Killing the Demon King is not the end

For most of the game’s life, killing the Demon King did one thing well and everything after it badly. You won, the epilogue played, and then it handed you to the start screen. Your party, the map, the people you knew, your gear and your guild rank all stayed behind in a save you had no reason to open again.

The game is about a world that remembers what you did in it. Ending the run at the moment you did the biggest thing in it was the wrong way round.

A chapter break

Since 11 September, the epilogue is a chapter break. Its last page reads “press to return to the world”, and closing it puts you back where you were standing, in the same save. The King’s throne stays empty: he doesn’t respawn on a revisit, though every other boss still does. New frontiers keep opening and newcomers keep arriving. Even the labels changed: the chronicle no longer calls it “the end”, and the event line no longer says “It is over.”

Everyone hears

The second problem was quieter. The King died and nothing outside the throne room knew. Now every living person in the world hears that he fell, and the companions who were in the room remember seeing it. The world’s own account of itself moves into the past tense, with you named in it.

The people who matter gather

Then the game brings you home, to where the run began, and stands the people you actually spent the run with around you: the whole party first, creatures included, then people with a real history with you. Someone you met and became friends with, or someone who owes you personally. Never anyone you hurt, never the dead. Closest first, six in all, and each of them says their piece before control comes back.

The first version only took you home if somebody gathered. With no party and nobody close, you were left at the door of the King’s seat. Now the trip home comes first, and the gathering, when there is one, follows.

Four endings

Killing him was still the only ending. As of 29 September, there are four, and each is a milestone in the run rather than the end of it.

• Slay him. As before.
• Serve him. Anyone may kneel to his banner, and everyone notices. Kneel and he gives you his last errand, “The Last Banner”: break the faction still holding out against him, alongside his army, by bringing down its head or leaving its seat with nobody to fill it. Change your mind later and he remembers it, and his next move is aimed at your friends.
• Turn him. He can be talked onto your side, like any boss, once he is losing.
• Make peace. Propose peace to the sitting head of every faction that stands against him. If one dies and is replaced, the successor has to agree again. Win them all over and the throne room offers a parley instead of a fight, where you still have to talk him into it.

Whichever comes first is the run’s ending. The epilogue’s last chapter is written for that ending, the world hears about it, the people closest to you gather, and the King stops making moves. Then you go back to the world, because the run always continues.