Larian Studios
Posted By: flamewave Epilogue in DOS2 - 04/11/15 12:03 PM
Several games that I hold in high esteem (only some of which I have played completely) have an epilogue at the end of the game that summarises the player actions and their effects on the world.

An example of a game that does this well is ADOM. Other games that do it too are:
1. This war of mine
2. Age of Decadence
3. Pillars of Eternity

These are usually text-only. But create a very nice impact. You might not bother to be nice to a little girl in the game........but when you get a "Made a little girl very sad" in the summary at the end of the game..........

Have seen people very concerned about the summary....

Would like to recommend that it be included in DOS2.
Posted By: Devin at Larian Re: Epilogue in DOS2 - 27/11/15 09:15 AM
Very interesting... ;-)
Posted By: Nyanko Re: Epilogue in DOS2 - 27/11/15 12:58 PM
The witcher 3 does it great as well.
Posted By: Ayvah Re: Epilogue in DOS2 - 27/11/15 08:56 PM
What I love about the way it is handled in Witcher 3 is that I felt like there was fully-realised pay-off occurring in the middle of the story.

One thing Mass Effect got wrong, I feel, is that it kept promising the pay-off would come later. You freed the Rachni? This is one of the biggest choices in the original Mass Effect game, but all that happened was they said "thank you" and fluttered away. The game promised that the pay-off would come later. I remember that, finally, in Mass Effect 3, some lady comes up to you and says, "Psst. You know those Rachni you saved? They're grateful and would like to help you fight the big bad. Here's a boost to your 'war asset' score." (I think they did a little more with it in some DLC but I never bought it.) Anyway, Mass Effect kept promising a pay-off, and then when we got to the end of the trilogy, it had too much to do and it struggled to deliver on all those promises. A lot of the pay-off ended up being half-assed.

Most of the big consequences in Witcher 3 are short term. The outcome of the Baron, for instance, isn't likely to be referenced in any sequels, but we did get immediate meaningful pay-off. And the (playable) epilogue of Witcher 3 was awesome because it was so small in scope. Only a couple of decisions actually affected it, and so much work had gone into the bad ending that I actually kind of prefer it over the good ending. (Geralt is seriously badass when he's on a vendetta.)

I would like Larian to focus on paying-off on decisions sooner rather than later, and minimise the number of things saved for the epilogue.
Posted By: Arrahed Re: Epilogue in DOS2 - 04/12/15 10:32 AM
I think that meaningful decisions can have both an impact on the story as well as being included in an epilogue.
E.g. "I decided to rob the kids candy and give it to the hive-queen. It turned out that before the hive queen could aid me, the sad kid would stab me in the back." Game Over ;)
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