When was the last time you read a book that ended ‘And they all lived happily ever after’ or ‘and he woke up and it was all a dream’? Endings don’t happen like this anymore. They are a crappy cliche that ties something up. Bad endings ruin any narrative. Films, books and more on topically games.
There are a few tried and tested ways developers seem to like to wrap a game up and all of the methods below should be abolished and anyone that works them into a game severely maimed.
Unnecessary boss fight
Notable Guilty Parties:
Bioshock
Half-Life
Shadowman
After a gripping, clever, twisting plot to a quality new game you are confronted with, oh, a big ol’ monster. Unless it is from the 80’s or Japan a game does not have to have a big boss finale. It’s always a simple blastathon that never contains any atmosphere or intelligence of the game that was laid out before it.
Big bad baddy spam
Notable Guilty Parties:
Tomb Raider Underworld
STALKER
Crysis
Just Cause
“So you think you’re good eh?” The Game says staring at you. “Well handle these! Muhahahaha!!1! Zomg!” Just because I am near the end of a game doesn’t mean you have to slow me down as I wade through a stream of ultra-hard baddies in an attempt to finish it. It’s never fun and always feels like the game is dragging itself out.
Abrupt anti-climax
Notable Guilty Parties:
Fallout 3
XIII
The End. Eh? What? What’s happening? Nothing seems properly resolved. You feel abandoned like a kitten in a bag on a canal, like an infant in a basket on a church step, like Mcully kulken at Christmas, like..well you get it. The game just decides it’s done. No real dramatic climax, no real resolution of plot just “Fin”.
Cutting off for a sequel
Notable Guilty Parties:
Halo 2
Crysis
A story has a beginning, a middle and an end. You can not release something with just a beginning and a middle and charge the same amount of money for something with all three pre-requisites. Don’t release Game 1 if Game 1 is just a platform for Game 2: The Reckoning, Game 3: Legacies and Game 4: Origins. Tell a story in one installment, if that story can click into another story feel free release a sequel, otherwise, just do it properly first time around.
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you forgot the “do what you want games” where the ending is generic/doesn’t matter how you played it..
A few more ideas – Multiple Endings (GTA4, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Silent Hill 2, Chrono Trigger), and Sad Endings (Super Metroid, Grim Fandango), Cinematic Climaxes (Jet Force Gemini, FF8, ICO).
where are my capital letters?
I don’t know what’s going on with the capital letters. It’s something I keep meaning to look into but never get round to.
Are multiple, sad, or cinematic endings a bad thing?
*Edit: Fixed*
Im not sure you see this any more, bu ti used to hate sector endings. eg FF7 – at the end of each cd there was a “sector ending” to try and entice you to actually take the disk out and re-insert the next..
those annoyed me due to the fact that if i just played through 1 disk I was gonna play though the next anyway.. not “leave it at that”