Adventure Gamers - Forums

About the ending discussion:

Well, now the intro of someone opening a book and telling “It may make you sad to hear it, but this is the last story I’m going to tell you… I know. You like to hear funny stories. With jolly people and a happy end. But I don’t have the strength for tht any more. What difference would it make if I lied to you? Well, my last story takes place in a land far away…”
It certainly has a different meaning now, doesn’t it?

The more observant of you will notice that your father in the intro (while opening the book) has only 4 fingers on his hand.

The entire game seems like a constant symbolism about Progress (change) VS Stability. Almost everything in the game is about that. Mulachei’s views about a constant state of equilibrium (remember the 8-Queen puzzle? ), Loucaux’s wounds from the passing of time, the fact that Sadwick’s pet is a shapeshifter, the water of life, Sadwick’s destiny…everything points to this.

Remember the final dialog with Loucaux?
L: “I offer you eternal life as an alternate to total destruction. How can you resist such an offer?”
S: “I would rather have the world ended than eternal stagnation!”
L: ” I know you Sadwick. That’s not who you are. You don’t want things to change. Change always brings doom and destruction with it. You are afraid of that. I offer you a world without time. Without doom. Without fear”.
S: “I’ll wake up the King”!
L: “And how do you propose to do that? Do you want to fly to the other side? Come with me! If you help me stop the fabric of space and time once again, I’ll make you King”!
S: “I’ll figure something out”!
L: “Why are you tormenting yourself? This whole voyage has been a single great ordeal for you. Let us save the world! By bringing back stagnation. You can be even King! I am no longer interested. With my help, you can preserve the world as it has been in your memory! No more fear. No more responsibilities. No guilt. You wouldn’t have to worry any more. It would be a perfect world”.

After this dialog and now knowing the ending, can we trully say that the Asgil (and more specifically Loucaux) were evil for not wanting everything to change - thus destroyed?
I can’t.

Sefir - 14 February 2015 03:41 PM

About the ending discussion:

Well, now the intro of someone opening a book and telling “It may make you sad to hear it, but this is the last story I’m going to tell you… I know. You like to hear funny stories. With jolly people and a happy end. But I don’t have the strength for tht any more. What difference would it make if I lied to you? Well, my last story takes place in a land far away…”
It certainly has a different meaning now, doesn’t it?

The more observant of you will notice that your father in the intro (while opening the book) has only 4 fingers on his hand.

The entire game seems like a constant symbolism about Progress (change) VS Stability. Almost everything in the game is about that. Mulachei’s views about a constant state of equilibrium (remember the 8-Queen puzzle? ), Loucaux’s wounds from the passing of time, the fact that Sadwick’s pet is a shapeshifter, the water of life, Sadwick’s destiny…everything points to this.

Remember the final dialog with Loucaux?
L: “I offer you eternal life as an alternate to total destruction. How can you resist such an offer?”
S: “I would rather have the world ended than eternal stagnation!”
L: ” I know you Sadwick. That’s not who you are. You don’t want things to change. Change always brings doom and destruction with it. You are afraid of that. I offer you a world without time. Without doom. Without fear”.
S: “I’ll wake up the King”!
L: “And how do you propose to do that? Do you want to fly to the other side? Come with me! If you help me stop the fabric of space and time once again, I’ll make you King”!
S: “I’ll figure something out”!
L: “Why are you tormenting yourself? This whole voyage has been a single great ordeal for you. Let us save the world! By bringing back stagnation. You can be even King! I am no longer interested. With my help, you can preserve the world as it has been in your memory! No more fear. No more responsibilities. No guilt. You wouldn’t have to worry any more. It would be a perfect world”.

After this dialog and now knowing the ending, can we trully say that the Asgil (and more specifically Loucaux) were evil for not wanting everything to change - thus destroyed?
I can’t.

On the last point, no, of course not, the Asgil were just [spoiler]the part of the boy’s mind that didn’t want to wake up. Which kind of makes you wonder why they were made to be so evil. Sadwick was more scared of waking (destruction) than staying in a coma (stagnation), so I wonder if it would have been better to have the Asgil start out as good guys and gradually revealed to be the baddies, reflecting the boy’s increasing will to wake up and awareness of the folly of staying asleep[spoiler].

I liked the ending, but I think that overall not enough happened in Sadwick’s journey. It was really just a series of events, with very few twists and turns. The game could have been much shorter or much longer and it wouldn’t have mattered, and I think that’s a weakness. There was not enough to ponder upon in terms of what was happening, except for the last chapter, and the cutscenes with the mouth bore little relationship to everything else happening in the game, almost as if they were made as an afterthought.

Also finished the game and I do like the ending a lot. The alternate ending should have been fleshed out more, but it looks just like a small easter egg rather than a real ending.

Now,  the concept of constant change is good and stagnancy is bad is not necessarily a true one all the time IMO. The old native Americans for example didn’t do any changes before thinking about the implications of these changes for seven generations down the line. One can argue that the extreme speed of change today is bringing with it the gloom and doom of an uninhabitable globally warm earth.

Overall though, a really enjoyable game. Not perfect, but very good.

I’m a bit behind—I just did the planetary system puzzle.

I took the Chapter Three quiz and got 3 correct. 

One of my favorite sayings from Chapter Four: “Have door handles gone out of fashion that badly?”

Iznogood - 07 February 2015 06:19 AM

Overall this is probably the most difficult chapter with a lot of challenging puzzles, but only one that gave me any real trouble, and that was the astronomy puzzle. Finding the right order of planets from the description in the encyclopaedia - no problem, connecting it to the drawings on the blackboard - easy, making the connection between the colours, the names of the planets and the colours in the periodic system - pretty obvious, what however did gave me some problems is that the colours in the periodic system and the colours of the planets, was not a complete match, two was brown and orange in the PS but red and blue as planets. I’m still not sure if it is a bug, or something done intentional to make it more difficult, so I would love to hear if this is also the case in the SE version?
Anyway apart from that little problem, I apparently also made a mistake along the way, so I had to resort to trial and error , fortunately there was two I was absolutely certain of, so that only left me with 6 possible combinations to try.

Yes, it was the same in the Special Edition.

Iznogood - 15 February 2015 11:22 AM

Oscar - 15 February 2015 03:33 AM

On the last point, no, of course not, the Asgil were just [spoiler]the part of the boy’s mind that didn’t want to wake up. Which kind of makes you wonder why they were made to be so evil. Sadwick was more scared of waking (destruction) than staying in a coma (stagnation), so I wonder if it would have been better to have the Asgil start out as good guys and gradually revealed to be the baddies, reflecting the boy’s increasing will to wake up and awareness of the folly of staying asleep[spoiler].

I think you are forgetting that this is also a story that his father is telling to the real world Sadwick. Exactly how much is the father’s story and how much is Sadwick’s own imagination isn’t completely clear, but the story itself is a story a father is telling his son, who is in a coma, in order to convince him to wake up from that coma. It only makes sense that he would portray what is keeping his son in the coma, as some external evil that his son has to battle and defeat.

Yes, that’s true. But can you blame me? The father is only seen at the beginning and end. But then again, I don’t like this explanation of ‘it was the father’s story’. What about all the mistakes I made? Spending hours pondering over a chess puzzle? The father’s story would have been much more straightforward and makes my own choices and my own journey through the game irrelevant. My Sadwick’s journey would have been different from say, diego’s.

Oscar - 15 February 2015 03:33 AM

I liked the ending, but I think that overall not enough happened in Sadwick’s journey. It was really just a series of events, with very few twists and turns. The game could have been much shorter or much longer and it wouldn’t have mattered, and I think that’s a weakness.

Again the comparison with The Neverending Story comes to mind. Atreyu is send on a quest to find some McGuffin that will save Fantasia from the Nothingness, but this quest is in reality nothing but a snipe hunt, no such McGuffin exists and The Childlike Empress knows that very well. Instead the purpose of Atreyu’s adventure is simply to tell a thrilling story that will drag the real world boy Bastian into the story, so that he can save Fantasia. Exactly what happens to Atreyu or how long or short that snipe hunt is, doesn’t really matter as long as it serves it purpose.

Same thing with TWW, the story and obstacles serves no purpose in themselves other than to act as a story which drags in the imagination of the real life Sadwick, and make him realize that he can’t stay in his coma forever. The question we have to ask is if Sadwick could have made this choice if the story had started at the end, and I believe the answer to that question is No. During the course of this adventure, Sadvick grows as a person and he learns that he can overcome obstacles, even handle dangerous situations if he just tries, whereas the Sadwick in the beginning would just whine about how helpless and useless a person he is, and would most likely have chosen Stagnation instead of Life.

Maybe. Still, it seems like he only does this in the final stages of the last chapter. There is not much growth, or if there is, it isn’t reflected on enough during the journey.

diego - 16 February 2015 07:55 PM

(Now, I’m STUCK again!! codename: Olive)

I take it that you don’t know how to cut the branch.
Tip 1: Have you found grandpa’s pantaloons?
Tip 2: Desecrating the dead was never such fun! Do you have the moon instrument?