Game Ending?

Well, I was thinking that the game would have a few definite endings, most of which would take multiple gameplays to get to. These are the definite endings I thought of so far (in order of increasing number of gameplays it should take to accomplish them):
- The PC abandons Xenallure to go 'home', wherever they were before being summoned.
- The PC completes all development of the human settlement as a human.
- The PC becomes a spiritual, finds out that he/he/it is actually 'the oldest spiritual', and goes back in time to help the island and humanity survive the apocalyptic war.

Heh, the first one seems too depressing to do. It would need to be done in a way that might really invite the player to take that path. In other words, it would have to be relatively complex; no multiple choice Indiana Jones style stuff, because of course the PC won't just give up. Plus, as there's no going on from this one, it will still have to come after a good deal of game play.

I do like the second one. It's something that I could easily see a player doing. However, the PC will need to *not know* that he could become a techno or magical for this option to be interesting. That is, given the option, I would choose to try new things instead of helping out the humans. Still, this is a path I would take the second (full) play-through.

The last one is cool, and probably the most important one. Still, within this, will the PC be able to fall back from being a Spiritual? (Perhaps if this happens, you end up going back to help out the humans with their settlement. Hmm.) Wow, and even going back to stop the war... That would be an incredibly tough choice. There would have to be some sort of new and potentially catastrophic event in the near future for this to be viable. Otherwise, the PC would be destroying the lives of ALL the magicals and technos (err, maybe the Spirituals too, but who knows) for selfish reasons. Of course, he/she *could* do this, but I wouldn't. However, if the Magicals and Technos were facing a destruction that only a quick decision to go back to the past could stop.

How is the first one depressing? Personally I think it's boring, but if any of our players happened to be more Xenophobes than Xenophiles, trying to get home would be the goal they naturlly wanted to pursue wouldn't it?

Quote:

Original post by sunandshadow How is the first one depressing? Personally I think it's boring, but if any of our players happened to be more Xenophobes than Xenophiles, trying to get home would be the goal they naturlly wanted to pursue wouldn't it?

Well. I suppose. But it seems like that would work against the purpose of the game. Anyways, it's nothing I would try except on a later playthrough.

Well, I think it would seem strange if we didn't talk at all about the possibility of the PC going home, and just assumed that none of our players would want to go home. If we are gong to talk about the possibility of going home, there are three options: make it impossible, make it dificult, or make it easy. If we make it difficult, that means we have to spend a lot of writing on the obstacles to getting home and the path the PC must take to accomplish it, which I don't want to do. If we make it impossible, we have to think of a good reason the summoning can't just be reversed. Thus I think we should make it easy, an ending which can be reached on the first gameplay for impatient, xenophobic players. Maybe we should consider this the 'booby prize' ending, which acting cruel and callous towards the RNPCs pushes the player towards - I think it fits into the purpose of the game that way.

"Booby prize" ending?

Yeah, you know, like the "How sad, too bad... sucker!" ending. ;) Like the adventure game Rama had 2 different 'death' endings where the author came out, made fun of you, and talked a little bit about the game. Or in games where you get a different ending depending on how long it takes you to finish the game, the 'booby prize' ending would be the one yu get if you take an absurdly long time.

That's great! I love it [grin].

I've gotten the "You took too long, you moron!" endings before, always fun.

Had some ideas for the text for this ending:

Interior monologue:
"Yay, I made it home! I had to sacrifice my chance to romance an alien beauty or help repopulate the human race, but it was worth it, because here I am at last! Ah, home... skyscrapers, pollution, traffic, no magic, no nanobots, impending bionuclear war I probably won't survive... but at least I can look forward to getting up at 6 am tomorrow to go to work!"

Response choices:
(I'm happy to be here and have that crazy annoying adventure be over. Really. Lalala, happy as a lark, that's me.)
(What was I THINKING?!? I wanna go BACK!!!)

Haha! I love it.

By the way, you're in charge of all the dialogue [grin]. I have trouble being funny if it isn't spontaneous. Seriously though, your stuff has made me laugh more than anything else I've read in quite a while!

I gotta write it _all_?!? o_@ lol Really though, a lot of people don't find my writing particularly funny, I think you just have the same sort of sense of humor I do.