DiD Alternative Ending (Tangent)

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Belial_rus
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DiD Alternative Ending (Tangent)

Post by Belial_rus »

Theres a bridge at north-west, if you leave the castle and meet your opponents there one at a time, you will win no matter how much gold enemy leader has (Ancient Lich ftw), I leveled up more than 20 times, I think, before I got bored.

I think the concept is fun, but it stops being so atm when it gets obvious you cannot win with strategy no matter how good it is, just b/c enemy heroes get ridiculous amount of gold after first 10 battles or so, while your limited to 100 gold.

I felt like the scripted ending is actually being enforced on me, although I'd love to play through these encounters for a couple more times.

The best thing, that probably could be done is adding a few special encounters with high level creatures on enemy side, instead of hordes of lvl2 units. For humans that could be crusaders or inquisitors with mages of light. Or ambitious Great Mage. Or even Deflador himself (would be fun).
Or a Red Dragon and his orc minions looking for a brand new cave ^_^ or just willing to add your treasures to his hoard.
Or dwarwen expedition digging up a tunnels and ending up in your cave by accident.
Or noble elven sorceress, willing to get the world rid of your evil.

Anyway, the game just has to have an alternate ending for the hardcore players willing to beat as many "foolish heroes" as possible.

PS: Ancient Lich power over undeath should influence the game somehow. For example hiring lvl 2 instead of lvl 1's.
Zaphod
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Forever and Ever, Amen

Post by Zaphod »

Personally, I find it fun (and easy) to beat this scenario as many times as I want. However, I usually get bored around wave 8 or so and suicide Mal. Either I put Ancient Mal onto the village near the mushroom grove and let him destroy all that comes near ( :twisted: ), or I recall three nightgaunts to pwn the fool. Although the AI seems to detect them easily…
The effect of playing through this scenario *forever* almost makes me cry, because Mal is just so powerful, yet so weak. :geek: The entire campaign is pretty sad, too… Well done!
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taemyr
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Forever and Ever, Amen

Post by taemyr »

It's possible to keep going for ever on easy. Or it was the last time I played through the campaign. You have 3 loyal ghouls, so you recall them and a sufficient number of walking dead. That leaves you with no upkeep so you can build up enough gold for the next time round.
Mac
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Forever and Ever, Amen

Post by Mac »

I have to say this campaign was one that I really enjoyed playing the first time. I have always liked the "bad guy" campaigns of controlling undead/orcs. However, I was really letdown by the ending. During the whole game I made a point, as I do in all campaigns, of saving all my lvl two's and higher. So when I fought the last mission, I simply recalled my elite lvl 3's and kept going for almost 15 missions before I finally said enough.

I think that to fix this requires only a little bit of work by someone. :eng:

Make it so that in the Alone At Last mission, Dela and the Paladin leader are not able to be killed through scripting. (eg. they lose all their hitpoints and flee the mission). Then after two battles of Forever and Ever, they arrive at the cave. Dela from behind you (with loyalist/outlaw troops) and the paladin in front of you. The scenario objectives would be defeat all enemy leaders or lose Malin. If Malin is killed it remains the way it is while if Dela is beaten:
You cannot bring yourself to kill her and the little bit of goodness that is still in Malin is awakened. Knowing that he will never be accepted for what heis , but that he cannot face his undead armies again, he flees but is killed by some white magi that are cutting off the escape.
Or Dela accepts him back as her brother and he spends the rest of his life trying to aid the world as he has already been trying although he is eventually slain by asking someone to kill him/being killed in battle.

That way the scenario ends on a morose tone if you die, but leaves satisfying alternate endings.
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turin
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Forever and Ever, Amen

Post by turin »

Mal Keshar 'living' out the remainder of his days in a cave while Foolish Heroes keep coming to attack him is IMO an integral part of the aesthetic of the campaign and should definitely not be changed.

That said, it'd be cool to make Dela more of a character somehow. My proposal - somewhat similar to Mac's idea, in that you keep her alive, but make it so that when she comes back and Mal Keshar beats her, he's not able to bring himself to kill her and so instead chains her up in his cave for the rest of her life while he tries to convince her he's not a bad guy - of course, he fails. :twisted:
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Mac
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Forever and Ever, Amen

Post by Mac »

Turin wrote:"That said, it'd be cool to make Dela more of a character somehow. My proposal - somewhat similar to Mac's idea, in that you keep her alive, but make it so that when she comes back and Mal Keshar beats her, he's not able to bring himself to kill her and so instead chains her up in his cave for the rest of her life while he tries to convince her he's not a bad guy - of course, he fails. :twisted:
This ending would satisfy everyone. Not only do we have an ending that would resolve the hanging plot revolved around Dela, but we would see that although Mal has descended into the deepest reaches of darkness, he still has some good in him.

Win win for everyone :mrgreen:
Rad3k
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Forever and Ever, Amen

Post by Rad3k »

I've played this on normal difficulty (BfW 1.6).

I've beaten 5 foolish heroes in hope that there will be some more 'positive' ending, and was quite disappointed when they started repeating.

I totally agree that there should be some alternative ending to the story. The first thing that came to my mind was that when you beat each foolish hero, then the campaign would end with words like:
After many years the area around Lich cave finally became deserted place, and even the greatest heroes didn't wander near it, remembering the legends about the great evil dwelling there. On rare occasion when someone strayed and found himself near the cave, he could hear the inhuman screams of a tortured soul. Some say that it's Lich itself, despairing about its own fate.
Of course, more epic/poetic than that.
Glowing Fish
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Re: DiD Alternative Ending (Tangent)

Post by Glowing Fish »

Shakespeare wrote a play called "King Lear", which was never too popular in its day because it ended with Lear and his good daughter both dead. So about eighty years after Shakespeare wrote it, someone rewrote it with a happy ending, and it became a lot more popular. For about two hundred years, and then people realized that if they wanted to see a happy Shakespeare play, there were many to choose from, and if they wanted to see King Lear, having everyone die was kind of the point.
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Orcish Shyde
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Re: DiD Alternative Ending (Tangent)

Post by Orcish Shyde »

I personally think you absolutely should get the chance to kill Dela, the ungrateful [censored] - whether in "Alone at Last" or as a one-shot enemy in "Endless Night". Actually, I'd have it both ways - get the option of seeing a tear-jerking last scene when Malin kills Dela, then regardless of whether or not you saw it, Dela the Death Knight comes and attacks Malin's cave for one last hurrah.

Dialogue/plot changes necessary to missions that aren't "Endless Night" shouldn't take long, so I'll deal with them now. The idea of a "parallel" campaign where _you_ are Dela also came to mind, but I'd need more to go on than just DiD for that.

@Glowing Fish IIRC, the best defence I ever saw for changing the ending of King Lear was that "everybody dies" wasn't actually what happened in the events the play is supposedly recounting. However, taken as a story, it works better with lots of tragedy - otherwise why bother with such a big change to reality?
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Glowing Fish
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Re: DiD Alternative Ending (Tangent)

Post by Glowing Fish »

Orcish Shyde wrote: @Glowing Fish IIRC, the best defence I ever saw for changing the ending of King Lear was that "everybody dies" wasn't actually what happened in the events the play is supposedly recounting. However, taken as a story, it works better with lots of tragedy - otherwise why bother with such a big change to reality?
And as far as I understand it, King Lear is almost totally fictional. As, for that matter, is DiD.
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Orcish Shyde
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Re: DiD Alternative Ending (Tangent)

Post by Orcish Shyde »

Glowing Fish wrote:And as far as I understand it, King Lear is almost totally fictional. As, for that matter, is DiD.
While this may well be true - the original source material is, in fact, a mythical Celtic figure - all the legends before Shakespeare had Lear and Cordelia still alive at the end (although Lear died of old age and Cordelia was overthrown after a few years by ambitious nephews. Now where have Wesnoth players seen that last bit before?). I'd erroneously "remembered" some kind of reference to actual fact involved from the last time I checked up on the play.

DiD is of course 100% fictional, whereas I'll bet you a tiny grain of truth started the myth of King Lear, and thus gave Shakespeare his source material.
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