I took my time with this game, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Wish I had better hardware so I could record every moment of my first time with it in 4k, but-
the moral point system is garbage, pretentious, obnoxious, unnecessary. And not for the reasons you think.
It's not getting the bad ending that's the issue, you reap what you sow (I guess? Literally didn't put down anyone that wasn't tryna shoot me first), but more importantly, I got what I wanted, a certain characters survival.
I didn't give a fuck about what happened to me. I wanted them to fucking live, I smacked a Blind one in the face, killed another one with bullet spray, threw a can in another ones face, kicked one in the balls & Triangle choked out another (Because the stealth system is full of shit, you'll throw 5 cans in an opposite direction and these mfs will STILL go in your direction).
ALL so that this person would live.
So i was 100% content. And it was an ending fitting the games tone. But that was considered *Bad, not alternate ending but BAD lmfao. OK.
And it's funny, because I notice these "good" endings are littered with cheesy asspulls and plotarmor and the "BAD" endings have better storytelling because there's actual consequences and committed stakes that fit the situation more organically given what's actually going on.
So the non-canon versions are actually, unintentionally, better stories than the timeline that's actually canon. Almost as if "the point" is fucking irrelevant if the story isn't matching the energy of the set up and Or the narrative and messages gets in the way of a better story.
And it usually does. No one wants to play a PREACH simulation.
Anyways, EXODUS is well produced, well acted, good stories, fun new mechanics, good level design, enemies are a threat, feels like a movie but too much. Most of the Characters are meh, but Anna is cool, Katya was useful, Olga was cool, Giul was cool, Yermak underrated.
But for the moral system, some of the characters and thus the game lowkey passive-aggressively throws digs at you throughout the rest of the game IF you didn't obey the narrative like a passive drone puppet- is the absolute WORST part about the game.
The game offers a different experience and then lowkey antagonizes you because you dared to waver from the canon narrative, super pretentious.
All these opportunities to spare NPCs, GREAT, but do they really matter? If in the end, killing the wrong Npc at the wrong time in the wrong mission, renders the ones you spared null and void anyway? That's the shit I'm talking about.
- Why even offer an alternative, just make it one singular story/experience. It'd be a better execution, better experience. CONSISTENT with the previous 2 games.
And because Artyom is silent, you just have to sit there and take this bullshit the others are vomiting when they do have something to say about your choices, meanwhile they're killing just the people they deemed as "bad" or the "right" people to slaughter. lmfao.
So It's not just the moral point system, that's the worst part about THE GAME itself: The post-op lecturing.
Because I repeat, WHO the fuck decides who's lives matter and who's doesn't in a post apocalypse where its literally anything goes.
Not Khan, that's for damn sure.
Kill the fanatics, that's a problem. Why? They're not trained soldiers, well neither are the bandits as far as i'm concerned, both parties had guns, thus a threat.
You do nothing, those fanatics will kill you, trust me, I tested it. So they're not helpless.(You kill the Volga fanatics that's a nono because they're not soldiers)
The fanatics who don't pose a threat, like the praying dudes on the shore, dozens of people I leave alone, they're spared because logically they're not a threat.
But apparently that wasn't enough for the "good boy" points. Corny as fuck.
There's multiple times in the game where there's supply stashes, but to get to them, you have to kill the bandits who were literally just minding their business before you pulled up and massacred them unprovoked.
Buuut despite not being soldiers either, their lives somehow didnt matter to the message, soooo fuck them i guess =D
Last Light, killing the bear was a no no. Which i didn't, she was beaten, and wasn't a threat anymore.
Buuuut the bear in Exodus, their life according to the plot apparently boiled down to a B movie monster, this bears life didnt register to the moral system, cause how that went down was definitely brutal enough for a bad ending.
But apparently not all Bear lives matter. We have a mountain of bandit, soldier, beast, regimen corpses behind us but those lives didn't matter.
Literally there's a demon nest in VOLGA , the thing was minding its business in its home, I burned it alive via molotov right? I GOT A TROPHY for it…..uhh message?
Burnt to a crisp. Soooo that didn't register to the moral point bullshit?
Why Not? Because Khans eternal wisdom said so? Writers want to empathy for a bear that attacks you, but a Demon minding it's business is irrelevant???
Mercy for them didnt matter huh, we clearly see little baby Bats floating around later, what if that demon was a momma huh? Fuck off.
PRE-TENTIOUS, no consistency, want to push this hippie shit, be consistent.
Only the lives the game vaguely hints matters, are the lives that actually matters. Thus defeating any legitimacy the games little message possessed.
PLAY Stealthily, kill the right people, or you're the bad guy, its a sandbox yet wants to put you in a box.
And its funny because the game doesn't really make anything clear, it vaguely pushes a direction but doesn't get blatant until AFTER you make up your own damn mind.
All these guns to kill, but there's only ONE main method to non-lethally k.o enemies, not even a sleep dart, or knockout gas, yeah thats not redundant.
FUCK I even tried just shooting knee-Caps & arms to see if that'd neutralize, to make em drop the guns. Nope. Gotta hug them from behind like a lover or punch em out EVERY SINGLE TIME. Same animation.
Bioshock Infinite: Burial At Sea* gives the player more non-lethal options to fight.
Fallout 3 doesn't pull this shit to this extent. Fallout knows what it is and what a post apocalypse is in reality. Gray.
You kill a vendor to steal, guess what? No lecture. But the consequence is NOW you one less person to trade with. One less person to provide you Stimpak
That's fucking reality. You kill just to kill, you lose connections, you need people, thats reality. Kill everyone in the wasteland, now you have no one to work with when you need it. No network. And sometimes regular vendors are murdered by NPCs and you never see them again = Cold hard REALITY, brilliant game design
That's Karma done right, because it ISN'T a solely moral system, its just (cause and effect) in nature.
In Metro? Its obnoxious. Bioshocks karma system was leagues better because you could tell when and where the "moment of truth" was, it wasn't vague and the game didn't beat you over the head a million times about it like a naggy spouse.
I would've played Exodus immediately again after I finished it, and i WANTED to, but that passive-aggressive shit leaves a bad vibe. It nags & antagonizes you for making your own fucking choice.
And unlike Fallout 3, there's no option to speak back.
Again, NOT THE ENDING itself is the issue, because the bad ending is not even bad, it's bittersweet.
The characters being annoying saying slick shit a hundred times and you say nothing back is where I started tilting my head.
That doesn't smell right, the game gives you another path then penalizes you for exploring what it made available, sometimes accidentally, cause how tf would a normie know?
For THIS story? It was unnecessary. Especially for Exodus. Linear stories meant to be linear should be linear, for the continuity if anything else. You want a certain narrative, then axe the bad ending and just make the ending you want to be the narrative.
And yet something like Last of Us pt2 that should've had multiple endings, didnt get any lmfao
Devs are sleeping man.
TL;DR yes Exodus moral system is laughably infantile, finished it last night (Jan 2024) and I WILL NOT be playing it again for a while just because its pretentious with the message bullshit, I binged the 3 games just to be lectured. Naaaah fuck you. I'll gladly take my blackass right back to Fallout, WAY more content anyway.
I understand the overtones, the "diamond in the rough/being the exception/", the Bioshock 2 "Mercy is victory" message, but in this game? It wasn't executed well at all. And seriously, at the end of the day, Fuck the writers, play your fucking way.
