"VERSUS: The Deathscapes"—The epic conclusion to the VERSUS trilogy!

In very broad strokes:

In the very beginning the A list characters(Romances and other “main characters”- with exclusion of Manamana) get turned into blots. So you are forced to ally with B lists. Corrupted characters then set up a match with lord darkandscary(Wone with shadow powers). So while you are preparing for that, Manamana informs us that we should link up with the last b lister in the deathscapes. Memory travel happens and you are introduced to new religion, it’s irrelevant. So the b team and co go to deathscapes, the journey is mostly skipped. You link up with the last contestant, turns out he’s and admin or some shit in Versus.

Match happens you win get shadow powers(mostly irrelevant). You get introduced to another religion during memory travel(with the angel lady?), completely irrelevant.

So techno wizard lady offers to partially turn you into the mcguffin race from the first book. You do that. Admin comes up with how to de-blot the A lists. You chose who you are going to de-blot and go do that. You get a line from romance option and they become irrelevant.

Last step is to kill Vacuus and de blot Oli. Manamana is untrustworthy and dies. You fight Vacuus while the rest de-blot Oli. You win. Oli turns out to be the shiny dude(extra galactic Admin alien) you are looking for. Turns out blots(extra galactic race of space slugs) used them to open one sided wormhole to our galaxy and Vacuus was sent as a scout.

To close it NotOli needs to sacrifice themselves. Or you can absorb their power and do it yourself(this is the non-cannon ending game explicitly tells you so). So they die, you are reborn, never reunited with love intrests, and start prepearing the galaxy for incoming reaper blot armada from extra galactic space. Game over.

Or not, it shills some comic or something at the end. Not gonna touch it.

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Mama na wasn’t untrustworthy in my playthroughs,she actually helped fight Vaccus for me

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Friend recently showed me a screenshot of sergi’s instagram and patreon where he’s advertising yet another ‘this game will explain all your HR and VS questions’ game and seems to be musing to publish that as a Hosted Game. He better move his behind here to the forum and faces the community for the wip then, instead of continuing with the 'pay me 100 bucks per month to be alowed to give me ‘feedback’ thing he does

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I have no question about either of those. I want my characters story to be properly concluded.

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from what a cursory glance tells me you will have to sign up to his patreon for ‘the representatives’ and ‘span the sergiverse’ for that AND buy the upcoming ‘fortune of the fated’. because he’s totally going to deliver conclusions there.

Totally
(yeah, i’m a little salty)

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Yeah no. I am not buying “A true ending DLC” type thing ever. I expect a story to be self contained when i buy book/game. Kinda made me wary of buying more books from him, since i am not interested in knockoff marvel cinematic universe of his.

Same here my salty brother/sister/sibling/ sentient flock of melting flightless birds. Deathscapes ruined the entire series for me, similar how Mass effect 3 did.

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And like, he’s not a bad author as such. he has potential. but this, well, obsession (?) with creating a ‘cinematic universe’ doesn’t pan well with IF. There’s a difference between ‘oh, btw these two stories are actually connected in some way that doesn’t stop you from enjoying either on its own’ and ‘oh and in order to have the slightest clue what’s going on click these links and buy these books and podcasts for a chance to get half an answer’

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I wonder when that started. I don’t remember anything hinting at it in old Hero rise and first two versus books. And it feels like Deathscapes was quick attempt to tie everything in by dropping most plot lines from previous books and replacing them with knockoff reapers from Mass effect.

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Well, he said he wanted VS to be 4 books, but… I don’t really get why he didn’t do that. Similar with THP. it really looks like a three book thing, but we only got two.

Best guess would be that he became so focused on the new ideas that he wanted to wrap everything up asap to move on to Representatives and Fated.

Which… I mean, his writing suffered from whims before, so, i’d not be surprised. It’s a bit of a shame.

edit: if you wanna discuss this further we can move to DMs

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Although I’m glad I’m not the only one that shares the sentiment I’m still disappointed in the way the series ended. Plot wise it felt very much like the author had a grander story he wanted to tell that hadn’t been moved further enough along in the first two books so he just force wrapped up the important plot threads from the first two books in the first chapter. And then dumped a whole bunch of new information on the reader and railroaded you in a completely different course. My romance with Lady Venuma was completely mute after the first two chapters as well as my other relationships as we get sent along with new and minor characters I hadn’t spent anytime fleshing out.

On top of the continuous one uppance of the hierarchy of power in the universe we had to deal with 3 morality checks in one book? It was just excessive to me.

I think the story would’ve been better served as a series of books not dealing with choice and interactive fiction, because I don’t see how any of the choices you made in the previous books would have given you a satisfactory ending.

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I think there would have been a way to make is satisfying AND segway into the ‘new’ overarching plot, but… what has been noted before: Sergi seems to get easily too focused on new ideas that the rest suffers. Mostly cause it seems he can’t put things on the backburner.

It’s quite a shame. Maybe someone should encourage him to come to the forum. The people here have usually been a great help when one is tangled up in ideas.

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Thank you for typing out literally my entire thought process while reading

Is there some way of saving Lockdown?

That one is easy. Because it wasn’t successful. The backlash from the first, made sure any sequence wouldn’t be successful.

Eh, the first thp got mixed reviews and sold decently well. And people made it pretty clear what was wrong and what was right with it, so, they did expect thp os to be better…

But, don’t mind if I say this, i think it’s an issue that sergi isolates himself from the fandom the way he does. The communiyt can be weird, but at bottom line they are the greatest gift to any author in the middle of a wip.

so, i honestly hope he stops by for his fortune game if he decides to have it be a hosted game project

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I think the general public expected the contrary, that is why the sequel’s topic was dead almost as soon the game was released.

Well, they certainly expected it to tie up loose ends.
And a lot of people were lookkng forward to the promised conclusions… so, yeah, people had hopes, but both games went the same way…

Well I just finished the series, and while I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed as I did enjoy the experience, there are clear signs that things feel rushed, which I hope Fated will aim to sooth over.

I do have a question for the Zack though, will we have a way to bring Dhanoli back from our merged state in Fated? I went with the merge route to preserve her, and she was my RO, so I would really like our interactions to be expanded further.

While I could, begrudgingly, settle with just more mental interactions, I would be very disappointed if nothing much more happens with her, being able to bring her back would feel very rewarding.

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Zach isn’t active on the forum. I think you can reach him through twitter or instagram, and patreon. (people are hoping he’ll come to the forum should he decide to publish fated through HG)

Guess I might need to make a twitter account then, cheers!