What is your opinion on personal character endings?

[Cyphre]

So, first and foremost, i created this topic so i and everyone else could see the reaction of the community on the topic, and put my own thoughts in here, as a simple member of the community. Second, i fully respect Jan's way of doing things, and whatever he says will be it, but i feel like this is a topic that needs to be adressed and at least structured in some way. 

In Q&A Jan stated that there will be no romance options for MC, thus prompting me to speak about this topic in more details. 

 

RPG's in general, especially great RPG's, there are 3 main focus points: you either base your plot on  1) some very unique points of view and ideas, which become focal points of the narrative 2) interesting and likable characters, who you grow to love in time 3) adventure itself. Rejuvenation, while having great plot, mostly focus itself on characters and adventure, and during my personal multiple 140+ hours runs, i grew to love absolutely every character in the game. And this is absolutely natural to wish to see, how the future of your beloed characters unfold. Different games deal with it in different ways, for example, Fire Emblem series (even pre Awakening) often lets you not only see their epilogues, but directly influence their friendship or romantic life. Certain JRPG's like Mana Khemia allow you to go on personal bond-deepening quests and thus choose the closest character to you personally, allowing you to live your life after the events with those characters, and it's not necessary romantic. Obviously, we dont know how things will end or even if we gonna survive the final battle, but i can give you few examples of how things can end, based on how things are at the end of v12. 

We can talk some reason into Flora, especially if we chose to go with her in the cave, and try to make the world a greener place together. We can stay with Ryland as a guard of the pyramid. We can go back to Sheridan with Aelita and become dual sensei together, romance or not. We can go with Valarie to her home. We can go climb mountain Donkeyass as the best trainer in the world and wait for the next challenger. We can travel the world with Ren as best buddies and Rivals. We can go with Agate circus together with Adam, for example. We can choose to live in Telia resort with Amber and Tesla. Maybe we can go and become a journalist for Gearen News. 

 

The thing is, Pokemon as a series is the most personalised AND personal journey among all RPG's. You choose your own adventure, this is how it has been since gen 1, this is how it should be. It makes sense for such a character driven narrative to be a personal journey for everyone, to decide, what kind of champion you want to be. Do you want to be champion at all? What do you want, what will you choose? This is what pokemon is all about for me, it's a personal journey. And Rejuvenation took it much further with its supreme characters, and every person got it's own attitude towards those characters. 

Now i heard few times that it wouldnt make sense narrative-wise, romance or personal deeper connections with the MC, but i beg to differ. We've had quite a few pivotal moments in character's fates, becoming quite important people for them. We showed Kenneth his long forgotten light inside him, making him alive again, fighting along each other, gaining respect towards each other. We bonded with Valarie a few times, most notably inside the Aquamarine cave. We obviously mean a huge deal to Amber and we turned her attitude around, helping her better herself. We have created a deep bond with Narcissa during her sidequest. We've had our moments with Adam and Ryland. Not to mention main cast like Nim, Venam, Melia, Alexandra, Ren e.t.c. There are a lot of things that already made us closer narrative-wise, and there are always opportunities for more, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. 
 

My personal opinion that in the end we should be able to choose our own personal conclusion to our own personal story, whatever form it might take, and i dont think romance or chosen character epilogues will not fit the plot. All of this is my own opinion, and i want to know your thoughts on that matter, where do people stand on this. 

[Swampellow]

I think it’s time to stop. This sort of thing has never been in a Pokémon game and there is zero reason for people to be expecting it.

[Cyphre]

To be fair, a plot has never existed in a mainline pokemon game. And yet, we have Reborn, Rejuvenation, Insurgence, Uranium and many others. 

[Walpurgis]

Jan has presented through his fangame a world and a cast that you want to engage in a deeper way with, but that doesn't mean that the burden to provide the means to do that should be put on his shoulders. He isn't there to write things for anyone, he's telling the story he wants to tell and that's how it should be. And don't get me wrong, there's nothing bad about wanting to engage with his game/characters more personally, but there are other ways to do that than asking someone to create something they don't feel like creating. There's a lot of people that draw fanart or write fanfiction or have OCs or even if they haven't written it down have their own little stories in their heads. You have always been able to choose your own story, just don't expect everything to be already written for you. 

[Gheist]

I'm gonna pick the romance option for the sake of the poll and because that's what would be my preference but the 3rd option probably describes what I actually want better. A non explicitly romantic ending would be perfectly fine too. For example staying with Aelita to take care of Sheridan. Or you could go with Valarie to visit her hometown (I kinda forget where that was). Or stay at Telia resort with Amber (Tesla offered to let you stay there anyway) etc.

I'm not asking for a 50 hour visual novel where you get to date each girl but a 15 minute epilogue (with an open ending or otherwise) would be nice.

 

Anyway great thread. Props on making it so the devs at least know we exist and what our opinion is. Whether they choose to take it into consideration or not is a different story.

 

1 hour ago, Swampellow said:

This sort of thing has never been in a Pokémon game and there is zero reason for people to be expecting it.

Having choices in the game that give you relationship points with individual characters is a good enough reason for people to at least consider the possibility in my opinion. It also just feels your character is bonding pretty deeply with some of the characters (especially Aelita and Melia) so I don't see why you'd be surprised that people are thinking about a potential romance option.

[interdiction]

Jan has already said that "relationship" doesn't have to mean "romance". I can imagine characters maybe getting little epilogue bits based on their reationship points, seeing an extra custcene or small gameplay bonuses postgame. I don't think anyone should try to change his mind. It's his game and vision, and enough games, mainstream or otherwise push romance on the player as it is. People insisting on it will just become exhausting for him. I think something more like little "where are they now" bits for other characters that vary based on relationship points are more likely, to me, compared to platonic personal endings based on them, as well.

Edited July 13, 2019 by interdiction