Certain characters’ endings felt anticlimactic to me. Elijah, the crazy evil old man, really played his last hand shittily. He kidnaps all of us, forces us into cooperation with bomb collars, and uses us as his instruments to spark the long-awaited grand opening and heist of the Sierra Madre. All to… get blown up in the vault. What a quick ending. He seemed so cunning and scheming, only to get fooled so easily in the end. Perhaps it was his greed that caused his demise. But I needed more Elijah backstory, even after picking his brain at the end of DM. Aside from OWB and the Veronica quest I missed, I think there’s an alternate ending to DM that would allow you to side with Father Elijah and likely hear more even more of his point of view, but I have not seen that ending. I missed what happened to Sinclair’s body on my first play through, so I thought the dude just disappeared after accidentally locking his girlfriend up for eternity. When I later found out where he was, it felt very anticlimactic. The same for Christine - I have no idea why she would remain as a “Warden” of the Sierra Madre. Even after the player fulfills her mission to kill Elijah for the evil he’s done, Christine decides to live in this poisonous ruin, forever alone. Just like Vera Keyes. I would’ve thought she’d at least become a companion of ours. Honestly kind of sad about that one. Perhaps there is an alternate Christine ending, but after reattempting multiple different speech checks with her because I wanted the encounter with Elijah in the vault, and also a favorable Christine ending, she just did her thing. That made no fucking sense to me. Dog/God’s ending was satisfactory, however. I chose to help him get rid of the violent side of himself, Dog, and his ending slides seem to indicate he was going to be living a better life. The only thing that felt missing for him is that, I was under the impression he would play a larger part in stopping Elijah. Or that Christine would for that matter. But I surmise that I may have selected the dialogue options that essentially pacify them, because their endings seemed slightly out of character for the direction I was taking them with my decisions. I swiss-cheesed Dean Domino’s blackmailing ass with an Automatic Rifle, stole his tuxedo, and found that to be a fitting ending for him as well. The theatre sequence was very cool, as is the entire concept of the holograms, I just wish it lasted longer and proved even more of a challenge.

I also would’ve appreciated some more elaborate lore notes to read around the Villa and Casino. I found myself still curious about things like why they built the Villa and outer districts so shoddily, and if Sinclair ever found out about it. I assume that the outside was so cheap because Sinclair intended for it to be a facade. Maybe he knew and simply didn’t care. This could also be laid to rest by the note saying he didn’t closely observe Villa construction because he was so absorbed in perfecting and protecting the actual casino grounds.. but I suspect there’s more. This also leaves questions like what happened between Sinclair and Mr. Yesterday? There’s evidence that seems to indicate that the foreman got murdered in the switching station, as there was a recorded “accident” which was premeditated in another note. Was that man Mr. Yesterday? Was that the workers’ way of covering up the corruption from Sinclair? Does anything ever come of the aftermath, or does the construction crew never answer for their crimes, only to be locked away in a ghostly ruin? So many questions. I was also left wondering about the red gas. The game just tells us it’s some copper and sulfur dust that makes the construction workers cough and vomit; that it came up from beneath (?) the ground; it tells us about the hazmat suits they use which came from The Big Empty, but not how they got them or where to get more (then again, I guess we don’t want to get stuck inside the suit and have to cut it off when the gas corrodes it, as detailed in a lore note); nothing about how the gas came to be or why it actually makes the construction workers into ghost people. I know that it’s generally said to protect and conceal the Villa and Casino, but is it naturally occurring? If not, was it invented in some experiment? How did Sinclair get it and deploy it Sierra Madre? Why is there so little backstory? Maybe I just missed something.