15. April 2020, 12:45:34

#15

KolyaQuote

Allegedly there was a better ending cutscene planned but they somehow lost it and then cobbled this one together quickly.
I say allegedly because no details about this better ending were ever revealed.

My personal dream ending would be, that Shodan discloses to Goggles that he is too late, because she's already on her way to Earth, then switches off the screens. After the escape pod and Becca's new hair, Goggles is seen in a familiar scene in a corridor of the VB, where he shoots himself in the head. THE END

15. April 2020, 17:00:08

#16

RocketManQuote

I hate how everybody has completely abandoned bad endings in movies, video games, etc.  It makes it so you can easily guess how a story will wrap itself up.  Why can't the hero ever utterly fail, leaving everything in ruin?  That would be cool. 

15. April 2020, 17:03:06

#17

voodoo47Quote

generally, you just go RL for your daily dose of failure, if that's what you desire.

31. July 2020, 04:07:16

#18

sarge945Quote

Sorry for the necro, I have something to actually contribute so hopefully it's okay.

I find the "nah" so inherently awful and cringe that I decided to do a quick edit to remove it. It sort of looks strange now because it zooms in on goggles only to have him say nothing, but I feel like it's still a bit better having him silently contemplate what to do for a second, and then blasting, rather than giving an extremely cheesy, borderline comical response.

The player character doesn't say a word for the entire game, so I think this is far more fitting than the "nah", as I assume most players already have their own idea of what goggles sounds like. Doom Eternal broke the "the player never speaks" rule, and it was really terrible when they did it too. The rule seems to be either have a talking PC, who then talks in all instances where it makes sense, or keep them completely silent. Having them say a few words in the entire game is really jarring, at least in my opinion. It doesn't help when their only line of dialogue is awful. Had Goggles spoken a lot more in the rest of the game, I honesly don't think the "nah" would have been as jarring or as bad. It would still be bad dialogue, but it wouldn't be so extremely out of place.

In my opinion, almost this entire cutscene is bad (except the last bit). SHODAN's dialogue is pretty cheesy as well, and it makes no sense that the PC who has just spent all this time defeating her would stand there and listen to her monolouging, especially since she should already be "dead" by that point. The last level of the game was entirely about urgency - stop shodan before she transforms reality as we know it. So to then stand there and listen to her, especially since she is the type to always try and scheme her way out of everything, doesn't seem right to me.

I also did an edit where the cutscene starts with him simply shooting her, and removed the monologue completely. Obviously this is VERY different from Vanilla, will feel wrong to many people, and is obviously not-canon, but I still think it somewhat improves the ending, as it is now basically "player shoots SHODAN, calls shuttle, Surprise! SHODAN is in the shuttle!". It is simple and gets the job done without the comical B-grade dialogue, and is more like a typical game ending cutscene. The video starts very abruptly, but it makes more sense when it's in the context of playing immediately after a boss fight.

You can find the edited versions here

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bNoGVp1QMP_jX0lxQL19B9wx9xc2vtjz?usp=sharing

I am bad with video software, let me know if I messed anything up.

I would be very interested in people's thoughts on these, as I always dread and despise this cutscene in every playthorugh - it cheapens the entire game for me. Unfortunately short of re-creating something specifically in the Dark engine, and getting in Terri to re-voice stuff (which is never going to happen), there's really not much good we can do to this cutscene, so I think gutting it almost entirely is the best option. The last part (after shodan's death) is alright. It's just the monologue and the "nah" that gets to me.

30. August 2020, 21:54:33

#19

GuyFawkesGamingQuote

I have to agree, cs3 was pretty lazy. I think it would have added better feel if goggles pointed his gun at her just before she said "how dare you", it would have made the change from "you weren't meant to be important" to "can you not see that value in our friendship" have more weight considering how arrogant SHODAN is. Of course I would also be nice to have this cutscene redone with rebirth models, but that's probably not going to happen.