Part 37: Update XXXVII - Ende Gut, Alles Gut (All's Well That Ends Well)

Update XXXVII - Ende Gut, Alles Gut (All's Well That Ends Well)



So, last time we finally dealt with Wahnfried, and we didn't so much stake him as we did straight-up impale him. Now, it's finally time to close the book on this chapter.



...wait, what?

What's going on here?



Oh fuck.



But... but... how is that possible? How can that be?
Oh no! Grandy, we've made a huge mistake!
The prophecy is coming true! The Dark God is entering Wahnfried's body!



We get a spooky shot of the church with lightning and shit, and then...




OH FUCK.

Holy smokes! But that... that... what about the "pure heart" from the prophecy?
Wahnfried's heart was evil. The embodiment of hatred! Pure evil!
What? And what about the rest? "Born under an evil star" and that thing with time?
Wahnfried was also born under an evil star! Reborn the moment he became a vampire!
And a vampire doesn't age! Time has no effect on one. It's a freak in the face of time!
I don't have a clue what you're talking about, but it doesn't matter! Let's finish what we came to do!



You didn't really think that we were getting out of here without the final boss having a second form, did you? Oh, no. And this is one tough as nails boss. You might be able to notice that this boss actually consists of three "enemies" - the left claw, the right claw, and the monster itself. As long as the two claws are still there, you can't damage the main monster, so that should be your first priority. The problem is that those claws are tough as nails - big defense, and roughly 4000 HP on each of them. Of course, durable enemies isn't that big a problem, it's just a slog.



The real problem is this. In addition to each part of the monster getting its own attack capabilities (of course, each with very powerful attacks), there's this special attack caused by the power of the Dark God.



It's this big super attack...



...and it absorbs roughly 250 HP. From every party member. Note that that's not just damaging every party member. It's absorbing, which means healing. Healing for every enemy. Oh, and guess what? It heals MP too. Yeah. This shit is fucking rough. At least it only absorbs the amount dealt to one person, not the sum. God, I think I'd have gone insane if that was the case. ~1000 HP healing for every enemy? Damn.



Oh, and it happens a lot. Every few rounds, you get to deal with this shit. Even if the entire rest of the game was on the easy side, this fight will test you, and test you hard. In this fight, you're definitely forced onto the defensive a lot and need to stop and heal almost every three rounds, and with the enemy healing themselves regularly as well while keeping the capability of laying the hurt on you, you're in for one hell of a fight.



Still, through concentrated attacking and healing, we eventually manage to take down one claw. Oh, and by the way, it explodes and deals roughly 200 HP damage to everybody in the party. Because this is where the big boys play.



And then, when the second claw goes down, the special attack changes.



This one isn't as bad, it's just ~300 HP absorbing from one character.



Of course, it's still terrible when that absorbing brings the target down to 1 HP and then the monster itself throws out an all-party attack, knocking the target out without you getting a chance to heal. Yeah, it's still rough. Those Gifts from the Gods really are godsends.



But eventually, we do win...



...and the monster explodes really violently, just like the Tho'Sharr.



After that, there's no dialogue, just a fade to black. I guess there was nothing left to be said.



When we come back from the black, we find ourselves over Castle Düs-... Falkenburg. Believe me, it's there.



See? There it comes! Also, fireworks!



More fireworks!



THE CASTLE IS UNDER ATTACK! GET TO SAFETY!
Grandy, you're mistaken! This is all happening to honor you...
To honor me? What fiend found out that we're here now and has now started bombarding us with his... his...
This is no bombardment, Grandy! It's only firework!
I don't care if it's bombs or fireballs! An attack is an attack! ...

And what are all these people doing here?
They have come to express their gratitude.



Dankwart, I told you he wouldn't get it...
How? Where? What?
Grandy... we wanted to surprise you with this party... clearly, we succeeded.
You can say that again... I was just sleeping a bit and dreamt of Wahnfried, then I was woken by this noise.



So here we have a crowd of people, and the amount of people here depends on the sidequests you did. And because why not, let's list everybody and what you have to do to have them show up here:

- Baron Davidoff, the teachers from the magic academy, Wilhelm von Junzt, Justus, Jonas, Chief Draconis, Chief Tharand, Sol Aeinur, the owner of the inn in the Eastern Marches and his wife, Father Medarius, Darion, Roncarlo's father, Talex and Harkon: Appear regardless.
- Kati: If you saved her.
- Sarah and Stöö: Either if you saved Kati or if she dies and you send the two to Baron Davidoff.
- Genji: If you arrange the date with Kati.
- Berta and Rüdiger: If you meet them in Düsterburg.
- Torben, Rank and Hanni (fruit shop owner): If you find the secret weapon store in Düsterburg.
- Naggash Izzar: If you convince him to quit the cult.
- Derric: If you saved him from the curse by killing the head priest.
- Minas and Sigmund: If you killed all the rats down in Minas's tavern.
- Hearon: If you brought back his ring.
- Waldemar, Winfried and Werdegast: If you deal with the monster of the Screaming Ancestors.
- Bartolan: If you brought Berta and Rüdiger to the Squeaking Boar.
- Fitz, Trude and Matjes: If you sent them into the secret passages in Rabenstein.
- Göfla: If you pay his debts.
- Gero Ronsen: If you bring him the full set of clothes.
- Natascha: If you bring her the treasure.
- Leo, Donna, Michel: If you give Michelangelo the super food.
- Magda: If you bring her the ring of her husband.
- Bernhelm, Dudu, Dada: If you brought Bernhelm to Bernhelm's Fate and got him to talk about his past with the others.
- Xanja, Radul, Hannes: If you brought Bernhelm to Bernhelm's Fate.
- Punja, Tika: If you saved Punja and Bernhelm isn't dead.
- The prisoners from Castle Rabenstein: If you saved them and they survived it.
- Alvaro: If he didn't die on Castle Rabenstein.
- Rondrian: If you sent him to Dankwart.
- Julie: If you get her into your party in chapter 5.

And we got all of them. However, there is something we didn't get, and I'm kicking myself for only realizing it now. Turns out that if you buy a Sarabian tea service from Sheeva in Königsberg, it would have appeared on one of the tables here. Oh well.

All the guests we've assembled here tonight have you to thank for a lot. We barely managed to fit them all in here...

This line is the same, even if you fuck everything up. Suffice it to say that it looks decisively less impressive with about one and a half dozen people.

Take a look, Grandy! Barely anybody can manage so many heroic deeds in their life, and you've done it in just a few weeks!
Aw, man... that feels really good. After all that stress we've had over the last few weeks...
Enjoy this night, Grandy! Celebrate, and be celebrated! Tomorrow, the serious side of life will begin for you again.
What's that supposed to mean? I thought that Libra and I could travel back home tomorrow...
Our family life really got the raw deal recently.
Well, there's still more problems. Falkenburg is still in a pretty strong state of chaos, and that'll have to get cleaned up first.
So? That's not our problem - let your servants deal with that! Libra and I earned ourselves a vacation!
Don't worry - I was talking about issues in the space-time-continuum. You can't help me there, even if you wanted to.
But I can't organize the rebuilding of Falkenburg and at the same time clean up Wahnfried's missteps.
Not to mention that I'm quite rusty regarding all this governing business. To be honest, I was never that good at it to begin with...
Wait a second... what are you getting at?
Right after you travelled to Königberg, I sent a messenger to Emperor Kuno.
Doria and I had no children. The line of the von Dengelbracks ends here.
Because of that, I have taken the liberty of adopting you, so that you can become my heir and successor.
...
Now, close your mouth, dear. It's not like you haven't already treated Dankwart like your daddy.
But I don't have a clue about all this stuff. I like it simple, with clear fronts and that...
You'll manage, dear. After all, you've still got some time to prepare for this...
I guess you're right. Alright, Dankwart. I agree... umm...
...dad.
Excellent, my son! Then let me also tell you that I've decided to abdicate and relinquish my office to you today...
...
...
Tomorrow, we'll work on getting your facial features under control again.
In three days, Emperor Kuno and his retinue will be arriving here... by then, you'll have to have that down pat!

Suddenly, we hear a baby crying!

What was that?
That was Maltha! She must have soiled her diaper again. I'll go and change them right quick!
Not so fast, dear! Normally, you'd be trying to dodge that! I'll take care of it!
Before you two leave Uncle Dankwart here alone with your guests, I'll take care of it.
But you don't have any experience in that, Tarius!
Neither do you two...
He's got us there...

And Tarius leaves, the crowd "applauds" again (more like just kind of moves around), and we fade to black. To note - this scene plays out basically the same if you killed Tarius and Malthur stuck around, just that the baby is named Taria and that the idea of Malthur changing diapers is infinitely more hilarious.



And with that, the curtains rise on the credits!



I guess I should transcribe those, too. Off we go!

Contributors

Bug fixing, story design and MIDI editing - GSandSDS
Message boxes, story design and quest design - Alexius Hawkwood
Battle animations - Feldherr
Character poses - Artifex

Resources

Games: Vampires Dawn, The Magic Sword, Dreamland, Aurora's Tear
Web pages: rpg-maker.com, rpg2000.de, ncs-germany.de, phylomortis.com, rpg2knet.com, whatever-online.de

Almost all of those are dead! Only RPG2KNET seems to still be online, and it's seen better days too.

Chipsets: refmap
Battle animations: Solosoft
Charsets: ASCII
Sound effects: sounddogs.com

Music

Games: Castlevania, Daggerfall, Privateer, Ultima 8, Final Fantasy, Heretic, Hexen, Resident Evil, Kingdom Hearts, Duke Nukem, Lufia, Seiken Denetsu, The Legend of Zelda
Movies: Alien, Batman, Blade Runner, Halloween, Terminator, Psycho, Conan
Composers: Carl Orff, The Beatles, Gustav Holst, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, J.S. Bach

Testers

GSandSDS, andy86, Ieret, Marec, Kati, Uzgur, Miriam Gerke, Anja Krämer, DarkenSky, Squall83, element_b, Blue Raider, Blutstropfen, MemoryOfRouge, Artifex, ColdMephisto, Durandal, Sponk, Condor, SilverLizard, Peacemaster, Terminator 90, D-D, Tiger 2001, Necronium, roger007, Genocide, Dee, mechdragon2003, Cobos, Strife

Sources of Inspiration

Writers: Bram Stoker, Alexandre Dumas, Rudyard Kipling, Kim Newman, Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, Alexej Tolstoi, Nicolai Gogol, C.R. Maturin, Stephen King, Robert Irwin, E.F. Benson

Note a lack of Lovecraft. Seems that everything related to that came from Alexius Hawkwood.

Movies: Batman, The Haunting, Sleepy Hollow, Untouchables, Lord of the Rings, Dance of the Vampires
Games: The Dark Eye, Ravenloft, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Final Fantasy

Special Thanks

My girlfriend - for her patience
GSandSDS - for everything
Alexius Hawkwood - same
Marlex - for his e-mail about the first demo and his constant encouragement

Furthermore: [koa-angel], lachsen, maze, the_question
And of course the communities of rpg-maker.com and rpg2000.de - without their advice and criticism, this game would have been a lot more unimpressive...



And that's it! ...well, not quite yet. There's still a little post-credits scene left.



The curtains fall on the end...



...and over the starlit sky, we get our stats for this playthrough. I saved the game 100 times and fought 107 battles. We also get a playing time of 11 hours, 17 minutes. Definitely a very solid length, given that I knew exactly what to do at all times. And after that, we pan down to reveal...



...is that who I think it is?



...yep, it sure is. Looks like Malthur turned out to be just fine. If we end up killing Tarius, this scene would show Tarius, which is a lot more puzzling. I'm almost certain it wasn't planned to be a cliffhanger, given that this game has a fairly tight ending with little avenue for real sequel material. I guess in a pinch one could squeeze something out of it, but this seems more like a "oh, and Malthur is actually fine because what the fuck did you expect, the son of the Dark God to just die from changing a guy from vampire back to normal?".

And that's really it - Unterwegs in Düsterburg, ladies and gentlemen! I hope you all enjoyed it - it certainly was one hell of a ride for me, rediscovering a gem from my youth and realizing it was even better than I remembered it. Thanks to everybody in the thread... you know what, fuck it, their credits get to list off a whole bunch of names, so I'm going to do it too.

Thanks go out to Tin Tim, Blind Sally, Night10194, a cartoon duck, vilkacis, RickVoid, ultrafilter, Zore, red mammoth, TheBrigand, Endorph, Comrade Question, HenryEx, Lynneth, Glazius, SSNeoman, RabidWeasel, Tallgeese, Lunar Suite, ElTipejoLoco, Lost Generation, avoraciopoctules, Yapping Eevee, Coolguye, Admiral H. Curtiss, Cattail Prophet, tomanton, Hammurabi, Pierzak, sheep-dodger, wiegieman, Mehuyael, Guarstine, AltaBrown, alcharagia, Head Hit Keyboard, DmitriX, Luigi's Discount Porn Bin, IGgy IGsen, InappropriateJazz, NGDBSS, Edward_Tohr, frankenfreak, Rockopolis, bathroomrage, Nondevor, Torrannor, GunnerJ, Death Dealer, Trizophenie, Whybird, David Corbett, SystemLogoff, Fionordequester, Quantum Toast, inscrutable horse, Sustentacular, placid saviour, StrixNebulosa and Sorced for posting in the thread.

Thanks also go out to the lurkers, the unregistered readers, the people reading this on the LP Archive, hell, everybody reading this. Yes, even you, random guy reading this while looking over your co-worker's shoulder. You should probably still tell him to go back to work, though.

That's all, folks! Next up will be a compilation of interesting posts from the thread about various subjects for the archive, edit in some thread corrections to past updates and then it's on to the next project!

LET'S PLAY UNTERWEGS IN DÜSTERBURG - THE END