I fixed it. The issue from below. I found that I was calling the wrong kind of information. I didn’t want to know what specific object I wanted, I really wanted to know what kind of object it was. A subtle difference, but good nonetheless. So, the new object system is all installed and works like a charm. Well, except I can’t save anything, not a goddamn thing. I remembered as I was setting up the loop (arrays need loops like fish need water and child stars need therapy) that I can’t reference an array “off page.” I mean, I can do all kinds of things to it, including and not limited to doing the robot, but I can only do these things when the array is mentioned in the same bit of code. It does not work through an include function at all. I tried that and I get an error. Since my Save Function is included in its own file, I can’t mod that to save it. Of course, I could always just move the save function into the main ThiefEd code, but what’s the point of using different sub-programs if you have to put everything in the same bloody file. Yeah, Riddle me that Batman.
Right, so now I have a cornucopia of different objects and they all display correctly and all that jazz. I even got my Key to work, up until it all fell apart. Hey, at least it works now.
-Speaking of disappointment, I’m going to share a story about Fable II. Stop reading now if you haven’t finished it and care about the ending at all. No? Alright. I played through the game as the lovable rogue the Scarlet Sparrow. The name coming from the color of my coats and the name the game gave me that I was too lazy to change. Anyhow, at the end of the game you get the choice to either A) Bring back the dead people that went out like dufuses building a powerful yet evil artifact. B) Screw those people and bring back loved ones and your rotten mutt. C) Screw everybody and take the gold. I thought to myself, “I’ll bring back the wife. That’s the heroic thing to do.” So I went with option number 2 and credits rolled and I generally felt good about myself. But one line kept bothering me, “He will have to live with his choice.” So I ran home to see what the real ending was. I mean, I saved the girl, that’s what the hero does right? Right!?
So I get back from my ordeal and run up to see what the wife has to say. She says, “Oh dear, you’ve been so good to me lately, I got you this gift,” and she proceeds to give me some lousy potion. I own most of the known world and bring her back from the dead at the cost of thousands of lives and she gives me a trifle, a rotten bauble. It’s like, “I forgot about your birthday, sorry. Here’s some pocket lint.” I guess I was just hoping for more, some change in the game and the story and yet, there was none. The game disappointed me and that line, that singular, “He will have to live with his choice,” haunted me. In desperation I talked to the wife again, same line, different variation, different worthless trinket. The situation revealing how truly lifeless she was. “He will have to live with his choice.” So, for the first time in the game, the Scarlet Sparrow did something evil. Finding that being a hero doesn’t matter for anything in Albion, he pulled out his trusty Masterwork Clockwork pistol, shot 2 rounds and never looked back.
I’ve never felt that way about a game before. The game made me feel as if the last 8 hours really didn’t matter. What I did and the story that played out really were for nothing. The magic trick that was the game revealed to all really just be smoke and mirrors. After becoming the Hero of Albion, I’d found that I still counted for very little.
I want to say that my expectations are to blame, and that’s the rationale that I use when thinking about it. Some changes could have been made at the end somehow to give me something, anything. But thinking about it makes me depressed. The Scarlet Sparrow isn’t supposed to come home and find only heartbreak. He’s not supposed to find out that his wife doesn’t care about him and that the world at large, cares nothing for a middle aged hero in a crimson coat. He’s supposed to sail off into the sunset and quote Ulysses, “…for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars…” That’s an ending.