[SPOILER WARNING] Ending Confusion

[RPGenius]

Having had a fondness for the Millennium pentalogy, I decided to finally come back to Aldorlea Games and try something else from the catalogue. At sort-of-random, I chose Witch Hunt. I played it through to the end, enjoying some things, disliking others, but overall having a fun time. The ending, however, left me perplexed and more than a little disappointed, as

Spoiler: show

the wrong chicken was cured

and the ending scene cut out abruptly.

Are there other endings to this game? And if there are, how does one get them? I was playing it on Normal Mode, and since I bought the guide in the interest of fully supporting the developer, my final score was over 100, so I assume that the score has nothing to do with it.

[Indinera]

Hi, thanks for your support!
It's the real and only ending.
The game ends in a double plot twist, one some of you might have guessed (Cybel's mother is the witch), and the other one meant to take by surprise even the most veterans of Aldorlea players.
I don't always go with the happy, everything-resolved ending.
Sometimes I like leaving things a bit open and to the player's imagination. In that case yes they did cure the wrong chicken and Cybel's was unintendly exchanged with another one in the Monastery. But with the big bad witch defeated (and identified), Cybel's quest is basically over nonetheless.

[RPGenius]

I see. Thank you for your reply. That's very surprising and disappointing.

[Indinera]

Unhappy endings are a welcome change IMO. I don't find them "disappointing", I like stuff that is unpredictable and I'm not particularly fond of the Hollywood style, let alone Disney which I can't stand.
Witch Hunt is a cynical, twisted tale, it's not meant to be uplifting like Millennium. Some of my games have the formulaic happy ending, but some not.
I guess if you had picked Little Hearts you would have been happier, without spoiling it, it seems to fit your taste better.

[RPGenius]

I agree, unhappy endings are a fine change of pace, when they're done well and fit the mood of the game. Some of my favorite RPG endings have been those of Shadow Hearts 2 and Rakuen, and I quite respected the endings of Severed and Eternal Senia 1. Unfortunately, I don't feel that the ending of Witch Hunt does either.

First: Regardless of intention, Witch Hunt isn't a cynical, twisted tale until this very ending - the setting's elements of horror and the evils wrought by the Devil Witch aren't enough to make it so on their own. Cybel herself is relentlessly driven in an outgoing, good-natured, and well-intentioned way, reigning her party members in to focus on the task at hand when necessary, insisting that they do the right thing for those they pass by even if it inconveniences her party, and always ready to argue against a bias that witches are all bad. No part of her is cynical or twisted, nor does any part of the game's events, cast, or theme make any real effort to make her so. And since this game centers around her personal quest, and since her attitude and interactions are what define the party's dynamic,* it does not come off as cynical or twisted as a story at all.

* Not that said dynamic would be cynical or twisted even without Cybel holding it the cast together. Xendra's a prideful professional, Xena strikes an appealing balance between a fledgling warrior adventurer and Cybel's supportive bestie, Viktor's a cowardly lion type, Marvel's a focused professional who takes a slight distance of distaste from the rest, Double 0's a damn chicken, Sandy's mostly just there, and Lone focuses mostly on just getting the job done rather than what he's lost. There's a lot of bickering and they aren't all skipping around with their hands clasped in friendship, but no part of the dynamic overall suggests anything cynical or twisted beyond maybe Diddy, who's more just puzzling than anything. With the Bear's abusive negativity and Jezebel being a jerk all around, I'd say the cast of Millennium's being forced indirectly by an oppressive government system to work together with people they could genuinely dislike, sometimes for reasons that aren't inspiring and nice (since Marine has to practically force some of them to be there) would actually have made a more compelling bid for cynical and twisted.

Also, the very foundation of this game's story works against the idea of it being cynical and twisted. Cybel's boyfriend got transformed into a chicken - a chicken with an amusingly exaggerated profile picture, to boot - and she's embarking on an 80s-NES-styled quest to fix him. Even if everything else about the game's events and characters and feel lined up toward a cynical and twisted mindset, it would be difficult to square away with the spiritual foundation of Witch Hunt.

Second and Far More Important: I'm not disappointed because it's not a happy ending, I'm disappointed because it's careless and just abruptly drops. There's a world of difference between an ending that doesn't intend to resolve everything and an ending that doesn't try to resolve anything, and there's a world of difference between an ending that's not happy and an ending that's simply incomplete. The reveal that

Spoiler: show

the chickens got switched is made,

and things just stop there. That's it. There's no emotional payoff of any kind, positive OR negative, there's nothing to take from it, there's not even enough time devoted to this ending for it to feel cynical or twisted. It's like a conversation where the battery in someone's phone dies mid-sentence. The true weight of what's happened doesn't have time to sink in for Cybel. We don't get to see any of the lasting results of what this will do for her relationship with her parents, nor how it will relate to any of the political circumstances surrounding witches and Wes's family which the game dropped on us just a minute before (which, by the way, is also not a good move; the ending isn't the place to drop the majority of the game's social lore). We don't get to see how the rest of the party reacts to this news and interacts with Cybel over it - we didn't even really get to see them react to the revelation of who the Devil Witch is! 7/9ths of the major cast members of Witch Hunt end this game waiting in a hallway. There's not resolving everything, and there's not resolving anything, and it's the latter that Witch Hunt does.

It doesn't feel like you wanted to make a twisted, cynical ending without full resolution, it feels like you just didn't want to make an ending, period. Witch Hunt didn't end, it just stopped.

There are other, better ways this could have been done. Off the top of my head:

Spoiler: show

Rather than just fade to black with a teasing message that leaves the player wondering whether they'd done something wrong somewhere down the line, continue to another scene, with Cybel and company returning to the Monastery. Have them go back and legitimately not be able to find the real Wes, and show the emotional fallout of that. Did something happen to him after they accidentally left him behind? There aren't enough monks to watch over this place any more and there's monsters all over the place. Did he just wander off? They'll never find him. Did the switch even occur here? It's the most likely place, but it's possible they could have accidentally grabbed the wrong chicken anywhere. It could be a dawning horror on them that they'll never find him, if there's even anything left of him to find. This scene would give you time to show the true weight of horror as it sinks in that she's lost him for good. It would give you a chance to give the rest of the party some time to react to this, to interact with Cybel over this matter, to sort out their own final feelings on the quest and the twist and the tragedy. When all is said and done, Cybel could rush outside and start frantically calling for Double 0, ignoring her friends, ignoring her mother, searching in desperation that we suspect is fruitless. THEN fade to black, maybe have a tasteful bit of narration about her having accomplished something good and important in stopping the Devil Witch, but at the cost of perhaps never knowing the fate of her boyfriend and the guilt of such a simple mistake costing her so much. There you go: still cynical and twisted, definitely not a happy ending, and the most important thing to the whole game (Wes's fate) is left unresolved, as well as how this will affect the kingdom and Cybel's future as a ruler and/or as a witch...but it still has the payoff of emotional fallout for Cybel, it still has some degree of resolution by having the rest of the party able to say their piece and perhaps indicate what they'll do now instead of locking them in a waiting room and forgetting about them.

Would I have liked this? Goodness no. Because it's still highly contradictory to what Witch Hunt is as a game, regardless of author's intentions. But it at least would have felt like an ending I disagreed with. And this is just an example of a possibility; there were many different ways to play this setup in a way that would provide a definite conclusion, unhappy or not, fully resolved or with an appropriate number of matters left ambiguous, to your game. As it stands, the last moments of Witch Hunt don't feel like you wanted to do an unhappy ending, they just feel like you wanted to wash your hands of the game and move on to the next as soon as you could.

[Indinera]

What you put in your second spoiler is way too explanatory to me.
I wanted to leave things open ended. I've seen plenty of movies doing similar things, by the way, they're actually quite frequent in horror movies for instance. I just tend to like open ended endings.

they just feel like you wanted to wash your hands of the game and move on to the next as soon as you could

That's a pretty insulting thing to say.
Just because you don't like what I do like doesn't give you the right to disrespect me.

[RPGenius]

What you put in your second spoiler is way too explanatory to me.
I wanted to leave things open ended. I've seen plenty of movies doing similar things, by the way, they're actually quite frequent in horror movies for instance. I just tend to like open ended endings.

Open-ended is not the same as incomplete, movies aren't video games, and this isn't a horror game - the horror genre is more than just spooky trappings: the actual events, pacing, villains, and characters of a horror title invoke feelings of uncertainty, terror, suspense, and dread in an audience. Witch Hunt doesn't do that - the setting and enemies and ambiance are dark, yes, but the characters, quest, and approach are all very much a more straightforward RPG adventure style. Even if this ending were tidy enough to be considered open-ended more than unfinished, it would still be akin to using the ending of a horror movie instead to conclude a Halloween-themed movie. Do they both have spooky imagery? Yes. Is the approach of one the same as the other? No.

they just feel like you wanted to wash your hands of the game and move on to the next as soon as you could

That's a pretty insulting thing to say.
Just because you don't like what I do like doesn't give you the right to disrespect me.

Well, I'm sorry, but I didn't mean personal disrespect to you. However: you make it clear here that this was not your approach, which is good, but that doesn't change the fact that Witch Hunt's ending does impart that feeling. It's a 10+ hour game whose approach gives no indication that it will resolve nothing, which ends with the majority of its characters standing in polite silence without any substantial reaction to the finale's events, and the sole motivating quest of the game not just unresolved, but left without indication of whether the protagonist even intends to give it up as a lost cause or keep trying. That's 10+ hours of questing, dialogue, and story events, all culminating in a 5 minute conclusion that doesn't conclude anything, or even explore the emotional fallout of its lack-of-resolution twist. Regardless of whether or not you did still care about the game at that point, surely you can see how it feels, which is the term I used before, to an audience like the work of someone who just wanted to be done with it ASAP?

And not for nothing, it's not incredibly respectful to imply that someone's dissatisfaction with your ending - dissatisfaction which was in part directly stated to be with its abrupt nature - is only because it's not Hollywood or Disney enough. The way you phrased,

I guess if you had picked Little Hearts you would have been happier, without spoiling it, it seems to fit your taste better

could be seen as passive-aggressive (many "I guess if [someone] had" statements tend to be), and makes assumptions about my tastes that, in relation to the above allusions to Hollywood and Disney, are not flattering. I did you the service of not taking offense by reading disrespect into your intentions with that response, so I'll thank you to do the same for me when I clearly denote (with ample prior context) the unfortunate impression that something gives, which is not a statement of assumption that such impressions are reality.

[Indinera]

But... I always write my stories like movies, most of them anyway. They are as much stories as they are games to me.
So yeah I tend to like cliffhangers for horror-themed games. What happens afterwards is left to the viewer's imagination. I like this kind of ending, especially in games with elements of horror and mystery.
I guess there isn't much else I can add about this. I wrote Witch Hunt in the way I wanted, it's your right not to like it.

Regardless of whether or not you did still care about the game at that point, surely you can see how it feels, which is the term I used before, to an audience like the work of someone who just wanted to be done with it ASAP

Nope. That'd be a silly approach. An ending, even a longer one, is never going to take that long to include.
If I wanted to do what you say, to move as fast as possible to the next, maybe it'd be smarter to do like so many other devs, just make SMALL games. This would save so much more time.
Witch Hunt was one of my favorite game to make.
If you don't feel the way I feel about it, of course no problem, it's your right. But we just have to agree to disagree there.

Edit: Little Hearts was a genuine recommendation.
Once I know more about a player's prefered style, I always try to direct them to potentially "more agreeable" content.

[RPGenius]

Sounds like this has gone about as far as it's going to, then. I guess I'll just leave you with the suggestion that reevaluating your approach to ending your games would be beneficial to them, because while I liked the overall finale to the Millennium series, the ending itself shared several of the problems of being sudden and lacking content that Witch Hunt suffers from, and the reasoning of fast, leave-stuff-unresolved endings fitting to the horror genre doesn't apply to Millennium, even if one believes it applies to Witch Hunt.

And either way, storytelling needs to adapt to the medium it's using. Cats worked fine as a musical, but was a disaster when made a movie without making an adjustments to its approach. In some movies, an abrupt, 5-minute ending that doesn't include the majority of the cast and leaves many or all plot points unresolved and left to the reader's imagination may work, but an audience invests only 2 hours of their time and has no personal interaction with the actors in the case of a movie, whereas even a short RPG is typically at least 10 hours that mix storytelling with gameplay, a process inherently involving of the audience. The drastic differences in the time an audience invests and the ways in which she/he engages with a video game as opposed to a movie is going to alter the functionality of some narrative conventions, and endings are certainly among them.

That's my suggestion, at least. I'll try another game from your catalogue sometime, and see how that goes.