D'you guys ever have moral/ethical qualms?

[chris the cynic]

I don't regard any of it as a reflection on me as a person or anything like that;

I don't think anyone regards how one plays TNM as a reflection of the player as a person.

[Hassat Hunter]

WC is too funny to get any kind of moral issues.

[~Psychotic~]

I would never condone the raping of anyone, I would also never play any game with rape as it's theme. It's sickening, it's twisted, it's fucking up beyond all imagining, and it's against all I believe in. But I will defend such games

I agree with this whole-heartedly. I may not care for your opinions, but I will defend your right to have them.

And that's exactly my point. Thank you.

[Jonas]

I've since tried pretty much every variation

Every variation? How many times have you completed the game?

[Jaedar]

I've since tried pretty much every variation

Every variation? How many times have you completed the game?

apparently 273 times, since that is how many variations there are by my count

[Servalan]

I don't regard any of it as a reflection on me as a person or anything like that;

I don't think anyone regards how one plays TNM as a reflection of the player as a person.

Neither do I.

I've since tried pretty much every variation

Every variation? How many times have you completed the game?

Pretty much every blindingly obvious variation, then. And having done so, I've come to appreciate how many zillion others there must be.

(I'm actually more and more impressed with every run at how much thought was put into this game. You - the developers - thought of so many things; I was very amused at some unexpected skill points I picked up when I fell off a particular structure in the space station. )

[chris the cynic]

I've since tried pretty much every variation

Every variation? How many times have you completed the game?

apparently 273 times, since that is how many variations there are by my count

That seems a bit low to me. Nine endings times four outcomes on the cult wars is 36, time three outcomes on Yardbomb is 108, a simply binary choice would kick variations up to 216 (Ravings could certainly pull that off) which means one more choice would put us over your number. There are more than that.

Also the above is also under counted as I'm pretty sure there are more than four outcomes for the cult wars.

The original Whopper had 1024 variations, I have a feeling TNM has more variations than a Whopper.

[Added:]
I do wonder what the smallest set containing all subvariations is though.

For the whopper it is two (one with everything, one with nothing.) This is possible because the subvariations are binary non-interacting choices.

The same is definitely not true for TNM. Nine endings means nine playthroughs. The variations on the Yardbomb story are different depending on whether you sided with PDX or WC, so I'm pretty sure that at the very least that would mean ten playthroughs, possibly more. Pretty sure the cult choices don't interact with other choices, so they wouldn't add to this number. Not sure what else would.

So, interesting questions:
1 How many times would you have to play TNM to experience every variation?
2 How many times would you have to play TNM to experience every possible denouncement scene?

The first number should be huge, the second much smaller.

[Jonas]

You'd have to start by defining what constitutes a variation. I generally go with 9 because that's the variations that are different enough to require different soundtrack files, but you could go higher than that if you count things that change certain shots or lines - for example in the PDX ending, I only count two variations: with or without TRM - but actually another scene changes drastically depending on whether or not you successfully save Deus Diablo on the space station (if you save him, you see him stopping a fight, otherwise you see his empty office, and the dialogue changes as well), so that's actually 2 further variations if you count that.

There's also a further minor camera movement variation in the WorldCorp ending(s) depending on whether Ryan is left alive or not, which would double the WC variation count up to 8 - I'm personally not sure if that's fair, which is why I never count it myself (yet another reason for Trestkon to proclaim that I shouldn't be allowed to do PR ).

It would probably be fair to start by determining that incidental characters being added or removed depending on whether they're dead shouldn't count.

[~Psychotic~]

You also kind of have to include smaller variations too. Such as killing important people, killing everyone, not killing everyone, killing select storyline NPC's, etc.

These may not contribute to a different ending but they're a different variation whilst getting to it. Hell, the term variation is subjective, as Jonas starts you have to define what one is before you can find out how many there are.

EDIT:

It would probably be fair to start by determining that incidental characters being added or removed depending on whether they're dead shouldn't count.

That simplifies it by a lot.

[Jonas]

I would only count a character's death as a variation if that character was supposed to have lines in the endgame cutscene which are removed or replaced due to the character's absense.

As for the denouement, it's easier to determine what constitutes a variation: when Narcissus says something different, that's a variation. The weapon shop denouement is one of the most complicated in that regard, it has different lines for Raving Nutter and Andreus depending on what the player did to them and depending on which ending the player got (WC, PDX, or ABI).

The cults I think have 5 different variations - Llamas win but Goats escape, Goats win but Llamas escape, Llamas wipe out the Goats, Goats wipe out the Llamas, everybody is dead and the cults disperse (if you kill all the cult leaders).

[chris the cynic]

Yeah, I think DD's survival or lack of it in the PDX ending should definitely count as a variation, so make the first number I listed 11 and work from there.

Ryan's survival would seem pretty significant so we could count those World Corp ending variations as well so that would be 15 before we even consider the denouncement.

[Hassat Hunter]

Ryan's ending changes wheter you saved DD/killed DD or just ignored him.

Sadly enough Scara always appears even if you killed him .

[Jonas]

You mean banned him?

Odd, I thought we fixed that.

[bobby 55]

I can't remember Scara in any of the endings I played after I banned his ass.

[Rex]

I almost never had moral things in games. Mass effect for example - nothing, i just play as anyone, kill any freind. No big deal.
Empire earth: the heroes in there sometimes make me a bit sad, like grigor in russian mis. 3.. he was so poor.. And alexander ending of greeks.. cry after defeting everyone..

Now the tnm.. not too much. But killing all that people, Jonas, Winq, Ghand.. etc. was a bit more.. confusing then killing army of nameless bastard scara's guards.

The only game that made me see some moral was Fable:the lost chapters - moment when you must decide between sword of aeons or the life of your sister, liked that because she didn't resist.. and she herself told me to kill her if i just want. That was briliant, I became a good guy after that.