EFFORTPOST My hatred of types of Locked content in games, Supreme Autismo Longpost Rant Pathfinder: WotR - Secret Ending Sneed

Disclaimer: This is a rant and will probably be be boring and contain no drama, sorry guyz

OWLCAT:

Owlcat is the double AA indie company which published the recent Pathfinder: kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous games, with also the recent 40K: Rogue Trader game, usually they are my favorite publisher, but basically they made a secret ending so fricking complex and batshit insane , that I've been spending the past 24 hours using (wasting) my lifespan on the Pathfinder subreddits and forums,

bitching about how the fricking Secret ending riles me up so much beyond reason and how my mouth-foaming reaction to it is so wildly disproportionate to its actual importance to the world and life at large, but then again this site informs us to blow shit as wildly out of proportion as feasible, so I'm GOING TO

I've been having discussions with other straggots who've managed to complete this secret ending, who've accused me of being salty of not being able to figure it out myself, which is what has had me SEETHING and COPING and DILATING the entirety of last night

SECRET ENDING GUIDE VIDEO DROPPED:

This is in response to the even more hardcore community in the Pathfinder: WOTR community after, youtuber dropping a definitive guide to actually obtain the fricking much vaunted and gossiped about Secret Ending of the WOTR game, which had infamy since the games release back in SSeptember 2021, so the game is pretty much 3.5ish years old already at this point.

The youtuber in question, MortisimalGaming, has carved his niche as the premier CRPG game reviewer, and also being unique in the gayming reviewer space by actually 100% percenting fricking games, via obtaining all steam achievements, if achievements or trophies are a thing in said game, as you can imagine his autism functions on an entirely other level from average mortals, which is very impressive as according to himself he's actually a father, and has a son (What's your excuse dramatards! ) Despite his impressive steam Achievement portfolio, he maintains humility and claims that he considers himself not to really be a hardcore g*mer, or even especially good/talented, and merely that his literal occupation as a gaymer-tuber enables him indefinite time to lay siege to games, and obtain experience as to how game devs have their design philosophies cracked to be able to defeat challenges which would turn away average mortals.

He especially made a name for himself as someone who made very useful guides for Pathfinder and Larians' Divinity: Original Sin 2. So he has that turbo nerd cred in CRPGS

So you guys need to comprehend the sheer levels of autism required to know these things, and for people to follow them, they are neurodivergents to neurodivergents, to what neurodivergents are to normal people!

OBSCURE FORUM SLAPFIGHTS:

On forums I wont name, there had even been arguments that the Secret Ending of WOTR (Wrath of the Righteous) didn't exist, or was too fricking convoluted to figure out, or was even fricking bugged for many to complete. Since September 2021, many completionists even bitched and complained that the extreme and highly specific actions one must perform to fricking unlock the Secret Ending of WOTR, and there had been minor turbo-autism slapfights frick-you-got-mine peeps who had somehow obtained the achievement, and those that were seeking it.

Many people didn't even believe or know the fricking secret ending existed, until people datamined the game and found a Steam Achievement for it or utilized Unity Mods to data mine the fricking game and discover flags that needed to be triggered in ingame events, similar as to the Biowhere Mass Effect game where you needed to complete actions to enable the ability to even unlock choices later ingame.

And again, due to the size and complexity of WOTR, there had been a metric shitload of bugs which affected anything from abilities not doing what they described, to literal pivotal plot points to proccing because of bugs - Literally up until last month, massive gaming overhaul bugs and pathes, literally more than 3 years since release, have involved fixing game mechanics not working as intended or dialogue bugs.

For many the entire Secret Ending was impossible, because bugs would prevent specific needed plot interactions at just one specific moment, meaning if they fricking did just that one thing wrong, the rest of their actions working towards the secret ending was entirely moot.

There had been guides to the secret ending, but prior to MortisimalGaming's guide, they had all been flawed, outdated or didn't take into consideration of bugs, cuz the writer themselves weren't affected by them. So Mortisimal dropped a mini nuke yesterday. with how comprehensive and complete his guide is, especially after Owlcat devs fixed most of the plot bugs after 3 years.

SECRET ENDING HAS LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG REQUIREMENTS:

And oh my god - just to make the rest of you neurodivergents on rDrama.net understand the level of autism involved in this shit - the video which I know none of you will click on, is a colossal 35 fricking minutes lonnnnnng

Just to make you guys appreciate the monumental amount of shit you guys have to do right accomplish this secret ending.

The effort to do this to unlock the secret ending, is wildly, wildly, wildly, wildy, wildly disproportionate to accomplish this. What's even more when i verbalized this frustration (autism) to other frickers on Pathfinder forums they just blocked me or told me it was totally easy and reasonable.

I'm going to waste your lifespan explaining why this shit made me

PATHFINDER KINGMAKER HAD SIMILAR ISSUES:

Back when Pathfinder: Kingmaker was released, it also had a secret ending, which the devs explicitly alluded to in their Kickstarter campaign, when they as an indie company had no capacity to fund themselves out of pocket, and they had actually went to monumental effort to both create this secret ending, to cater to their biggest kickstarter patrons.

When Pathfinder: Kingmaker was released back in 2018, like many CRPGs riding on the renewal of Obsidians Pillars of Eternity, they were overly ambitious in their inclusion of their Kingdom Management simulator portion of their game, and ironically this Kingdom Management was very unpopular and very controversial for many customers and even original Kickstarter backers.

The Kingdom Management was so controversial that it divided the fanbase, and actually almost cost the fricking devs sales of the game, as early reviews were so largely negative, stating that the actual adventuring and RPG mechanics was fun, but its tethering towards the Kingdom simulation basically made them stop playing or even refund the game!! the poor devs were forced to spring into lightning speed, to create an option to automate the Kingdom Management, to entirely skip this shit. I don't know if this was during the Early access phase as it was during my time at university.

But even this automated Kingdom button would be controversial Because basically, the actual events of you deciding with your advisors, and determining whether your kingdom would be evil or orderly was interesting and well written, and the manner in which you as a burgeoning new fantasy ruler have to deal with various crisis was intriguing,

BUT THE AUTOMATED setting meant that the fricking game made default choices for you, and bypassing much choice which was equally unsatisfying and COMPLETELY removed the roleplaying from the Kingdom part of the game which was pretty baked into the rest of the game, so you WERE missing out on a great deal of story and roleplay if you fricking went with this option.

It was a lose lose situation.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/252382-pathfinder-kingmaker-definitive-edition/78928689

"Just know that in making it auto you will forfeit receiving any accomplishments that are normally granted by doing it yourself. Not sure what accomplishments as of yet tho.. I also don't know if you still need to visit your kingdom once a month if it's set to auto"

https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/cff5a0/game_would_have_been_more_fun_without_kingdom/

"Beneath The Stolen Lands is so much more fun than the main game that I can't progress past the 2nd chapter in it because management sucks. I wish the game was like NWN1/2 with more of an adventure/crawl rather than loads of dice roll events trying to frick you every month in your Kingdom where Advisors will fail due to bad RNG and then continue to fail as they become worse."

"Auto is not a solution as you no longer have a say in anything and it ruins roleplaying. The management would have been fine if it had a "Off" button where failure in events and game overs relating to it were disabled but you coud still make choices and customize your kingdom in the usual way."

https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/cff5a0/game_would_have_been_more_fun_without_kingdom/eu9hql7/?context=8

"The only issue I have with Kingdom Management is that it's all stick and no carrot. Aside from a vague relationship between the kingdom stats and the artisans, you don't really get anything from having a booming kingdom versus one on the verge of revolt."

"If higher kingdom stats increased the number of merchants in your capital, conferred bonus stats on your party members, or had some other mechanical interaction with the game; I would consider it much less of a nuisance. There are the projects that give you bonuses while in your claimed lands, but pretty much every new chapter takes you out of your land so they never really matter. Artisans are nice, but their random nature makes them questionable - especially on a first run where you don't really know what you're getting from them."

https://steamcommunity.com/app/640820/discussions/0/3393916911755161624/

"Yeah they really really need to either let all your "potential" advisors actually take part to keep up with all the events if you are on top of things or, they need to make it so that all events pop up at the beginning of the month. I suppose its not really realistic but, neither is having an event pop on the 30th that will auto fail once it rolls over to the first of the month."

KINGDOM MANAGEMENT SUX:

The issue was that this Kingdom Management was possibly one of the worst of rulership simulations ever created in the entirety of gaming. In a vacuum it would be fine if not enjoyable, but the manner in which you as a player are introduced to fricking the management mechanics is horrific and highly cruel and unfair.

You received staggered information on the importance of significant mehcanics, like your need of Advisors which are critical, and critical to get as early as humanly possible. The game doesn't inform you, but basically you are in a massive stress inducing timer the very moment you begin the campaign, and if you camp spam too much, you will enable time to pass to much to the point of no return.

You as a fricking 1st time player will never know this, and for 90% of players, for whom this will be their 1st and ONLY playthrough, will only realize this calamity 20 hours into the game, past the point of no return, and when it is beyond their capacity to salvage their situation.

In the early game, in the 1st chapter, the way you are SUPPOSED to play, is make a beeline straight towards all Advisors to unlock their capacity to govern your various different parts of your government. You AS A Green fresh faced new will not know this, will not know that you are on a timer, or even WHERE on the overwolrd map to find them, or even that there will exist departments in your governments to fricking need a post in lategame.

Depending on which routes you take on the overworld, you will obtain needed Advisors based on pure fricking luck if you go in blindly. Even guides covering the RPG character builds dont often warn players of this critical fact.

And why is this critical?! Especially early game? Because the Kingdom Management will throw crises at you with incrementally more difficulty, which if you need to level your Advisors against over time. If you are up shit creek because your advisors were discovered too late, and have not been able to level them up in tandem with the increasingly difficulty of crisis management, then you will very quickly find a point of no return. Because guess the fun part of this shit Your Advisors ONLY levels up on successful crisis handling,

meaning if you fail even ONCE you will initiate the cockup cascade into your eventual demise, and if your underleveled Advisor, whom you had no way of fricking knowing would be important down the line was underleveled , then the cockup cascade is basically guaranteed

Basically the game would retroactively severely punish for suboptimal decisions you had made for as many as 20-30 hours, when you literally didn't even know you were making a decision at the time.

LONGTERM RETROACTIVE PUNISHMENTS:

It reminded me of X-COM which was a semi-roguelike which explicitly had baked in its design philosophy to have the player fail down the line, but to manage failure against success, I really fricking hated his game it too would punish you 20 hours down the line, and past the point of no return.

It reminded me of why RTS genre games would be by order of magnitudes less popular than regular shooters or other multiplayer games. If you lose or screw up or make a mistake, you are punished immediately and the consequences are inconsequentially short - you go back to teh starting line.

But if you make a mistake on an RTS game, even and usually especially a single player campaign, you will only realize your mistake maybe 1 hour into play, and will realize a suboptimal choice your had made strategically in the very beginning of the game is now retroactively punishing you 1 hour into the game, leaving you to the slow burn RTS death or quitting, yet even such a setback only ever takes an hour or afternoon of your lifespan.

What was especially aggravating and cruel about Pathfinder: Kingmaker's bullshit Kingdom Management, was that you would be punished retroactively into the game, for as much as 20-40 hours of gameplay! For a bad choice you didn't know you were making. For traditional games, or games which aren't as ruthless as XCOM, you pick yourself up from the dust and just fricking restart the mission. But for Kingmaker, you would effectively be throwing away 40 hours of play, and even if you willed yourself to fricking restart all the grueling effort, and wasting through plot twists which you thus already know now with hindsight, ruining the retread - this basically has a design philosophy in competing areas, to test your roleplay of a character against forewarned knowledge just to succeed in the fricking, which is NOT roleplaying

Even Dark Souls, is never this punishing to players (also it's not that hard, KEEP YOURSELF SAFE FromSoftsFantrags), the actual moment to moment failure maybe robs you of 1/2 hour of your life. And even crap builds can be and are expected to play through by the core design philosophy of Dark soulshit.

I really fricking despise thee notion of having your endeavor in a game be pointless, and especially despise the notion of being Retroactively be punished by devs, which is also why I personally hate Roguelikes.

PLOT OF KINGMAKER:

The other important thing which raised some in the CRPG shadows of the internet, was the difficult and convoluted manner in which peeps were able to unlock the secret ending of the game, which was similarly complex, but not nearly to the same degree as that of WOTR.

Summary of PLOT: Basically you and a bunch or brokeass mercenary strags are hired by Aldori dorks to subdue the massive banditry of the Stolen Lands and hopefully induce some level of stability into this historically unstable shithole, and as rewards, whichever loser mercenaries succeed and survive would be acknowledged and raised as a Baron/Baroness of the region by the neighbours of the Stolen Lands they just "conquered" to basically be their backyard buffer against banditry.

Your straggy main character becomes a Baron/ess and thus must thus play Sim City from Heck in the next 5 years, and basically put out the fires of calamity after calamity, as your new fledgling Barony appears to have the worst case of Bad Luck on the entire fricking planet, and is just fricking besieged by problems beyond counting. You manage sewage in the morning and fight off bandit invaders in the afternoon, and it appears like your new nation state is just filled to the brim with fricking 5th columnists hellbent of sabotaging your new nationbuilding project at every turn, and you also have to stop invasions of Fey Fairy frickers from the Fairy Fey dimension (not joking)

Basically it seems like the fricking Gods are fricking conspiring to burn down your new young Barony, and mid-game plot twist, after having faced off hordes or rampaging bandits, trolls and Barbarians (Micks ), you find out to your disbelief that there ACTUALLY ARE demigods conspiring to r*pe your kingdom to the ground!

The plot twist is that Narissa, a sexy Fey dryad treelady :marseyfoxxylove: chick, whom helped you from the very beginning of the game to overthrow the Bandit King to establish your Barony in the 1st place, is also conspiring to overthrow your new Barony as well. And has been behind every turn and twist and invasion and calamity which has befallen your Barony since you took charge!

The end game has you kill this cc*nt to finally establish peace and prosperity in the Region of the Stolen Lands, and you become a good/bad/r-slurred ruler whatever.

The super duper SECRET ending of the game, is you finding out WHY Narissa has been sabotaging not just your new Kingdom and that of the Bandit King before you arrived on the scene, but basically EVERY single kingdom and nation state in the Stolen Lands for the literal past 1000 years. In FACT you realize that the very reason the Stolen Lands have been so historically unstable and prone to banditry and chaos and shit has been because of Narissa all along!!!!!! And that she has basically sabotaged the nationbuilding of every single nation state ever endeavored in the region for the past millennium acting as this demigod 5th columnist over and over, breaking and sabotaging every single concurrent state or kingdom after one another.

You find out WHY the frick she would do this in the SECRET ending, as she had been cursed and her own Fey kingdom been cursedraped by the super straggy Lantern King in Feytopia (another dimension connected to your fantasy world, where the barrier was weak in the Stolen Lands) because she had made a failed coup against another Fey someshit

As punishment, she has to fill a magic jar with the grains of sand, where very single grain of sand represents ONE KINGDOM which she must destroy, in order to undestroy her magic Fey kingdom in turn, and thus she has been in constant 5th columnisting in the Stolen Lands for the past 1000 years.

======

It's a pretty good ending and extra story with a full extra 10 fricking hours of gameplay and fights after the traditional ending after you defeat Narissa. You can even redeem Narissa or romance the b#tch if you are an evil overlord!! (WHICH I DID BY THE WAY)

PAINFUL REQUIREMENTS SUX:

My problem?!!!!! Ulocking this super fricking r-slurred ending is in my opinion too convoluted and r-slurred and unfair1!!!111!!!!

Some buttholes on the sub or forum would be like "get gud" and how THEY totally fricking easily got the secret ending of Kingmaker and how it was all logical and shit, and only subhumans could not figure out how to unlock the Secret ending, and I was like

Because I actually DID UNLOCK THE SECRET UNDING in my 1st playthrough of Kingmaker, even as I was getting anally keelhauled by the Kingdom Management system, but the r-sluration was that I had done so with pure fricking unadulterated luck, I didn't accomplish it through any amount of thinking or logic or intuition or choices, I just stumbled my way through the right choices like and idiot-savant-r-slur and this ENRAGED MEEEEEEEEEEE

Because was just as likely to fail as succeed and would have been robbed of the choice 100 hours into the game had i been luckless enough not to have fricking made the right choices to unlock the Secret Ending in Kingmaker, and the ability to prone-bone the Fey tart

I am willing to bet half of the buttholes who got the steam Achievement of completing the secret ending had only done so with luck, and 50% sure as heck didn't obtain it through skill or reasoning

Like look at this shit to do it right!!

https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-kingmaker/guides/Best_Ending

LIKE LOOK AT THE SHEEEER AMOUNT OF SHIT YOU HAVE TO DO

https://www.pcg*mer.com/the-long-road-to-the-secret-ending-of-pathfinder-kingmaker/

Also you can secret romance the Badguy Narissa at the end if you're evil enough, and some had comments about her:

On a Steam forum thread where players theorized about the possibility, one suggested you'd be better off romancing literally any other NPC, since they "don't look like lettuce." A player who was more intrigued by the possibility replied, "She has 36 in charisma so she is a good looking lettuce."

Now normally an ambitious game which creates content fearless if it will be missed by many, and is antithetical to games like Skyrim which hold your hand with markers, I would like.

After all many peeps complained that even story driven games like Life Is Strange have railroading throughout its plot, and many choices don't have meaning anyways,

But I hate this type of content blocking just as much, because you as a player may never even be able to KNOW that you were at a point in making a choice or your inaction would lock you off from a Secret Ending, and thus be retroactively punished by a game like Kingmaker by as much as 90 fricking hours worth of playtime, realizing too late you can't go back and change your decision!!!!

RAILROAD BLOCKS:

I found this comment chain on a sub which perfectly encapsulates and verbalizes my frustration with this problem.

On the surface the ambition of these indie devs should be infinitely more celebrated over camp Triple AAA story slop where minor inconsequential choices never seem to affect the outcome of the main story in Developers like TellTales games, which have been accused of such, but are still highly revered by their main fanbase regardless.

Because it is the ultimate INVERSE problem, where you are railroaded too steeply in TellTale and other story games, instead it is TOO easy to block yourself out of specific lategame Secret endings like in Owlcat because you didn't fricking adhere to Adventure-Game-Moonlogic

It instead transforms otherwise praiseworthy design philosophy of ultimate choice into the g*mer's hands, as actually unintentionally blocking out too easily. Like you can be fricking AWARE of the secret ending an even be able to intuition your way into solving the problem of WOTR (Wrath of the Righteous) Secret Ending, but if you so much as unintentionally made a fricking mistake and made a specific binary chocie in the goddarn PROLOGUE of the game,

CONGRADULATIONS, you have just blocked yourself out of the secret ending of the game!!!!!!

I personally don't even mind bad endings in games if they are proportionally telegraphed by the devs ingame, like for example the Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines, has several bad and really bad endings, all of which are telegraphed over and over and OVER from the very beginning, and outside of very specific actions, none of the fricking endings are locked out to you, including a couple of "Secret Endings", or at least as cruelly easily like that of fricking WOTR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/9xih5a/guide_to_the_true_ending_all_the_spoilers_by_free/

"On one hand- this is awesome that "true ending" can be obtained only if someone is really determined to do so (I guess that person who wrote this guide in the first place must have spent few hundred hours to achieve this), but on the other- It's rather poor design choice to make it so railroaded (it seems like there's very little room for straying from the path, i.e.- failing Vordakai's curse check or killing Tartuk first- which is most reasonable choice as he buffs Hargulka). This feels sort of "gamey" for an RPG (I mean- it wouldn't be possible without being able to start over with previous knowledge of meta-game)."

"My point is that it takes very specific approach to reach this ending- not that it's too hard. If there was- for example- any indication that killing Hargulka first will yield different outcome than killing Tartuk than it'd be fine, now it seems arbitrary. I don't mind that it has to be done in certain order (although it would be cool to have such ending for characters that don't want to act compassionately towards Nyrissa), making encounters harder and being devoted to the goal, but it'd be nice if it could be achieved by wider array of characters and not necessarily gated behind skill checks (what's the point of reloading game only to have single RNG result different?)."

YOUTUBE DISCUSSIONS:

Anyways I basically triggered myself with the release of this video, as it confirmed just how painfully specific the path ahead to the secret ending is in the game, even compared to that of Kingmaker.

A lot of peeps praise Owlcat and the fact that devs would include such a mountain of content probable never to be seen by the majority of players, which is an admirable design philosophy, especially in comparison to railroading Triple AAA slop,

but I personally feel like I basically fallen out of love with Owlcat because of this - it ticked me off beyond reason.

Even a couple of Youtube-comments, through the usual blind praise towards the Youtube or circlejerk of the subjectmatter, also mirrors my complex feelings on the matter of the Secret Ending and how it is implemented in WOTR

"Very convoluted & cryptic way to get to the "secret" ending tbh. In fact it is so convoluted that I have even heard an opinion that conditions to meet are so "unfair" that a lot of people were apparently using some save editor tool to alter in-game date so it would unlock the ending (which apparently works)."

R-SLURRED MORALITY OF SECRET ENDING:

there's also other reasons why I hate the Secret Ending.

Basically the main Posterchild Badguy, is Areelu Vorlesh, whom opened the Worldwound onto the fanatasy planet, which is basically an interdimensional portal staright to a demonic heck, and the setting of the game has been basically for 130 years the mortal humans/elves/dwarves have been fihghting desperate crusades to close this Worldwound super portal to save all of mortalkind

So Areelu Vorlesh is basically super fantasy hitler, and have caused absolutely tremendous suffering for the peeps of this fantasy world, yet in order to fricking fascilitate the Secret Ending, you have to fcucking understand her side of teh story,

which is interesting and cool, but morally can be r-slurred. She basically has that anime-cliche where she has a sad traumatic backstory, so all the horrors he had inflicted upon others is totally cancelled out

Additionally, you absolutely cannot finish the Secret ending as a Legend mythic path, which sees your protagonist giving up all their magic demigod powers, to become a Legend of mortalkind, and basically rule as an average everybody to save the planet from demonic invasion, and erect your own nationstate on the ashes of the Worldwound

It's my favorite mythic path because I enjoy narratives where you relinquish extreme power in favor of responsibility, yet due to the zany twister morality of the Owlcat devs this is inherently antithical to the Secret Ending, which sees you ascending into Godhood basically.

It sort of feels like the implied BEST ending is only achievable through the avarice for ultimate power for your character, instead of a form of redemption where you realize to live your remaining years amongst mortals as a hero - it's fricking weird

SOME MORE YOUTUBE DISCUSSIONS:

Others on the youtube video share the sentiment that the requirements are too extreme, and feel like the game is sort of retroactively punishing them as in the eyes of the devs as they had no forewarned knowlegde to accomplish the demanding tasks to fulfill the requirements of the Secret Ending.

ALSO by the way, like the Kingdom Management in the 1st Pathfinder game, there is a Crusade Management system midgame, which is basically Heroes of Might and Magic

So if you pretty much hate that part, and hate Heroes of Might and magic as a genre, and want it automated like in the 1st pathfinder game, once again you are fricking shit out of luck, and have to engage with this system, in order to fulfill the requirements of teh Secret Ending.

I personally love Heroes of Might and Magic, and enjoy this "mini" game but can absolutely empathize with peeps who would abhor this shit, just as I had personally abhorred the Kingmaker's Kingdom Management system

CLOSURE:

Basically in summary I really really fricking hate this Secret Ending, I hate the complexity of its requirements, I hate the fact that it's near impossible to do on your first run, I hate the fact that you can even realize of its existence and even figure out somewhat how to do it, but have fricking unknowingly locked yourself out via an unwitting earlygame choice - and I hate HATE the feeling that I am being punished retroactively by developers for having made a "bad" or suboptimal choice

Especially in very very Loooong games like the two Pathfinder games each of which can easily take a 1st run from 70-100 hours. Imagine the cruel sensation of playing for 50 fricking hours, only to realize midgame that you've unknowingly cucked yourself out of a secret choice you would have wanted to make, and that the ingame files are complex with tracking plot-flags, that even using Unity-mods are basically impossible to fix your unwitting frick up.

Even bad endings on Dishonoured, with its chaos system is telegraphed by the game throughout and you can change course midway.

This Secret Ending of WOTR leaves a very sour taste in my mouth