This review contains spoilers
One of the most impactful video games i've ever played. Getting to know each character and the never-ending regret running through Russel's mind as i made sure to get every event and get the "best" ending left me in total awe as someone who would otherwise be completely and utterly unredeemable is given humanity and the ability to sympathize towards.
Unfortunately, there is no "good" ending. Russel's story was already over before the game even started, the events in the game prolonging the inevitable. The people he'd killed were already dead, and even in the experiment's success... his life was still done. There's no coming back from such things, and he didn't have a life to come back to either; his parents were dead, and his extended family despised him.
So, despite all of this being obvious throughout the game, I was still deeply affected by the ending. Even knowing everything that had happened, and the impossibility of any amount of redemption for the "deranged maniac", part of me was hoping (and honestly partially dreading) that the game would end on a cheery note: he succeeds in the experiment, is freed and starts a new life.
Unfortunately this is not the case. In either of the three endings, Russel's fate is the same. Whether it be from him not gaining any remorse from his actions, finding the prospect of leaving his ideal "Happy Dream" world too troubling and choosing to stay in the delusion until his mind caved in or accepting what he did and atoning it by taking his life in the name of bringing peace to the souls he'd destroyed, Russel ends up dead; once by his own doing, twice from his failure at the experiment.
In a more idealist game, made perhaps with a less jaded perspective and a perhaps too optimistic angle, the game could've had that "good note" ending. Whether it be that it was somehow a dream, that the experiments could change the fate of those who died and thus bringing them back to life in some weird faux-science plot device that definitely would've ruined the story, or Russel being let off the hook like nothing ever happened.
But this isn't that; this game serves the uncomfortable truth on a silver platter: not everyone can be saved, some crimes are unforgivable, some minds unrepairable, some fates unchangeable. It's a cruel but necessary fact of life that, even if we could take a liking or sympathize with someone who's caused such pain, even if we, as outsiders, could look past that and see someone who (perhaps) deserved better, that doesn't dismiss what they did.
Russel is a character that becomes someone that you grow to care about, root for (that is, if you play the game as to send him on the path of redemption), as the games progresses... but that doesn't matter. Even as much as how we see him, a troubled child who was never given the space to grow a conscience until it was too late, it doesn't erase what he did, and doesn't absolve him of it either. It makes the true ending all the more heartbreaking, because you wish as much as Russel himself does that there were a way to take it all back, so get to know the people he killed and undo all the hurt he caused.
End Roll is a game about grief, guilt, redemption, repentance, tragedy and a cautionary tale of how circumstances can lead to creating a monster out of a caring soul. It shows that even the most cruel of people have a story, their own demons, their own humanity, and that (many times) their cruelty is something they are taught. It's easier to stray from a good path into a dark one that one can think; from one moment to another, your innocence, your sense of morality can be taken from you and in rarer cases, you gain it back after it's too late.
End Roll is the epilogue to a tragedy; you're not participating in the development of a story, simply the aftermath of it. It was all over before you pressed the start button.
10/10
Unfortunately, there is no "good" ending. Russel's story was already over before the game even started, the events in the game prolonging the inevitable. The people he'd killed were already dead, and even in the experiment's success... his life was still done. There's no coming back from such things, and he didn't have a life to come back to either; his parents were dead, and his extended family despised him.
So, despite all of this being obvious throughout the game, I was still deeply affected by the ending. Even knowing everything that had happened, and the impossibility of any amount of redemption for the "deranged maniac", part of me was hoping (and honestly partially dreading) that the game would end on a cheery note: he succeeds in the experiment, is freed and starts a new life.
Unfortunately this is not the case. In either of the three endings, Russel's fate is the same. Whether it be from him not gaining any remorse from his actions, finding the prospect of leaving his ideal "Happy Dream" world too troubling and choosing to stay in the delusion until his mind caved in or accepting what he did and atoning it by taking his life in the name of bringing peace to the souls he'd destroyed, Russel ends up dead; once by his own doing, twice from his failure at the experiment.
In a more idealist game, made perhaps with a less jaded perspective and a perhaps too optimistic angle, the game could've had that "good note" ending. Whether it be that it was somehow a dream, that the experiments could change the fate of those who died and thus bringing them back to life in some weird faux-science plot device that definitely would've ruined the story, or Russel being let off the hook like nothing ever happened.
But this isn't that; this game serves the uncomfortable truth on a silver platter: not everyone can be saved, some crimes are unforgivable, some minds unrepairable, some fates unchangeable. It's a cruel but necessary fact of life that, even if we could take a liking or sympathize with someone who's caused such pain, even if we, as outsiders, could look past that and see someone who (perhaps) deserved better, that doesn't dismiss what they did.
Russel is a character that becomes someone that you grow to care about, root for (that is, if you play the game as to send him on the path of redemption), as the games progresses... but that doesn't matter. Even as much as how we see him, a troubled child who was never given the space to grow a conscience until it was too late, it doesn't erase what he did, and doesn't absolve him of it either. It makes the true ending all the more heartbreaking, because you wish as much as Russel himself does that there were a way to take it all back, so get to know the people he killed and undo all the hurt he caused.
End Roll is a game about grief, guilt, redemption, repentance, tragedy and a cautionary tale of how circumstances can lead to creating a monster out of a caring soul. It shows that even the most cruel of people have a story, their own demons, their own humanity, and that (many times) their cruelty is something they are taught. It's easier to stray from a good path into a dark one that one can think; from one moment to another, your innocence, your sense of morality can be taken from you and in rarer cases, you gain it back after it's too late.
End Roll is the epilogue to a tragedy; you're not participating in the development of a story, simply the aftermath of it. It was all over before you pressed the start button.
10/10