Hello.
Despite now being a multibillion galactic credits industry, many games still struggle to actually produce a narrative worth a damn. This still tends to fall mainly within the purview of indie titles such as LIMBO (which you should have bought for £1.76 in the Steam sale, okay?). The trend seems to be slowly inching toward a more thoughtful denoument, but I've personally found that endings are still often lacklustre, frequently mistaking 'cinematic' for 'good' - and, more crucially, missing brilliant ways in which to satisfyingly address larger themes in the game.
This is what this thread is about. Let's examine some game endings, figure out what could have made them better and why, and discuss how the extant offerings disappoint. There are two recent games in particular that I think could have done their endings so much better than they did: Deus Ex HR, and CODMW3. I want to look at the second of these.
How it ended:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNku_cbJJkwHow it should have ended:
Broadly the same, but with one significant difference. The Modern Warfare series has become progressively sillier through its sequels, yet - unlike Treyarch's embarrassingly inept efforts - the main characters have retained enough resonance to mean they still matter to us. Making Soap an 'external' character rather than keeping us in his shoes allowed us to observe his relationship with Price as an extrusion of the one that many gamers had already formulated playing as Soap in the first game, whilst freeing up the scriptwriters to add some direction.
Thus, when Soap dies two-thirds of the way through MW3, we lose one of the main emotional pillars of the game. A decent proportion of that emotion is rechannelled into revenge, but some of it is lost where it should have transferred to Price. Hence why the castle level feels so lightweight. That's in the execution. Either way, Soap joins the not insignificant ranks of the MW dead, and indeed forms the bulk of its emotional weight. The deaths of the US marines, and the last-minute death of Yuri act as the capstone for this death toll. Just Price and Nicolai are left, and it is only Price who really commands the player's attention.
In short, you have a situation where there is only one character left alive who the player really cares about, and a litany of dead that is more dispiriting than anything else. Everyone else has died. That's why, when Price lights his cigar as Makarov swings silently in the hall, the victory feels more pyhrric than meaningful.
So this would be my change to that scene: when it comes to lighting the cigar, the player resumes control. They press X to use the lighter. Price flicks his thumb. It sparks, but doesn't light. They press X again. Still no light. So they try again, and then again. The player keeps trying, in vain, to use the lighter as the screen fades to black.
Bleak? Perhaps. But the last scene is not one of victory. There's no triumph to be had, just some relief that Makarov is finished, and reflection on the weight of the dead. Price's cigar-lighting is too Hollywood for me. Too action-hero. I believe that allowing the player to take control, and actively denying them satisfaction, would have reflected the underlying themes of the game with far more accuracy.
So, that's my ending. What about yours?
Posts
I hate it when a game gives me something to do, but that something is meaningless and has no real choice to it. If there is no choice, skip the user input. With your inserting of pressing X, what if the user does not press X? Is there any meaning to that? Will that show the user something different? Will the game simply wait for the user to press X?
One thing you can do is something like valve did in its cutscenes. Let the player look around freely but not move, and do not prompt the user to do anything, but let the user press x to attempt to light the cigar if they want (with no prompt, the user will discover that x makes me attempt to light, cool). That way the user does not have to input anything, or do anything as you play out your cutscene, but if the user wishes to they may change their perspective or experience.
Fair enough.
@Draygo, the point of making the player do it is that it does serve a purpose. The player would be expecting the action to work. Having it not work makes them question the act, and what it might signify. I'm actually not a big fan of QTE, but they can definitely be used in a way that enhances narrative play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY9NO4GQJRk
Saints Row 3:
Dragon Age 2:
i'm pretty sick of every game throwing them in to make it seem intense
Someone on Something Awful suggested an ending where you choose one of the choices, but later the Boss decides he/she doesn't have to make a choice and does both of them.
Alternatively, you get some of your homies to do the choice you didn't choose because YOU'RE THE BOSS OF A GODDAMN GANG.
Once that's done, the ending is of the Boss executing every Saint whose phone was busy when you called on them.
By which I mean it could have had an ending rather than just cutting to credits.
EVO (and the player) get pissed of that this awesome game doesn't have any kind of ending and decides to make one by shooting the Space Station back into space, disappearing for another 1000 years, and comes back with an army of hyper-evolved animal robots to take over the Earth.
This. A MILLION TIMES THIS.
Also the ending section
What happened:
A. Return to the surface with the little sisters, and live out the rest of your days surrounded by them, ultimately looking up at them all from your death bed.
B. Send all of the splicers to the surface in bathyspheres (???) so they take over the world or something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3nBbo-uyZo
What should have happened:
Ryan built Rapture, and Jack (his genetic son) destroyed it. It's poetic, really.
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That's great. Even though I was happy enough with Bio1's ending, I'd definitely agree that it would have been fitting for Bio 2.
Bioshock 2, however, the good and bad endings are not what your character does, but what another character who looked to you as a father chooses to do with her life based on what she took from watching you.
In the first game my reaction to the bad ending was "Geez, you harvest one Little Sister and suddenly you're Ocean Hitler."
For the second game it was "Shit, I should have been a better Dad and set a better example for her."
Unfortunately the rest of Bioshock 2's story isn't as good as there are lots of missed opportunities, and the father/daughter connection really isn't played up as much as it should have been.
What we got:
What should have happened:
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
The Bionic Commando PS3/Xbox Retail Game Thing
What we got:
What should have happened:
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Oh god, that failed version had me rolling on the floor.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I agree with you though, that is my favorite theory about what the shit the plot means.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
By hiring writers. To actually write something not terrible.
I'd suggest the same thing for Other M, for instance.
As for endings that could have been improved via QTEs, Skyward Sword
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
I like your endings for Castlevania and Bioshock respectively infinitely better then what was in the game. Nice!
YES!
This is what I was expecting the entire game.
Example is pacifist holds bad guy at gunpoint, decides to pull the trigger, but the safety's on and the bad guy runs away.
That's the evil ending, right?
I happen to be a fan of the existing good ending, but agree that the evil ending was a bit much.
I was proud of my stupid little ending, but this is pretty fuckin' good.
Twitter 3DS: 0860 - 3257 - 2516
Well, yeah. I meant that was proposed as the evil ending, right?
Not a general ending, because I can't get behind that as a "good" ending.
It sounds more like that, "I'm going to be the biggest dick in the universe" ending, then just evil. Mostly because there's probably good guys out there who would totally do that.
Steam: pandas_gota_gun
Just add this in: http://thelifestream.net/ffvii-advent-children-complete/3820/on-the-way-to-a-smile-case-of-tifa-revised-translation/
If they had ended the original game like this, I wouldn't have demanded anything else from the Compilation.
That short story pretty much has everything I wanted the original game to end on.
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I had lots of issues with Bioshock's ending, such that anything else would've been better.
Anything that didn't fly in the face of that amazing climax with Andrew Ryan would be better. I don't even care about the specifics, because Bioshock up until that point was amazing and the ending could be sort of lackluster and it would still be great. I just want something that didn't make the game regress.
An easy one that Flippy mentioned in the OP is Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
How it ended:
Another one that's been on my mind for a while is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
How it ended:
Oh, and a pipe dream of mine, Republic Commando.
How it ended:
Okay one more, Planescape: Torment.
How it ended:
Okay wait one more. Alpha Protocl.
How it ended:
No hold on, one more. Fallout 3.
How it ended:
This is the last one I promise. DEFCON.
How it ended:
Edit: Ah, beaten to the punch/
Why I fear the ocean.