Part 36: Act V - The Real McCoy

Act V - The Real McCoy

So we’ve to the end of our little story. Hope everyone’s enjoyed the thread so far.



It’s interesting the game allows you to make substantial choices right up until the end. Sometimes it’s easy to forgot this is an adventure game, because frankly, there’s more ‘role-playing’ and character choices here than in most JRPGs.

In this case, not killing Sadik would have precipitated a completely different ending. It’s not like the earlier choices didn’t matter, as you sometimes piss off the wrong people and you never get much of a say in the matter, but in this case Ray has stayed neutral enough through the game to go either way.

But the people have spoken, and Bob Marley must die.



Killing cops, killing reps… I think I’ve figured it out.

Ray’s not an idiot or a Rep – he’s just schizophrenic.





And down goes Sadik.



I call this particular ending the ‘Scorched Earth’ ending, as Ray racks up a huge bodycount on the way, and ends up killing just about everyone.

I don’t think you’re really suppose to kill Crystal and Sadik and Clovis, but like I said… our Ray is schizophrenic.



By the time we get to Clovis, his time is almost up.









At this point the mouse cursor becomes free and it’s possible for Ray to interrupt the recital with a bullet. But we’ll let Clovis finish his last Blake poem (only because it’s a pretty good piece). The poem doesn’t have a name, it’s just something Blake wrote in a letter to a patron.







Not quite “tears in the rain”, but at least they tried.



Gaff drops by to give the little epilogue. Sometimes it’s another character who does this, like Crystal, but we’ve manage to kill just about everyone else already…





That was the line that had me laughing.

Ray tries to cover up Crystal’s death by trying to pass her off as Rep sympathizer. Who’s gonna believe that? Even Gaff is all like, “Yeah, whatever McCoy.”









And for the last reveal…













Duh duh dooom…





I avoided discussing this in much detail earlier because it would have spoiled it, but as to whether Ray is a Replicant or not – it’s not randomly decided at the start of the game. But neither is it really decided during the game by player choices per se. Much like the film, it’s ultimately decided in the player’s mind; they left it deliberately ambiguous. There are some endings where it’s more obvious than others, but the game never really comes out and reveals it outright, and most of the clues could have been interpreted either way.

The writers did something pretty clever in order to do this – they never let a ‘reliable’ character come out and talk about the subject. Clovis, Guzza, Crystal, Sadik, etc… they all have some ulterior motive, and while what they to say to Ray might seed doubt, it’s never actually confirmed. Opposite them, they wrote Ray’s responses mostly neutral, so as a whole the scenes could be interpreted both ways. The final confrontation with Crystal was a pretty good example – the whole way, it’s Crystal who’s making the accusations, and Ray’s responses don’t really lean one way or the other (he only gets time to complain about his dog getting killed). Whatever way you read it as – Ray being a Rep or not – it could have made sense.

And the origami dog? Well, think about it for a bit.


Okay, despite the protestations of what little sanity I had left after doing this LP, I’ll quickly do a couple more endings. For now, pick one of the following choices:

1) The Clovis ending, aka. the “I hope you’re sure about this, Ray” ending
2) The Lucy ending, aka. the “What the holy fuck?” ending
3) The Dektora ending, aka. the “But… they’ve barely met!” ending
4) The Crystal ending, aka. the “I’m better company than a dog” ending
5) And the Charlie Brown ending, aka. the “Ray, you incompetent twit” ending.