BETA TOPIC: Your thoughts on the endings?

[Dr. Casey]

Normal Ending - I won't even begin to go into all the bombshells dropped concerning the story... I thought it was pretty brilliant, personally, even though I still don't understand everything. Seeing Rhue's first line of dialogue in the whole game again... that scene will never again seem as innocent as it used to. It was great to see Traziun again, though, and it reminds me of Episode 5 - Rhue and Traziun have a small amount of interaction, but what's there is significant. The fifth episode had me thinking that Rhue and Traziun would turn against one another... and that would have been cool. But Traziun's "Goodbye, my friend." ... the scene showed that Traziun had Rhue's best intentions in mind until the end. That might be even better. The whole "Traziun made the sword feel remorse" thing was poignant. I'm also a fan of the Rhue/Kloe pairing, so yay for them two getting hitched! Seeing Rhue's little breakdown was, of course, great, but I also think that Rhue's going to go on a better path from now on. Hey, maybe Rhue and Kloe will form their own settlement? Or not, but hopefully he's on the road to happiness. Overall, the ending was very well-made.

The Reaches Ending - This was... interesting. It was, of course, nice to see Gaius, Traziun, and Slade, as every major character other than Rhue had a small part in this one. The small insight into Slade's psyche was interesting, and the bastard finally speaks! I wish he wasn't mute in EP 6... as for Gaius, his motives for not staying with Kloe have restored my faith in him. I'm glad he showed some obvious love for her. As for Traziun... nice to see him, as always. It was kind of strange how Rhue seemed equally tolerant of Slade, Gaius, and Traziun. I'm used to him showing major bias towards good ol' Traz. Anyway... this ending also illustrated the purpose of the Phantom Slasher's mission well, showing the virtuous faults of three of the characters. You can tell exactly what he wants to get rid of. Definitely my least favorite of the three characters, but it has its interesting insights.

The Lexus Ending - The scene between Rhue and Lexus in that green place was just beautiful. "Do you love me?" "More than you'll ever know." And "You are my... purest hope..." I dunno how to describe it, but that's a great way to put it. And then Rhue's "This isn't the end. I have no end." Rhue sure has come a long way from the little newbie Lyn who got pushed around in the first episode, hasn't he? This is the complete opposite of the spectrum. There's the off-screen, long-speculated Traziun vs. Gaius, although I'm slightly disappointed that Rhue wasn't able to comment on this act of loyalty, being gone and all. Oh well. And the final scene with Lexus appealed to me, since there's nothing better than being with the one you love...

Your thoughts?

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

I got 'em all. The one that most deeply affected me was the normal ending where Traziun...You know.
I was screaming "NOOOOOOOO! WHY!" over and over for 10 minutes after and "DON"T!!!!!!" while it was happening. I stopped playing the game for several days after that.
Then I started again and got the Reaches ending. (I hated the Reaches final boss.....7000 HP? And uses End of the Way every certain number of turns? Pure evil, Lun. I must congratulate you.)
Finally I got the Lexus ending. Meh. Good ending. I just don't like these little cutesie endings. Better that one than the Normal ending where Traziun.........
WHY HIM, LUN? WHY?!?!?!?

[Sephiroth555]

What are the methods on getting these multiple endings? I only got the normal one.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

For the Lexus ending, get the house and find everything for it. Fir the Reaches ending, beat all of the Shadow Plungers. Once you do, go to that one part underneath the Arm of Estrna where there are four rooms and a metal door. Go to the metal door, beat the two bosses, and you get an....interesting...ending. The first boss (Gaghn) isn't that bad, but the second one (Gharon) friggin' sucks. End of the Way kills pretty much all of your characters. (Unless you've been spending some serious time leveling them up. I, personally, have never gotten anyone to survive End of the Way. I just got extremely lucky and criticaled several times with Rhue and Slade, and somehow, by some freak accident, inflicted several stat ailments to it. THANK YOU, SACRIFA!) As for End of the Way, it uses that every 14 turns. As the description says 'Nothing can survive'. I believe it. FEAR THAT ATTACK. FEAR IT VERY MUCH!

[JourWorstNightmare]

For the Lexus ending, get the house and find everything for it. Fir the Reaches ending, beat all of the Shadow Plungers. Once you do, go to that one part underneath the Arm of Estrna where there are four rooms and a metal door. Go to the metal door, beat the two bosses, and you get an....interesting...ending. The first boss (Gaghn) isn't that bad, but the second one (Gharon) friggin' sucks. End of the Way kills pretty much all of your characters. (Unless you've been spending some serious time leveling them up. I, personally, have never gotten anyone to survive End of the Way. I just got extremely lucky and criticaled several times with Rhue and Slade, and somehow, by some freak accident, inflicted several stat ailments to it. THANK YOU, SACRIFA!) As for End of the Way, it uses that every 14 turns. As the description says 'Nothing can survive'. I believe it. FEAR THAT ATTACK. FEAR IT VERY MUCH!

There is a way to survive it
With the Hatasser sword aura, you can learn a spell called "guardian angel" which will auto-res Rhue after he dies. I havn't tried if this works if you'r whole party is dead though. If it would work, and Rhue has enough mana he could res Sacrificia afterwards for example.
And about the lexus ending.. I have everything for the house, and now what? Didn't get any cutscene or whatever.

[Berserker]

You also have to have a high relationship with her both in Ep4 and in Ep6

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

And beat the game as if you're trying to get the normal ending. (It has something to do with relationship? I didn't see that...)

Guardian Angel doesn't work if your whole party dies. I used it...After I lost the first two times, it became my strategy. Then it failed every time as soon as I hit turn 14. I died...and lost, even after using Guardian Angel. I was just able to halve a bunch of his stats and inflicted some other ailments...

[JourWorstNightmare]

And beat the game as if you're trying to get the normal ending. (It has something to do with relationship? I didn't see that...)

Guardian Angel doesn't work if your whole party dies. I used it...After I lost the first two times, it became my strategy. Then it failed every time as soon as I hit turn 14. I died...and lost, even after using Guardian Angel. I was just able to halve a bunch of his stats and inflicted some other ailments...

Didn't even bother using those, thought status ailments didn't work on bosses :s (sorry, played too much World of Warcraft lately).. And I had a hard time beating the boss just before him, couldn't bother trying the last one as well.

[EmperorJeramyu]

There's the off-screen, long-speculated Traziun vs. Gaius

So who do you guys think won this anyway? From our statistical knowledge, Traziun is the stronger fighter, but if Gaius really was the harbinger, then he would still have his immunity to shadow swords. Then again, if the sword in the credits on the mountains we see is Traziun's (and remember this sword is there no matter what), he could have left it behind and used his normal sword. BUT, there's the question if wheather Traziun got his uber power from the sword or not, or if he was just holding back. Since he wasn't using his shadow sword in E3, it seems a safe bet he gets his power from the sword. Although he was still and incredible plunger with some mysterious power in E2... GAH! TOO MANY DIFFERENT OPTIONS!

And then there's Gaius saying "What a waste". Was he talking about Rhue, or Traziun? (Or maybe even himself!?) Rhue seems the most likely, but... Damn Lun and his accursed ambiguity!

To me it seems like Gaius would win. But that still can't stop me from rooting for Traz... =P

[Wellsy]

I would have to believe Traziun would win. Let's not forget, he busted up a Blana Sera fortress and killed his dad, a Blana Sera himself. And throughout the games I got the sense that he was indeed holding back, at least on Rhue, and not deriving his power from a sword, but from himself.

Gaius just acts like a tool.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

They'd kill each other. Gaius definitely has some abilities we haven't seen yet. He'd use them on Traziun, Traziun would use his abilities on Gaius, huge subatomic detonation, and everything within a three mile radius would be destroyed.

[Wellsy]

Traziun would use his abilities on Gaius, huge subatomic detonation, and everything within a three mile radius would be destroyed.

Mutually Assured Destruction is always fun, too . . .

[Culix]

Normal Ending - Other than Traziun's death, this ending was pretty good all around: Rhue wound up with the girl I would have liked him to, the Shadow Sword was destroyed in an unanticipated and cool manner, and Rhue seems like he'll finally be getting on with his life. All-in-all, a pretty good ending.

Lexus Ending - I actually liked this ending most of all, despite the fact that Lexus wasn't really the girl I would have wanted. I'm still kind of ticked off that the relationship points were basically meaningless, but... Anyway, I'm not sure why people are assuming that Gaius and Traziun fight. I mean, sure, it's a possibility, but he just sounded to me like he was going to stop Gaius from going after Rhue if the blue-haired one tried. Traziun just seemed too happy for Rhue. In the Blana Sera Temple, he looked very stoic during his entire visit. Seeming so happy, I doubt he would try to kill anyone Just my thoughts, of course. Gaius's comment, "What a waste..." seems to be about Rhue, but, just as Jeramyu (by the way, you, Emperor, are a very lucky bastard to have gotten your name to appear in the game) said, it's really too ambiguous to say. Curse that ambiguity to the depths of the Pits, where it will be forced to fight Gharon for all eternity... with no status ailment-inflicting abilities! The line did make it seem as though Gaius was reluctantly giving up, though. Unless it was referring to Traziun, anyway. Then he'll likely be trying to kill his fellow Delhara escapee

Reaches Ending - I preferred the normal ending to this one, overall. While 'normal' is more bittersweet than anything else and 'Lexus' is a pretty happy ending, this one is basically a downer. I mean, it's totally submerged in angst from start to finish. Not to say it wasn't very interesting and cool. Watching all the potential lovers (save Scatha) getting killed felt appropriate for the ending, sad though it was. I thought the character's chats with Rhue where well done, on the whole. Like Dr. Casey, I was glad to see that Gaius really did love Kloe, and that he had his reasons for not being with her. I do wonder what exactly he meant by leaving a widow and child as his legacy, though. Does he believe he'll die or in some other way have to leave before she or their child will have to? I was glad to see Slade actually speaking with some insight at the end. It almost made up for his disappointing silence during all of the episode. Traziun's conversation... kinda bewildered me, really. I mean, it was obvious that Gaius was talking about Kloe and that Slade was talking about either Cetsa or Scatha, but who was Traziun referring to? I don't recall him actually having a relation to one of the girls of the same calibur that Slade and Gaius did. I was a little disappointed that Strata wasn't present at the gathering. I definitely would have liked a look into his thoughts on Lyrra: did he realize that he really loved her or was he just mad that Rhue had killed his 'property?' The Phantom dialogue was the best part of the scene, I thought. I did feel sad when I saw the blood splotch at Landorin, though.

It's been mentioned that Lun considered Christianity a lot when created the Way and I think the three endings do a good job of making that clear: Reaches depicts a descent into hell, Lexus shows an ascent into heaven (Rhue's upward soar couldn't have been any more blatant), and Normal displays either remaining on Earth or going to Purgatory. An interesting way of doing things...

[Wellsy]

I have to agree with Culix once again. The Lexus ending appealed to me on an emotional level, while the "normal" ending made sense on a logical level. At the same time, I don't like that so much gameplay (Lexus plot) is left to chance.

Come to think of it, I don't like that ALL of Ep 6 doesn't really happen.

Re: the Way and Christianity - Interesting read. Not sure if I agree the whole Lexus ending agrees with Heaven/Purgatory though.

And I would have definitely liked to have seen more Scatha in this episode.

[Dr. Casey]

Thanks for the excellent reply, Culix.

Also, I loved the last scene in the game. Everything from, "It seems like you've been around a long time, Rhue." "That's not my name... Jeruh... that psycho Jeruh made that name up." on.