Conker's Bad Fur Day/Tear Jerker
- Conker's Bad Fur Day is basically the "Mrs. Doubtfire" of games. Sure, it's tasteless, but it was so silly, comical and innocent all the way through, and then, the Sudden Downer Ending hits the player unexpectedly in the face. The protagonist has the opportunity to save a life, but instead performs a macho act that gets him crowned king, only to regret it immensely.
- You're not kidding. Just having to witness Berri shot to death, and her heavy breathing as she succumbs to the wounds before the final battle... I had to pause and cry in my pillow for a good 10 minutes before I resumed.
- To twist the knife in even further, Conker even blows his chance to revive Berri when he has it. He realizes this mistake just after the programmers have left, and tries in vain to get them back. Truly a morbidly cruel ending.
- What really hammers the downer ending and feelings of sadness in your face is Conker's last few lines before the credits about not knowing what you have until it's gone, and the music that plays after said scene during the credits; you'll probably find it very hard to find a game with humor like Conker's Bad Fur Days that uses such a sad track in an actual serious moment rather than a part parodying another thing's sad moments. Really, the end credits theme is a pretty powerful track that just adds to the feeling of sadness in Conker's Bad Fur Days ending.
- Despite the sorrow, I can't help but feel that this game was made in order to teach us a lesson. If Conker did take the chance, the game wouldn't work as a parable. The developers wanted us to learn a lesson from Conker's final words. "The grass is greener. But you don't know what you have until it's gone."
- What really hammers the downer ending and feelings of sadness in your face is Conker's last few lines before the credits about not knowing what you have until it's gone, and the music that plays after said scene during the credits; you'll probably find it very hard to find a game with humor like Conker's Bad Fur Days that uses such a sad track in an actual serious moment rather than a part parodying another thing's sad moments. Really, the end credits theme is a pretty powerful track that just adds to the feeling of sadness in Conker's Bad Fur Days ending.
- The ending they scrapped was even worse: originally, they had planned an ending where Conker goes up to a mirror in the Pub from the game's bathroom, starts sobbing due to both Berri's death and his unhappy situation of being king of a land he doesn't care about surrounded by people he doesn't like, and then he pulls out a gun and points it to his head; the screen would go blank and only a gunshot would be heard, implying that Conker committed suicide. This ending was changed due to the fact that Rare and Chris Seavor wanted to be able to make a sequel to the game and scrapped this ending because it didn't leave room for one. Granted, the ending they did choose is still depressing, but nowhere near the level of the scrapped part of the first downer ending.
- A very, VERY sad thought with regards to the ending is that, when Microsoft took over Rare, they forced Rare to stop working on a game called Conker's Other Bad Day which was going to be a sequel to Conker's Bad Fur Day. That alone is sad enough, but think about this... Had the developers at Rare known that Conker's sequel was going to be cancelled before finishing the first game, it's entirely possible they might have gone with Conker's suicide ending. For the record though, even if they had made the sequel when they'd planned to, it would have ended in a bittersweet manner as well... Poor Conker's biggest adventures don't seem to end well for him.
- To twist the knife in even further, Conker even blows his chance to revive Berri when he has it. He realizes this mistake just after the programmers have left, and tries in vain to get them back. Truly a morbidly cruel ending.
- You're not kidding. Just having to witness Berri shot to death, and her heavy breathing as she succumbs to the wounds before the final battle... I had to pause and cry in my pillow for a good 10 minutes before I resumed.
- Conker's final monologue.
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Conker: "So there I am. King. King of all the land. And who’d have thought that? Not me. I guess you know who these guys are now. I certainly do. I don’t want to know them. And, yep, I may be king and have all the money in the world, and all the land, and all that stuff, but, you know, I don’t really think I want it. I just wanna go home, with Berri, and... I don’t know... have a bottle of beer. Hmm. It’s not gonna happen. It’s true what they say. The grass is always greener, and you don’t really know what it is you have until it’s gone. Gone. Gone...." |
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- While not totally tear-inducing, this troper did feel pretty depressed hearing the Sergeant's speech during the It's War chapter, which pretty much describes how tragic war is, and how romantic politics makes it out to be. Hell, the whole chapter can be depressing when you see an army of innocent soldiers being massacred in a matter of seconds, and it gets worse when you find out that said battle/massacre had been raging for the last 10 hours with the squirrel soldiers pinned down on the beach. Who actually had the worse day? Conker OR them?
- Not really much of a Tear Jerker, but just the fact that we might never get to see a true sequel regarding Conker's resolution to his depressing dilemma (unless you count the fan fictions, which I find some are kinda true, but abandoned).
- Something that people somewhat overlook is that the game's events are technically told in a flashback sort of way, since we start out seeing Conker crowned as king and surrounded by those he met on his adventures (that he doesn't like). The game lives up to the name, from Downer Beginning to Downer Ending.