I agree with the sentiment that there’s a difference between a bittersweet ending and an unsatisfying ending. Let me take Shadowheart’s ending, for example. Act three spoilers, so don’t click below if you don’t want to be spoiled.

By any stretch of the imagination, Shadowheart has a bittersweet ending. She’s been tormented and abused for the vast majority of her life by sadistic maniacs, who kidnapped her parents and made her torture them, etc. And so that’s quite a bitter life to begin with. And then when she finally finds her parents again, she either has to kill them (as her father asks) and be free of Shar’s curse forever, or save them, and then they all are all cursed for the rest of their lives. Whichever choice she makes, this is a bittersweet ending.

But I’ll honestly say, as much as it sucks that Shadowheart has to make this choice, I’m willing to accept the bitterness as part of her story, and what makes her, her.

What I’m not willing to accept is the unsatisfying way in which it is subsequently handled. Like, for example, if she chooses to kill her parents, she pretty much breaks down crying in a cutscene while the player character stands stoic and just asks stupid generalized questions like “what’s next?” Now that’s unsatisfying right there. You can’t even have the satisfaction of comforting someone who you may have romanced. You also don’t have the satisfaction of a nice fully developed closing scene with her and more about the life that you would go on to live afterwards. Give me just a little bit, you know? More than her saying, “hey, come find me sometime.”

An ending can be bittersweet AND satisfying, or bittersweet and unsatisfying, and I think it’s not necessarily the lack of a happy ending that’s the problem, but the unsatisfying execution of the endings altogether! (Which makes sense, because we all know the game isn’t finished.)

Seems like folks are saying something similar about how unsatisfying it was that the other companions made fun of Astarion at the end, too, though I’ve never seen that myself. And as I’m sure you’ve seen on the Karlach thread, those endings are unsatisfying, because so much has been left unexplored with the Gondians, etc. So again, I would say that it’s less about an ending being happy or unhappy technically speaking and more about the player feeling satisfied or unsatisfied with what they’ve invested so much time in.

And I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a player to expect to feel satisfied, and like they’ve played a finished and fully fleshed-out game, by the time they’ve invested 100+ hours in it.

Last edited by Ecc2ca; 23/10/23 07:56 PM.