Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Oct 08, 2015, 01:21:27 PM
Quote from: newbeing on Oct 08, 2015, 01:00:13 PM
It's definitely a cliffhanger ending. Everything about that ending is a setup to continue Amanda's story and answer major questions that were left unresolved when the credits started to roll.
It's definitely setup for more. But I found it only slightly more a cliffhanger than Alien because she was in a spacesuit (more limited than an EEV) and we saw her imminent rescue. I can't say I felt any significant story threads were left hanging though. What are you referring to?
QuoteNot to mention it leaves a big gaping hole between that point in the story and her supposed fate explained in Aliens.
That would have happened regardless. Unless they went from the end to her on her deathbed saying "boy, I'm glad nothing else ever happened after Sevestapol".
Quote from: newbeing on Oct 08, 2015, 01:00:13 PM
It's also just a very poor ending. Not that everything needed to be tied up in a little bow by the end of the game, but some resolution for that character would have been nice.
She received her resolution. She found out what happened to her mother (the whole point of the game) and she survived the Alien. Granted we don't know who picks her up - but she achieved those very 2 things the game's narrative was built around. The cliffhanger ending nearly parallels Alien IMHO.
***SPOILERS***
Do we know who picked her up or if she was even picked up? Do we know who the survived on the Torrens? Was the Alien even sucked out with her or did she just escape it's grip by ejecting herself? None of these questions are answered. It's all just assumed. And I don't mind endings that leave somethings up the viewers imagination, a good example being Ripley at the end of Alien. Ripley defeats the Alien, fills the audience in to what may or may not happen, goes to sleep and (depending on whether or not you know of the sequels) leaves it up the view to make up what happen next.
Alien Isolation just leaves way too much open with a climax that never sees any resolution, good or bad. That's just poor storytelling. Amanda finding out what happened to her mother, really only plays as a B plot, and is used as a reason for getting her there. As soon as the Alien shows up, she could give two flying f**ks about finding more info about her mother, which to their credit is reasonable. By the end of the game the player wants to know, how is Amanda going to get out of this? The answer is apparently a big "shrug".
Also when I say resolution and spanning the gap between this game and ALIENS, I don't mean explaining every detail of her life after A:I or even having her rescued and one of her rescuers being McClaren (oof that would be a bad ending). What I mean is showing how the character has been affected by this ordeal after the crisis has subsided and how the character moves on from that point. Instead Amanda is left hanging waiting for some other story element to happen.
I can get why people might like this ending. It does have some poetic meaning behind it. The idea that, much like her mother, Amanda has encountered this thing and is never going to be safe from it or that sometimes all you can do is escape from a crisis. However I feel like that could have been extrapolated to a longer ending. The ending we got felt like they were either trying to be too clever or they just ran out of time and were praying that they'd get a sequel.