Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

It’s Monday ~ The Game is a Lie

Get ready because this week will be spoilery, so if you didn’t play the game I’m going to speak about and intend to, please avoid reading right after the banner. Seriously. That would certainly ruin your fun. Hope you got it. Yes that was a warning wink wonk.

When you engage a game, you tend to believe that everything that is told to you is the truth. At least in most of games, you get to know stuff, you believe those stuff and there are sometimes stuff you discover that weren’t true, but overall it’s just only a part of the stuff, not the big stuff itself. RIGHT ?
Most of games are based on the fact that as you begin, lore is given to you like it’s just junk food so you can understand what character you’re playing, why it’s there, what it is doing, it’s specialty, etc. Of course there are bonus information given by the type of the game, where it takes place, the whole design, etc.

To make it simple, we’ll speak of Zelda. Even if you never played a Zelda game, you probably know that Zelda is the name of the Princess, Ganon is the bad guy and Link is the Main Character who cannot speak (I SEE YOU COMING ! NO, THOSE TWO ATROCITIES ARE FORBIDDEN, BLEACH YOUR BRAIN WITH JAVEL NOW !).
As you begin the game, even in the early versions, you easily can recognize enemies, you meet people reminding you that > it’s dangerous to go alone, take this < , pots you can crush to find hearts and moneys, as well as deadly poultry.
All in all, even if you have things to discover (like the way you screw up and is the reason why things suxx that much in Ocarina of Time), the basic lore, who you are, who are the nice guys, the bad guys, the Tri-force, the fairies, etc. That is true and you have absolutely no reason to doubt it.

But. There are games which are based on false information given to the player (and generally the Main Character as well) and sometimes player’s reaction can be as violent as the MC itself. But I digress.


“Why would they lie to me !”

Last spoiler warning !

So yeah, I finished “A New Beginning” this weekend and read a few messages here and there of people being confused, upset, trying to find reasons behind the idea of an ally who doesn’t become a villain even though they kept lying to the Main Character to obtain what they wanted.
For those who don’t know the plot or forgot about it, a group of people from the future return in the past to avoid a nuclear power plant to explode which, as a result, created a dramatic ecological disaster leading the few hundreds of Human left alive to stay in bunkers while waiting for the next solar flare to wipe them all.
It’s important to understand that the first part of the game is Fay telling to Bent what happened and why she came to him. As you play Fay, you aren’t playing the events as they happened, but as Fay explains them, which - in that specific case - means that everything is intertwined with a lot of lies, which Bent has no idea about.
After Fay’s explanation, Bent get kidnapped by her and Ozzy, the later adding more lies to the pile in order to get Bent to trust them and to help them with their plan.
Eventually, even Bent hides stuff to Fay, Fay does the same and the whole damn thing shatters as Salvador reveals that the Phoenix Plan is absolutely not about trying to stop the catastrophe, but instead to create one to force people to react and to take more care of the planet. They didn’t come back to stop the power plant to blow up, quite the contrary in fact, Salvador is there to kaboom one.

What is interesting in there is that the plot twist isn’t about a part of the story, but the story as a whole, everything is based on a lie so the two main characters (Fay and Bent) can collaborate and reach their objective. And a lot of people, like Bent, don’t want to believe that Fay could have lied all along and -still- would be an ally to the end.

Also read a lot of complain about the lack of ending.

My thoughts about the whole thing

Yeaaah, well, you’re a bit stuck there with my point of view, also everything is super fresh so there is that.

  • First of all, I’m not sure that Fay and her partner (Nigel) had the same mission as the others, particularly Delvin and Salvador. I’m not even sure that they wanted to follow the Phoenix Plan in the first place as even the prologue is a little weird about it, stating that they have to abandon it.
  • What we do know is that all of the time capsules are sent at different place, we also know they failed to calculate the period of time (is it a lie ? I don’t think so) and appeared after the first solar flare which destroyed everything. Fay trips on that one at first when she speaks to Bent, she said they were stuck in 2500 then add that maybe it was 2050 as their way to calculate time isn’t the same. This is a lie, they indeed wear in the 26th centuries as confirmed at the end by Salvador.
  • Nigel and Fay both seem more like idealists who want to try everything to give another chance to the Humanity to change without using violence and after Nigel’s death, Fay will keep trying to do what she wants, causing a lot of commotions in the process.
  • There are definitely hostilities between Fay and the Salvador to the point I just wanted to be able to go through the screen to kick the butt of that misogynist asshole.
    I still don’t get why Salvador eventually calms down while Fay is ruining everything but shrugs.
  • I have no idea how Fay gets to know about the blue green alga, at which point she hears about it, if it’s before leaving the future ? During her visit in the archive ? Was her and Nigel working about it ? Who knows ! There are a lot of unanswered questions about Fay (for example, why does she cough blood).
  • I do think that she tries really hard to convince Bent to return to his research, and honestly it wouldn’t make sense at all if her goal was only to blow up a whole power plant.
  • Sadi’s call is both the most mysterious and the most interesting plot point to me. Sadi tells them that they failed and their attempts to change the past lead to more and more death. Fay doesn’t want to believe it, but her attitude changes soon after as she discovers that Bent had to lie about the power of the alga which causes Indez to react by blowing up completely the oil rig. After that, she does everything to keep people alive, including going against the Phoenix Plan itself.
  • You also play the whole game not knowing when it takes place until the last discussion with Salvador. Once you realize that everything is set in 1982, you understand better why people in the convention don’t want to believe that there can be a problem with the nuclear plant. As a reminder, Tchernobyl happened in 1986, those people cannot know what sort of disaster a nuclear power plant exploding can bring, they don’t know about nuclear winter, nothing that Fay can say actually makes any sense for those people.
  • Finally, the open ending isn’t a lack of ending to me, it’s just that this game is a good one to push people to think of our actual climatic problems and need of replacement to the fuel and nuclear energy. I understand that people may have wanted to see the whole planet green and all, but it would be contradictory with our own world where we no solution to fully replace everything has been publicly disclosed.

So, what do you think of those sort of plot twist, do you like them ? Did you play some game where it was a complete 360° like on “A New Beginning” ? Do you like story with open ending ? What do you think of those ? If you played “A New Beginning” what are your own theories about the game (if you have some of course) ?

Cece09

I played new beginning beginning this month I believe (just remembered it was pop so yes this month) and I can’t say I thought into any theories on it or care for thinking about it now. I didn’t like the story at all and I don’t see anything redeeming it for myself but I do believe that it can be interpreted different ways like with some of the things you brought up. It honestly was saying 1 thing then yet it was different another way, just a lot of contradictions and as you said in the end it was just 1 big lie. Who knows what was honestly the truth at certain points since it kept changing things up

For other games I can’t really think of any big plot twists that weren’t spoiled like bioshock for example. However I don’t mind them, they keep it interesting as long as they make sense. Whenever I see stuff with time travel though its a no go. I will play them but I’m never going to enjoy them to a full extent for the fact they don’t make sense in the end. .

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

Time travel is always a trouble bringer in all literacy mostly because everything has a consequence and travelling in time and space bring that into light more than anything else.
Barjavel, a French author, wrote a book called “Future Times Three” (Which has absolutely nothing to do with the original title which is “the reckless traveler”) in as early as 1944 where the whole questioning is how changing the past may change History. Eventually the main character gets so curious on how things could change that he decides to kill Napoléon, his attempt fails and instead he kills a guard which happens to be his ancestor. This create a paradox with a future where he doesn’t exists because he killed his ancestor but at the same time exists because if he doesn’t exists his ancestor can live. Quite the Schrödinger story.
In the same way, the characters of “A New Beginning” have their own interest in the story and I’m pretty sure that Bent, without the event, would still be retired and the world just continuing in the normal timeline where Fay exists.

Anyway, people are fascinated by time travel and influence you may have, but it always ends up with contradictions and lack of sense because as soon as you get someone who is supposed to know the future by your side, how can you not be influenced by whatever they may tell you ? How can you know if that jump to the past wasn’t actually supposed to happen and thus if you are being influenced, you just follow the course of History ? x_X

After thinking of other games with huge plot twists and just.. Whole game you could throw in the bin as whatever happened in them is just a bunch of lies, I remembered of the whole > Legacy of Kain < the last game having been released in 2003 it’s possible that you never got spoiled about it. The plot is quite interesting and goes through 5 games, there are some time manipulation elements but they serve the plot well instead of pushing to confusion.

Something though, life is too short to bother with things you don’t enjoy, you’re allowed to skip stuff if you don’t have fun with them. When it comes to your free time, always try to prioritize your happiness and joy, there is that option to hide games on Steam for reason, don’t hesitate to use it ♥

ninglor03

I wanted to be smart and dug out my review of the game. Turns out I didn’t go as much into detail as you did. (In case your interested it’s Log 106)
I like plottwists, as long as they are good. Bc there are some way to obv out there, some that just don’t work out and some that are just awesome! This one? Can’t remember. I mainly remembered not licking the game. It worked (as I apparently stated in my review) but that’s about it.
Maybe I should add, that I’m so over Deadalic games… :]

Cece09

just read it and I would say I preferred the beginning more then the end but even then I disliked it all. Plus I would be the opposite to you I got it for the fact it was a daedalic game and very disappointed by what it was in the end

Looked at my review 2 weeks ago and I claimed this apparently
I don’t like the idea of being completely negative about a game but I can’t think of anything that I found good.

ninglor03

Yeah, I read it back then :D
And yep, that’s also the reason I got it in the first place… but I stopped liking them already before I got to it. So there we go. Loop closed :D

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

The game has a lot of flaws tbh, particularly its slowness and part of the dubbing which is quite cringy in English.

ninglor03

It was also cringy in German. Buuuuut we shall not talk about this here :D

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

I didn’t manage to find your review, but it’s ok, I get the gist of it right here haha ^^ ! I’m actually new at Daedalic games so for now I find them enjoyable, I’m waiting for > Felix the reaper < to be released, it seems to be super fun !

ninglor03

A New Beginning - Final Cut

7 hours, 27 of 28 achievements, ★★★☆☆

More

Welp, you'll probably ask, why the heck I was freaking out the moment I realized this was a Daedalic game. I mean, I was really, super duper annoyed. Like wanna run away from it - annoyed. But didn't. I did this!
Secondly I was SO bored/annoyed by the first half of the game. It was all so retro perspective and it felt like such a waste of game time! Still didn't abandon it. (This time it might even have not been that bad. Come on! WHO abandons a game just bc of the name? Right, so I won't give up now either. Well, didn't. Ugh, what ever.) The moment we finally caught up with the "now time" I started to enjoy this. By the end of the game I reached the point where I could say: "Yeah, this works." Still, I don't love it.
Drawings and all that was super… well, Daedalic like. I guess the whole setup of the game was. But I liked the climate change as a topic. And the weird time travel thing. (Still no Doctor Who in sight -.-)
And with this I concluded the first Batch! \o/
Recommendation? Daedalic Fan? Yeah. No Daedalic Fan? No.


:]

Oh, glad you like them! I mean, there rly have to be ppl who like those games! So go for it! Enjoy them! <3
Btw Deponia was the end of it for me…

Иιɢʜᴛᴍᴀᴢᴇ

Daedalic don’t feel exactly the same to me, mostly because they hire a lot of different developer, maybe that’s the dev the problem ?

Cece09

aw man i could’ve just waited to read it when you posted it here. oh well I learnt by looking that it was that thread with this review I ended up buying ur stuff. Now i just need to transport them when I move saturday and hopefully not break them! if they survived shipping from you to me I’m sure they can survive a little moving

ninglor03

I believe in you! You can move them! <3