I'll give you my liver for the duration of the game. It got battlehardened by years of unchecked alcoholism, it will aid you well in your journey! No one should be forced to wake up in that cart on it's way to Helgen...
I can confirm that there's a 0,2 second pause between voice lines, that's also why the songs sung by bards in taverns sound so bad. It can be removed with mods, but the lack of pause makes dialogue in the base game way worse. It may work for Enderal.
Ahh, engine limitations. Just play skyrim with 150 fps and see people interrupting themselves. Just because so much is linked to the framerate. Not just parts of the physics engine, but also the time window for a piece of dialogue. And since the dialogue is played the same speed (basically just playing an audio clip) the next line is started before the old one has finished.
Ngl I sometimes miss the music that plays whenever I went to the temple to buy skill books and smoking pipe weed in cool locations. These two things will always stick to my mind whenever I think of this game. In a way I guess this is the closest Skyrim ever got to a New Vegas spin-off. Uses the same engine+assets but adds its own weapons/armor and has a completely different focus on gameplay. Over all a very impressive game from the schnitzel people. If only the tutorial wasn't so painfully long more people would give the game a chance to enchant them. P.S The "Rat Catcher" armor set is dope and the giant armored badasses with hammers in the mountain fort will give you a run for your money
Enderal is like a D&D dungeon master who has a super cool story they want to tell with interesting characters and themes. But instead of just writing a novel, they try to railroad their players down a prewritten path without taking into account the characters' motivations, personalities, or skills. This makes the plot feel confused at best, and incoherent at worst, ruining whatever good could've been. Enderal has good gameplay, but the story's extreme dissonance would consistently ruin whatever fun I started having, and constantly knocking my character out at coincidental moments got VERY annoying after the fifth time. Still better than most big-budget triple A games.😁
For the life on Starling cities, I guess it's mainly airborne life (birds and maybe insects) that could fly up there, and the plants were "seeded" by them. Then, considering a "cycle" is a whole evolutionary loop, spanning thousands if not millions of years, it means the constructions should be buried meters deep in soil, dirt and mold.
Some cool things I noticed throughout the game; - In the Silvergrove 'illusion', the time stays at 6.30AM from when you pass out, but it goes up by one minute for every wish you complete for the kid - The game hints the whole time that you're actually dead. From the people with Red Madness saying you have no flesh to the fact you legitimately find Sirius' and your own bodies. - There are moments in the game where there are references made to someone trying to transfer their mind into machines to avoid the cleansing And a mildly far-fetched theory I have about the fate of the Starlings, I believe that all the machines you fight in the Star City are the Starlings, as it's known the cleansing can't affect machines, and that they transfer the minds of the exiled back into bodies when they send them to Vyn. This would explain why Kurmai seems to be sure that they are still there. Although it would leave the question of why the black guardian lost their "feeling".
There is a third ending if you drink the dreamflower elixer without getting it purified first. Though the question still remains if the person did purify the elixer.
Interpreting the Emissaries as being nothing but robots isn't consistent with the game as presented. Its more true to observe them as Jungian archetypes; their reactions to events are simply predictable and easily coaxed by prodding them with the right snarl stimuli. Tealor's ego demands that he keep pushing forward in the face of doubt, Yuslan's nihilism means he'll destroy everything just to get even and You don't want to accept the idea that you're powerless, so the taunts of the High Ones excite the desired response. The High Ones know exactly how to play off the weaknesses of humans, because they are the collective shadow self. A psionic manifestation of the Death Drive. Your suggested rewrite doesn't really change anything, except lower the symbolic value. The Beacon doesn't merely destroy everyone; it makes them part of the same cyclical, self-perpetuating system of abuse that nobody can escape from. It encourages the player to reflect on the abuse they have suffered, and how they can stop it before they pass it on.
100% agreed. Enderal could have been a bit clearer about the nature of the high ones manipulations (particularly with how they relate to the veiled woman seeming to create you), but that rewrite is basically just the exact same thing except in an industrial setting and focused way more on greed. Could still be a cool story, but shifting tone a bit and losing a lot of what makes the cycles feel complex or interesting isn't an improvement imo. Imagine how much the black guardian sequence would drag if he was just repeating surface level marxist critiques for half an hour instead
Also I agree that the thing that seems to incense people most about the story is that the final twist is "surprise, everything that ever happened was in the villain's perfect and flawless plan all along, including what you did from the moment you learned of the villain's plan and tried to thwart them". Viewers like a twist where a plan fails, be it the heroes or the villains'. What they don't like is when everything ultimately gets overwritten by the revelation every single action was ultimately meaningless and the only silver lining is that what is essentially a deus ex machina cast some doubt on the villain's plan succeeding completely. Especially since as the video said the story tries to paint the Higher Ones as some kind of omniscient masterminds who are playing 5D chess with mankind but in the end they have direct control on the Emissaries (and a crucial part of their plan is to lie to the Emperor's face to basically trigger the command they programmed him with to initiate the Cleansing)
The opening about spoiler resistant games vs. those not remind me all the AAA games with 2deep4u plot twists that got leaked and had go out of their way to spoil them for random people. Thinking of all the games I consider to have GOOD stories, I can’t think of how most if any of them would be significantly spoiled with a one/two sentence line like “X kills Y!”, “X is the villain. Kill your X or blank the Y!” or “X is nameless character’s “daughter” who kills the previous game’s main character in a cutscene!”. Deus Ex doesn’t really get ruined by knowing UNATCO’s true nature or the ending options, Fallout isn’t ruined by knowing about the post-Water Chip stuff or the Vault Dweller’s ultimate fate, most of the majesty of KotOR2’s grand reveal is just how much stuff is crammed into the enclave scene than one single line, New Vegas doesn’t really have any single big thing to spoil (Mr. House's true nature isn't really foreshadowed enough to be a twist and it's a mid-game thing at most), and even Planescape: Torment requires both the “victim” understanding the game and a LOT of text to even begin covering anything. Even a game like Custom Robo (GCN) or the Baten Kaitos duology where I consider the moment the twist shows itself to be some of the best parts of the plot (in games that also have great gameplay and fun writing overall) are both hard to spoil without going into VERY extensive detail (Sure “X betrays you”, but the how and why are the really fun part), and get their effect not from pure shock but from how entwined they are with the game mechanics (and aesthetics in Custom Robo’s case).
My head canon: Arcanum was one of the previous civilizations. Unlike them Pyreans managed to use both technology and magic without the two interrupting each other
I'm absolutely drawn in by the clothes designs in this game. Skyrim's casual clothes were always sort of samey with furs and dirty cotton shirts. In these two videos, the Endersl-made stuff has so much color, contrast and charming details. People actually dress good.
15:35 when i finished the whole game, this sentence come up in my mind immediately. Firespark was telling the truth. An if the main character was killed then the apocalypse could come a liitle later.
High One 1: "Ah shit, the Prophet is dead. What now?" High One 2: "No problem fam, watch this" (High One 2 appears before Tealor) High One 2: "Ha ha ha, your Prophet is dead and you are still wasting your time looking for the Numinos, little do you know it actually serves to start the Cleansing! Oops, silly me, I let that slip" Tealor: "AHA! Now I know you to defeat you!" (Activates the Beacon raw and starts the Cleansing)
Playing through this story and world in VR was one of the best experiences I've ever had in a game. Looking up into the sky in the sun temple as the cleansing begins, while ghostly silhouettes of bodies gently float towards the vortex far above, will forever be engrained in my mind. Thanks for this video :)
If you like archery in vanilla, you'll love it here. Lots of cool active skills that are used like shouts, but have separate cooldowns, so they can be combined. The combat is a lot more creative than vanilla in that way, makes it really satisfying. I'd recommend using the gestures from VRIK to switch between these "shouts" easily. Don't make the gestures cast them directly though, this is buggy and often doesn't work. I've also started a playthrough as a mage, which is a lot more interesting in terms of builds than Skyrims perks. I'd recommend disabling the crosshair for this, having imperfect aim adds a lot to combat. I do still prefer archery by a lot though.
After all this time, there's no part of any game that can make me so sad and upset than playing that damned Ryneus quest. They capture the innocence and hopeful part of a child really well!
Well if it makes you feel better, I can pretty confidently say you're looking at things with either rose tinted goggles or a culturally enforced "children are so great" mindset brought to you by the government organization that makes you sign that Whitney Houston song in elementary school. Children are, without reinforcement to break them of the habits, incredibly cruel and self centered. What you describe as innocence is really just a lack of education or care for what goes on around them. They seem "innocent" because they dont know things, and they dont know because they dont care about anyone else. So, they are by nature a Catch-22. In order to be hopeful, innocent or "pure" they need to be sheltered from the excesses and abuses of the world. But that also leaves them as sadistic little jerks. . The main reason some kids do come with a stronger conscience than others is they've already been victims to severe unfairness in the world, either by seeing it or experiencing it firsthand. But, if that's the case they then lose their innocence. So, the only way to make an innocent, good natured or hopefuly child is for childish nature of them to be taken away, effectively meaning you cannot be innocent until your innocence is already damaged by experience. I know i'm just rambling and I hate kids, but it is a good quest. Even if it stings it was well written and did fulfill an emotional core of the mid-late journey, Just try not to buy into too many more Hallmark Company deas and you'll handle it better in the future.
@@Warlockracy Oh yeah drain health is always great in these games Fire mage builds are also mad OP cause there's only like 2-3 rare enemy types in the game with any fire resistance to speak of and there's a ridiculous number of stackable items and traits that boost fire damage
@@Warlockracy Damn, Russia made the first safe vaccine and you guys are back in lockdown. Guess your other video makes a bit more sense now. Stay safe mate
Our reality also happens to be ruled by the cycles, if you study the geology of our planet you'll quickly notice that cataclysms that are in fact purges, happen in intervals of several thousand years, the latest one was the Younger Dryas. The aforementioned cataclysm wiped out most of the mega fauna and was a bottleneck for the human population.
Enderal seems great but I have this weird thing that I've had since childhood where I absolutely hate it when my character constant loses control or gets knocked out constantly for the sake of the plot
Same. I hate it more in games like Enderal where my main character is supposed to be this giga-powerful one-man army. I have centuries of magical knowledge and an amount of raw power that baffles even experienced scholars, but can't do anything to avoid being K.O'd by some random bandit with a mace during a cutscene? It is a good game but holy shit the Prophet probably has brain damage by the end for how often they get rendered unconscious.
@@pissedoffturtle7333 That kind of railroading for the sake of a plot is a mixture of game engine limitation and a lack of knowledge about how to bait players into following your linear plotline through curiosity and game design. In a way, Skyrim's dreadfully limited in cutscenes (I don't know how much of Oblivion/Morrowind is left in the engine, but i THINK they don't have the ability to play cinematics unlike Oblivion and Morrowind, so you can only work with in-engine scripting) so I can't really complain TOO much about plot progression by knocking out... But at the same time, anyone who's run a tabletop campaign competently knows that the FIRST thing you avoid as a DM is pulling player agency blatantly out of the player's hands, even if it means you then need to think up multiple lures to hook all the players in and/or multiple paths that all lead to the same plot element happening.
@@neoqwerty My specific issue could probably be fixed by just using different things to knock the player out. If they replaced a small amount of rubble with a big magic shockwave of unquantified destructive power then I'd be fine with it, I can just imagine that it's exactly as strong as would be needed to K.O my superhumanly tough prophet and that a normal man would've been killed instead. It's just the fact that the cutscenes kind of contradict the overall feeling of power progression that the gameplay manages to sell absolutely perfectly, if that makes sense. Shit I think Skyrim actually does this better at times like when Karliah knocks the Dragonborn out with her special, magic bow and a special, hard to make poison. Those two things are rare and impressive enough that I can see them working even on someone far more powerful than a regular human. Not sure if I'm wording this well enough but hopefully you get what I'm saying.
I know right. When I was a kid I was on this quest to go to school and like the plot kept making me sit through boring lectures in a classroom then when I finally get control again I just black out and when I wake up I'm railroaded back into the school quest. The worst part is it took me like 18 years to complete that quest. Spoilers the next quest ain't great either, dafuq you mean I got to do a work quest every day or else I'm going to starve and not have a place to live. Bro this game sucks
Enderal is quite a trip from start to end, it feels like the Skyrim engine just held back a lot of the ideas that SureAI wanted to go foward with. Hopefully we hear from their new game soon. Side note, Could have called the crystals "Tiberium" and you'd have the CnC plotline.
One thing that's always bothered me is: how does the Order even know so much about the Cycle anyway? How can a bunch of renaissance-era templars pick up these specific individuals and events from countless millenia ago, to the point where they can put them into rigid patterns? In our world it's taking the world's best scientists decades to even attempt to figure out things like the Bronze Age collapse, which was both far more recent and far less total (see Egypt and the Assyrians) so how can the Order do it with the Cleansing? Not only that, but the Cycle seems to happen on such vast timescales that it would start being affected by shit like plate tectonics. At some places the ground should just be littered by millions-year-old artifacts as nature spits up older artifacts like fucked-up dinosaur bones while swallowing newer ones. If this world has anything like that then Vyn-eans (Vynners?Vynnii?) without knowledge of things like continental drift or carbon dating could easily confuse dozens of seperate civilizations over a million years as a single really big one (since common sense would say that things found closer to the surface must be more recent) I'm probably overthinking this but it just kinda takes me out of the story. Like, the whole main story is supposed to be about figuring out an event, but the characters don't act like humans trying to figure out things from their environment like normal people. Rather the mod creators just seem to randomly put the story on hold so they can possess one of the characters and infodump things to you.
Mmm... I always thought the High Ones were showing things in people's dreams to point them in the correct direction, as they are the ones who want that society builds the Beacon in the first place. I mean, without those dreams ("it all begins with the dreams") there wouldn't have been a truce between Tealor and Narathzul's mages. My take on Nicolas's writing is that is like mine was in the past: he is writing to himself (sharing what is in his head) and if it can connect with you at some level good if not, it wasn't the point from the start. When you write for yourself and not an audience you also don't question how it would work, because for you as a writer in your head it does and that is really the end of it. That doesn't make you a bad writer, just a writer with a different goal that doesn't match the norm, as nullifies any criticism from the very conception. Edit: As Nicolas shared himself freely, he ended up in a madhouse at a point in his life because he couldn't distinguish what was real and wasn't. So I am really glad that I can understand at least something of what his head can imagine and his thought process. Because probably (as someone with mental disorders myself) doesn't make much sense sometimes.
The magic in the setting and the level of technology demonstrated in the story explains how archeologists have been able to make the discoveries that seem to perplex you. The Pyrean's writings have been decyphered as have the Starlings, and their technology allows for memories and consciousness to be recorded with a level of fidelity that our world's technology cannot reach yet. The way that magic allows mages to peer into alternate dimensions and gain insight to other permutations of causality allows researchers to infer and extrapolate information, allowing them to find locations of dig sites in their own dimension. There are multiple methods of divination and research demonstrated both by the characters in the main plot and in the books you can find.
this feels more like the consequences of balancing time and cost on the development side. The devs could definitely have written the story without these problems but that would mean either adding 10 more hours of decent content to the main questline in order to make that discovering of the Cycle feel natural to the player or adding 2 hours of almost perfect storytelling that manages to provide the same idea but condensed. If they try to condense it into 2 hours and screw up even a tiny bit, the player is going to notice and that becomes one of the weakest parts of the story. Going for 10 more hours of decent content puts more stress on development time and that has its own set of issues for the devs. Info dumping sucks but there are times in some games where I feel like its the best of the worst solutions to a problem that is not related to the storytelling abilities of the devs.
@@D00000T Exactly. And that's not even limited to games. Books and movies have that too. Making some information come to light in an in-universe organic fashion could prove sometimes disastrous for the pacing. Sometimes, and that has nothing to do with lazy writing, info-dumping is legit the most efficient and least hurtful thing to do, in terms of pacing and story-composition. Though, it should always be used as a last resort.
Magic man. If we could look back through time with whirlpools and crap that would be way more useful than computers, feather dusters and shovels. People always confuse intelligence with technology. They're still just as smart as we are.
Not sure if anyone commented but according to lore, Emissaries aren't programmed, they're free-willed revivals of people whose personality and desires match the needs of High Ones master plan. Like Prophet is always a nobody who wanted to be someone big and meaningful and is driven by desire to do big things - and you are given the means to achieve greatness (empowerment, ability to learn really fast). Emperor is someone in power and willing to sacrifice everything out of stubbornness. So, uh... I guess it is still about human nature, just... how it can be exploited by profiling and manipulation performed by super-intelligence?
Still a twist that the ones that were holding all the cards from the very beginning turn out to be the ones holding all the cards, who knew. Their plan isn't even entirely manipulative. The High Ones still have to directly intervene by preventing the Prophet from succeeding at spying on the Nehrimese or straight up directly telling Teanor to go activate the Beacon. Makes you think, if they can bend the rules so much, why didn't they just go up to Tealor and tell him "Ha, you see, the Numinos is a trap, we are just tricking you into recovering it so we can bring the Cleansing"?
120 hours of playing Enderal after I first noticed these videos, and here I am. I don't regret a millisecond of my time playing Enderal. ... Well, maybe except the bit where I dumped a bunch if crafting points into lockpicking and as a result wasn't able to level up handiwork later on when levelling up became slower. I really, really regret that. ... I also regret buying the house in the Noble's district. Too far away from the market for it to be convenient...
Enderal will forever for me be the adventure of a freelance merchant marine who roams the land in search of the next big payday. A cool dungeon with excellent environmental storytelling and a boss fight is always more valuable than powerful or valuable loot. The story seemed interesting but it just takes too long for me to suffer through it while my own story flows as fast as I can walk.
Yeah, too many quests will have parts where your character is just frozen in place and has to wait for one or more characters to talk for a looong time. The kind of moments that make you think "Did they want to create a game or write a book?" until you realize oh wait, they did write books on that.
(SPOILERS) One thing that is not explained in the video is why you find the Prophet's corpse latter on, and why you're called "Fleshless" in the game. It's quite interesting. Essentially, that's because the Main Character is an Emissary, which means they're like a ghost, but artificial, and at the same time less and more real than them. Essentially, if a person dies with their last, greatest wish unfulfilled, the High Ones have the ability to project a reconstructed image of that person upon reality, which will think itself real and will be perceived as such by the world. The construct, or Emissary, will be physically identical to the deceased, and retain all their memories, but their personality and abilities will be entirely reshaped to fit the requirements of their last wish (a failed apprentice will come back as a genius of their craft, a man who died defending his village as an invicible protector, and so on), which they will be driven to fulfill obsessively. It is never explicitely stated, but it's likely that an Emissary can only die naturally once they've fulfilled their wish. I think this is what the devs were going for: Emissaries essentially embody aspects of human nature driven to extremes, and the predictability of their desires means they can be easily manipulated, which is how the Cycle is capable of perpetuating itself. It's not super well executed, but I find it decent. If anything, Emissaries are under-exploited, as they're the most unique things about Enderal's setting. They would have a ton of potential if instead of being linked to the High Ones' plans, there were other entities capable of creating Emissaries just for the sake of creating them. Imagine how interesting it would be to discover that the town doctor is actually an Emissary who had died wishing he could have saved more people, or that a noble line is actually protected by an Emissary ancestor who wished to defend his family forever; one of your companions dies halfway through the story and comes back as an Emissary, way stronger but their personality is now a weird caricature of their previous one, giving rise to interesting dilemas. What I really don't like though is the player-created protagonist. Since their personality is so important to the story, as you're basically playing the embodiement of their greatest wish, freedom, it's one of those cases where a fixed protagonist would have been way better to help the player connect with the story.
"It is never explicitly stated, but it's likely that an Emissary can only die naturally once they've fulfilled their wish." It is the complete opposite: when they give up that flaw/wish and accept themselves as who they are. As long as they have that flaw that defines them, that desire, they will keep existing. Because what an Emissary is, is a pure manifestation of a flaw. No flaw = no existence. They already fulfilled their wish just by being an Emissary: a powerless become powerful. A moron becomes intelligent. They are living their wish already. What they need to do is let it go and accept themselves (and life in general) for what it is instead of what they wanted it to be. About your last paragraph... it is already a fixed protagonist. The game starts with a nightmare from his past, where you can look at the Prophet's psyche. That alone should show that this is not your character because how much broken is in the head is something you don't know and can't control. I just facepalm when people even try to role-play in this game, they tell you, again and again, you shouldn't. You even met your psyche in the Order's trial that tells you who you really are: weak, and useless. But people (and the Prophet himself don't want to hear that, I guess) keep saying "bullshit" and keep repeating "whatever" in the dreams sequences that support that notion. Hell, I saw a let's play that every time he appeared at the nightmare with Dad said something among the lines of "I don't know him and don't care about him, I will skip this useless crap" and I rolled my eyes so hard almost went blind. The game from the beginning shows that you don't have any control over whom the Prophet is. The fact people even try is, from my perspective, moronic.
@@Ilwenray85 I don't think that's fair, because the game itself is conflicted about it. The Black Guardian plain tells you that it didn't matter what you were before being the Prophet, and that the Prophet and their older self were two different entities. As an embodiement of a wish for freedom, you're given immense mechanical freedom in how to build your character, which is thematic, but this constrast with the fixed personality of the MC. Since that Prophet Emissary supposedly built for freedom, they should have the freedom to just disregard everything the nightmare sequences say, as a lot of players do, because it seems the natural thing to do. Same thing for the Emissary wish thing. For me, the Catharsis ending is a case specific to the Prophet finally fulfilling their wish by being freed of all their inadequacies and their very existence. But at the same time they should already have been free by virtue of being an Emissary in the first place. It's messy.
The Black Guardian says that who you were before have no importance, yes. But what that means is that before being the Prophet, you were just like everyone else, someone irrelevant. Not that the past is useless, but that you back then, were. *"This is a story of someone who wanted to be free,"* says the narrator in the introduction. We have a character with a past (who grew in an abusive house) already defined with a clear flaw and psyche: that he/she was useless and weak. And a slave both in the literal sense (Sirius insinuates Enderal is paradise because there are no slaves here) and the figurative sense: he/she couldn't change his/her circumstances at all. But then woke up on a beach, and now he/she is strong, with not only magic powers but power over other people. He/she is important now, is not weak anymore, and can't let it go. Even then, he/she subconsciously knows, and the dreams keep tell him/her to accept the flaw, give up to be really free (and actually finally have a chance to end the cycle), but it can't. Is in denial. The Black Guardian is making him/her understand that every action until now when he/she thought was making a difference (and be different from his/her past self) was what the High Ones wanted. He/she is a puppet that was created based on that flaw, nothing more. *And without freedom.* The option of being a God is really tempting for how the protagonist is designed to be: a defining flaw (avoid weakness, keep power, don't be an inferior to anyone) that drives everything he/she does. Being everything he/she could have dreamed for and more is actually the most obvious outcome. In fact, that option is always the first one in the dialogue wheel, sometimes hiding the other choices so you can catch up on it. Again, he/she doesn't want only "freedom", he/she wants what it entails: be powerful to control his/her life. Because he/she, is at the core, weak. Edit: Have you read the novel? Because the antagonist of the novel is a mirror to the Prophet's personality. Suffering abuses from his Dad is pretty much the start of it too. We wouldn't even be discussing this I think.
Nooooo, you didn't talked to Jespar before he died, just before Beacon destruction! (Or at least didn't shown us) Even tho character development is better for Jespar, I like both of the companions. They have cool arks.
I think the kid was voiced better in german (I guess overall the german VO is better since it had professionals at work) anyways. The only powerful scene in the game where I couldn't hold back my tears. I give enderal that.
For me the moment where I almost cry is the end of the main quest, especially the last dialogue with Jespar. Very painful to hear... I'm not a very sentimental person, so a very few games give me these kind of emotions. Truly a masterpiece for me.
I played Enderal up until the crystal collection. At that point a faulty script regarding my class replicates itself so often that my game ran at 5 FPS
I got a fair bit into Enderal (after your previous video about it) and kinda fell off. I think the main plot dump (spoiler alert) about the impending disaster they learned about from historical civilization cycles just felt off in how it was presented. I think a Morrowind style “well, you have to discover what history actually was instead of having a lore dump” would have saved it for me.
The core of Enderal is to ask yourself: *why did I waste my time playing this game?* On purpose, designed to make you ask yourself that. Not because is bad but because the theme is determinism and is so well conveyed that you can say anything you do in the game is a waste of time. Because if there is no free will, no chance of winning at the conflict, and you were doomed from the start, what was the point? As Fate as a concept exists in Vyn, with the Book of Predestination where everything that will happen (and how the "personification of Fate" Sarantha wants it to happen) is written already, that makes everyone a single puppet with no free will at all. Sure, in the eventuality we are playing in Enderal the Shadowgod killed Sarantha (the Aged Man writes about how he had hope that things would be different in this reality,) but in the end, everything is the same, because the battle known as " The Night of the Thousand Fires" which is the detonator for Sha'Rim's treason already happened. I always thought the Veiled Woman was Chance, traveling between realities and looking at destinies trying to find one where Fate is out of the picture so she can influence the outcome. Nothing in the game really matters. And that is just delightful. **** Some words by Nicolas Lietzau, the writer about the Red Madness and the High Ones and what they are supposed to be: "Here's the way I intended it as a writer: it is true that the Red Madness is caused by the High Ones. It's true that they manipulate people to their ends. HOWEVER, the manipulation only works because people give in to it. Think of it as a kind of catalyst for your inner demons. Yero always felt grief and guilt for his wife, even before the High Ones came along (letter 3.) However, only when they infected him with the Red Madness, this grief morph into hatred and desperation. The same applies to Ryneus. He was also broken and lonely, but the Black Stones/the High Ones used that loneliness against him and made him effectively kill that entire village. And so on, and so forth. Yes, the High Ones manipulate us, but the only reason they can do this is that we're fragile creatures in the first place. It's probably a bit obvious, but for me, and on a more meta-level, the High Ones were always metaphors for the frailty of conscious existence. It might sound pretentious, but it's always been a topic that fascinated me. The less aware we are of the underlying emotions and struggles that guide our actions, the more prone we are to 1.) bringing about our own downfall and 2.) externalizing these struggles onto someone or something else. On a micro level: Yero projected his suffering on the people who chose "the Void." Adila projected it on the criminals of the world. Tealor projected it on the High Ones - and so on and so forth. Every character affected by the Red Madness (the Fleshless Ones/Emissaries more than anybody else, as they are materializations of their struggle) is ultimately fighting a part of themselves. Even the generic Possessed Ones or the crazy keepers whose struggles the story doesn't reveal. *And that's also what the High Ones and the Cycle ultimately are in the grand scheme of things: The embodiment of the perpetual struggle of humanity/existence with itself.* Now, I could go on for ages, but I'll stop here to not spell out things too much. :) As for the animals and the undead, yes, the Red Madness works on them because, as you suggested, their minds are a lot less complex. They still have aggression the High Ones can make use of. In a way, they are probably the closest thing to a direct intervention method the High Ones use."
@Brupcat Determinism as an excuse? If by "those aspects" you mean the _existence of Fate/absence of free will_ is something established in the game that came before, Nehrim. Enderal is a continuation of those themes, building on top of them greatly. And as curiosity, determinism is a philosophy Nicolas Lietzau, in real life, holds. Not tied as Fate but subconscious instead, the "I" we don't know and moves the strings. Even if he recognizes, it is not a healthy philosophy (specially related to mental health) to live for. And is the spin he chooses to add in Enderal to still make everyone a puppet after Fate is out of the picture, now from the High Ones/subconscious, humanity always a puppet if not for one reason for another.
@Brupcat Well... that is not tied to Enderal, but determinism itself. If you think about it, an existence without choices, where any perceived personality or ambitions are fake, is not an existence worth living, even less an existence you can hold accountable for anything. You just breathe, *don't exist.* That makes life itself, (and of course a game based on the concept of determinism) a waste of time. Not because Enderal wanted it directly, but because that is determinism in a nutshell, you can't have one without the other.
the veiled woman, I call her "Deus ex machina" Not joking. That's what she is or what how the writer said: "She's what you want believe she is", but doesn't give enough clues what she could be.
@@BobExcalibur Yeah, I read about more information about her here in the comments. Haven't played the DLCs yet. It's on the to do list. the added more information about her probably because of the criticism
@@Superschokokeks They did, and the additional content does not make concrete answers but does help to narrow the scope of what impression you take from her. There's another youtuber called Wereyoi who does good videos on Enderal, and recently did an overview of people's takes on her based on whats presented. He's quite good, you should take a look.
Enderal's shortcomings all feel organic, they feel like logical consequences of the game being developed by a small team. The quests have to be heavily railroaded because it would take a huge amount of work to account for player actions if you retained control of the player character.
Coming back after a while, it's almost infuriating how its major flow plays perfectly with the story's general theme. The only reason your character lives and breathes is that they have a role in a greater entity's sick plans. So of course you can't attack certain NPCs, or say anything that would deviate from that plan: you're being puppeteered all along.
I should replay Enderal. It captures the feeling of exploring an alien world and culture in a way that only a few games like Morrowind are really able to do.
Fallout was a tricky one. Wanted to play the old ones after 4 dissapointed me so much. Took me a few tries, but it was worth it. Both 1 + 2 were great games! But hard to get used to.
One possible reason for the delay between responses in dialogue is actually a matter of translation. A great example of this is WoW's old in engine cutscenes (haven't played in a while, so not sure if they changed their practice regarding this.) Different languages can take a different amount of time for any given line. English, French, and German can already have some major differences in how much time it takes to say the same line across them. So, the natural solution in a scenario where general animations are used (hence why it's an in-engine cutscene/convo issue) is to put a pause between lines, to act as a buffer for these differences.
the story seems to fit better together when you go on the Esme quest about the veiled women. where supposedly shes the cause of the cycle after her first experiment of a perfect society became boring to humankind. To be honest it doesnt make too much sense, as its never brought up again sadly. another point of interest is the Rhlatta questline, going in depth with the butcher of ark books. both are heavy in fire and flesh motifs. both also draw heavy parallells to the player character.
i still think the veiled women represents the Programmers and makers of "the game" or the Game itself. She stands above all, She helps you progress... she is the "master of the game". and the offerings she "takes" are the donations from the players. ;-) Its works when you think about it. Of course she can be everything else, but i like this kind of Mind.fu__ idea. ;-)
I still haven't played Enderal yet, so I don't want to watch it yet. However, I just wanted to say, thanks for still making videos. It makes me feel less alone in the world to see people discuss things I feel alone about. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
Pillars of Eternity!? I really hope you'll consider making a video on that. I've always been a fan of RTWP, ever since Baldur's Gate back in the day. Great video as always!
The writing of the mod is rather schizophrenic: a lot of anachronisms in the phrasing, what seems a copious amount of swearing, and decade old atheistic arguments from 4chan and Reddit, not to mention all the passing out the main character does. Excellent gameplay, mechanics, and aesthetic design however. For what is essentially a free game, Enderal is excellent.
@@KNIGHTMAREMANIAC this. It was very strange that the arguments most of the characters had were against religion itself and not the imperfect people posing as gods. It didn’t feel like an organic part of the world, just an attempt to draw parallels to ours. Parallels are fine and all but themes must be able to exist in world of the game independently of the real world
Hot take, "girl who swears" doesn't feel like the most egalitarian way to write a woman. I actually hate it. My feelings on Enderal are complex. I feel like the story is highly overrated, to the point that sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game than what people are describing and talk so highly about. Everything else about the gameplay is almost perfect, but I really hate the story, how it's told, and the characters it tells it with. I felt the same about Nehrim. Then, I remember that it's free, and I feel like the asshole. Which is fair, I definitely am, in this situation. But despite being reductive, I do feel like the criticisms of Enderal hold water.
Pro tip for this game.... rob every home,shop bank and most importantly the library for every book in the game bc it's give context and quest and probably some of the best memory I got from enderal was from reading a book I randomly stole and forgetting I was playing a video-game for 10-20 minute
It seems the second ending is the best one. The entire concept of the cycle is a test on humanity. The final choice is the finale of this test. The first actual decision the Prophet is allowed to make. Everything before was little more than the cycle taking its course. Choosing to be truly selfless and sacrifice yourself so that humanity may have a chance. Not a heroic sacrifice to be remembered. A sacrifice only one person remembers. A sacrifice you don't even know will be enough. The game goes out of its way multiple times that it is your desire to be a hero, to live in a dream, is what will drive you to failure. That is what the Brave new World ending leads to. You fully lose yourself to your pride and believe you can become the god of the next humanity. And you obviously weren't the first prophet to be given this choice. There were ones before. Mainly the Aged Man. Gajus. He chose to try to be a god. A guide to humanity. But he failed. Because this choice is a trick. Fleshless ones, Emissaries, are bound to the rules of the cycles. Like slaves. Just by surviving their own cycle doesn't mean they are free of it. Far worse, they were forced into just being another part of the cycle. Just another piece of the puzzle, now he is only there to give the word of the dead to the next prophets, eternally forced to watch one after another fail. And, to those who still believe it, i am sorry but Calia is not unique to our Cycle. Gajus had his own Calia. Like, he literally has two puppets DIRECTLY referring to her, one of a little girl with a hole in her chest, Calias backstory of having her heart replaced by a black stone. And one depicting almost the EXACT position of the first time you saw Calia lose herself to the stone, when she murdered that Bandit leader. The woman in the water is his Calia. His love that he saved with him from the cycle. If we chose the brave new world ending, we will just be another Gajus.
I think "quite interesting" isn't fair towards the desert part, I was blown away by how well that place looked without any additional graphics enhancements mods when I reached that part. Skyrim should've been set in Hammerfell.
Oof, i didn't realize how often player gets knocked out :P. I personally didn't noticed the pauses in dialogue and got very immersed in the story. Great video, especially on top of the Deus Ex vs real life one. Do you plan to make third video about the dlc quests, 2 questlines and secret ending?
I believe Starlings are an example of a civilization that managed to unite for a single goal and overcome their nature for something greater than them. Perhaps that's why they're hiding from humans from Vyn, the "soil-born" as Kurmai called them. He said that the soil-born are not yet ready to ascend to the stars because they didn't let go of what allows them to be manipulated by the High Ones.
Whoever did the dungeon designs in Enderal, theyre likely one of the best level designers I've seen. For the sheer level of craftmanship put into this game the only two things that pulled it down were the skyrim engine/textures, and Lishari's awful voice actor which completely took you out of the setting and made you feel like you were in a poorly written teenage rom-com during any interaction with her.
The game should gradually lower your stats and then make you start slurring g your words as your brain turns to Swiss cheese from the MMA/NFL-tier quantity of concussions you get
The whole continent blowing up and everybody dying kind of makes the previous hundred or so hours of Exploration and stuff feel... wasted doesn't it? I guess it was the story The developers wanted to tell but ultimately I'm kind of glad I never actually finished the main quest.
It's not the fact the continent blows up itself, it's the fact that ultimately it's not because of a slip up or a plan gone awry, but it's because everything you've done was just facilitating the High Ones' plans all along. They go full anime villain on you and go "Aha, all that has ever happened in the world ever was just a part of my keikaku".
The thing that makes this a story about human nature is the circumstance of a Fleshless One's creation: when a person dies, the High Ones may electively create a Fleshless from their dying wish. The Prophet is a Fleshless created from the dying wish of a peasant on a boat. "This is the story of someone who wanted to be free." The Prophet is driven by a desire for significance and grandeur, but in being aware of this, perhaps you could subvert it. In knowing the role you need to play for the High Ones, you can choose to act countercurrently to it. Remember the Aged Man? He had materials related to The Cleansing all over his manor. He'd been there for ages. He had a companion entombed, who wasn't immortal like he was. Perhaps he was the Prophet of the Pyreans. Perhaps he went to the Starlings' city with his Calia, in a bid to save humanity the next time around, only to end up serving his part as an emissary once again. To my read, the only way to have any hope against the High Ones is to actively recognize that you, The Prophet, are the wrong person for the job. There are a few opportunities in Enderal to create immortal beings that would survive the cleansing--extra variables that might just break something--and there's enough of them that I can't read it as a coincidence. Consider the temple with the Pyrean spirit: if it had been successful in convincing Firespark to kill you, then that really *would* have stopped the Cleansing. Pass the torch to someone else. Step down. Let yourself die to cast a light into the future. Overcome your nature.
Enderal's endings honestly just kill any interest I have in replaying the game. I love the story, and the way its twists and turns are handled is really great, but I've genuinely played several games where the "worst" outcome is less awful than the best options in Enderal. The fact you can do nothing to prevent the entire game world you've poured so much time into from being erased just makes it kind of... pointless? Like any choice you make in any quest in the entire game is completely meaningless because no matter what everything gets destroyed eventually anyway. Yeah, you get to see the outcomes regardless, but eventually all those same outcomes lead to the exact same eventuality. Everybody involved is fucking dead. That, and the idea that humanity is apparently so absolutely fucked that they will literally doom themselves time and time again after thousands of redos, just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I love pessimistic or grim stories, but Enderal's just feels needlessly bleak. Well, either that or hopeless and irrelevant because humanity's only fucked because of the perfectly, some might say unrealistically, flawless manipulation of the High Ones (which kind of destroys its message anyway, imo). I really love it as a game and it's one of the most incredible showcases of talent and dedication I've ever seen, but holy shit does the thought of playing it again feel like a slog to me. Honestly the best way to surmise my thoughts on it is probably just to point out the fact that the devs, deciding to add a third and alternative ending, chose to make it so that Enderal is still 100% destroyed but this time the MC is maybe still alive (or possibly just in a coma, dying without achieving anything whatsoever). It's like Warhammer 40k levels of grim, only without the humour to make it less draining.
I find it interesting that what you disliked about the ending is the exact reason I think it’s perfect. None of the story, none of the themes of the game would have worked had it not been pointless. You died at the very beginning, everything after that, the entire part where you were an important adventurer and hero was nothing but a projection of unfulfilled wishes of being free and in control. This is what the character experiences but it’s also what the player experiences. When someone plays an rpg, they do so because they want to be a powerful person affecting the events of the world. The revelation that you were nothing but an instrument to bring the cleansing, that you were tricked into believing you could save the world hits the player the same way it hits the character. It works as a commentary on the expectations players have of the genre. In that, I found it did something far more interesting than most other rpgs (especially Skyrim itself).
@@LordAJ12345 Are you SURE that's the order, for RPGs? 'Cause I play it for the story. It happens that RPGs railroad me into saving the world or my PC or the NPC allies die. In games where I'm not railroaded I apparently faff around just going into random caves and solving puzzles and don't even feel compelled to move the main plot. RPG is a genre where your choice is generally "move the plot or turn off the game", there's no OPTION except to affect events BECAUSE the story is programmed that way. (There's an RPG maker game, OFF, that actually uses exactly that genre convention to amazing narrative effect.)
Gothic had a visible barrier at the edge of the colony you could walk to. It made a lot of sense in the setting. So no idea where you got that idea. TLDR: The barrier being there was the point of the game.
Yeah, but it feels like the writers forcibly hammered in a copout just to prevent it from being an ending that couldn't be interpreted as having at least one unequivocally positive part. "Here's the Dreamflower elixir, it can make you strong enough to survive the localized Cleansing...OR IT CAN MAKE YOU THINK YOU SURVIVED WHILE TRAPPING YOU IN A PERFECT FAKE REALITY THAT IS UNDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE REAL ONE! Doesn't matter that the two effects have nothing to do with each other, I'm the writer and I just ruined your semi-happy ending, because fuck you for wanting one"
@@ZorotheGalladeThat’s pretty much how I see it, it’s Enderal so it has to be super dark and edgy. But I think it’s pretty clear that it’s the devs throwing us a good ending while appeasing the super dark edgy grimdark fans that like Enderal
What I enjoyed most in the game was the map tbh, the story sequences were okay at first but stuff like the dreams was just insufferable, and the blacking out 24/7 is just...
The world/setting is the best thing about any Bethesda game, or even Bethesda type games like New Vegas or total overhaul mods of Bethesda games like Nehrim and Enderal In Nehrim and Enderal’s case the mods are fun despite the story, not because of it.
Stopped off perhaps half or three quarters into Enderal, and have just started playing Skyrim again a few days ago - the difference is astounding. Here's to the (probably futile) hope Starfield is a bit experimental. I'm not evening dreaming for much you know, just like, maybe one or two real characters.
Starfield is coming out and Bethesda devs are stroking their own egos about how there is a thousand planets to explore. Needless to say, I don't trust them to have made even one hundred unique and non-samey planets, let alone a thousand. They're most likely going to be like Skyrim dungeons but spherical
There is also a third ending which is a bit harder to get. Never got around but found a video. Spoiler: through a series of circumstances and tasks you craft a probility potion that gives you 100% chance of favorable outcome. You drink it when the reaper machine explodes and you survive, unocking the third epilogue.
@@Warlockracy its how the magic system works essentially. Mages make possibilities into reality. But the magister that went tankie and blew himself and his puppils up is the plot thread you have to follow you get a key to his secluded lab and follow it from there.
@@BobExcalibur That feels like a copout. It's like one writer wanted the secret ending to be at least partially happy, and another writer just punched him off his seat and sait "No, fuck you and fuck the player, the elixir can now just trap you into a perfect dream that you can't escape because I said so"
Using unconscious to get the player/protagonist from point a to b or to drive the plot foward is usually a sign of bad writing. Just saying. Not related to enderal at all really.
"If we let the player move during this scene they might do THINGS and dirsupt the 5 minute dialogue we set up. Better set all NPCs to essential. Actually no, make all of them 100% invulnerable. Also stop the player moving. You WILL watch the cutscene."
The story gave me whiplash from how amazing the premise and characters, and how awful and ridiculous the ending and final twist are, respectivaly. If you make a logic equation to cross-reference what people say and actually do, you find out pretty much everyone is lying to you. The only specifically verifiable fact the Black Guardian says literally turns out to be false 5 minutes later. He's also completely removed from what's going on in the world above and is probably just as insane as the living city was. No reason to assume a single thing he says is true. Veiled Woman? Lying through her teeth about her part in your death; because you DID die, specifically because of her. Her being some spanner in the works after countless teeth-clenching cycles of suffering? Nonsense that does not jive at all with the cycles, since why assume the Shadow God was the only one to kill the fate lady; moreover by some lorebooks she started the whole bloody thing anyway. At the end, after Sha'rim does his inevitable betrayal-thing, she doesn't actually heal you or anything, just sort of talks to you when you're half-awake and then create a portal to the Black Guardian. Why? Wouldn't it have been easier and clearer to just explain things herself? She wasn't above talking during the Jespar resurrection incident. Funnily enough, it's not enough for her that you're just brought up to snuff about the cycles and fleshless either; try leaving the Black Guardian without letting him "die" (ie. try to body-snatch your ass). Just try the portal. Still there, but it doesn't work. You can't leave. No, you've gotta get nearly possessed by the Black Guardian before she'll let you leave through that portal. Fuck knows why, I sure don't. Maybe it was to set him up as the next cycle's Asatoron. Whatever the fuck she's doing, it's not particularly helping you OR humanity. Aged Man? Gave you the instrument of your destruction (which by design must be re-created for every cycle, because its destruction is apparently instrumental), making him nothing more than a sock puppet of the High Ones. The Word of the Dead is a pointless item anyway, because the VERY BASIS of the Prophet being special is seeing the past ffs, so it's likely just a method to control specifically WHAT the Prophet sees in the past. Coincidence the Word of the Dead didn't reveal Sha'rim's treachery? Hah! "The cleansing is a test for humanity"? As you pointed out, literally all the actors on-stage are fleshless, but when you factor in that, hey, EVOLUTION IS A THING AND A PART OF THE CYCLE, it makes even less sense. All those "evil" traits that the High One's supposedly abuse are mechanisms brought about by evolution. It's not something you can just excise willy nilly. It will always end the same way by that logic. And finally the bonus round hodge-podge nonsense: Sigil stones do nothing to stop the red madness and never did. There's another beacon in the tutorial dungeon which you can never visit again or mention. What the fuck did the Father achieve? What the fuck is the Black Libra and the Room of Paintings? How come this random faction can create fleshless and it's never an issue; are fleshless a normal phenomenon in Vyn? Were the lightborn fleshless, too? (Immortal masters of their chosen craft, usually magic, apparently just all-around better than normal people... sound familiar?) Tealor doesn't think to chuck Sha'rim (who is apparently possessed by a High One at the end there) into the beacon to make it target High Ones. Sha'rim is a lying liar who lies about lying and by no means has anyone's best interests in mind, so just go ahead and pick two dreamflowers, use the spectral chest spell to store one out of Sha'rim's reach so he can make you a "safe" potion for stat gains, and THEN make another real one yourself later so you can dab on reality and get the only good ending in the game. It's how magic works anyhow, so why doubt it now? That said, I think Calia might be the first woman in fiction to actually listen to a man when he tells her to get over herself. Amazing romance; 10/10. Tho, never got to murderize the entire invading army or the starling guardian thingy. Also got knocked out way too often; 0/10.
I love Enderal, but a lot of the writing really didn’t translate well properly when spoken and felt stiff. You could tell very often that the dialogue wasn’t written by native English speakers and you really had to ignore it in order to enjoy the game
Oh yeah, this is a pretty interesting quest. I really enjoy essentially all the quests in this game. Even the side missions are really interesting. Nothing revolutionary and all within Skyrim's confines; but man, I'd love to see what this team could do with funding and their own tech. Oh, the things I could do if I was a billionaire.
@@heidik670 thank you! It’s pretty coincidental the timing of both videos lmao. Especially on a topic as small as this. But it’s neat seeing any and all coverage of the game!
Apart from the massive lore dumps the main quest was pretty good. The only thing I had was a niggling feeling with all this talk about the beacon and how it would save all of Vyn. Before the ending I was really paranoid what the beacon would do. I felt vindicated that it was a trap (though it would work with the Numinos some how?).
Yes I felt the same. Something was wrong the whole way. The ominous music when entering Ark lategame. In retrospect I felt like an idiot, in a good way. Also yes the Numinos would focus its energies and just wreck shit on the High Ones. :)
I'm not afraid of the drinking game, i'm afraid of passing out in enderal and waking up in Skyrim... finally awake and back in Todd's grasp...
I'll give you my liver for the duration of the game.
It got battlehardened by years of unchecked alcoholism, it will aid you well in your journey!
No one should be forced to wake up in that cart on it's way to Helgen...
Evil Todd he like: Hey, you are finally DEAD. Let me help myself with your gold, citizen
once had a bug in enderal where the world map changed to the skyrim one
You wake up, in the arms of Todd.
He puts his finger to your lips and Shushes you.
Saying " _It just works._ "
@@boneman-calciumenjoyer8290 hey unchecked alcoholism just means you never had a problem in the first place
"Enderal is like Skyrim but with a story"
shots fired
They all hit though.
Like Skyrim with a story taken from Mass Effect.
@@Jrock420blam lol fr the inspiration is undeniable but still different
bullseye
enderal did with jespar what skyrim was too scared to do ever, and made an attractive man. wild
Ahem, Hadvar?
He's attractive both physically, and personality-wise. Very dateable.
Ahem, Nazeem?
Honestly thought he was annoying which Skyrim has plenty of people like him
All the attractive male characters were unromanceable 😔
I can confirm that there's a 0,2 second pause between voice lines, that's also why the songs sung by bards in taverns sound so bad. It can be removed with mods, but the lack of pause makes dialogue in the base game way worse. It may work for Enderal.
"The Aged Man's Abode" is a bop tho
I used that mod in enderal and it seemed to suit everything quite well
Ahh, engine limitations. Just play skyrim with 150 fps and see people interrupting themselves. Just because so much is linked to the framerate. Not just parts of the physics engine, but also the time window for a piece of dialogue. And since the dialogue is played the same speed (basically just playing an audio clip) the next line is started before the old one has finished.
Ngl I sometimes miss the music that plays whenever I went to the temple to buy skill books and smoking pipe weed in cool locations. These two things will always stick to my mind whenever I think of this game.
In a way I guess this is the closest Skyrim ever got to a New Vegas spin-off. Uses the same engine+assets but adds its own weapons/armor and has a completely different focus on gameplay. Over all a very impressive game from the schnitzel people. If only the tutorial wasn't so painfully long more people would give the game a chance to enchant them.
P.S The "Rat Catcher" armor set is dope and the giant armored badasses with hammers in the mountain fort will give you a run for your money
I wanted to be offended by the Word Schnitzel People until I rememberd its literally my Favorite food ever..
Enderal is like a D&D dungeon master who has a super cool story they want to tell with interesting characters and themes. But instead of just writing a novel, they try to railroad their players down a prewritten path without taking into account the characters' motivations, personalities, or skills. This makes the plot feel confused at best, and incoherent at worst, ruining whatever good could've been.
Enderal has good gameplay, but the story's extreme dissonance would consistently ruin whatever fun I started having, and constantly knocking my character out at coincidental moments got VERY annoying after the fifth time.
Still better than most big-budget triple A games.😁
For the life on Starling cities, I guess it's mainly airborne life (birds and maybe insects) that could fly up there, and the plants were "seeded" by them.
Then, considering a "cycle" is a whole evolutionary loop, spanning thousands if not millions of years, it means the constructions should be buried meters deep in soil, dirt and mold.
Some cool things I noticed throughout the game;
- In the Silvergrove 'illusion', the time stays at 6.30AM from when you pass out, but it goes up by one minute for every wish you complete for the kid
- The game hints the whole time that you're actually dead. From the people with Red Madness saying you have no flesh to the fact you legitimately find Sirius' and your own bodies.
- There are moments in the game where there are references made to someone trying to transfer their mind into machines to avoid the cleansing
And a mildly far-fetched theory I have about the fate of the Starlings, I believe that all the machines you fight in the Star City are the Starlings, as it's known the cleansing can't affect machines, and that they transfer the minds of the exiled back into bodies when they send them to Vyn. This would explain why Kurmai seems to be sure that they are still there. Although it would leave the question of why the black guardian lost their "feeling".
Two videos in one day? Our dark lord Warlockracy is gracious!
There is a third ending if you drink the dreamflower elixer without getting it purified first. Though the question still remains if the person did purify the elixer.
It's real alright
You can always holding off drinking it till the last second too make it superfluous
Interpreting the Emissaries as being nothing but robots isn't consistent with the game as presented. Its more true to observe them as Jungian archetypes; their reactions to events are simply predictable and easily coaxed by prodding them with the right snarl stimuli.
Tealor's ego demands that he keep pushing forward in the face of doubt, Yuslan's nihilism means he'll destroy everything just to get even and You don't want to accept the idea that you're powerless, so the taunts of the High Ones excite the desired response.
The High Ones know exactly how to play off the weaknesses of humans, because they are the collective shadow self. A psionic manifestation of the Death Drive.
Your suggested rewrite doesn't really change anything, except lower the symbolic value. The Beacon doesn't merely destroy everyone; it makes them part of the same cyclical, self-perpetuating system of abuse that nobody can escape from. It encourages the player to reflect on the abuse they have suffered, and how they can stop it before they pass it on.
100% agreed. Enderal could have been a bit clearer about the nature of the high ones manipulations (particularly with how they relate to the veiled woman seeming to create you), but that rewrite is basically just the exact same thing except in an industrial setting and focused way more on greed. Could still be a cool story, but shifting tone a bit and losing a lot of what makes the cycles feel complex or interesting isn't an improvement imo.
Imagine how much the black guardian sequence would drag if he was just repeating surface level marxist critiques for half an hour instead
Also I agree that the thing that seems to incense people most about the story is that the final twist is "surprise, everything that ever happened was in the villain's perfect and flawless plan all along, including what you did from the moment you learned of the villain's plan and tried to thwart them".
Viewers like a twist where a plan fails, be it the heroes or the villains'. What they don't like is when everything ultimately gets overwritten by the revelation every single action was ultimately meaningless and the only silver lining is that what is essentially a deus ex machina cast some doubt on the villain's plan succeeding completely. Especially since as the video said the story tries to paint the Higher Ones as some kind of omniscient masterminds who are playing 5D chess with mankind but in the end they have direct control on the Emissaries (and a crucial part of their plan is to lie to the Emperor's face to basically trigger the command they programmed him with to initiate the Cleansing)
I love how the plot he comes up with at the end is just the plot of Dead Space.
also basically the plot of Mass Effect trilogy.
The opening about spoiler resistant games vs. those not remind me all the AAA games with 2deep4u plot twists that got leaked and had go out of their way to spoil them for random people. Thinking of all the games I consider to have GOOD stories, I can’t think of how most if any of them would be significantly spoiled with a one/two sentence line like “X kills Y!”, “X is the villain. Kill your X or blank the Y!” or “X is nameless character’s “daughter” who kills the previous game’s main character in a cutscene!”.
Deus Ex doesn’t really get ruined by knowing UNATCO’s true nature or the ending options, Fallout isn’t ruined by knowing about the post-Water Chip stuff or the Vault Dweller’s ultimate fate, most of the majesty of KotOR2’s grand reveal is just how much stuff is crammed into the enclave scene than one single line, New Vegas doesn’t really have any single big thing to spoil (Mr. House's true nature isn't really foreshadowed enough to be a twist and it's a mid-game thing at most), and even Planescape: Torment requires both the “victim” understanding the game and a LOT of text to even begin covering anything. Even a game like Custom Robo (GCN) or the Baten Kaitos duology where I consider the moment the twist shows itself to be some of the best parts of the plot (in games that also have great gameplay and fun writing overall) are both hard to spoil without going into VERY extensive detail (Sure “X betrays you”, but the how and why are the really fun part), and get their effect not from pure shock but from how entwined they are with the game mechanics (and aesthetics in Custom Robo’s case).
Spoilers can definitely impact how we experience adventure games (Full Throttle, Grim Fandango). Admittedly, these are not RPGs.
Sounds more like Dead Space than Mass Effect, but those are very similar games, so there's that.
My head canon: Arcanum was one of the previous civilizations. Unlike them Pyreans managed to use both technology and magic without the two interrupting each other
I'm absolutely drawn in by the clothes designs in this game. Skyrim's casual clothes were always sort of samey with furs and dirty cotton shirts. In these two videos, the Endersl-made stuff has so much color, contrast and charming details. People actually dress good.
The garish clothes look nice, I'm definitely not a fan of those models with ultra-saturated hair color.
15:35 when i finished the whole game, this sentence come up in my mind immediately. Firespark was telling the truth. An if the main character was killed then the apocalypse could come a liitle later.
When finishing the secret ending I think of 5:13
High One 1: "Ah shit, the Prophet is dead. What now?"
High One 2: "No problem fam, watch this"
(High One 2 appears before Tealor)
High One 2: "Ha ha ha, your Prophet is dead and you are still wasting your time looking for the Numinos, little do you know it actually serves to start the Cleansing! Oops, silly me, I let that slip"
Tealor: "AHA! Now I know you to defeat you!"
(Activates the Beacon raw and starts the Cleansing)
I was very impressed with Enderal, recommended it to anyone.
Playing through this story and world in VR was one of the best experiences I've ever had in a game. Looking up into the sky in the sun temple as the cleansing begins, while ghostly silhouettes of bodies gently float towards the vortex far above, will forever be engrained in my mind.
Thanks for this video :)
If you like archery in vanilla, you'll love it here. Lots of cool active skills that are used like shouts, but have separate cooldowns, so they can be combined. The combat is a lot more creative than vanilla in that way, makes it really satisfying. I'd recommend using the gestures from VRIK to switch between these "shouts" easily. Don't make the gestures cast them directly though, this is buggy and often doesn't work.
I've also started a playthrough as a mage, which is a lot more interesting in terms of builds than Skyrims perks. I'd recommend disabling the crosshair for this, having imperfect aim adds a lot to combat. I do still prefer archery by a lot though.
After all this time, there's no part of any game that can make me so sad and upset than playing that damned Ryneus quest. They capture the innocence and hopeful part of a child really well!
Well if it makes you feel better, I can pretty confidently say you're looking at things with either rose tinted goggles or a culturally enforced "children are so great" mindset brought to you by the government organization that makes you sign that Whitney Houston song in elementary school.
Children are, without reinforcement to break them of the habits, incredibly cruel and self centered. What you describe as innocence is really just a lack of education or care for what goes on around them. They seem "innocent" because they dont know things, and they dont know because they dont care about anyone else.
So, they are by nature a Catch-22. In order to be hopeful, innocent or "pure" they need to be sheltered from the excesses and abuses of the world. But that also leaves them as sadistic little jerks. . The main reason some kids do come with a stronger conscience than others is they've already been victims to severe unfairness in the world, either by seeing it or experiencing it firsthand. But, if that's the case they then lose their innocence. So, the only way to make an innocent, good natured or hopefuly child is for childish nature of them to be taken away, effectively meaning you cannot be innocent until your innocence is already damaged by experience.
I know i'm just rambling and I hate kids, but it is a good quest. Even if it stings it was well written and did fulfill an emotional core of the mid-late journey, Just try not to buy into too many more Hallmark Company deas and you'll handle it better in the future.
>Open video
>0:40 See Warlockracy plays Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader without picking Best Spirit Daemonic
>Day ruined
I played with the infernal dude (whatever it's called) and a trait that drains health on hit. It's OP as fuck.
@@Warlockracy Oh yeah drain health is always great in these games
Fire mage builds are also mad OP cause there's only like 2-3 rare enemy types in the game with any fire resistance to speak of and there's a ridiculous number of stackable items and traits that boost fire damage
Holy shit, 2 videos in the matter of minutes. You're really on a roll eh, Warlockracy?
he probably took russian speed
We are on lockdown ATM. Gyms closed. movie theaters closed. I have nothing else to do.
Stay save in Russia. really mournful time.
@@Warlockracy Damn, Russia made the first safe vaccine and you guys are back in lockdown. Guess your other video makes a bit more sense now.
Stay safe mate
Our reality also happens to be ruled by the cycles, if you study the geology of our planet you'll quickly notice that cataclysms that are in fact purges, happen in intervals of several thousand years, the latest one was the Younger Dryas. The aforementioned cataclysm wiped out most of the mega fauna and was a bottleneck for the human population.
Enderal seems great but I have this weird thing that I've had since childhood where I absolutely hate it when my character constant loses control or gets knocked out constantly for the sake of the plot
Same. I hate it more in games like Enderal where my main character is supposed to be this giga-powerful one-man army. I have centuries of magical knowledge and an amount of raw power that baffles even experienced scholars, but can't do anything to avoid being K.O'd by some random bandit with a mace during a cutscene?
It is a good game but holy shit the Prophet probably has brain damage by the end for how often they get rendered unconscious.
@@pissedoffturtle7333 That kind of railroading for the sake of a plot is a mixture of game engine limitation and a lack of knowledge about how to bait players into following your linear plotline through curiosity and game design.
In a way, Skyrim's dreadfully limited in cutscenes (I don't know how much of Oblivion/Morrowind is left in the engine, but i THINK they don't have the ability to play cinematics unlike Oblivion and Morrowind, so you can only work with in-engine scripting) so I can't really complain TOO much about plot progression by knocking out...
But at the same time, anyone who's run a tabletop campaign competently knows that the FIRST thing you avoid as a DM is pulling player agency blatantly out of the player's hands, even if it means you then need to think up multiple lures to hook all the players in and/or multiple paths that all lead to the same plot element happening.
@@neoqwerty My specific issue could probably be fixed by just using different things to knock the player out. If they replaced a small amount of rubble with a big magic shockwave of unquantified destructive power then I'd be fine with it, I can just imagine that it's exactly as strong as would be needed to K.O my superhumanly tough prophet and that a normal man would've been killed instead.
It's just the fact that the cutscenes kind of contradict the overall feeling of power progression that the gameplay manages to sell absolutely perfectly, if that makes sense. Shit I think Skyrim actually does this better at times like when Karliah knocks the Dragonborn out with her special, magic bow and a special, hard to make poison. Those two things are rare and impressive enough that I can see them working even on someone far more powerful than a regular human.
Not sure if I'm wording this well enough but hopefully you get what I'm saying.
Same. I hate how pervasive it is in Skyrim and it's modding scene overall.
I know right. When I was a kid I was on this quest to go to school and like the plot kept making me sit through boring lectures in a classroom then when I finally get control again I just black out and when I wake up I'm railroaded back into the school quest. The worst part is it took me like 18 years to complete that quest. Spoilers the next quest ain't great either, dafuq you mean I got to do a work quest every day or else I'm going to starve and not have a place to live. Bro this game sucks
Enderal is quite a trip from start to end, it feels like the Skyrim engine just held back a lot of the ideas that SureAI wanted to go foward with. Hopefully we hear from their new game soon.
Side note, Could have called the crystals "Tiberium" and you'd have the CnC plotline.
One thing that's always bothered me is: how does the Order even know so much about the Cycle anyway? How can a bunch of renaissance-era templars pick up these specific individuals and events from countless millenia ago, to the point where they can put them into rigid patterns?
In our world it's taking the world's best scientists decades to even attempt to figure out things like the Bronze Age collapse, which was both far more recent and far less total (see Egypt and the Assyrians) so how can the Order do it with the Cleansing?
Not only that, but the Cycle seems to happen on such vast timescales that it would start being affected by shit like plate tectonics. At some places the ground should just be littered by millions-year-old artifacts as nature spits up older artifacts like fucked-up dinosaur bones while swallowing newer ones. If this world has anything like that then Vyn-eans (Vynners?Vynnii?) without knowledge of things like continental drift or carbon dating could easily confuse dozens of seperate civilizations over a million years as a single really big one (since common sense would say that things found closer to the surface must be more recent)
I'm probably overthinking this but it just kinda takes me out of the story. Like, the whole main story is supposed to be about figuring out an event, but the characters don't act like humans trying to figure out things from their environment like normal people. Rather the mod creators just seem to randomly put the story on hold so they can possess one of the characters and infodump things to you.
Mmm... I always thought the High Ones were showing things in people's dreams to point them in the correct direction, as they are the ones who want that society builds the Beacon in the first place.
I mean, without those dreams ("it all begins with the dreams") there wouldn't have been a truce between Tealor and Narathzul's mages.
My take on Nicolas's writing is that is like mine was in the past: he is writing to himself (sharing what is in his head) and if it can connect with you at some level good if not, it wasn't the point from the start.
When you write for yourself and not an audience you also don't question how it would work, because for you as a writer in your head it does and that is really the end of it.
That doesn't make you a bad writer, just a writer with a different goal that doesn't match the norm, as nullifies any criticism from the very conception.
Edit: As Nicolas shared himself freely, he ended up in a madhouse at a point in his life because he couldn't distinguish what was real and wasn't.
So I am really glad that I can understand at least something of what his head can imagine and his thought process. Because probably (as someone with mental disorders myself) doesn't make much sense sometimes.
The magic in the setting and the level of technology demonstrated in the story explains how archeologists have been able to make the discoveries that seem to perplex you. The Pyrean's writings have been decyphered as have the Starlings, and their technology allows for memories and consciousness to be recorded with a level of fidelity that our world's technology cannot reach yet.
The way that magic allows mages to peer into alternate dimensions and gain insight to other permutations of causality allows researchers to infer and extrapolate information, allowing them to find locations of dig sites in their own dimension.
There are multiple methods of divination and research demonstrated both by the characters in the main plot and in the books you can find.
this feels more like the consequences of balancing time and cost on the development side. The devs could definitely have written the story without these problems but that would mean either adding 10 more hours of decent content to the main questline in order to make that discovering of the Cycle feel natural to the player or adding 2 hours of almost perfect storytelling that manages to provide the same idea but condensed. If they try to condense it into 2 hours and screw up even a tiny bit, the player is going to notice and that becomes one of the weakest parts of the story. Going for 10 more hours of decent content puts more stress on development time and that has its own set of issues for the devs. Info dumping sucks but there are times in some games where I feel like its the best of the worst solutions to a problem that is not related to the storytelling abilities of the devs.
@@D00000T Exactly. And that's not even limited to games. Books and movies have that too. Making some information come to light in an in-universe organic fashion could prove sometimes disastrous for the pacing. Sometimes, and that has nothing to do with lazy writing, info-dumping is legit the most efficient and least hurtful thing to do, in terms of pacing and story-composition. Though, it should always be used as a last resort.
Magic man. If we could look back through time with whirlpools and crap that would be way more useful than computers, feather dusters and shovels.
People always confuse intelligence with technology. They're still just as smart as we are.
Enderal is an amazing mysterious mod, and you Warlockracy
are amazing for delving into it
I played the drinking game and now think i have liver failure based on the pain and gurgles.....Worth it
Cheers worlockracy appreciate the upload
Not sure if anyone commented but according to lore, Emissaries aren't programmed, they're free-willed revivals of people whose personality and desires match the needs of High Ones master plan. Like Prophet is always a nobody who wanted to be someone big and meaningful and is driven by desire to do big things - and you are given the means to achieve greatness (empowerment, ability to learn really fast). Emperor is someone in power and willing to sacrifice everything out of stubbornness. So, uh... I guess it is still about human nature, just... how it can be exploited by profiling and manipulation performed by super-intelligence?
Still a twist that the ones that were holding all the cards from the very beginning turn out to be the ones holding all the cards, who knew.
Their plan isn't even entirely manipulative. The High Ones still have to directly intervene by preventing the Prophet from succeeding at spying on the Nehrimese or straight up directly telling Teanor to go activate the Beacon. Makes you think, if they can bend the rules so much, why didn't they just go up to Tealor and tell him "Ha, you see, the Numinos is a trap, we are just tricking you into recovering it so we can bring the Cleansing"?
120 hours of playing Enderal after I first noticed these videos, and here I am. I don't regret a millisecond of my time playing Enderal.
...
Well, maybe except the bit where I dumped a bunch if crafting points into lockpicking and as a result wasn't able to level up handiwork later on when levelling up became slower. I really, really regret that.
...
I also regret buying the house in the Noble's district. Too far away from the market for it to be convenient...
hearing skyrim characters say "fuck" is uncanny
Would've been a great video for Timestamps.
Also, the Silvergrove story fucking *decimated* me the first time through.
Enderal will forever for me be the adventure of a freelance merchant marine who roams the land in search of the next big payday. A cool dungeon with excellent environmental storytelling and a boss fight is always more valuable than powerful or valuable loot. The story seemed interesting but it just takes too long for me to suffer through it while my own story flows as fast as I can walk.
Yeah, too many quests will have parts where your character is just frozen in place and has to wait for one or more characters to talk for a looong time. The kind of moments that make you think "Did they want to create a game or write a book?" until you realize oh wait, they did write books on that.
(SPOILERS) One thing that is not explained in the video is why you find the Prophet's corpse latter on, and why you're called "Fleshless" in the game. It's quite interesting. Essentially, that's because the Main Character is an Emissary, which means they're like a ghost, but artificial, and at the same time less and more real than them. Essentially, if a person dies with their last, greatest wish unfulfilled, the High Ones have the ability to project a reconstructed image of that person upon reality, which will think itself real and will be perceived as such by the world. The construct, or Emissary, will be physically identical to the deceased, and retain all their memories, but their personality and abilities will be entirely reshaped to fit the requirements of their last wish (a failed apprentice will come back as a genius of their craft, a man who died defending his village as an invicible protector, and so on), which they will be driven to fulfill obsessively. It is never explicitely stated, but it's likely that an Emissary can only die naturally once they've fulfilled their wish.
I think this is what the devs were going for: Emissaries essentially embody aspects of human nature driven to extremes, and the predictability of their desires means they can be easily manipulated, which is how the Cycle is capable of perpetuating itself. It's not super well executed, but I find it decent. If anything, Emissaries are under-exploited, as they're the most unique things about Enderal's setting. They would have a ton of potential if instead of being linked to the High Ones' plans, there were other entities capable of creating Emissaries just for the sake of creating them. Imagine how interesting it would be to discover that the town doctor is actually an Emissary who had died wishing he could have saved more people, or that a noble line is actually protected by an Emissary ancestor who wished to defend his family forever; one of your companions dies halfway through the story and comes back as an Emissary, way stronger but their personality is now a weird caricature of their previous one, giving rise to interesting dilemas.
What I really don't like though is the player-created protagonist. Since their personality is so important to the story, as you're basically playing the embodiement of their greatest wish, freedom, it's one of those cases where a fixed protagonist would have been way better to help the player connect with the story.
"It is never explicitly stated, but it's likely that an Emissary can only die naturally once they've fulfilled their wish."
It is the complete opposite: when they give up that flaw/wish and accept themselves as who they are.
As long as they have that flaw that defines them, that desire, they will keep existing.
Because what an Emissary is, is a pure manifestation of a flaw. No flaw = no existence.
They already fulfilled their wish just by being an Emissary: a powerless become powerful. A moron becomes intelligent. They are living their wish already.
What they need to do is let it go and accept themselves (and life in general) for what it is instead of what they wanted it to be.
About your last paragraph... it is already a fixed protagonist.
The game starts with a nightmare from his past, where you can look at the Prophet's psyche.
That alone should show that this is not your character because how much broken is in the head is something you don't know and can't control.
I just facepalm when people even try to role-play in this game, they tell you, again and again, you shouldn't.
You even met your psyche in the Order's trial that tells you who you really are: weak, and useless.
But people (and the Prophet himself don't want to hear that, I guess) keep saying "bullshit" and keep repeating "whatever" in the dreams sequences that support that notion.
Hell, I saw a let's play that every time he appeared at the nightmare with Dad said something among the lines of "I don't know him and don't care about him, I will skip this useless crap" and I rolled my eyes so hard almost went blind.
The game from the beginning shows that you don't have any control over whom the Prophet is.
The fact people even try is, from my perspective, moronic.
@@Ilwenray85 I don't think that's fair, because the game itself is conflicted about it. The Black Guardian plain tells you that it didn't matter what you were before being the Prophet, and that the Prophet and their older self were two different entities.
As an embodiement of a wish for freedom, you're given immense mechanical freedom in how to build your character, which is thematic, but this constrast with the fixed personality of the MC. Since that Prophet Emissary supposedly built for freedom, they should have the freedom to just disregard everything the nightmare sequences say, as a lot of players do, because it seems the natural thing to do.
Same thing for the Emissary wish thing. For me, the Catharsis ending is a case specific to the Prophet finally fulfilling their wish by being freed of all their inadequacies and their very existence. But at the same time they should already have been free by virtue of being an Emissary in the first place. It's messy.
The Black Guardian says that who you were before have no importance, yes.
But what that means is that before being the Prophet, you were just like everyone else, someone irrelevant.
Not that the past is useless, but that you back then, were.
*"This is a story of someone who wanted to be free,"* says the narrator in the introduction.
We have a character with a past (who grew in an abusive house) already defined with a clear flaw and psyche: that he/she was useless and weak.
And a slave both in the literal sense (Sirius insinuates Enderal is paradise because there are no slaves here) and the figurative sense: he/she couldn't change his/her circumstances at all.
But then woke up on a beach, and now he/she is strong, with not only magic powers but power over other people. He/she is important now, is not weak anymore, and can't let it go.
Even then, he/she subconsciously knows, and the dreams keep tell him/her to accept the flaw, give up to be really free (and actually finally have a chance to end the cycle), but it can't. Is in denial.
The Black Guardian is making him/her understand that every action until now when he/she thought was making a difference (and be different from his/her past self) was what the High Ones wanted.
He/she is a puppet that was created based on that flaw, nothing more. *And without freedom.*
The option of being a God is really tempting for how the protagonist is designed to be: a defining flaw (avoid weakness, keep power, don't be an inferior to anyone) that drives everything he/she does.
Being everything he/she could have dreamed for and more is actually the most obvious outcome.
In fact, that option is always the first one in the dialogue wheel, sometimes hiding the other choices so you can catch up on it.
Again, he/she doesn't want only "freedom", he/she wants what it entails: be powerful to control his/her life. Because he/she, is at the core, weak.
Edit: Have you read the novel? Because the antagonist of the novel is a mirror to the Prophet's personality. Suffering abuses from his Dad is pretty much the start of it too.
We wouldn't even be discussing this I think.
I think a Clone who has all the previous memories and think itself real would've explain it much better than a Ghost but artificial
A bit like how ghosts work in many concepts. They can't pass on because they still have a desire. A wish they need to fulfill before they can leave.
Damn, why is it unlisted?
The biggest twist is that the entire story is merely a hallucination induced by the 50 concussions the character has
I’m more of a dreamflower elixir drinker
The average dreamflower drink enjoyer.
Gotta admit, I am so glad I never played this. If I'd spent 60 plus hours in this game for those endings, I'd have had a Mass Effect 3 rage moment.
Nooooo, you didn't talked to Jespar before he died, just before Beacon destruction! (Or at least didn't shown us)
Even tho character development is better for Jespar, I like both of the companions. They have cool arks.
I think the kid was voiced better in german (I guess overall the german VO is better since it had professionals at work)
anyways. The only powerful scene in the game where I couldn't hold back my tears.
I give enderal that.
na imo i like the english voices better for almost every character
For me the moment where I almost cry is the end of the main quest, especially the last dialogue with Jespar. Very painful to hear...
I'm not a very sentimental person, so a very few games give me these kind of emotions. Truly a masterpiece for me.
I played Enderal up until the crystal collection. At that point a faulty script regarding my class replicates itself so often that my game ran at 5 FPS
I got a fair bit into Enderal (after your previous video about it) and kinda fell off. I think the main plot dump (spoiler alert) about the impending disaster they learned about from historical civilization cycles just felt off in how it was presented. I think a Morrowind style “well, you have to discover what history actually was instead of having a lore dump” would have saved it for me.
My friend had fallout 4 spoiled via a message on the miiverse stage in smash 4.
mention of fallout spoilers always reminds me of it
you missed the cool and good secret ending; you need to complete the Rhalâta quest line to unlock it.
Intentionally didn't touch the (extremely good) expansion content for this vid.
The core of Enderal is to ask yourself: *why did I waste my time playing this game?*
On purpose, designed to make you ask yourself that.
Not because is bad but because the theme is determinism and is so well conveyed that you can say anything you do in the game is a waste of time.
Because if there is no free will, no chance of winning at the conflict, and you were doomed from the start, what was the point?
As Fate as a concept exists in Vyn, with the Book of Predestination where everything that will happen (and how the "personification of Fate" Sarantha wants it to happen) is written already, that makes everyone a single puppet with no free will at all.
Sure, in the eventuality we are playing in Enderal the Shadowgod killed Sarantha (the Aged Man writes about how he had hope that things would be different in this reality,) but in the end, everything is the same, because the battle known as " The Night of the Thousand Fires" which is the detonator for Sha'Rim's treason already happened.
I always thought the Veiled Woman was Chance, traveling between realities and looking at destinies trying to find one where Fate is out of the picture so she can influence the outcome.
Nothing in the game really matters. And that is just delightful.
****
Some words by Nicolas Lietzau, the writer about the Red Madness and the High Ones and what they are supposed to be:
"Here's the way I intended it as a writer: it is true that the Red Madness is caused by the High Ones. It's true that they manipulate people to their ends. HOWEVER, the manipulation only works because people give in to it.
Think of it as a kind of catalyst for your inner demons.
Yero always felt grief and guilt for his wife, even before the High Ones came along (letter 3.) However, only when they infected him with the Red Madness, this grief morph into hatred and desperation.
The same applies to Ryneus. He was also broken and lonely, but the Black Stones/the High Ones used that loneliness against him and made him effectively kill that entire village.
And so on, and so forth.
Yes, the High Ones manipulate us, but the only reason they can do this is that we're fragile creatures in the first place.
It's probably a bit obvious, but for me, and on a more meta-level, the High Ones were always metaphors for the frailty of conscious existence. It might sound pretentious, but it's always been a topic that fascinated me.
The less aware we are of the underlying emotions and struggles that guide our actions, the more prone we are to 1.) bringing about our own downfall and 2.) externalizing these struggles onto someone or something else.
On a micro level: Yero projected his suffering on the people who chose "the Void." Adila projected it on the criminals of the world. Tealor projected it on the High Ones - and so on and so forth.
Every character affected by the Red Madness (the Fleshless Ones/Emissaries more than anybody else, as they are materializations of their struggle) is ultimately fighting a part of themselves.
Even the generic Possessed Ones or the crazy keepers whose struggles the story doesn't reveal.
*And that's also what the High Ones and the Cycle ultimately are in the grand scheme of things: The embodiment of the perpetual struggle of humanity/existence with itself.*
Now, I could go on for ages, but I'll stop here to not spell out things too much. :) As for the animals and the undead, yes, the Red Madness works on them because, as you suggested, their minds are a lot less complex. They still have aggression the High Ones can make use of. In a way, they are probably the closest thing to a direct intervention method the High Ones use."
@Brupcat Determinism as an excuse?
If by "those aspects" you mean the _existence of Fate/absence of free will_ is something established in the game that came before, Nehrim.
Enderal is a continuation of those themes, building on top of them greatly.
And as curiosity, determinism is a philosophy Nicolas Lietzau, in real life, holds.
Not tied as Fate but subconscious instead, the "I" we don't know and moves the strings.
Even if he recognizes, it is not a healthy philosophy (specially related to mental health) to live for.
And is the spin he chooses to add in Enderal to still make everyone a puppet after Fate is out of the picture, now from the High Ones/subconscious, humanity always a puppet if not for one reason for another.
@Brupcat Well... that is not tied to Enderal, but determinism itself.
If you think about it, an existence without choices, where any perceived personality or ambitions are fake, is not an existence worth living, even less an existence you can hold accountable for anything.
You just breathe, *don't exist.*
That makes life itself, (and of course a game based on the concept of determinism) a waste of time.
Not because Enderal wanted it directly, but because that is determinism in a nutshell, you can't have one without the other.
the veiled woman, I call her "Deus ex machina"
Not joking.
That's what she is
or what how the writer said: "She's what you want believe she is", but doesn't give enough clues what she could be.
The book in Forgotten Stories explains her origin in Kadath.
@@BobExcalibur Yeah, I read about more information about her here in the comments. Haven't played the DLCs yet. It's on the to do list. the added more information about her probably because of the criticism
@@Superschokokeks They did, and the additional content does not make concrete answers but does help to narrow the scope of what impression you take from her.
There's another youtuber called Wereyoi who does good videos on Enderal, and recently did an overview of people's takes on her based on whats presented. He's quite good, you should take a look.
@@BobExcalibur Thanks for the information. I'll keep that in mind
Enderal's shortcomings all feel organic, they feel like logical consequences of the game being developed by a small team. The quests have to be heavily railroaded because it would take a huge amount of work to account for player actions if you retained control of the player character.
Coming back after a while, it's almost infuriating how its major flow plays perfectly with the story's general theme. The only reason your character lives and breathes is that they have a role in a greater entity's sick plans. So of course you can't attack certain NPCs, or say anything that would deviate from that plan: you're being puppeteered all along.
I should replay Enderal. It captures the feeling of exploring an alien world and culture in a way that only a few games like Morrowind are really able to do.
Fallout was a tricky one. Wanted to play the old ones after 4 dissapointed me so much. Took me a few tries, but it was worth it. Both 1 + 2 were great games! But hard to get used to.
One possible reason for the delay between responses in dialogue is actually a matter of translation. A great example of this is WoW's old in engine cutscenes (haven't played in a while, so not sure if they changed their practice regarding this.) Different languages can take a different amount of time for any given line. English, French, and German can already have some major differences in how much time it takes to say the same line across them. So, the natural solution in a scenario where general animations are used (hence why it's an in-engine cutscene/convo issue) is to put a pause between lines, to act as a buffer for these differences.
the story seems to fit better together when you go on the Esme quest about the veiled women. where supposedly shes the cause of the cycle after her first experiment of a perfect society became boring to humankind. To be honest it doesnt make too much sense, as its never brought up again sadly.
another point of interest is the Rhlatta questline, going in depth with the butcher of ark books. both are heavy in fire and flesh motifs. both also draw heavy parallells to the player character.
i still think the veiled women represents the Programmers and makers of "the game" or the Game itself. She stands above all, She helps you progress... she is the "master of the game". and the offerings she "takes" are the donations from the players. ;-) Its works when you think about it. Of course she can be everything else, but i like this kind of Mind.fu__ idea. ;-)
@Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин Yeah youre probably right, however it was made for free I still believe its amazing for what it was.
Reading the Butcher books also clues you in.
Crazy how enderal is the antithesis of fallout the frontier
Knew about the plot for Fallout 1 and 2 for quite sometime, went and finally played them, loved them so goddamn much.
Agreed, knowing it really doesn't hurt the game
I still haven't played Enderal yet, so I don't want to watch it yet. However, I just wanted to say, thanks for still making videos. It makes me feel less alone in the world to see people discuss things I feel alone about. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
Your gonna love this game man
Join up with a discord server, discuss and make connections. Loneliness is a killer, so take care of yourself.
Pillars of Eternity!? I really hope you'll consider making a video on that. I've always been a fan of RTWP, ever since Baldur's Gate back in the day. Great video as always!
The writing of the mod is rather schizophrenic: a lot of anachronisms in the phrasing, what seems a copious amount of swearing, and decade old
atheistic arguments from 4chan and Reddit, not to mention all the passing out the main character does. Excellent gameplay, mechanics, and aesthetic design however. For what is essentially a free game, Enderal is excellent.
This mod is like divinity original sin. The story is great but also not.
yeah nehrim and arktwends writing and story were far better. The writing for enderal failed.
You seem a tad insulted by the idea that religion might not be perfect
@@tsarnicholasii274 it's less that I'm personally offended and more that medieval societies never produced reddit tier opinions.
@@KNIGHTMAREMANIAC this. It was very strange that the arguments most of the characters had were against religion itself and not the imperfect people posing as gods. It didn’t feel like an organic part of the world, just an attempt to draw parallels to ours. Parallels are fine and all but themes must be able to exist in world of the game independently of the real world
I really wonder what SureAI could do if they were given a AAA game budget
The Raymond Chandler theory of scene transition. When it's time to move on to the next event, simply have the protagonist get blackjacked.
Hot take, "girl who swears" doesn't feel like the most egalitarian way to write a woman. I actually hate it.
My feelings on Enderal are complex. I feel like the story is highly overrated, to the point that sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game than what people are describing and talk so highly about. Everything else about the gameplay is almost perfect, but I really hate the story, how it's told, and the characters it tells it with. I felt the same about Nehrim.
Then, I remember that it's free, and I feel like the asshole. Which is fair, I definitely am, in this situation. But despite being reductive, I do feel like the criticisms of Enderal hold water.
Yeah it's a huge downgrade from nehrim
The "nonono! " Into an adbreak got me.
jesus christ i didn't realize there were so many ads. removed most of them.
@@Warlockracy it was a bit much yeah. Cool you removed some. Uh, enjoy my money?
Pro tip for this game.... rob every home,shop bank and most importantly the library for every book in the game bc it's give context and quest and probably some of the best memory I got from enderal was from reading a book I randomly stole and forgetting I was playing a video-game for 10-20 minute
It seems the second ending is the best one.
The entire concept of the cycle is a test on humanity.
The final choice is the finale of this test.
The first actual decision the Prophet is allowed to make. Everything before was little more than the cycle taking its course.
Choosing to be truly selfless and sacrifice yourself so that humanity may have a chance.
Not a heroic sacrifice to be remembered. A sacrifice only one person remembers. A sacrifice you don't even know will be enough.
The game goes out of its way multiple times that it is your desire to be a hero, to live in a dream, is what will drive you to failure. That is what the Brave new World ending leads to. You fully lose yourself to your pride and believe you can become the god of the next humanity.
And you obviously weren't the first prophet to be given this choice. There were ones before. Mainly the Aged Man. Gajus.
He chose to try to be a god. A guide to humanity. But he failed. Because this choice is a trick.
Fleshless ones, Emissaries, are bound to the rules of the cycles. Like slaves. Just by surviving their own cycle doesn't mean they are free of it. Far worse, they were forced into just being another part of the cycle. Just another piece of the puzzle, now he is only there to give the word of the dead to the next prophets, eternally forced to watch one after another fail.
And, to those who still believe it, i am sorry but Calia is not unique to our Cycle. Gajus had his own Calia. Like, he literally has two puppets DIRECTLY referring to her, one of a little girl with a hole in her chest, Calias backstory of having her heart replaced by a black stone. And one depicting almost the EXACT position of the first time you saw Calia lose herself to the stone, when she murdered that Bandit leader. The woman in the water is his Calia. His love that he saved with him from the cycle.
If we chose the brave new world ending, we will just be another Gajus.
Wow, this comes out right as I am watching an Enderal video after watching your own Enderal video yesterday. Very apropos, universe.
This is one of the best Mods for skyrim BY FAR
THE best, imo
What you described at the end of the video was basically Valkyria Chronicles.
I think "quite interesting" isn't fair towards the desert part, I was blown away by how well that place looked without any additional graphics enhancements mods when I reached that part. Skyrim should've been set in Hammerfell.
I tried to participate in the Enderal Drinking Game, but I blacked out on my way to the liquor cabinet. Very Inconvenient.
Oof, i didn't realize how often player gets knocked out :P. I personally didn't noticed the pauses in dialogue and got very immersed in the story. Great video, especially on top of the Deus Ex vs real life one.
Do you plan to make third video about the dlc quests, 2 questlines and secret ending?
If I get nostalgic about Enderal, I'll do it (+ the Veiled Woman side quest). With another character obviously.
Calia ist just Morrigan and Ada Wong in Skyrim Engine.
Wait a double upload AND ENDERAL?! THANK YOU!!!!!
I believe Starlings are an example of a civilization that managed to unite for a single goal and overcome their nature for something greater than them. Perhaps that's why they're hiding from humans from Vyn, the "soil-born" as Kurmai called them. He said that the soil-born are not yet ready to ascend to the stars because they didn't let go of what allows them to be manipulated by the High Ones.
Whoa, TWO Warlockracy videos at once? You're spoiling us. Great video as always
"it's like Skyrim but with a story." Savage.
It was absolutely amazing. A masterpiece.
Thanks.
Medieval Mass Effect
I can’t get enough of your blunt sense of humor
Whoever did the dungeon designs in Enderal, theyre likely one of the best level designers I've seen. For the sheer level of craftmanship put into this game the only two things that pulled it down were the skyrim engine/textures, and Lishari's awful voice actor which completely took you out of the setting and made you feel like you were in a poorly written teenage rom-com during any interaction with her.
Their previous game also had fantastic dungeons.
You could try to play it in german, it was pretty solid voice acting, much better than in english IMO
I played this drinking game and now I have cirrhosis, thank you 👌
ვახ არ მეგონა ქართველს თუ ვნახავდი ენდერალის ვიდეოს კომენტარებში 😂 პლუს ასეთ პატარა ჩანელზე
The game should gradually lower your stats and then make you start slurring g your words as your brain turns to Swiss cheese from the MMA/NFL-tier quantity of concussions you get
why are your videos so good, my man?
The whole continent blowing up and everybody dying kind of makes the previous hundred or so hours of Exploration and stuff feel... wasted doesn't it? I guess it was the story The developers wanted to tell but ultimately I'm kind of glad I never actually finished the main quest.
It's not the fact the continent blows up itself, it's the fact that ultimately it's not because of a slip up or a plan gone awry, but it's because everything you've done was just facilitating the High Ones' plans all along. They go full anime villain on you and go "Aha, all that has ever happened in the world ever was just a part of my keikaku".
The thing that makes this a story about human nature is the circumstance of a Fleshless One's creation: when a person dies, the High Ones may electively create a Fleshless from their dying wish.
The Prophet is a Fleshless created from the dying wish of a peasant on a boat. "This is the story of someone who wanted to be free." The Prophet is driven by a desire for significance and grandeur, but in being aware of this, perhaps you could subvert it. In knowing the role you need to play for the High Ones, you can choose to act countercurrently to it.
Remember the Aged Man? He had materials related to The Cleansing all over his manor. He'd been there for ages. He had a companion entombed, who wasn't immortal like he was. Perhaps he was the Prophet of the Pyreans. Perhaps he went to the Starlings' city with his Calia, in a bid to save humanity the next time around, only to end up serving his part as an emissary once again.
To my read, the only way to have any hope against the High Ones is to actively recognize that you, The Prophet, are the wrong person for the job. There are a few opportunities in Enderal to create immortal beings that would survive the cleansing--extra variables that might just break something--and there's enough of them that I can't read it as a coincidence. Consider the temple with the Pyrean spirit: if it had been successful in convincing Firespark to kill you, then that really *would* have stopped the Cleansing.
Pass the torch to someone else. Step down. Let yourself die to cast a light into the future. Overcome your nature.
Enderal's endings honestly just kill any interest I have in replaying the game.
I love the story, and the way its twists and turns are handled is really great, but I've genuinely played several games where the "worst" outcome is less awful than the best options in Enderal. The fact you can do nothing to prevent the entire game world you've poured so much time into from being erased just makes it kind of... pointless?
Like any choice you make in any quest in the entire game is completely meaningless because no matter what everything gets destroyed eventually anyway. Yeah, you get to see the outcomes regardless, but eventually all those same outcomes lead to the exact same eventuality. Everybody involved is fucking dead.
That, and the idea that humanity is apparently so absolutely fucked that they will literally doom themselves time and time again after thousands of redos, just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I love pessimistic or grim stories, but Enderal's just feels needlessly bleak. Well, either that or hopeless and irrelevant because humanity's only fucked because of the perfectly, some might say unrealistically, flawless manipulation of the High Ones (which kind of destroys its message anyway, imo).
I really love it as a game and it's one of the most incredible showcases of talent and dedication I've ever seen, but holy shit does the thought of playing it again feel like a slog to me.
Honestly the best way to surmise my thoughts on it is probably just to point out the fact that the devs, deciding to add a third and alternative ending, chose to make it so that Enderal is still 100% destroyed but this time the MC is maybe still alive (or possibly just in a coma, dying without achieving anything whatsoever).
It's like Warhammer 40k levels of grim, only without the humour to make it less draining.
I find it interesting that what you disliked about the ending is the exact reason I think it’s perfect. None of the story, none of the themes of the game would have worked had it not been pointless. You died at the very beginning, everything after that, the entire part where you were an important adventurer and hero was nothing but a projection of unfulfilled wishes of being free and in control. This is what the character experiences but it’s also what the player experiences. When someone plays an rpg, they do so because they want to be a powerful person affecting the events of the world. The revelation that you were nothing but an instrument to bring the cleansing, that you were tricked into believing you could save the world hits the player the same way it hits the character. It works as a commentary on the expectations players have of the genre. In that, I found it did something far more interesting than most other rpgs (especially Skyrim itself).
@@LordAJ12345 Are you SURE that's the order, for RPGs? 'Cause I play it for the story. It happens that RPGs railroad me into saving the world or my PC or the NPC allies die. In games where I'm not railroaded I apparently faff around just going into random caves and solving puzzles and don't even feel compelled to move the main plot.
RPG is a genre where your choice is generally "move the plot or turn off the game", there's no OPTION except to affect events BECAUSE the story is programmed that way.
(There's an RPG maker game, OFF, that actually uses exactly that genre convention to amazing narrative effect.)
Hey I remember Invisible Wall Simulator: "Inspired" by Gothic.
You talking about the Gothic teaser?
No.
Gothic had a visible barrier at the edge of the colony you could walk to. It made a lot of sense in the setting. So no idea where you got that idea.
TLDR: The barrier being there was the point of the game.
There is a third ending my dudes, a secret one, good as a summer night dream
Yeah, but it feels like the writers forcibly hammered in a copout just to prevent it from being an ending that couldn't be interpreted as having at least one unequivocally positive part.
"Here's the Dreamflower elixir, it can make you strong enough to survive the localized Cleansing...OR IT CAN MAKE YOU THINK YOU SURVIVED WHILE TRAPPING YOU IN A PERFECT FAKE REALITY THAT IS UNDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE REAL ONE! Doesn't matter that the two effects have nothing to do with each other, I'm the writer and I just ruined your semi-happy ending, because fuck you for wanting one"
@@ZorotheGalladeThat’s pretty much how I see it, it’s Enderal so it has to be super dark and edgy. But I think it’s pretty clear that it’s the devs throwing us a good ending while appeasing the super dark edgy grimdark fans that like Enderal
What I enjoyed most in the game was the map tbh, the story sequences were okay at first but stuff like the dreams was just insufferable, and the blacking out 24/7 is just...
The world/setting is the best thing about any Bethesda game, or even Bethesda type games like New Vegas or total overhaul mods of Bethesda games like Nehrim and Enderal
In Nehrim and Enderal’s case the mods are fun despite the story, not because of it.
Stopped off perhaps half or three quarters into Enderal, and have just started playing Skyrim again a few days ago - the difference is astounding. Here's to the (probably futile) hope Starfield is a bit experimental. I'm not evening dreaming for much you know, just like, maybe one or two real characters.
Starfield is coming out and Bethesda devs are stroking their own egos about how there is a thousand planets to explore. Needless to say, I don't trust them to have made even one hundred unique and non-samey planets, let alone a thousand. They're most likely going to be like Skyrim dungeons but spherical
There is also a third ending which is a bit harder to get. Never got around but found a video.
Spoiler: through a series of circumstances and tasks you craft a probility potion that gives you 100% chance of favorable outcome. You drink it when the reaper machine explodes and you survive, unocking the third epilogue.
oR dO yOu
is this why Jespar and Firespark were schooling us on alternative realities?
@@Warlockracy its how the magic system works essentially. Mages make possibilities into reality. But the magister that went tankie and blew himself and his puppils up is the plot thread you have to follow you get a key to his secluded lab and follow it from there.
@@BobExcalibur That feels like a copout. It's like one writer wanted the secret ending to be at least partially happy, and another writer just punched him off his seat and sait "No, fuck you and fuck the player, the elixir can now just trap you into a perfect dream that you can't escape because I said so"
Using unconscious to get the player/protagonist from point a to b or to drive the plot foward is usually a sign of bad writing.
Just saying.
Not related to enderal
at
all
really.
Dreams are an integral theme of the story.
Just because Internet Historian says something doesn't make it true.
@@BobExcalibur ok, bro
"If we let the player move during this scene they might do THINGS and dirsupt the 5 minute dialogue we set up. Better set all NPCs to essential. Actually no, make all of them 100% invulnerable. Also stop the player moving. You WILL watch the cutscene."
The story gave me whiplash from how amazing the premise and characters, and how awful and ridiculous the ending and final twist are, respectivaly.
If you make a logic equation to cross-reference what people say and actually do, you find out pretty much everyone is lying to you. The only specifically verifiable fact the Black Guardian says literally turns out to be false 5 minutes later. He's also completely removed from what's going on in the world above and is probably just as insane as the living city was. No reason to assume a single thing he says is true.
Veiled Woman? Lying through her teeth about her part in your death; because you DID die, specifically because of her. Her being some spanner in the works after countless teeth-clenching cycles of suffering? Nonsense that does not jive at all with the cycles, since why assume the Shadow God was the only one to kill the fate lady; moreover by some lorebooks she started the whole bloody thing anyway. At the end, after Sha'rim does his inevitable betrayal-thing, she doesn't actually heal you or anything, just sort of talks to you when you're half-awake and then create a portal to the Black Guardian. Why? Wouldn't it have been easier and clearer to just explain things herself? She wasn't above talking during the Jespar resurrection incident. Funnily enough, it's not enough for her that you're just brought up to snuff about the cycles and fleshless either; try leaving the Black Guardian without letting him "die" (ie. try to body-snatch your ass). Just try the portal. Still there, but it doesn't work. You can't leave. No, you've gotta get nearly possessed by the Black Guardian before she'll let you leave through that portal. Fuck knows why, I sure don't. Maybe it was to set him up as the next cycle's Asatoron. Whatever the fuck she's doing, it's not particularly helping you OR humanity.
Aged Man? Gave you the instrument of your destruction (which by design must be re-created for every cycle, because its destruction is apparently instrumental), making him nothing more than a sock puppet of the High Ones. The Word of the Dead is a pointless item anyway, because the VERY BASIS of the Prophet being special is seeing the past ffs, so it's likely just a method to control specifically WHAT the Prophet sees in the past. Coincidence the Word of the Dead didn't reveal Sha'rim's treachery? Hah!
"The cleansing is a test for humanity"? As you pointed out, literally all the actors on-stage are fleshless, but when you factor in that, hey, EVOLUTION IS A THING AND A PART OF THE CYCLE, it makes even less sense. All those "evil" traits that the High One's supposedly abuse are mechanisms brought about by evolution. It's not something you can just excise willy nilly. It will always end the same way by that logic.
And finally the bonus round hodge-podge nonsense: Sigil stones do nothing to stop the red madness and never did. There's another beacon in the tutorial dungeon which you can never visit again or mention. What the fuck did the Father achieve? What the fuck is the Black Libra and the Room of Paintings? How come this random faction can create fleshless and it's never an issue; are fleshless a normal phenomenon in Vyn? Were the lightborn fleshless, too? (Immortal masters of their chosen craft, usually magic, apparently just all-around better than normal people... sound familiar?) Tealor doesn't think to chuck Sha'rim (who is apparently possessed by a High One at the end there) into the beacon to make it target High Ones. Sha'rim is a lying liar who lies about lying and by no means has anyone's best interests in mind, so just go ahead and pick two dreamflowers, use the spectral chest spell to store one out of Sha'rim's reach so he can make you a "safe" potion for stat gains, and THEN make another real one yourself later so you can dab on reality and get the only good ending in the game. It's how magic works anyhow, so why doubt it now?
That said, I think Calia might be the first woman in fiction to actually listen to a man when he tells her to get over herself. Amazing romance; 10/10.
Tho, never got to murderize the entire invading army or the starling guardian thingy. Also got knocked out way too often; 0/10.
I love Enderal, but a lot of the writing really didn’t translate well properly when spoken and felt stiff. You could tell very often that the dialogue wasn’t written by native English speakers and you really had to ignore it in order to enjoy the game
Oh yeah, this is a pretty interesting quest. I really enjoy essentially all the quests in this game. Even the side missions are really interesting. Nothing revolutionary and all within Skyrim's confines; but man, I'd love to see what this team could do with funding and their own tech. Oh, the things I could do if I was a billionaire.
Had a thing with my character that he got bigger and bigger leveling up. I wonder if it's my build or what
"Enderal it's like skyrim but with a story" :]]
Wild video, will have to save this one for watching.
I really enjoyed watching your recent video, it was really detailed and well thought out.
@@heidik670 thank you! It’s pretty coincidental the timing of both videos lmao. Especially on a topic as small as this.
But it’s neat seeing any and all coverage of the game!
FreeSpace 2 briefly mentioned in this makes me want a fs2 warlockracy vid
It's 3 A.M and I have exam tomorrow but I'm just hooked to your videos. great work.
Apart from the massive lore dumps the main quest was pretty good. The only thing I had was a niggling feeling with all this talk about the beacon and how it would save all of Vyn. Before the ending I was really paranoid what the beacon would do. I felt vindicated that it was a trap (though it would work with the Numinos some how?).
Yes I felt the same. Something was wrong the whole way. The ominous music when entering Ark lategame. In retrospect I felt like an idiot, in a good way.
Also yes the Numinos would focus its energies and just wreck shit on the High Ones. :)
Knocked out as often as Artyom.