Feedback wanted: Some questions on Ending (spoilerish)

[superluser]

Now that a many of you have completed the game, we would like to take the opportunity and ask some questions related to the Ending and the story as a whole.

Here goes:

1) When entering the Orb Room (where Alexander is), what where your feelings toward Daniel (ie yourself), Alexander and Agrippa.

2) What was the ending that you got the first time? Was this a choice?

3) How did you like the ending?

4) Did you get any other endings? If so, which one was your favorite? And what where your motivation for seeing more endings?

I haven't read any of the replies yet, so this is raw and uninfluenced. I may add an addendum when I read the thread.

1.) I had separate feelings for the protagonist and for Daniel (which is who the protagonist was before the potion). I connected very strongly with the protagonist. Daniel was someone that I felt a strong sense of pity for. He was someone who had been duped (and who knows, possibly drugged, brainwashed, enchanted) into doing very evil things. He may or may not have been profoundly evil, and while he is--or rather was--me, I do not have his memories, so I have no right to judge what he did.

My interpretation was that Daniel had come to the conclusion that he could no longer do the right thing--even if he were to do what he ordered the protagonist to do, the circumstances surrounding the act would be different. He would be doing it for revenge instead of attempting to stop an evil man. So that put Daniel in a positive light. He was trying to do what was right, and trying to recapture the innocence that had been stolen from him. (it occurs to me now that Daniel might have been a bad man all along, even before he met Alexander, so innocence might not apply. We do not know. All we have are Daniel's own words, and the words of the man who convinced him to commit murders.)

2.) The first ending was the bad ending, where I waited for the portal to open fully, and by then it was too late, the portal was already open and I couldn't use Agrippa's head. It was not intentional, needless to say. I later looked in a walkthrough to make sure I did everything right at the end.

3.) The ending was a little too fast, and it didn't allow me to really get a sense of conclusion to the game. I am reminded of A Winner is You.

4.) I got the other ending, as well as the ending in the prison cell after consulting a walkthrough. The good ending felt a little like a tacked on happy ending; it did not seem to fit with the mood of the game. The issue for me was that most of the game was a sort of indirect show, don't tell. It seemed to me like the game was telling me that everything was going to be OK, and that's what Alexander had told Daniel (I originally wrote me here, not Daniel. Perhaps that means that I identified with Daniel by the end, and I did not identify with the protagonist at the point where Daniel was giving me directions--see above where I refer to Daniel giving orders to the protagonist, not me).