At the end of the game, when the two moons of Mars are about to collide, to release the Dreamers, you’re given a choice to act or not act. If you choose to act, you can ‘release the payload’ of the rocket you rode into orbit, firing it at the two Moons, apparently blowing them up. The way that the ‘mother’ voice cries out in despair about the Two Dreamers as a result of the explosion lends to the conclusion that they have somehow been destroyed.
If, on the other hand, you choose NOT to release the payload, the two moons crash into each other, their surfaces crack open like eggs, and the two Dreamers are released.
There’s a few logic problems with this ending:
First: Why did the mother voice care if Shaun went up in the rocket or not? Once he’d destroyed the Gaia Engine the Dreamers were already set to be released: all that needed to happen was for the two moons to crash into each other, which was going to happen whether you launched or not. According to the game, the only thing that could prevent this was firing the rocket payload at the moons and blowing them up instead. Thus all the mother voice had to do to ensure release of the dreamers, once the Gaia engine was destroyed, was to make sure Shawn … did nothing. Killing him would have been expedient, but just leaving him stranded on the surface of Mars would have done the trick just as well. So why have him get into the rocket and head into orbit? What purpose did that serve?
Second: HOW DOES A ROCKET PAYLOAD DESTROY TWO DREAMERS? THEY EAT STARS!
I just… I have no idea how this works, from a logic perspective. Everything we’ve learned about the Dreamers from the Secret World tells us that they are unstoppable, inevitable universe ending beings who transcend space and time and who have destroyed the universe several times over already - or at least brought it so close to destruction that a reboot was necessary. All that could be done to delay them - not even stop them, just slow them down - was to imprison them using the Gaia engines. If all it took to kill them was a rocket payload (I’m assuming Nuclear), why didn’t any of the more advanced societies from previous ages just… do that in the first place? Or the second place, or the third place, etc. Why didn’t Samael have Orochi nuke the lot of them? It just doesn’t seem possible – again, THEY EAT STARS! Even if the biggest nuke that mankind could produce could destroy them, eating stars would seem a bit beyond their capabilities. This ending does not seem… possible, given all that we know about the Dreamers.
Anyway. Until the ending, the game was a very enjoyable experience, although I’m still really upset that Funcom chose to release it as a stand alone title instead of (with some story tweaking) releasing it as a major content expansion for the Secret World game that they have been ignoring for over a year. If I hadn’t had a credit balance on my steam account, I would not have purchased this game due to my resentment over the way Funcom has treated its Secret World fandom.