Feedback wanted: Some questions on Ending (spoilerish)

[Commando Peach]

My feelings on the characters? Alexander was straight up evil. He liked to talk like he was all morally ambiguous, but he was sacrificing whoever he needed to attain a higher level of power, and I see no gray area for him to stand in there. Period. Daniel I was also less than happy with by the end of the game. I feel like he was manipulated, yes, but it's a kind of piss poor excuse when he even says in his own diary that he realizes full well that he's moved on to murdering to save his own hide, and then proceeds to play the coward because he can't take the heat he's brought on himself. He's fundamentally selfish (even at the start of all this, he's trapped by his own greed and only saved by some miracle to which he sounds more self-entitled than grateful), and by the end he can't accept the fate that he just plain has coming and instead chooses to forget. Agrippa I feel like I didn't know well enough to make any fair judgment on. He seems pleasant enough, but I just don't feel like I even formed a connection with him one way or another. I felt like I needed to help him out of pity for what had been done to him (which, by the way, it's strange to find yourself feeling more sympathy for a side character you barely know than the protagonist whose shoes you fill).

In all, I'd say that the Penumbra series did a much better job of casting characters that had true moral ambiguity. By the end of Black Plague, I just had no idea who the good guys were anymore, and it really did shake me a little. I'd never felt that way after a game's end before. Amnesia felt a little more justified.

I got the revenge ending first, and like others said before me, it was 100% due to lack of input on any other path. I wanted to save Agrippa and had made the tonic, but then found myself feeling forced into toppling the towers just to trigger anything. I agree that ominous messages from Agrippa or taunting from Alexander would have helped me realize that I had to first wait for the portal and then decide what path I would take. So no, I do not feel like the ending was by choice. I had no idea what toppling the pillars would do, it just was the only thing that felt like progress.

The ending felt kind of expected. Alexander gets fed to the shadows, Daniel has his happily ever afters. I went back and got the other two endings and found that I liked the Agrippa ending much more, even if it felt a little bland. By far the ending that evoked the most emotion was the ending where Alexander enters the portal, but it was really mostly a feeling of desperation as I was left behind for the shadow to devour, one that would have probably been much stronger had Alexander been taunting me for so long that I never figured out how to defeat him (locking me into my own destruction).

I LOVED the game overall, but I can't say any of the endings particularly thrilled me. I wasn't disappointed, but I wasn't blown out of the water either. That's my $.02, at least.