A quick disclaimer that, since I wrote about all but the very last bits of Sea of Stars already, this post is going to be rife with spoilers in probably every paragraph below this one (and especially rife in the paragraph immediately below this one)! It is impossible to discuss the things I want to without wading deeply into the various themes, plot beats, and even the final resolution of the game, so check out my first review if you just want to know whether or not you should play the game and then read this review if you don’t care about spoilers and want to know what I think about the game now that I’ve finished it. I will say that, regardless of what you might read below (and to give a pre-spoiler final conclusion on the game), I think you should play it. I had a blast and while I have a lot of thoughts about the story’s wrap up, it is still a point in the game’s favor that they put so much in the game that I have a burning desire to talk about it, even if I might not be as happy with the wrap-up as I would like to be. I put about thirty hours into the game and it was absolutely worth my money and that much of my time. I have no regrets about spending my time on it and I’ll probably even replay it eventually, using the New Game + mode to get the final achievements so I can rest easy knowing I did everything there was to do in the game. Now, with that said, on to my final and full review of the game!

As it turns out, the anxiety I voiced in my initial review was correct and I should not have put so much effort into reassuring myself that the game was going to wrap up all the story elements it had seeded through the game in a neat manner. Despite how much I enjoyed my time with it, the final ending of the game left me feeling unsatisfied and like I’d missed a step while walking down the stairs. Ultimately, there was no more to the story than the good/evil binary. The story wraps up, even in the “secret” ending, with the status quo being upheld. Sure, you got to save your friend (and the game is pretty clear that this counts as bringing him back from the dead rather than somehow preventing his death in the first place, which neatly sidesteps all the potential timeline issues in a very clean way that I appreciated) and he was able to act as the player surrogate in the conclusion of the story, forcing a battle against the actual evil guy behind the story rather than a servant of that evil guy who was only in that position because she felt like it was the sole option she had to escape the horrible cycle that same evil guy had started. It was satisfying to see how the final battle began differently, thanks to Garl’s influence, but it didn’t change how the story ended. It changed things in the individual lives of the characters (which I appreciated, since I got to see the good ending for the characters I had grown to love and even the ones who had turned away from the heroes out of desperation), but the status quo still got upheld.

The problem is, with the status quo upheld, all of the suggestions the story made that there was more to the world than the good/evil binary led to nothing. The entire story was set up to suggest that this saga of Good Champions battling Evil Forces was a mistake. That this did not solve the problems the world/universe was facing so much as just allow them to endlessly continue. The role of Garl, the protagonist of this aspect of the game, was to be the voice offering the third option to every ultimatum presented by the Evil Forces, to call out the false dichotomies that the Evil Forces try to present to the heroes. He constantly acts to break the developing narrative that the Good/Evil story is trying to build, adding a voice of reason, compassion, or pragmatism to the Epic Saga playing out around him. He keeps the game’s protagonists, Valere and Zale, grounded so that every conflict doesn’t need to end in death or destruction. He pushes them to act in ways that sometimes turn out to be a mistake, but that keeps them grounded in the needs of the normal people they’re supposed to be protecting. He pushes them to take direct action on their own terms rather than wait for the conniving villains to unfold their master plan. He is truly an audience surrogate in a more honest way that I’ve ever seen before. He does his job so well that I never once found myself wishing I could shout something at the characters on my screen since he was always there to say it for me.

Honestly, it happens so many times that it really seemed like a core theme of the game. The Evil Force (aka, The Fleshmancer as the people of the universe call him or Aephorul to those who know him well) spends all his time setting up and enforcing false dichotomies to the point that he seems to revel in them. After all, if he’s the one setting them up, he’s the person in control of the narrative. He gets to set the tone, control the scene, and determine the stakes. With Garl acting as the main voice of the player and the point on which the story turns, it feels like the game is setting up a story that concludes with the idea that, as we’ve seen so many times, we don’t need to engage with evil on its own terms. We are not wrong to strike first. We are not wrong to act swiftly, to challenge the version of events that Evil conspires to force upon us. We are not stuck in an either/or scenario, but always have more options than Evil is willing to give us. We need not cede control just because evil demands that we play by the rules it is so willing to break.

Unfortunately, the game never delivers. Sure, Garl challenges The Fleshmancer directly. Sure, someone who sold their soul so they could escape a horrible cycle and so that someone they loved could live in peace got to live in peace as well since you fight The Fleshmancer directly rather than one of his lieutenants. Sure, the heroes ascend to godhood but stay in touch with their friends. That’s all great and I absolutely loved that I got it in the true ending. But it shows that there was only one way this game was going to fall out. All this despite the opening of the game setting up the idea that the Good Forces (The Archivist to the many universes and Resh’an to his friends) chose to involve himself in this story in order to give this small slice of the multiverse a fighting chance. Sure, that happens, but Resh’an ultimately becomes the final enforcer of the status quo. He intervenes at the end, perhaps to deescalate a situation that was going to get out of hand in some way, but mostly to keep the universe spinning as it already does. We will never know if things could have been different because he, the “Good Guy,” showed up at the end to enforce the continuation of the horrors we’ve been fighting against this entire time, just against different parts of reality than the one we occupy.

What makes this even more frustrating is that we can see how much Resh’an wants to change things. He choses to act multiple times throughout the game, choosing to help the heroes be able to fight, choosing to fight alongside them, choosing even to manipulate time and bring someone back to life so they can get their friend back (hinting, while he does it, that he is giving them something he wants himself but can never get because his friend, Aephorul, The Fleshmancer, is too far gone). He wants to save this little twist of reality (a twist he created when he split the universe into a multiverse, according to the lore we’re provided in the game) if it is at all possible, but he refuses to allow the broader scope of reality to be changed. It really proves that, despite his good intentions, Resh’an is also a bad person no matter how he likes to style himself. Perhaps he is choosing the least evil option, to be passive most of the time. Perhaps he can argue that he’s actually a good person by giving all of the multiverses the tools to save themselves if they’re lucky (or if he chooses to thumb the scales like he did for the heroes of this game), but that all fades away when he steps in to prevent the heroes from making actual change to by taking down The Fleshmancer during the final battle. The Fleshmancer is fully and irrevocably Evil due to the clear cruelty he dishes out and how that is often the reason he does anything at all, but that doesn’t mean that Resh’an is automatically good just for providing mild opposition.

Resh’an has clearly chosen the slow death of the universes over the risk of breaking a bone or two by engaging in sharp confliction and assisting in the delivery of justice. He talks of rules between him and Aephorul, to prevent the two of them from coming into conflict in a way that he suggests could destroy the universe (or at least significant portions of it). Aephorul, in the moments when we see him, frequently comments on them, threatening to Resh’an with unspecified consequences should he intervene, all while slowly destroying each and every universe he arrives in so he can continue his horrible alchemical experimentation and grow his already considerable power. Aephorul, either playing the estranged friend to Resh’an or as the universe-destroying Fleshmancer, will not follow the rules unless they suit him and he has clearly spun them in a way that suits him. After all, passivity serves only the oppressor. Inaction serves the aggressor. Evil prospers when the so-called good do nothing and boy-howdy does Resh’an do a whole lot of nothing. He gets confronted with one horrible truth about Aephorul, learning that one gift from someone he considered a friend came with a much heavier price tag than he first thought, and he flees. He runs away because he was blind to Aephorul’s evil longer than he thought and then only returns when it looks like the heroes might be able to do something about the vile villain he once considered a friend.

And, you know, I would love to explore this. I love this kind of complex characterization. I’d love to dig into what is really going on here and how the people of the universe feel about The Archivist interceding to maintain the status quo that has made a misery of so many lives. Instead, the game just ends. No one says anything. Garl is as silent in these moments as he was when he had been killed (a moment that marked a dramatic shift in the way the story was playing out, since the player surrogate was gone and all that remined was an old, familiar, but tired tale about Good seeking to put an end to the machinations of Evil) and it feels so strange. He is content to let the evil mastermind behind all the worst miseries in the universe go. Everything the game built towards is just dropped in the moment and the ending that felt correctly disappointing the first time around (since Garl wasn’t there to shake us out of the Heroic Responsibility Saga) feels like a punch to gut when it plays out a second time, albeit in a more emotionally warm manner because everything we wanted for the characters gets to play out during the ending credits. No one asks Resh’an why he helps Aephorul to his feet. No one asks Resh’an why he left. No one calls into question what Resh’an tells them, about the need for them to ceaselessly continue to fight, despite how unreliable he has proven himself. They accept what he says and then move on, as if everything playing out was inevitable and not the result of two largely-immortal beings playing god with all of reality.

It’s so frustrating! It could have wrapped it all up with, like, five more minutes of dialogue! The game could have paid off all that build-up so easily, but it chose not to! I mean, I can see some reasons why they might not want to wrap it up here. DLC is a potential reason, as is trying to hit the deadlines from their wildly popular Kickstarter (unlike so many other video game projects). Maybe there’s another game already being planned out that would go into this a little bit. Maybe all of this was an accident, as the writers put in a character they loved and didn’t really consider the broader consequences as seen from the outside. Maybe there are elements of the story or worldbuilding that make it clear that the status quo is the only choice and they just weren’t emphasized in a way that is clear to the player but felt incredibly clear to the developers. Maybe video games are incredibly difficult to make and something just got overlooked. I would not blame them if this is the case because damn, video games are hard to make and this one got made so well that the only thing I have to complain about is the lack of payoff to this thing they built up for the entire game. Honestly, if the game wasn’t so well made in every other way, I would not be as disappointed and frustrated as I am. It is only because the writing is so strong, the characterization so perfect, that I expected all of this individual stuff that spins around a common theme to be eventually woven together in the end.

So I am left holding all of this expectation that went unmet while I try to remind myself that it was actually an excellent game. Which isn’t that difficult. It really was a truly wonderful game and I’d still recommend it to anyone and everyone who enjoys RPGs. I just wish it had been more than it was. It was so close to being in my top games of all time and now, while it will definitely be a memorable part of this year, it will not stick with me the way that Breath of the Wild has, or that Chained Echoes, Majora’s Mask, Celeste, and Spiritfarer have. It was so many wonderful things, with the amazing music, the fun combat, and the impeccable characterization, but the simplicity and ultimately frustrating nature of the story cast a long shadow and that, alone, will probably keep it from being a game I return to year after year. Which, honestly, is a bigger tragedy than any other ending to the game could have been.