I was playing the entire game, the whole time thinking "Please don't let the loyalists be the final villain." Like, it's very cliche' that they turn on you. Anyone else hope they'd stay on your side?
"You crave my toast. My PLEASURE toast."
I don't really hope for much of anything in a video game story's ending. If that sort of thing bothered me I'd have quit playing video games back in the early 90's when getting to the end of a videogame usually meant dumping a few dollars worth of quarters into a machine. It's the journey, not the destination, that is the better part. The ending was bland... so what? Most games' endings are.
"Who built this f#(%!^g police station." -- Leon Kennedy
Unfortunately I saw this coming a mile away and it was one of the biggest let downs of the story. There were a few things they could have done which would have at least made this a better twist to me.
Samuel the boatman should have been in on it and shouldn't have sided with Corvo. I think this would have been better than having him helping us.
I had hoped that there was going to be a way to side with Daud and the assassins and take down the Loyalists and the rest in a bloodbath.
I had also hoped that there was going to be a big twist, with maybe Samuel being the mastermind, or Emily being behind it due to her aspirations to lead... something, anything, other than the rather pedestrian ending.
The game was interesting but I found it more frustrating than enjoyable, although I suspect that says more about my gaming style than anything else. I am intending to go back through and try to do the missions with a little more finesse, as I spent the first run through systematically murdering everyone, even when I didn't need to.
I had also hoped that some form of investigation would be needed to discover who was behind the plots and how to stop them/find them/kill them. But this seemed to be given to us by the Loyalists and made it pretty unnecessary to do any searching of the levels.
I was a bit disappointed by how predictable the story was, too. Frankly, I would've liked to have a story path where the outsider can become your main enemy.
I thought that the whales would have more to do with the plot. Like, I thought that it would turn out that the whales really had great magical powers, and that they were the ones who summoned the rats to the city, to get back at the humans for killing all their friends. Remember, the plague and Sokolov's whale oil-based technologies appeared roughly at the same time, so it could make great sense that the sudden spike in whaling caused the plague. Also, the outsider could've really been the king of the whales, and was just using magic to appear human to people like Korvo. The "Hiram Burrows did it all" ending felt so lacklustre compared to what my imagination was cooking up throughout the game.
Also, how is it that Emily's "big secret" didn't play into the plot somehow? Come on! That could've been the set up for a MUCH better twist than the loyalists simply betraying you.
"Feeling Stupid? I know I am!" - Homer J. Simpson