From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

There was some discussion about Oblivion Remastered here. I just came
across an article about it and thought I'd share.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oblivion-remastered-ruined-me-for-skyrim-and-maybe-elder-scrolls-future/ar-AA1Uoki6?ocid=winpstoreapp&cvid=69799a41d2dc46aaa387c066bd928290&ei=132

"When I first fired up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, I
didn't expect to get sucked in. I'd never played the original 2006
version, and while all the chatter surrounding the remaster piqued my interest, I didn't see That One Game With The Horrifying NPC Faces
becoming a favorite of mine. It was just something on Game Pass I
thought I’d try. I certainly didn't expect it to challenge the great and mighty Skyrim in a battle for my heart.

Yet here I am, trapped in a Twilight-esque love triangle with two
fantasy RPGs. Am I team Skyrim, or team Oblivion? After 55 hours spent
in Cyrodiil, the truth of where my allegiance lies is becoming
undeniably clear: Oblivion Remastered has ruined me for Skyrim.

I wasn't concerned with any of this when I took my first steps in
Cyrodiil. Yes, the game looked nice, the voice acting was great, and
(most of) the NPC faces were far less cursed-looking than I'd expected.
The character creator even allowed me to build a Dunmer who looked intimidating instead of downright horrifying. But, I assumed, there was
no way Oblivion would ever measure up to Skyrim. After all, how could it
even compare? I have a wife and children in Skyrim. I own multiple
homesteads. I'm the freaking Dohvakiin, man. I talk to (and slay)
dragons! The Hero of Kvatch could never. Right?

Well, it's complicated.

I'll let you in on a little secret: I've never actually finished
Skyrim's main quest. Every year — usually around the winter holidays or
the lazy days of summer — I fire up the game and tell myself, "This is
it. This time, you're going to finish the main quest." But time after
time, I find myself distracted (and often, overwhelmed) by the
neverending onslaught of dragon attacks, radiant quests, and the titanic
size of the game's utterly enormous map.

To me, Oblivion's best quality is its size. Sure, I love me a good RPG
with a ginormous map and seemingly endless activities to take part in.
But size matters when it comes to game design, and not in the way some
people might expect. Starfield is a perfect example of why bigger does
not necessarily mean better. I'd rather a game leave me itching for more
than leave me burned out and ready to throw in the towel. As I've worked
my way through the main quest, Cyrodiil has become a world I look
forward to returning to, while Skyrim has become a place I have to drag
myself back into. I rarely finish a Skyrim gameplay session feeling
satisfied, but every hour I spend in Cyrodiil leaves me wanting more.

Skyrim catches the player's attention right out of the gate with an
excellent narrative hook (you're scheduled for execution) and an equally excellent "Holy crap" moment to follow that hook (said execution is interrupted by a dragon). But Oblivion starts things off a bit more
subtly: You just so happen to be occupying a cell connected to a secret passage that Emperor Uriel Septim VII is using to escape an
assassination plot. Your cell is unlocked, the Emperor and his security
detail wander through the secret passage, and nobody seems to actually
care whether you come with or stay behind. It's enough to make you feel
like an NPC. The entire experience contrasts heavily with Skyrim's
opening, which sees various NPCs effectively hold the player's hand
until they're safely out of Helgen, after which just about everyone
starts falling all over themselves to compliment the glorious Dragonborn.

Oblivion's first big "Holy crap" moment is, arguably, the player's first encounter with the Oblivion Gate in Kvatch, but my personal "Holy crap"
moment occurred the second I exited the Imperial City's sewer system and
laid eyes on Cyrodiil's overworld for the first time. My jaw dropped.
The environment wasn't just pretty, it was utterly breathtaking. The
night sky was dotted with stars, and aurora borealis shimmered around
them. Various harvestable alchemy ingredients sprouted from the ground
beneath my feet, and a curious Ayleid ruin called Vilverin stood in
front of me, its bright blue door beckoning me forth. A strange,
orange-red portal loomed in the distance. Color me impressed, literally.
I hadn't expected Cyrodiil to be so beautiful, especially at night.

Now, don't get me wrong — Skyrim absolutely has its moments of
environmental beauty, and I am certainly not suggesting that Bethesda
should re-re-re-remaster the game to make it prettier. But over the
years, I've noticed a distinct lack of color in many of Bethesda's
games. Every title seems to be set in a world that's a desaturated,
heavily color-graded shade of Bethesda Beigeâ„¢ (Fallout), Bethesda Blueâ„¢ (Starfield), or Bethesda Brown With Some Snowâ„¢ (Skyrim). Of course, not every game needs a heavily saturated, rainbow environment. It makes
perfect sense for Fallout's nuclear wasteland to be desolate and
sepia-toned, for example. But I've always found the studio's aversion to
color a bit perplexing when it comes to sci-fi titles like Starfield and fantasy franchises like The Elder Scrolls. By the time I bought my
adorable home in the gorgeous city of Cheydinhal, Cyrodiil's beauty had
me aching for a more colorful version of Skyrim.

But there are plenty of mods out there to give Skyrim a dose of color,
and pretty environments do not necessarily make a good game. What about gameplay? Clearly, Skyrim would be the winner on that front.

Or so I thought.

Skyrim has undeniably fantastic gameplay, as evidenced by the fact that
it's still immensely popular 14 years after its initial launch. But
frankly, I'm having way more fun with Oblivion than I ever had with
Skyrim. Sure, I miss fighting dragons. I do not, however, miss my horse constantly dying because it decided to "help" me fight said dragons.
Yes, I occasionally get the urge to Fus-Ro-Dah all of the painstakingly
placed plates and food items off of every dining table I encounter in Oblivion. But beyond Dragon Shout-based mischief, I can't say I really
miss Skyrim's gameplay all that much. On paper, Oblivion doesn't have
nearly as many things to do in-game as Skyrim does, but honestly, I
think that's a good thing. I don't miss tedious tasks like smithing, I
don't miss collecting loads of supplies to upgrade my homesteads, and as
fun as cooking can be in Skyrim, I much prefer the way Oblivion does it. Having cooking and alchemy effectively be the same skill in Oblivion
makes sense, and saves time.

Oblivion isn't perfect, of course. Lockpicking is a nightmare (though it
can easily be avoided via certain spells or a special Daedric artifact).
The persuasion mini-game drove me nuts at first, but now that I've
gotten the hang of it, I find it a lot more interesting than the
standard RPG skill-check that locks you out of dialogue options with no recourse if you haven't leveled up your social stats enough. I certainly
like it better than Starfield's bizarre take on persuasion checks.

But what really caught me by surprise about Oblivion Remastered is the
fact that — when it comes to gameplay mechanics that both titles share — Oblivion does so many things better than Skyrim. Yes, I can swim in
Skyrim, but it's not especially fun, easy, or rewarding. The controls
are clunky, and I rarely find much of interest floating in Skyrim's
waterways. Meanwhile I frequently find myself casting Starlight before
diving headfirst into any and every body of water I can find in
Cyrodiil, because not only is swimming fun in Oblivion, it's also
rewarding. Hidden chests, special alchemy ingredients, even loose
magical jewelry can be found in the bottom of Cyrodiil's lakes, streams,
and rivers.

Another area in which Oblivion beats Skyrimat its own game is,
surprisingly, combat. I'd say that the first-person combat experience is fairly similar in both games, but third-person combat is an entirely
different story. Sure, Skyrim will let you play in third-person, but god
help you if you want to engage in combat. It's doable, but it isn't
enjoyable. Meanwhile, I find myself frequently switching to third-person
mode in Oblivion, even for combat encounters. The controls are smooth
and seamless, whether you're flinging fireballs, swinging a sword, or
aiming an arrow at your foes.

When it comes to Oblivion-exclusive gameplay mechanics like the
Acrobatics skill and spellcrafting mechanic, I find myself wondering why
on Earth the developers at Bethesda chose not to implement them in
Skyrim. Jumping off the side of a cliff and taking next to no damage due
to my high Acrobatics skill makes escaping unwanted combat encounters
both easy and amusing. Spell-making is another incredibly cool,
extremely entertaining feature that has me hooked and has made it hard
to go back to Skyrim. After the fun I've had in Cyrodiil, returning to
Skyrim fills me with a profound sense of boredom.

Yes, I miss my lovely wife Lydia and our sweet adopted daughters, Britte
and Sissel. I miss our quaint home in Whiterun. I'll return to them
again someday, once I've gotten my fill of Oblivion.

…or maybe I'll be the type of parent who goes out to grab a bottle of
Skooma and never comes home. With how engaging Oblivion Remastered is,
it's a definite possibility."
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

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On Tue, 27 Jan 2026 21:31:13 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

There was some discussion about Oblivion Remastered here. I just came >across an article about it and thought I'd share. >https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oblivion-remastered-ruined-me-for-skyrim-and-maybe-elder-scrolls-future/ar-AA1Uoki6

I'm not quite as endeared with "Oblivion", but it always has a spot in
my heart. I played the shit outta that game when it was new, and for a
long time --and over multiple PC upgrades-- it maintained a place on
my hard-drive(s) just so I could drop in and wander about for the heck
of it. I don't think any of Bethesda's CRPGs are /great/ but they are
enjoyable romps.

[Really, the only Bethesda CRPGs I haven't enjoyed were
"Daggerfall" (too much procedural generation), and "Battle-
spire" (just a dull dungeon romp with little of the famous
Bethesda exploration). Although I've yet to play "Starfield",
which I fear might fall into the same camp as Daggerfall and
for the same reasons]

"Oblivion" had its moments, but so did the other games in the series. "Morrowind" by far had the most epic, fantasy-novel feel: your
character felt the most integrated in the story (what with you being a
chosen one and all), and the politics and setting added unique twists.
Its somewhat clunky mechanics were off-putting at start, but by the
halfway point, it was really hard not to be invested in the game.

"Oblivion" was more of an all-arounder; a great big pot of generic
fantasy with some interesting diversions to spice things up. The map
had some good variety; the swamps of the south east, the northern
mountains, the rolling hills in the southwest, the forests of the
midlands... it had a bit of everything.

"Skyrim" wasn't any less generic and its slightly reduced scale (its
cities were so small!) made that lack of variety even more obvious...
but it was head-n-shoulders the better game mechanically and
technologically. A big problem with "Oblivion" was its repetitive
quest structure and dungeon maps; Bethesda worked hard to alleviate
those issues and overall, this made the exploration (what I most enjoy
from these games) a lot more enjoyable.

I wasn't really that impressed with "Oblivion Remastered" (except from
a technical standpoint; porting the game to Unreal Engine and still
keeping all the goofy scripting had to have been a real treat to
program ;-). On the other hand, I eagerly look forward to fan projects
like Skyblivion, which will take "Oblivion" and move it to the Skyrim
engine and mechanics, and add new features. It'll be the best of both
worlds (also, it will give me a new reason to finally re-install
"Skyrim" ;-). The official Bethesda remaster just played it too safe
for me.

But really what I want is something new. Elder Scrolls 6 please?








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On 1/27/2026 9:31 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

There was some discussion about Oblivion Remastered here.  I just came across an article about it and thought I'd share.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oblivion-remastered-ruined-me-for- skyrim-and-maybe-elder-scrolls-future/ar-AA1Uoki6? ocid=winpstoreapp&cvid=69799a41d2dc46aaa387c066bd928290&ei=132

Dammit! This actually makes me want to play Oblivion again. My
experience the first time was pretty bad though. At least I finished
it. Unlike Skyrim*, which I've got* in common with this guy.

I possibly completed Skyrim. I was looking up the ending the other day,
and it's not killing the dragon at the top of the mountain, which is
what I never completed thinking that was the end, I'm not sure if I
actually completed it or not now.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 09:50:13 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 1/27/2026 9:31 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

There was some discussion about Oblivion Remastered here.  I just came
across an article about it and thought I'd share.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oblivion-remastered-ruined-me-for-
skyrim-and-maybe-elder-scrolls-future/ar-AA1Uoki6?
ocid=winpstoreapp&cvid=69799a41d2dc46aaa387c066bd928290&ei=132

Dammit! This actually makes me want to play Oblivion again. My
experience the first time was pretty bad though. At least I finished
it. Unlike Skyrim*, which I've got* in common with this guy.

I possibly completed Skyrim. I was looking up the ending the other day,
and it's not killing the dragon at the top of the mountain, which is
what I never completed thinking that was the end, I'm not sure if I
actually completed it or not now.

I mean, I /know/ I completed "Skyrim"... but ask me today how it
ended, and who the boss-monster was, and what happened after? I'll
draw a blank. I know at some point I flew on a dragon, and that I
visited the Elder Scroll equivalent of Valhalla... but beyond that?
Mostly I know that in the end I won, and then got unceremoniously
dropped back into the world to continue adventuring.

"Oblivion" definitely was more conclusive than that; there was a
big-ass fight against the baddie in the city-center, and then a
magical explosion as the wanna-be emperor turned himself into a statue
that banished the demons back to Elder Scrolls-hell. At which point
you were unceremoniusuly dropped back into the world to continue
adventuring. But at least I remember the final boss.

Then again, maybe that has as much to do with the fact that I played
"Oblivion remastered" six months ago, and "Skyrim" ten years ago. I
mean, it's not as if I really remember how Arena or Morrowind ended
either ;-)


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On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:10:28 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Then again, maybe that has as much to do with the fact that I played >"Oblivion remastered" six months ago, and "Skyrim" ten years ago. I
mean, it's not as if I really remember how Arena or Morrowind ended
either ;-)

Its a been a few years since I finished Arena, and I also am
forgetting how it ended. Umm... Jagar Tharn... melts I think? I do
remember the music that played though. That was a really good ending
midi track. The whole soundtrack for Arena was good.
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On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 14:00:16 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:10:28 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson ><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Then again, maybe that has as much to do with the fact that I played >>"Oblivion remastered" six months ago, and "Skyrim" ten years ago. I
mean, it's not as if I really remember how Arena or Morrowind ended
either ;-)

Its a been a few years since I finished Arena, and I also am
forgetting how it ended. Umm... Jagar Tharn... melts I think? I do
remember the music that played though. That was a really good ending
midi track. The whole soundtrack for Arena was good.

IIRC, you have to find the seven parts of the Staff of Foozle-Killing
and then bring them to the end of the final dungeon where a cutscene
plays. I don't think you even get to fight the evil foozle. I don't
think it was a bad ending, but it did feel a bit anti-climatic.


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On Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:54:18 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

IIRC, you have to find the seven parts of the Staff of Foozle-Killing
and then bring them to the end of the final dungeon where a cutscene
plays. I don't think you even get to fight the evil foozle. I don't
think it was a bad ending, but it did feel a bit anti-climatic.

You are right, you use the assembled staff (eight pieces) to end the
game. I think you touch the staff to something but I don't really
remember. You can definitely attack Jagar Tharn but I think he is
invulnerable so it does not matter.

I am not a fan of boss battles in video games so I was ok with ending
the game just using the staff. It made sense to me anyway as you spent
the whole game looking for its parts.
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On Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:16:10 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:54:18 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson ><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

IIRC, you have to find the seven parts of the Staff of Foozle-Killing
and then bring them to the end of the final dungeon where a cutscene
plays. I don't think you even get to fight the evil foozle. I don't
think it was a bad ending, but it did feel a bit anti-climatic.

You are right, you use the assembled staff (eight pieces) to end the
game. I think you touch the staff to something but I don't really
remember. You can definitely attack Jagar Tharn but I think he is >invulnerable so it does not matter.

I am not a fan of boss battles in video games so I was ok with ending
the game just using the staff. It made sense to me anyway as you spent
the whole game looking for its parts.

I actually had to watch a video after I posted to remind myself of the
ending. It's literally a case of double-clicking a texture on the wall
to trigger the cutscene.

Like you said, narratively there isn't really anything wrong with the
concept. Honestly, I find boss battles sort of weird anyway. Why is
the bad-guy leader engaging in combat anyway? Why is he always the
most powerful? It bears absolutely no resemblance to reality; do you
think if the US snuck a commando team into Russia, Putin would
eventually show up armed with two M60s and, if he was murdered in the
Kremlin, Russia would throw up their hands and go, "Oh, you got us.
You win."? It's the mechanics of the games overriding the narrative in
the silliest way.

So it wasn't the idea that there was no end-boss... but there could
have been more build-up; more challenge. Honestly, had Bethesda
changed the texture to a big "You Win!" switch, it wouldn't have been
much different. Especially since the final dungeon wasn't,
mechanically, any different from the dozens of others you'd already
fought your way through.

[Bethesda fixed this in Daggerfall. The end-dungeon of that
game was really trippy]

So, narratively Arena's ending was fine. It was just, as I said,
pretty anti-climatic how it was implemented.


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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

<snip>

Like you said, narratively there isn't really anything wrong with the >concept. Honestly, I find boss battles sort of weird anyway. Why is
the bad-guy leader engaging in combat anyway? Why is he always the
most powerful? It bears absolutely no resemblance to reality; do you
think if the US snuck a commando team into Russia, Putin would
eventually show up armed with two M60s and, if he was murdered in the >Kremlin, Russia would throw up their hands and go, "Oh, you got us.
You win."? It's the mechanics of the games overriding the narrative in
the silliest way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO1HC8pHZw0

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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On 1/30/2026 10:49 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:16:10 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:54:18 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

IIRC, you have to find the seven parts of the Staff of Foozle-Killing
and then bring them to the end of the final dungeon where a cutscene
plays. I don't think you even get to fight the evil foozle. I don't
think it was a bad ending, but it did feel a bit anti-climatic.

You are right, you use the assembled staff (eight pieces) to end the
game. I think you touch the staff to something but I don't really
remember. You can definitely attack Jagar Tharn but I think he is
invulnerable so it does not matter.

I am not a fan of boss battles in video games so I was ok with ending
the game just using the staff. It made sense to me anyway as you spent
the whole game looking for its parts.

I actually had to watch a video after I posted to remind myself of the ending. It's literally a case of double-clicking a texture on the wall
to trigger the cutscene.

Like you said, narratively there isn't really anything wrong with the concept. Honestly, I find boss battles sort of weird anyway. Why is
the bad-guy leader engaging in combat anyway? Why is he always the
most powerful? It bears absolutely no resemblance to reality; do you
think if the US snuck a commando team into Russia, Putin would
eventually show up armed with two M60s and, if he was murdered in the Kremlin, Russia would throw up their hands and go, "Oh, you got us.
You win."? It's the mechanics of the games overriding the narrative in
the silliest way.

So it wasn't the idea that there was no end-boss... but there could
have been more build-up; more challenge. Honestly, had Bethesda
changed the texture to a big "You Win!" switch, it wouldn't have been
much different. Especially since the final dungeon wasn't,
mechanically, any different from the dozens of others you'd already
fought your way through.

[Bethesda fixed this in Daggerfall. The end-dungeon of that
game was really trippy]

So, narratively Arena's ending was fine. It was just, as I said,
pretty anti-climatic how it was implemented.

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably
Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

"Master. of. Magic!" Not really spectacular I think. That's if I
remember it correctly. It's not an epic rpg, it's a game you're meant
to keep playing again and again, like a board game.

I'm pretty sure I finished Pool of Radiance fighting the red dragon.
That's probably the first semi-memorable rpg one.

A lot of really old games didn't even have endings, you just kept
playing until you got bored, the game got too hard, or a bug you
couldn't get past.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 08:28:00 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the >endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably >Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

"Master. of. Magic!" Not really spectacular I think. That's if I
remember it correctly. It's not an epic rpg, it's a game you're meant
to keep playing again and again, like a board game.

I'm pretty sure I finished Pool of Radiance fighting the red dragon.
That's probably the first semi-memorable rpg one.

A lot of really old games didn't even have endings, you just kept
playing until you got bored, the game got too hard, or a bug you
couldn't get past.

We should start a thread about that; call it something like "The Worst
Endings" or similar. I bet it would get at least 22 replies! ;-)

But, yeah, a lot of games from the earlier era lacked satisfactory
endings. This was in part due to the technology; a cinematic ending
needed artwork and sound assets that had to be stored on disk
somewhere. Disk-space was expensive and floppy disks were a
significant portion of the cost of shipping a game; developers did
their best to minimize the number of floppy disks used (It was even
worst with cartridge-based games). Plus, you had to pay for the
artists and programmers to actually create that ending!

And, like you said, with a lot of games a lot of people never, ever
got that far in the game. Why put all that effort into an ending that
only 10% of your players would ever see? Add to that, that sort of
ending is a narrative feature, and for a lot of people games weren't a narrative experience. They didn't expect an 'ending' to a game any
more than we might expect an 'ending' to playing tic-tac-toe or
tennis.

Even my beloved Ultima games didn't really have proper, memorable
endings until Ultima 5 (and, really, not till Ultima 6). Mostly it was
a 'well done' screen and drop-to-DOS. Heck, even "Doom" was pretty
shoddy in that regard.

But as the narratives gained ever more importance to games (and
disk-space became less of a restriction)... only then did we start
getting really memorable endings.


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On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 08:28:00 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the >endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably >Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

Earliest ending I can remember is bringing the gold chalice back to
the yellow castle in Adventure on the Atari 2600 and hearing the short
fanfare play and the flashing colors. Does that even count as an
ending? I think it does.
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On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:31:23 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 08:28:00 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the >>endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably >>Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

Earliest ending I can remember is bringing the gold chalice back to
the yellow castle in Adventure on the Atari 2600 and hearing the short >fanfare play and the flashing colors. Does that even count as an
ending? I think it does.

Ending? Yes. _Satisfying_ ending? Well, that's more subjective. For
it's time, probably. Nowadays, not so much.

It's not as if early games didn't have endings. I mean, some didn't,
of course. "H.E.R.O." (one of the earliest computer games I owned)
just started replaying random levels you'd already completed.
"Pac-Man" infamously kept going until some counter overflowed and the
game crashed. AFAIK "Pong" would keep going endlessly until you
finally turned off the machine (although it probably differed
depending on the machine).

But some games did have endings. The earliest I can remember is, of
course, "Zork". Find all the treasures and enter the barrow that is
the start of "Zork II". "Ancient Art of War" (a very early real-time
strategy game from 1984) give you a victory screen when you defeated
your enemy. After completing all the sports in "Winter Olympics" by
Epyx, you got a medals awards ceremony. Even "Eye of the Beholder" (a
game I frequently make fun of for its lack of an ending) actually had
an ending. Push the titular monster into the trap closet, watch the
spikes crush it, and get a page of congratulatory text before being unceremoniously dropped to DOS.

But given that you would often spend weeks or months playing these
games, these twenty-second endings rarely lived up to the rest of the
game.


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Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:31:23 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 08:28:00 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the
endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably
Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

Earliest ending I can remember is bringing the gold chalice back to
the yellow castle in Adventure on the Atari 2600 and hearing the short
fanfare play and the flashing colors. Does that even count as an
ending? I think it does.

Ending? Yes. _Satisfying_ ending? Well, that's more subjective. For
it's time, probably. Nowadays, not so much.

It's not as if early games didn't have endings. I mean, some didn't,
of course. "H.E.R.O." (one of the earliest computer games I owned)
just started replaying random levels you'd already completed.
"Pac-Man" infamously kept going until some counter overflowed and the
game crashed. AFAIK "Pong" would keep going endlessly until you
finally turned off the machine (although it probably differed
depending on the machine).

But some games did have endings. The earliest I can remember is, of
course, "Zork". Find all the treasures and enter the barrow that is
the start of "Zork II". "Ancient Art of War" (a very early real-time
strategy game from 1984) give you a victory screen when you defeated
your enemy. After completing all the sports in "Winter Olympics" by
Epyx, you got a medals awards ceremony. Even "Eye of the Beholder" (a
game I frequently make fun of for its lack of an ending) actually had
an ending. Push the titular monster into the trap closet, watch the
spikes crush it, and get a page of congratulatory text before being unceremoniously dropped to DOS.

But given that you would often spend weeks or months playing these
games, these twenty-second endings rarely lived up to the rest of the
game.

I thought Police Quest I ended spectacularly.
--
6iuq7JrV8XY
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On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:54:12 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Even "Eye of the Beholder" (a
game I frequently make fun of for its lack of an ending) actually had
an ending. Push the titular monster into the trap closet, watch the
spikes crush it, and get a page of congratulatory text before being >unceremoniously dropped to DOS.

On an (almost completely unrelated) aside, I saw this video yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuMc_6ANAQI

It's an 'homage' to "Eye of the Beholder", presenting the first part
of the first level of the game utilizing a modern engine. It's fully
3D (although it still uses step-based movement... mostly) and looks
quite nice. I could see myself playing this game.

[But probably not for long. The new visuals are nice but
I hated the combat in that game. ;-)]

Actually, I'm surprised nobody has made a fan-remake of this game,
even if just to port it to a new engine. While I wouldn't say it would
be /easy/, it certainly would be less complicated than a lot of the
other mods/remakes that are pushed out. There are a lot of concepts
but nothing beyond that. Well, aside from a "Neverwinter Nights" mod,
which isn't really the same thing.





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On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:54:12 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Ending? Yes. _Satisfying_ ending? Well, that's more subjective. For
it's time, probably. Nowadays, not so much.

It definitely was satisfying to me at the time. Partly because this
was the only 2600 game I had where I could actually reach an end game
screen. Adventure is probably the very first game I 'finished.'

But some games did have endings. The earliest I can remember is, of
course, "Zork". Find all the treasures and enter the barrow that is
the start of "Zork II". "Ancient Art of War" (a very early real-time
strategy game from 1984) give you a victory screen when you defeated
your enemy. After completing all the sports in "Winter Olympics" by
Epyx, you got a medals awards ceremony. Even "Eye of the Beholder" (a
game I frequently make fun of for its lack of an ending) actually had
an ending. Push the titular monster into the trap closet, watch the
spikes crush it, and get a page of congratulatory text before being >unceremoniously dropped to DOS.

I played and finished several Infocom titles back in the day but I
don't really remember how any of them ended. My best memory is having
to kill Floyd at the end of Stationfall. Although, I don't remember if
the game was actually over yet but I am pretty sure it was close to
the end.

Now, Eye of the Beholder, that drop to DOS ending I do remember. :)
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On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 14:21:03 -0600, phoenix <j63840576@gmail.com>
wrote:

I thought Police Quest I ended spectacularly.

I remember the ending to Space Quest 3 the most. I played that game a
lot when I was a kid as it was one of the first Sierra games I played
and I watched the ending over and over again. I am not sure which
Sierra game I would consider to have the best ending if I replayed
them all now.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 06 Feb 2026 12:58:13 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

I remember the ending to Space Quest 3 the most. I played that game a
lot when I was a kid as it was one of the first Sierra games I played
and I watched the ending over and over again. I am not sure which
Sierra game I would consider to have the best ending if I replayed
them all now.

I was never a big Space Quest fan, but that's mostly because I came to
them late in my 'adventure game' career and was tired of most of its
tropes. I was more of a Kings Quest person... although those games
were probably some of the weakest of Sierra's creations. That said,
"Kings Quest VI" probably had the best ending... all the moreso since
there were different endings depending on how you solved the game.
(Although arguably all the endings were sort of creepy if you really
thought about them. But fairy-tale endings usually are.

TL;DR: I don't remember /any/ of the endings of the "Space Quest" game
but that's more of a problem with me than an indictment of the series
itself. ;-)
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On Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:15:30 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

I was never a big Space Quest fan, but that's mostly because I came to
them late in my 'adventure game' career and was tired of most of its
tropes. I was more of a Kings Quest person... although those games
were probably some of the weakest of Sierra's creations. That said,
"Kings Quest VI" probably had the best ending... all the moreso since
there were different endings depending on how you solved the game.
(Although arguably all the endings were sort of creepy if you really
thought about them. But fairy-tale endings usually are.

You may be right about King's Quest VI having the best ending. You
probably are. King's Quest VI was one of Sierra's best games and I do
remember replaying it to see the different endings.

TL;DR: I don't remember /any/ of the endings of the "Space Quest" game
but that's more of a problem with me than an indictment of the series
itself. ;-)

I played most of the Space Quest games but I really only remember the
third game's ending clearly.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:50:29 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:


Speaking of /bad/ endings... "Eye of the Beholder II" springs to mind.

On a technical front, it actually was pretty great. You get several
different scenes, all done in that classic pixel-art style that
Westwood used. It lasted several minutes, which was quite impressive
for games of that era, and concluded the story nicely. You got a nice
shot of the Big Bad lying dead on the ground and the usual, "good job,
son!" from your allies.

But man... what it actually shows was so annoying. Sent to see what's
going on at the temple of Darkmoon by the archmage Khelben Blackstaff,
you fight your way to the bottom of the dungeon without any assistance
from the wizard. You triumphantly kill the Big Bad in a heroic battle.
And then Khelben teleports in, says, "Oh yeah, I always knew this guy
was trouble", and sends in some other wizards to raze the castle to
the ground with a few seconds of pyrotechnics.

And I watch this thinking: if you knew there was a serious threat
here, and had all this power just ready to go, and could have
teleported yourself to the bottom of the dungeon at any time, then WHY
THE FUCK did I just risk life and limb in a weeks long quest, you lazy
fucking sorcerer?

It's a good thing the game ended there because otherwise I'd have
taken a sword to the archmage himself. ;-)


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On 2/8/2026 8:08 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:50:29 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

Speaking of /bad/ endings... "Eye of the Beholder II" springs to mind.

On a technical front, it actually was pretty great. You get several
different scenes, all done in that classic pixel-art style that
Westwood used. It lasted several minutes, which was quite impressive
for games of that era, and concluded the story nicely. You got a nice
shot of the Big Bad lying dead on the ground and the usual, "good job,
son!" from your allies.

But man... what it actually shows was so annoying. Sent to see what's
going on at the temple of Darkmoon by the archmage Khelben Blackstaff,
you fight your way to the bottom of the dungeon without any assistance
from the wizard. You triumphantly kill the Big Bad in a heroic battle.
And then Khelben teleports in, says, "Oh yeah, I always knew this guy
was trouble", and sends in some other wizards to raze the castle to
the ground with a few seconds of pyrotechnics.

And I watch this thinking: if you knew there was a serious threat
here, and had all this power just ready to go, and could have
teleported yourself to the bottom of the dungeon at any time, then WHY
THE FUCK did I just risk life and limb in a weeks long quest, you lazy fucking sorcerer?

It's a good thing the game ended there because otherwise I'd have
taken a sword to the archmage himself. ;-)

Wizards (and Gods) work in mysterious ways.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.
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On Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:08:43 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

It's a good thing the game ended there because otherwise I'd have
taken a sword to the archmage himself. ;-)

Wow, even with your description I just don't remember the ending to
Eye of the Beholder 2 at all. I do remember the intro which I liked
very much though!
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 8 Feb 2026 08:39:40 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

Wizards (and Gods) work in mysterious ways.

They always do. And the magic they work with is always Ancient Magic.
There is no other kind.
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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:50:29 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

Speaking of /bad/ endings... "Eye of the Beholder II" springs to mind.

On a technical front, it actually was pretty great. You get several
different scenes, all done in that classic pixel-art style that
Westwood used. It lasted several minutes, which was quite impressive
for games of that era, and concluded the story nicely. You got a nice
shot of the Big Bad lying dead on the ground and the usual, "good job,
son!" from your allies.

But man... what it actually shows was so annoying. Sent to see what's
going on at the temple of Darkmoon by the archmage Khelben Blackstaff,
you fight your way to the bottom of the dungeon without any assistance
from the wizard. You triumphantly kill the Big Bad in a heroic battle.
And then Khelben teleports in, says, "Oh yeah, I always knew this guy
was trouble", and sends in some other wizards to raze the castle to
the ground with a few seconds of pyrotechnics.

And I watch this thinking: if you knew there was a serious threat
here, and had all this power just ready to go, and could have
teleported yourself to the bottom of the dungeon at any time, then WHY
THE FUCK did I just risk life and limb in a weeks long quest, you lazy >fucking sorcerer?

He didn't have probable cause or something like that.

He could have known that guy was trouble, but not that that guy was down
in that Temple, he just knew _something_ was off in that temple, so he
sent you to investigate.

A Schrödinger's Temple kind of situation, until someone took a look,
they didn't know what was what there.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 08 Feb 2026 14:11:04 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> said
this thing:

On Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:08:43 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson ><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

It's a good thing the game ended there because otherwise I'd have
taken a sword to the archmage himself. ;-)

Wow, even with your description I just don't remember the ending to
Eye of the Beholder 2 at all. I do remember the intro which I liked
very much though!

In fairness, neither did I. I mean, I vaguely remembered that Khelben
the Archmage appeared after the end, and that I was annoyed by how the
game ended, but beyond that the specifics had escaped me.

But this thread made me go out and re-watch the ending cinematics for
a bunch of DOS-era games, including EOB2. So I was able to refresh my
memory... and annoyance. Win-win! ;-)



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