Samuel already explained that the mc finally killing their mother unhindered the mc psychologically, were they weren’t being held back anymore from reaching their potential.
On my first read through I thought it made sense. Presumably they would’ve reached a higher potential sooner if they were not damaged and held back by their mother. The power was in you all along
I think the deaths in MMM were more dramatic for me.
Normally, animals win my feels more than anyone else, but on my first playthrough of TMB, I had rivalry with the cat, so it was just startling at the end. I also didn’t like my father, so his death wasn’t as strong.
The entirety of MMM was a build-up to death and feeling endangered by my team mates, so it was definitely a more impactful and dramatic conclusion.
In The Magician’s burden, the deaths were extremely sad. Mowbow’s death was unexpected and hit me like a sack of bricks, then the father died too. I did not expect that kind of consequences of the demon attack.
In MMM, I knew it was gonna end with a lot of death either way, but the way it really ended still managed to catch me off-guard. However, given the kind of character I was playing, the deaths gave me a real sense of accomplishment, a disturbing mix of pleasure and pride.
This is hard, but I gotta give it to TMB by a slight margin. I remember replaying the game numerous times to see if there was a way to save Mowbow and Dad or either of them, until I got to know that it was inevitable.
The cat and the Dad, they went swinging against overwhelming odds and i can respect that, even if i though the Dad was somewhat an asshole and i really liked the cat
hope we’ll get to go Constantine on some demons for some deserved revenge
Also, the chess club that I go to used to be a business that Bob Berdella owned, and my ex-girlfriend’s dad played as one of Berdella’s victims in a documentary, The Bizarre Bazaar.
What an ending! It’s incredibly cruel how you make the reader choose one by one who the main character is going to attack next, and it’s exactly the sort of thing that fits their character.
I have to agree with @Shawn_Patrick_Reed about the increase in power the main character gains. Even knowing that they have been constrained by Edina, and that there are more plot reasons to be revealed in the next installment, I felt like it suddenly came out of nowhere.
I think it’s because of these lines:
Then, a moment later, she falls still. And as you watch the lights fade out of her eyes, something within you changes. As you rise slowly to your feet, you feel an unfathomable power well up inside you, pressing and nudging and begging to get out, to wreak havoc on the world.
Not only is the main character and reader not given a moment to recognize what they finally have done, but it seems more like telling than showing to me.
But otherwise I’m excited to see what happens in the next story.
Yeah, I thought it was much more fitting and cruel to make the reader go down a list and kill the ROs one by one, only leaving one survivor by process of elimination. It would be less poignant to just have the reader choose who to keep alive from the start, especially since the reader likely thought they would kill all four ROs.
The shift is definitely extremely sudden and seemingly out of nowhere. Though this was sort of intentional, as the MC doesn’t fully understand what’s going on, either.
I could take a long while to describe the transformation in more detail and explain why and how everything is happening, but that would be a poor narrative choice, I think. It’s best to strike when the iron is hot and capitalize on everything that the story has built up to with a thrilling finale, rather than splash water on the reader’s face with an info dump on wizardry.
The MC’s transformation from magician to wizard will be explored extensively in Cruel Wizard, of course.
You are a horrible, horrible person and I hate you.
That being said, I love you, and I love your writing style. That ending was magnificent and I especially loved the Doctor Manhattan level OPness the MC gained after killing their mother, and the fact that we could leave someone alive to live with what happened. Curious as to how the Joy, Kel and Kat percentages will stack up considering they had no impact on the ending, but I can’t wait until the sequel and whatever other book you might make. You’re hands down one of my favorite authors of all time.
That all being said, would you ever make a modern fantasy game? Like the idea Bright tried to create, but better? With half-orcs?