» Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:45 pm Truly don't understand why it's such a big deal.I've been playing digital RPGs since the early 80s. Games having stories that End is familiar to me. Ones that Don't End tend to be the more plotless hack-n-slash games (Diablo & it's ARPG ilk, for example).The stronger the Story, the higher odds that the game will End. Console JRPGs, for example (derided by some as "interactive movies" rather than games) tend to have very strong story, and they tend to End. Games that just want to keep grinding on tend to have less story.I've played games both ways. I've played dozens of games that Just End. And in most of those games with sidequests or similar things, I've kept a save before the point where some NPC says "Hey, once you go forward from here? No Going Back?." I'm used to that mechanic, I've seen it for decades. It's normal. You're not "done" with your character? Ok, take a left, ignore the meteor hanging over the city about to destroy it, and go race Chocobos at the Gold Saucer.... the World Ending Armageddon will wait.
Just because it's familiar, doesn't mean it's better. I've been there too. JRPGs are amongst my favorite. I've been a huge Squaresoft fan since... well, since they were still Squaresoft. I loved them then and I still do. The hard ending of this game isn't ruining it for me, and if you liked it that's awesome. Glad you had fun. But one of the strengths of Bethesda's style of game making is the sense of immersion that comes with strong story telling combined with an open world in which you can ignore that main story when and if you please. I want that sense of immersion that comes with pursuing the most important part of the plot from start to finish. But I also want to take that same character back to do some of the side quests that didn't seem important enough to get side tracked by. I want to go out and explore the big open world they designed for us. Sure, I can do this by saving before the point of no return and reloading. But I lose whatever I gained during that final step. It may seem like a minor annoyance to those of you in favor of the hard ending, and it is. But it's still an annoyance. One that could have been avoided by replacing the "great big obvious point-of-no-return" warning box with a post game "would you like to continue playing now that the main story is over" option box. Even if the changes that result are minor and not truly indicative of the grand and far reaching effects described in the ending cut-scene. I'd still rather have that option than not. Anyone who thought the post-story game would have been a pointless and hollow wasteland wandering hack-n-slash sandbox could have just clicked "no". All the players leave happy and the wildly exaggerated flame war never happens. Or maybe it just gets replaced by the "true hardcoe fans" calling Obsidian and Bethesda sell-outs. No telling I suppose.
TL;DR: The reason you don't understand why it is such a big deal is because it really isn't that big of a deal. The people that are screaming insults and threatening to boycott and return their games are just as out of line as the people saying that anyone who wanted a soft ending is an idiot who doesn't deserve to play the way they want. But it is an issue worth discussing. At least to console gamers like me who don't have the option to mod our games. So that's just it. It's an annoyance that could easily have been avoided.
