To Dave Gilbert about the ending of this series. (Spoiler Alert)

[Brimstone]

I pretty much love these games immensely, but Epiphany didn't close the story as well as I would have liked. Do not get me wrong, all of this series was phenomenal, both in story and artistically. I was just left with a hole in the story a bit between Deception and Epiphany. At the end of Deception, a goal was set by Rosa to find the group Gavin belonged to. I was expecting to see Rosa demolish this group before the series ended, but no mention of it came up until the very end, and it was an already dead member that just closes out the story-line for what Rosa and Joey have been doing for all of Epiphany. "What happened to this group?", "Did Rosa take care of them already?", and if so "How did this one get missed?". I feel like I need more closure. "What does Joey do now?" He's nearly 100 years old and now in modern day New York without any I.D., job, or place of residence. How does he survive it especially when he never really learned about modern day technology. Like trying to teach my great grandma how to use the DVR. Any thoughts on this? Maybe the reigns could be taken up by somebody else in another series. Why not? It worked for Star Wars.

[googoogjoob]

I kind of think a sequel would dilute the overall effect of the series, but I am also disappointed in how Rosa and Joey are totally okay with just leaving a cult of dangerous vampires hanging around. In Epiphany a few times I think Rosa and Joey mention, like, "we met one of them..." or "we met a member of your group named Gavin...", etc, implying that they hadn't encountered or dealt with the group in the intervening months since Deception.

I don't really think there's room in Epiphany for the vampire thread to be wound up completely, because the Madeline plotline takes up the entire game basically, and it's been stewing around since Unbound, so it's more important than the energy vampire plot. I could say that I wished there were a "Blackwell 4.5", or that Epiphany was the sixth game, with another game added to explain the vampire group, but honestly I'm not sure that the series as a whole would be better off from being extended like that; as-is it's very compact, narratively, and stretching it out risks bloat and uninspired or diluted writing and design, which are near-totally absent from the games as they stand. Essentially, I prefer having a tightly-designed series of five great games, rather than a looser series of six or more games, running the risk of having some of them being subpar.

Also: I imagine Joey just walks into city hall or something and is like "hey I died in like 1930 or something can I get a birth certificate?"

[JanG]

How Joey survives with no documents is probably an interesting topic for anyone who wants to write Fan Fiction.... But he has overcome more difficulties than that! I wonder what he would do with his unexpected life?

[DaveGilbert]

It's funny how Joey being undocumented is such a big deal. Maybe he would prefer to be dead again!

As for the unresolved story issues... yes, this was something I thought about a LOT when designing the story of Epiphany. I talk about it briefly in the commentary, but the gist of the problem was that whenever I went in that direction, it just felt like a retread of Deception. Attempts to shoehorn Gavin's group into  Epiphany's story just fell flat and forced, so in the end I decided to just drop it entirely and focus on the main story I wanted to tell.

That said, I will probably revisit that group in a different game one day. While the Blackwell story is over, New York is still around.

[LostTrainDude]

I've just finished a full Blackwell marathon (I did never play any of the games before) and I didn't go through the commentaries yet (I will, though!), but I read and wrote (and talked) about you guys many times, that it helped me give additional meaning to the games as I progressed episode by episode. I loved to see their world grow and evolve, just as you did as developers!

That's why, maybe, I didn't pay that much attention to the missing links about the vampires. Maybe it's too "soon" for me to judge which mysteries still have to be unraveled.
 

How Joey survives with no documents is probably an interesting topic for anyone who wants to write Fan Fiction....

That basically nails my thoughts as I watched the ending I personally love anything that leaves food for creativity without being a way to avoid design responsibilities. You guys did a really great job (at least, in my humble opinion)!

Now I'm going to say something that, reading it again, I find a little stupid but... Anyway!

I've played Monkey Island 2 maybe a hundred times, and as I grew up I made up my own interpretation of the ending (SPOILERS). Seeing Joey turn human again, in the very first moments, reminded me of little Guybrush walking out of the forbidden rooms of the Big Whoop Amusement Park, letting me realize that, maybe, all I've experienced within the first two games was the product of a child's mind obsessed with becoming a pirate and win against his evil brother.

I felt the same when I saw Joey as a human for the first time. I thought that, in some way, Rosa was actually the spirit guide and Joey was her host. It could have been an "Epiphany" for Joey indeed, finally realizing that he wasn't dead at all. It could have all been a fabrication made up by his mind.

Then all came back together few moments after, as I realized that all the epiphanies were already happened and that there couldn't be really anything more great, for Joey's soul, to continue on where he (somewhat) left and finally conceding himself to think about a "proper ending" for his life in the future.

[garlicbug]

I can see why some people are cheesed off with the ending, especially with the ending of Deception implying there would be a reckoning.

After heading Dave's explanation (I haven't got up to it in the commentary but he mentioned it sans spoilers in a podcast in January) his decision made a lot of sense to me. But to be honest I didn't mind much when I played Epiphany?

I say this a lot (well, to my friends, and in blog posts I haven't gotten around to posting) but part of the reason Blackwell gets to me is that a large number of video games, even ones with exceptionally good narratives, go to incredible lengths to lay out the plot points and dramatic beats for you, they practically linger upon them.

Blackwell games just... don't do this. They refuse! For instance, in Deception, when Joey discovered what saving Danny had really accomplished, I thought for SURE Danny would show up as a lost spirit. Nope! No confrontation, no closure. All Joey does, after he hears everything from Lisa, is remark to Rosa on wondering if you made the right choices, at the end of the game. But you can still /tell/ it hit him hard, because the writing (and the voice acting) is that good. That's all you need!

So in any other game, I might have been miffed with the conspiracy of vampires being left unaddressed. But the writing in Epiphany and the direction it chose to take, where it concentrated on Madeline and resolving Joey and Rosa's character arcs, was satisfying enough that I didn't feel let down at all.

That's the reason the 'dropped' plot threads don't bother me, anyway.

As for Joey dealing with the lack of documentation, I like to think that, you know, maybe he wouldn't have to. It'd be trivial for rich vampires in control of a city to make him a brand new birth certificate, send him the deed for the apartment, etc etc, and mail it to him with no return address when he's still in the wandering-apartment-in-daze-knocking-legs-against-furniture phase.

It would be the least they could do after he saved them along with everyone else in NYC. Of course, it would also mean he would be indebted to them. *steeples fingers*

I have to say, it does make me happy to hear that the group might show up in a future story. If they do, I'll be looking forward to it! (despite my paragraph above, hopefully Joey can sit it out. He's dealt with enough crap for several lifetimes)

Maybe a sequel to the Shivah. Hahahah no just kidding. AS AWESOME AS RABBI STONE FIGHTING VAMPIRES WOULD BE.

[DaveGilbert]

Not much to add, Garlicbug, but that's my storytelling philosophy in a nutshell. If it's something that should be obvious to the player, I don't harp on it. Why reiterate things that you already know and have experienced for yourself? The best example would be Rosa and Jeremy in Deception. It's obvious that they both had a crush on each other at one point, but neither of them ever mentions it.  It's just in the air - present and awkward. No need to call attention to it and ruin the moment. So many games destroy the pacing by repeating the bloody obvious over and over again. You know, just in case you don't get it. I always feel insulted when that happens, so I avoid it in my own work.

[JFogarty]

It's funny how Joey being undocumented is such a big deal. Maybe he would prefer to be dead again!

How Joey survives with no documents is probably an interesting topic for anyone who wants to write Fan Fiction....

Hmm. My first thought when we cut to the epilogue with Joey on the bridge was something along the lines of Durkin helping him out. My take? Joey does his best to explain the situation to Durkin; although he dismisses most of it, Mallone clearly knows things that he shouldn't. In return for a few leads, he makes sure Rosa's landlord doesn't ask too many questions about the new guy living there.

Seem feasible?

While the Blackwell story is over, New York is still around.

Now that is an exciting prospect...