Brutal Legend Day#8: The Final Showdown

Finale of the main game on Day 8. It’s a series of stage battles in which you tie up the narrative and arrive at the ending boss fight. The stage battles are okay, I guess. I figure them out pretty quickly, with one taking a couple tries. It’s a decent ending to the game, and the narrative wraps up with a quite good set of twists, but you can’t help thinking that this is a game full of great stuff that fails because its core mechanic is bad. Spoilers within.

I start this one off with a quick ambush secondary mission since it’s like three feet away from me. It goes pretty simply and quickly. From there, it’s back to the main missions. The next step is a convoy  to the next attack site. Okay fun –mines that I can drop behind my car make this quite easy. When I get to the end, Ophelia CS arrives on an airship. Riggs and Ophelia trade some barbs, and then Ophelia reveals that the demons have their own time travelers that they sent to learn the titan’s secrets. Riggs laughs that they probably went to fight his dad, to which Ophelia replies that Riggs’s dad just went along for the ride. She then runs off. It’s interesting track laying here.

When I get control back, I do a nearby car-rack mission, which again is easy with my homing missile launcher. I head to the next mission spot to a nice sing-song voiceover of the thing that possessed Ophelia telling how she drowned. Nice touch.

I start the mission to see the team CS get to Sea of Black Tears (which Magnus comments in more of a lake).  Lita is  scared because she’s not sure what the time-travel means,  but Riggs insists on going forward. He walks off-camera, and Lita praises Riggs’s courage and dedication, and begins to wonder what it might mean for the two of them to be closer, when she finds Riggs has fallen asleep. We see his dreams of running in a field with Ophelia in a romance scene to Scorpian’s Holiday (a quite rad choice).  He notices his necklace back on Ophelia in the dream, and that wakes him up, just in time for the next battle.

This is a rough battle. There’s a bridge in the center with several armies on it and this tower-based force field I have to break down with a whole new weapon I’ve never used before. There’s actually a whole bunch of armies in this battle I’ve never seen before. You have to claim all the geysers on your side, generate a huge army, slog your way to the force field, use the new vehicle to blow up the towers, slog to the end. I do terribly once and restart, and then I figure it out and get it. Best part: a fuckin’ Dethklok song — I knew it as soon as it started, and it’s so fucking metal my ears bleed AWESOMELY.

The post-battle has Riggs  standing over Ophelia CS.  As they verbally spar, Ophelia reveals Doviculus is not the emperor.  Eddie admits that he thought Dov. was, and that Dov. came back when his father went to Earth. Ophelia laughs, reveals that the emperor is still in the future, and flies away. The CS changes to show Lita heading to the cathedral after Ophelia for vengeance, but then losing the stomach for it. Riggs tells her she’s a leader like Lars was, and she can’t be ruled by vengeance forever. He decides to go up there himself, to clean up a mess.

More CS, so I’m clearly near the end, but it’s all appropriate. Riggs and Ophelia face off and spar, but Dov. appears before they fight, reveling in their conflict. Riggs references Secoria, but Dov reveals that Sec. is not Ophelia; Secoria is the emperor that traveled to the future. Whoops.  Riggs protests that his father must have killed her then,  but Dov. laughs that off and reveals that Riggs is in fact the child of Secoria and his father. It’s a nice tie-up; that explains Riggs’s demon form.  He goes on to say Riggs was sent back to give secrets of ages to demons. As Riggs absorbs this, Dov kills Ophelia by ripping out her heart. She disintegrates into blackness in Riggs’s arms. Dov. then pulls out guitar and turns the whole temple into a huge, final-boss-style monster.

I get control back for a final stage battle, which I guess I’ve finally figured out, since it goes pretty easily. The temple monster has these two tentacles with heads on them, and the key to winning in to have your armies attack the heads until they collapse, and then drive the Deuce down a long corridor to the fallen head and drive clean through it. There are a bunch of new demon units, but I don’t even really notice as I plow through them somewhat effortlessly.

Once that’s done, you drive into the remains of the temple for the final boss fight with Doviculus. It’s a solid enough boss fight. Dov. alternates between being on the ground and off the ground summoning minions from a web of chains.  You hack him when he’s on the ground, and when he’s in the web, you shock him to cut the chain strands as you simultaneously fend off enemies. It’s challenging enough, but I beat it on the first try. It ends with you decapitating Doviculus CS.

Riggs then CS goes on to remove the hearts from Dov’s chest, but Ophelia’s black heart disintegrates in his hands. The tower collapses and Riggs ends up in the black lake. He dives down and finds the old Ophelia lying still on a slab of stone. He puts his fang necklace on her and begins to carry her out of the lake. He pushes her out, but is then caught by the tentacles and is dragged down. Ophelia (now awake) then reaches down and pulls him out. They kiss on the shore and we CS transition to the stage at Bladehenge.  The Baron makes  a speech about their leader’s heroism, and pulls a curtain to reveal  a statue of Lars. He then praises their current leader, and Lita comes on stage to give a big speech to rally the troops, clearly in charge. Backstage Riggs puts away some cables. Magnus stops to talk to him, but Riggs repeats that he’s a roadie and doesn’t belong on the stage. All the troops sign a book for him, and Riggs tells them that tour is over. They wish Riggs well, but he tells them he’s only going to clean up some last things and then he’ll be right back. He drives off as Ophelia watches him leave. She cries a single tear, a black tear swirling with something unknown as the credit begin to roll.

Good ending to the story. It’s such a shame. Everything about this game is good except the mechanic, but that’s the one battle a game can’t afford to lose.