Feedback wanted: Some questions on Ending (spoilerish)

[superluser]

Now that a many of you have completed the game, we would like to take the opportunity and ask some questions related to the Ending and the story as a whole.

Here goes:

1) When entering the Orb Room (where Alexander is), what where your feelings toward Daniel (ie yourself), Alexander and Agrippa.

2) What was the ending that you got the first time? Was this a choice?

3) How did you like the ending?

4) Did you get any other endings? If so, which one was your favorite? And what where your motivation for seeing more endings?

I haven't read any of the replies yet, so this is raw and uninfluenced. I may add an addendum when I read the thread.

Having read the thread and listened to the commentary, here's the addendum.

4.) Oh? There was a third ending in the orb room? The Revenge Ending? Let's try that. ... Hated it. I had cast the whole scenario as Daniel trying to stop Alexander and not wanting to do this as an act of revenge, which he would do if he had his memories of the event. So, naturally, the revenge ending was not a favorite of mine, because it implies that the protagonist loses and (the sadistic version of) Daniel wins. There has been no redemption. When I played it through again with commentary, I got the Agrippa ending, because it's the only version that makes sense once you get to the Orb Chamber. At least you stop Alexander and someone gets something they wanted. The other options were (1) everybody dies and nobody gets what they want or (2) don't stop Alexander--which I can do perfectly well without entering the Orb Chamber.

1.) It seems I left out the bits about my feelings on Agrippa and Alexander. Alexander seems rather like Grendel. Until the end, nobody know anything about him, except that he's old and can do magic.

The sheer numbers of deaths were implausible, and tended to make the whole thing seem rather less of something I could empathize with. The entire population of Saxony (probably the most likely place to see both an Altstadt--old saxon and a Brennenberg--old high german) in 1900 was less than 3 million. One man is described as having brought over 100 men to Castle Brennenberg. And we know that besides that one man, there was also Daniel doing the same thing. How many people did Brennenberg abduct? Someone was sure to notice a 33 per 100000 homicide rate. That's about the murder rate in South Africa. If that happened in rural Prussia in the 19th century, an army would have been sent out. Before someone mentions Vlad the Impaler, note that (A) he had an army (B) he was fighting an invading army and © those numbers were written by a guy who wanted him to seem very violent.

The number of murders reminds me of Eddie Izzard's quote about mass murderers:

Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people. We can't even deal with that! You know, we think if somebody kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. And over that, we can't deal with it, you know? Someone's killed 100,000 people. We're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning. I can't even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: “Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death – lunch- death, death, death -afternoon tea - death, death, death - quick shower…"

I would have preferred Alexander's number of victims in this century to be much smaller--somewhere around 14. Then, you have enough for each torture device to be used twice, with two left over to make you wonder. Then, you could have a personal connection to each of those victims. After all, you want to get the schreckstoff (look it up) from them, which you can't get when they're dead. No sense in killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

So I don't know what to make of Alexander. As Izzard puts it, I can't even deal with that.

Agrippa I have no clue. He was very good at passive manipulation. Alexander having been very heavy handed, he must have known that you would go out of your way to help someone who said, ``Save me or don't. It's your choice.'' I don't know what Agrippa was, but at least he was able to have something he wanted happen to him.