of games to live out their own stories. You can't go back and revert something at chapter 3 for better stats (even if you could) because it may drastically affect something later, for example the Dowager surviving and bringing some misguided youths before you leaning more into the Iconoclast arc

'30' is hardly the high mark the game implied for making it through but even so by the start of chapter 7 that may not have been possible for me for I don't even remember why at this point but something tanked my dignity hard, as like a reasonable choice I would have made anyway

I was playing on Normal. I don't mind failure at all, can enjoy a casual playthrough as much as something Kaizo where the world wants you dead.
Again ultimately this is a story game, a player goes through it to experience their story, the consequences of our choices as the character. You cannot just rewind every 5 seconds and pick the most beneficial choice in the moment because then you aren't playing your story, you're either playing someone elses, or just trying to abuse mechanical design. I could abuse a game to shit for the purpose of getting an intended ending, but that's not what anyone is here for
The 'Bad' ending is no ending at all, not even for the character, it's just disconnecting the player for nothing - you say the original allowed you to pay to carry on past it anyway, but at least there would have been that option. It could've been a horrid ending for all I care (in line with the existing game, not original writing just for the sake of it) but it'd still be an ending for the character. A player shouldn't be treated like that in a standalone and dismissing hours

DATLC62 days ago(+1)

Hi again. I will try to address some of your points, and explain the rationale behind some of the design choices here!

you’re still there chugging along, it’s only that the curtain was pulled on it

Canonically Failbetter Games had to force you to “chug along” as Serault, and her Marquis, have a minor role in Dragon Age: Inquisition (aka the game this one is a prequel/interquel of). That’s why you don’t have an apocalypse-sort of ending even in worst scenarios.

You can’t go back and revert something at chapter 3 for better stats (even if you could) because it may drastically affect something later

This is one of those gamebooks where you are supposed to play again and try different approaches if you want to see different/better endings, and getting a less-than-ideal ending on your first run is absolutely a genre stapple. Though perhaps the current threshold IS too harsh?

I will make more test runs, but feel free to share your own endgame stats, it would be helpful!

‘30’ is hardly the high mark the game implied for making it through

Sorry, the number is not important actually, the flavor text next to it says it all. Did you read the Tutorial?

“If your Threats rise too high, you may be taken to the Game Over screen. You may get one final chance at redemption if, depending on your situation: your Dignity isn’t Pitiable or Despicable, your Prosperity isn’t Desperate or Shattered, or your Freedom isn’t Wretched or Oppressed.”

If you had a Dignity Game Over, your Dignity was Pitiable or Despicable (i.e. less than 30) and your Twilight was above the (appropriately named) “Midnight looms” threshold. Hmm, I really need to test this more.

I was playing on Normal. I don’t mind failure at all

Oh. Ok. This is useful information.

You cannot just rewind every 5 seconds and pick the most beneficial choice in the moment because then you aren’t playing your story

Sometimes our choices, guided purely by role-playing, lead to “failure” scenarios like these. Perhaps the game is poorly-balanced. Perhaps you just chose poorly (no offense, I also got bad endings myself! lol).

Perhaps it’s a bit of both?

you say the original allowed you to pay to carry on past it anyway, but at least there would have been that option

I made Casual Mode for cases like this. Did you know you can just skip over that Game Over passage if you were on Casual? Bad stats will take you to that screen anyway, but you can always just jump out of it on Casual.

I am feeling like half of your core problems would have been solved by playing Casual. Why “half”? Well…

The ‘Bad’ ending is no ending at all

… because - spoilers ahead - all endings are sort of like this, even the best ones. You won’t be getting e.g. a slideshow or cutscene saying what happened to every character. You get a passage describing the gist of what happens to Serault now, and that’s it. Your imagination must do the rest.

This is the half of your issue that I cannot fix, and I am very sorry for that.

A player shouldn’t be treated like that in a standalone

Like I had mentioned, this isn’t a standalone. This is a pre-existing work, a sequel to Dragon Age II and a prequel to Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Serault’s story continued in the latter… to a degree.

And I concur, the player shouldn’t be treated like that. We still don’t know whether the Hero of Ferelden from Dragon Age: Origins managed to find a cure to the Calling, and what on earth happened to Hawke after Inquisition. These guys had AAA budgets behind their games, and still got very little closure from BioWare.

Between Failbetter’s text-based low-budget and me - who teaches History to schoolchildren for a living - spending about 130 hours on this preservation project for free, your Marquis never had a chance! lol

I am sure you liked (most of?) your journey since you clearly cared enough to be quite annoyed about a bad ending… but damn mate it’s the Dragon Age curse, vague-ass endings, so we either enjoy the journey despite unclear destinations or we just move on. :S

By the way, I just finished a quick test run with zero planning, clicking mostly at random. Got into the same Game Over as you did, but had plenty of Dignity to escape. Narrowly escaped a Revolution Game Over though, by 1 point (I would just have rewinded 3 or 4 passages to deal with the Iconoclast differently if that bothered me to be honest). I am on Normal Mode too. https://imgur.com/a/4JDPMon

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