Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General Disappointing Ending

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I agree but it's really only because the writing was so good. They closed out all of the arcs and I didn't ever feel like I didn't have closure, but I also wanted to see more. A real epilogue for my decisions. I was expecting a Dragon Ageish montage of how your choices changed the world.

An example of what I though it would be from my playthrough

well yeah that point could've been better, but overall I think the writing was great

honestly the ending fitted the style of the intro. Which made me lulz when i first saw it.

After seeing Divinity II cutscences the tone and the delivery was a bit unexpected.

But ya it was short and sweet.

You get to personally ask each character how they feel about you, instead of it being a long epilogue.

Yeah and that was nice but it wasn't an epilogue so much as a summary of how things went up to that point. It wasn't a bad ending (I don't think there will be any 'retake dragon commander' movements) I just wanted a more involved epilogue personally.

poor poor imp

Keeping the outro short (and avoiding definitive exposition about what happens to each character) also makes it easier to incorporate expansion material.

Not to mention that open-ended endings are a perfectly valid method of closing a story, like it or not.

I completely disagree and view it as lazy writing. To each their own though. That said dragon commander didn't really had an open ending. It was fine and had closure, it just didn't have a real epilogue.

So you're considering a time-tested method used in writing for centuries as "lazy writing".

The whole purpose of an open end is to have the reader fill in the gaps using their own vision. It's not lazy writing if the rest of the story was fashioned with care and offers this type of ending as its own artistic choice.

But culture, why do we need it?

There should be a better reason then it's the way it's always been, it's always worked so far and therefore is part of our culture. Can you imagine if our ancestors said that about switching to iron working, or agriculture. That said I'm not trying to be antagonistic and acknowledge this is a matter of personal preference. I understand that many people do prefer open-endings as they would rather end the story in their heads and that is a fine viewpoint. I personally view it as lazy though as if I wanted to make my own ending why would I read a story in the first case? I could just imagine my whole own story and cut out the middleman. When I read something I want to read the authors story and if they haven't finished the story then in my mind it is incomplete.

That is just my viewpoint though, this is probably a point that could be argued for a while with no clear end in sight. It isn't terribly important regarding dragon commander anyway. I felt they had a perfectly resolved ending. Closure was given and all loose threads were in fact tied up. What I wanted was an epilogue, not a new ending. I usually want this as when writing is as good as DCs I want to hear more about how the characters I know and love ended up and an epilogue gives that.

I am in no means attacking you, just some of your arguments :p

You're talking about applying pragmatism to art by bringing up metallurgy and agriculture, which I hope are pretty obviously not art.

Labeling a method of ending a story as "lazy" without some sound backing (good arguments) is itself a lazy affirmation. And that is because the personal preference of one or a few is in this case, and oftentimes, not an argument.

And the whole point that would stir me is really about using your preference to label a writing method as wrong (or lazy, but it kind of means the same here).

The feeling I get is that you never found a good story with a working open end (which, in my opinion, is what Dragon Commander's story is).

An open end has you building your own extension of the story based on what story was given to you. If you "cut out the middle man", you probably will never have the same universe, characters, situations, etc. to build anything similar from.
An open end is therefor an open field at the end of a road for each reader's mind to traverse. The road is what lead you to this particular open field to boot.

A story can choose to feed you the epilogue you so desire, or let you do it yourself. In itself, it's not a factor that one can use to believably brand a story as lazy.


I would like to mention that I am not an artist. I am not always right. Also, I'm not arguing preferences, as preferences are a very personal thing.

Well There certainly is the argument that as writing is an art that no method is 'wrong' and in that I can concede that point. You are correct in that I have never seen a work that worked within an open ending. Every single time that has happened I have felt cheated. I read to see the authors version of the world, not my own. As for my preference I have always asserted that it is just a preference. I feel that open ended writing is lazy at it usually just seems that the author couldn't figure out how to end it or didn't want to upset anyone. That said I never said your opinions weren't valid. They certainly are. But I personally find open endings to be very lackluster.

I also think our definition of open-ending is different. Dragon Commander did not have an open ending in my opinion, just a short one.

While I can certainly appreciate the desire to have more of an epilogue the thing that struck me as odd is how everyone was celebrating your victory, I'd have expected the Dwarves and Undead to be spitting tacks and wondering if it were better had I been defeated utterly.

Maybe if the game had only been partially voiced it could have had a lot more content in this regard. I'm somewhat hopeful the mod tools will enable this.