CameoAmalthea
Pro Adventurer
Obviously, contains spoilers for the ending of Before Crisis.
Before Crisis has an ending followed by two epilogues. The ending and first epilogue neatly ties up everything. Tseng is forced to shoot Veld in order to get the Turks into good standing with Shinra, only for the majority of the Turks to die stopping the world from ending.
This leaves us with the original game Turks (Tseng, Rude, and Reno) still alive and Elena set on joining. It also shows that Tseng becoming a darker person, willing to shoot the man who is essentially his father in order to preserve the Turks. This fits with the Tseng who kidnaps Aerith, and the sort of Turks who carry out the destruction of Sector 7 without batting an eye.
With this ending, the game is very dark. We see the Turks go from good people fighting the good fight to people able to divorce themselves from their feelings and do what they know is wrong. Also, all the player characters die.
Then comes the second epilogue, where you learn everyone is alive! The player Turks didn't die after all and Rufus somehow arranged to fake Veld's death and presumably cover up the fact all the other Turks survived.
It ends with the Turks all together again and helping the people of Midgar evacuate during Meteor Fall. So nobody dies
and the Turks are still good people at heart, still set on helping the people, atoning for past wrongs.
Which ending do you prefer? Does the second epilogue cheapen the ending?
I for one like the final ending, because see about 2:28 in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53CPuFgBK7E
It also makes sense in terms of character relationships. I don’t think Reno would have ever forgiven Rufus is his plan had actually been to make Tseng sacrifice Veld. It sort of makes sense in terms of how it happened. The Turks are on board the floating summon castle thing that blows up (ok this whole final boss thing really doesn’t make much sense), but while inside the thing they fight a bunch of random monsters. My theory is some of the monsters were teleported aboard then after the summon was defeated every living thing and person was teleported back to where they came from…so the Turks just wake up in the desert.
And yeah, it’s a plot hole. The kind of plot device a DM makes up to avoid a party wipe
It leaves a lot of questions like…so did the remaining Turks know everyone else were still alive? How did they find Veld and go into hiding together?
But personally, I don’t mind the questions, because it’s interesting think about and the ponder out the clues we can get from BC and CoS. (Reeve knew they where they were and how to contact them, Rufus probably knew they were alive and with Veld since he helped with the cover up, the rest of the Turks probably knew they were alive but not where they were or how to contact them).
All the same, I wonder why the second epilogue was written. Other than saving Tseng from dying in the Original Game (Reeve uses the second Cait Sith to take Tseng to Veld and the other Turks who get him medical attention. Case of Shinra fills in a lot of plot holes), the BC Turks don’t really show up again in the compilation. Not in ACC, DOC, or even “The Kids are All Right” which is Turk centric and would have been a great place to explore what the heck happened to all these people.
They could have been killed off in BC and it wouldn’t have effected things, so why let them live?
Before Crisis has an ending followed by two epilogues. The ending and first epilogue neatly ties up everything. Tseng is forced to shoot Veld in order to get the Turks into good standing with Shinra, only for the majority of the Turks to die stopping the world from ending.
This leaves us with the original game Turks (Tseng, Rude, and Reno) still alive and Elena set on joining. It also shows that Tseng becoming a darker person, willing to shoot the man who is essentially his father in order to preserve the Turks. This fits with the Tseng who kidnaps Aerith, and the sort of Turks who carry out the destruction of Sector 7 without batting an eye.
With this ending, the game is very dark. We see the Turks go from good people fighting the good fight to people able to divorce themselves from their feelings and do what they know is wrong. Also, all the player characters die.
(If there’s ever a remake of the game, I hope it forces you to play different missions as various characters and have interactive moments with everyone, just so you get super attached to everyone and cry your eyes out at the end, like 100 times worse than the ending of Crisis Core).
Then comes the second epilogue, where you learn everyone is alive! The player Turks didn't die after all and Rufus somehow arranged to fake Veld's death and presumably cover up the fact all the other Turks survived.
It ends with the Turks all together again and helping the people of Midgar evacuate during Meteor Fall. So nobody dies
(except Shears)
Which ending do you prefer? Does the second epilogue cheapen the ending?
I for one like the final ending, because see about 2:28 in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53CPuFgBK7E
It also makes sense in terms of character relationships. I don’t think Reno would have ever forgiven Rufus is his plan had actually been to make Tseng sacrifice Veld. It sort of makes sense in terms of how it happened. The Turks are on board the floating summon castle thing that blows up (ok this whole final boss thing really doesn’t make much sense), but while inside the thing they fight a bunch of random monsters. My theory is some of the monsters were teleported aboard then after the summon was defeated every living thing and person was teleported back to where they came from…so the Turks just wake up in the desert.
And yeah, it’s a plot hole. The kind of plot device a DM makes up to avoid a party wipe
(I’m pretty sure I’ve played D&D campaigns that ended like this).
But personally, I don’t mind the questions, because it’s interesting think about and the ponder out the clues we can get from BC and CoS. (Reeve knew they where they were and how to contact them, Rufus probably knew they were alive and with Veld since he helped with the cover up, the rest of the Turks probably knew they were alive but not where they were or how to contact them).
All the same, I wonder why the second epilogue was written. Other than saving Tseng from dying in the Original Game (Reeve uses the second Cait Sith to take Tseng to Veld and the other Turks who get him medical attention. Case of Shinra fills in a lot of plot holes), the BC Turks don’t really show up again in the compilation. Not in ACC, DOC, or even “The Kids are All Right” which is Turk centric and would have been a great place to explore what the heck happened to all these people.
(My theory is because the Turks are unnamed it’s difficult for them show up in other works because they have to work in why they can’t give their real names. Maybe they should have thought of that before implementing the name the player character yourself mechanic. That or Square just didn't like BC for some reason)