Bethesda delivers more anticlimactic endings with Fallout 4

After barely paying attention to Fallout 4‘s main campaign storyline for nearly two months, I rushed through it over the course of two days during my holiday time off at the end of December 2015. Not necessarily because I wanted to, but I wanted to experience it, at the very least, for myself before having any details unearthed while listening to the numerous “Game of the Year” podcasts popping up online right around now. Unfortunately, I really disliked the ending I got and, strangely enough, wasn’t even aware that I was moving through the final mission, similar to what happened in Rage, wherein I think things are just beginning to unravel, but in reality they are winding down.

Let it be known here and now that I’ll be talking a bit about my Fallout 4 playthrough, and there will be spoilers in terms of factions and quests and quests for factions and how there are no more quests for specific factions because of the quests I decided to do. Got it? Okay, let’s roll out. I’m speaking to Dogmeat, by the way, not you.

The sole survivor of Vault 111 in my Fallout 4 is a bearded man who prefers to use a silenced pistol until things go haywire, and then any gun–usually a damage-heavy shotgun–will do the trick when the bad guys/girls/monsters get too close for comfort. He also loves collecting coffee mugs out in the wild, hanging up paintings of cats everywhere, and, most importantly, befriended Nick Valentine early on, before the quests became the sort that demand you make separate save sessions. Y’know, in case everything goes wrong.

Anyways, when I play a roleplaying game, I roleplay–shocking, I know. So, for my character, a reasonable man who ensured that Nick Valentine got answers to the questions nibbling away at his synthetic mind, I ended up siding the Institute. From the very start, the Institute is portrayed as evil incarnate, kidnapping people from the Commonwealth and replacing humans with metal lookalikes. That said, I had already seen the good that Synths could be by the time I reached the Institute in my playthrough, some fifty-plus hours in, and after exploring the facilities beneath C.I.T., I was a believer that the world above needed these people to thrive. Sorry, Brotherhood of Steel, but it’s true.

No, really sorry, Brotherhood of Steel. See, by siding with the Institute, the final missions for this decision demand you murder and eradicate every last member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Ugh. As well as everybody in The Railroad, an organization I had only briefly interacted with via the main quest. The Minute Men were allowed to continue existing, not viewed as any tangible threat. I looked up what happens when siding with the other factions, and you, more or less, are forced to killed others to ensure the strength and longevity of your chosen faction. I’m not a fan of this–at all. Sure, my sole survivor has killed bandits and raiders and plenty of too-far-gone ghouls, but has never once shot an innocent bystander. That’s not the type of person he is.

I will say, murdering all of the Brotherhood of Steel was a whole lot easier to do–gameplay-wise and morally–than the Railroad. Perhaps it is due to all their armor and weapons and advancements that they feel like a foe on equal footing with my sole survivor and his brood of Synth assassins. Murdering all of the Railroad really hit a disgusting chord with me; I walked into their base as a friend and left as a ghost, bodies piled here and there. I did not loot a single soul. I did not take anything from anywhere. I did what I had to do, apologizing before each and every V.A.T.S. headshot, and I got out of there. I wish there was some other way. In Fallout: New Vegas, and I think Fallout 3 as well, if your charisma and speech skills are strong enough, you can basically talk your way to the end and around a big ol’ bloodbath. Doesn’t seem to be the case here, and that is a major bummer, especially since I unlocked a ton of perks related to these skills, thinking there would be some options down the line.

Here’s the thing. Bethesda does not have a strong history with the main campaigns and conclusions to its games. You are scarcely involved in the final fight of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I barely remember what happened in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, though I think it had to do with speaking with a dragon atop a mountain and then leaving you to stand there afterwards completely dumbfounded as to what to do next. Fallout 3 did not take into consideration logical solutions to entering that radiation-filled room, and only DLC allowed you to keep playing after fixing the water situation in the Capital Wasteland. Fallout 4 concludes with a lot of seemingly unnecessary killing–your pick of who gets it–and the departure of your child. It’s a boring ending, to be honest, and it feels like little thought went into it based around your character’s actions and decisions leading up to the final blasts. The loss of choice is overwhelming.

This is what I do know though. When I restart Fallout 4 with a new character, which I will definitely do some time in the future, most likely an evil woman with a penchant for melee weapons modded to the extreme, I will only go so far into the main quest. Only to the point where you are on good terms with every faction, where you can help everyone out…to a point. Crossing that murder line is something I’m not interested in doing again, unless it is to murder Deathclaws or a swarm of Bloatflies. Not people, not humans (or human-like humans) that you can converse with and grow close to and revisit from time to time to regale with your wild, crazy adventures out in the Commonwealth.

Ultimately, Fallout 4 is a much better game to play and live in than conclude.

The ending to Jurassic Park: The Game is a big pile of dino droppings

There are several problems with Jurassic Park: The Game, but none bigger than its ending, and I’m going to discuss it at length in this post, so if you don’t want to be spoiled beyond Spoiled City, get out now. Just go. Put in a VHS copy of the 1993 classic Jurassic Park, play with the tracking buttons, and then sit back, soak in, and be at peace. Trust me, you’re better off; I mean, I wish I wasn’t thinking about these things, but I am. And the only way to get rid of them is to dump them here.

::insert Tyrannosaurus Rex roar::

As the remaining survivors–Gerry Harding, Jess Harding, and Nima–race to reach the boat that can take them off Isla Nublar, a choice is presented, one that’s extremely easy to make: save Jess or save the Barbasol can of dinosaur embryos. If you go for the can, Nima dies. If you save Jess, the can is stomped flat, but everyone lives to see another day. The latter is deemed the “good ending” and was what I earned first, later going back to see what would happen if you tried to grab the can before Mean Ol’ Mr. T-Rex caught wind of your antics. Right. So, they all live and are motoring away on the escape boat as that familiar tune plays. Hooray. Except Nima is pretty downtrodden and not because her partner in crime Yoder got eaten: that Barbasol can represented a way to get her and her daughter into a new life, with food and security and all the things that a mother/daughter combo need to survive. Without it, she has nothing. Gerry promises her that he’ll do whatever he can to help the both of them, but before he can work out a plan, his daughter Jess interupts to inform them about a bag full of cash she just found.

And that’s where Jurassic Park: The Game ends. No, really. It’s that, followed by the boat scooting away into the sunset and a flock of Pterodactylus passing by overhead. Roll credits. Put the controller down.

Which means we–the viewer, the player, the puppet master–are left to interpretation. And the game seems to imply that Nima will take the money found on the boat. That Gerry Harding will totally be okay with Nima taking all that money, that it’s for a good cause. For the entirety of Jurassic Park: The Game, Harding has been constantly reminding his daughter that stealing is wrong and trying to teach her to be a wiser teenager, to make good, wholesome choices. To not smoke or talk back to elders or, y’know, steal stuff. And he did all of this while dinosaurs of varying sizes and skins tried to eat them. Good for him.

But here, at the end–and granted, he did just outrun a T-Rex–he says nothing about the bag of money. Nothing about going to InGen about what happened on the island and Dr. Sorkin or anything like that. Maybe he actually does. The scene cuts away after the literal money shot, and we don’t know what other conversations the trio have as they make their way home, but that’s the game’s fault. Again, it doesn’t tell us, and so we have to go off of what is presented, which is that Nima is going to get all the money, the money she was originally going to get anyway from stealing from InGen. If Harding lets Nima take the money, he is again approving of stealing, which I’m sure Jess would find contradictory.

It’s an atrocious piece of writing, that doesn’t make sense, but comes across as extremely unlikely and Hollywood-like. I’d rather have seen them sail away without a bag of money, happy to be alive, promising each other that they would get through whatever came next, especially considering what they just survived. Maybe even Nima would become a motherly figure to Jess since her parents were not going to work it out. Of, if anything, as a wink to the first film and a meta joke to the fact that Jurassic Park: The Game is in itself a wink to a throwaway plotline, Harding could’ve acknowledged the bag of money, zipped it up, and tossed it into the water–y’know, for someone else to find. As is, the game’s “good ending” is far from good.

And all of this makes me extra nervous about Telltale Games’ forthcoming The Walking Dead game. The only light there is that in a world overrun by zombies, a bag of money is pretty much useless.

What I disliked about Chrono Trigger

I know that the previous post to this one was a game review haiku and for Chrono Trigger itself, meaning that that was going to be it in terms of “reviewing,” but I do want to talk about this powerful RPG from the SNES heydays a little more at length. I mean, I finished it up in early January 2012 a few days after GiantBomb completed their Endurance Run and have been rather silent since then, letting my thoughts and feelings about Crono, his friends, time, and Lavos stir and grow inside my mind. And don’t worry. While in this one I will be moaning and groaning about the parts I found disappointing, there will be another post devoted to what Chrono Trigger did right and why it is, many years later, still an amazing game.

Okay, let’s break this down for easy peasy squawking.

The writing (at times)

Chrono Trigger, despite all the destruction and malice that Lavos brings to the table, is actually a lighthearted tale. It opens with a festival, there’s a lot of bouncy music, and characters exaggerate in large and loud ways to get home their personalities. The writing also reflects this with Ayla, Robo, and Frog speaking with heavy dialects, which is not fun to digest. The biggest problem with the writing is that, when it came to quests and where to go next, nothing was clear. There’s no quest log, and so you just have to talk to everyone, and sometimes they will say something important, but it’s hard to decipher what is worth following and what carrot is not. I had to look up the solution to the Rainbow Shell quest because there was no way I’d ever figure it out on my own; I just can’t think that abstractly.

The old man at the End of Time could’ve been a bigger help, too.

Unclear stats

You can obtain a variety of accessories to put on your pals, but I never really changed them out too much as it was never clear what a lot of these things did. A MuscleRing gives its bearer Vigor +6, but in no way is it made known what Vigor means. Is that the same as Power? Stamina? Strike? Tickle? Your guess is as good as mine. I did not do a ton of weapon/armor switching, focusing only on whatever pumped up my people’s Power and Defense the most. Sometimes that meant everyone wearing Nova Armors and being boring clones.

Overpowered

The point after this one might seem contradicting, but about halfway through the  time-traveling adventure, fights became super easy. Like, just mashing the attack command for all three party members and never even glancing at dual techs or higher skills.

The final battle

Boss fight after boss fight after boss fight after boss fight. I had plenty of Elixirs and Full Elixirs and all my dudes leveled up, but man…it was grueling. No breaks or chances between to save and breath meant it was tense, and on my first real attempt to end it all I died midway through due to not paying attention intensely. My fault, but still…

DS bonus stuff

Yes, that’s right. I did not find a creepy pawn shop, sift through countless boxes of moth-ridden clothes and old VHS tapes to find a dusty–yet still workable–copy of Chrono Trigger for the SNES. Instead, I picked up the Nintendo DS version, which contains a translated version of the 1995 gem rainbow shell, as well as some bonus content. Namely, this:

• Anime cutscenes from the PlayStation 1 port
• The Lost Sanctum
• The Dimensional Vortex
• Arena of the Ages
• A new ending (bringing the total to…17, ugh)

None of it is stellar. The anime cutscenes are a weird and kinda jarring, especially when you see Crono and his goofy hair in motion. The bonus areas…well, I didn’t even find them. Unless they only pop up in New Game+. So, good job there. I tried Arena of the Ages for a pinch, but it’s basically Pokemon diet, and not even near as gripping. Otherwise, it’s easy to not miss it, but at least I was able to have a copy of the game for portable purposes.

Multiple endings

I only toss this under the bus because I really don’t have time to play this game more than once, and I definitely don’t want to do that final battle again just to see a new ending. Maybe I’ll YouTube some of ’em…

—

And that’s it. I basically enjoyed everything else about Chrono Trigger, but I’ll call those aspects out in a separate post down the road. If you’re a Chrono Trigger fan, did any of these above points ring true for you as well or is it perfection from beginning to end? Let me know below in the comments. And don’t hate me too hard; I loved Chrono Trigger, but I’m still able to see its faults. That’s just one of the problems stemming from me playing the game as a 28-year-old man versus a young boyconstantly high on Mode 7 and Super Mario World.