Closure... (A Rant at 2:10 AM)

[KaynSlamdyke]

I'm typing this because I can not sleep. My brain has got the remnants of plot in its brain and it can't focus on getting any nocturnal activity until the threads iron themselves out. Which won't happen, because the plots are related to video games.

((It's also because my wisdom teeth were removed and I still can't get used to the wierd feeling my tongue has when it goes over the stitches. But let's run with this...))

Despite calling myself a gamer, I don't actually play many games any more, prefering to read about them (in mags like Edge), read the theory about them (to wit, my copy of Designing Virtual Worlds by Bartle arrived in the mail on Friday), and hear what informed people have to say about it (like, my friends, Yahtzee and of course, you lot).

So when I DO play a game, it's a rare thing I complete it. Which is why I'm feeling a little down. The last three games I completed (over the last six months) have not exactly ended... oh the credits rolled, and I've been told the game's over by being dumped back to the main menu but... well...

Okay. The three games are, in order, Portal, Beyond Good and Evil and Assassins Creed (the latter came with the 360 I bought last week. Go me, I'm finally next gen compatible).

Spoiler

Now Portal doesn't exactly give any closure whatsoever. In fact, it doesn't even tell me who I am. It's like playing Myst all over again, only without the joy of the sequels that follow it to clear up the plot. Oh I know Episode 3's going to clear up those plot holes and tell me exactly what Apeture Science is and give Gordon a portal gun, but stuff that. I don't actually like Half Life, I've not played the other episodes, I bought Portal over Steam because I didn't want to pay for more Half Life or yet-another-multiplayer-fps (which, actually, I'll be buying eventually since I've seen how much fun it is... but not Half Life... not going to happen). And I've heard whispers of Portal II... but would it have been so bad to have been told everything in game? Do I really have to sift through promotion sites and forums to understand what the hell just happened?

Okay. Beyond Good and Evil. The game is perfect in every way. Except for some plot holes, but by and large everything's explained. And then, shock horror, After Credits Screens. Great. Now I'm next in line demanding UbiSoft, third member of the Western Triforce of video gaming monopolies gives me a sequel to give me more of a world to play in and finally defeat the DomZ once and for all and get them out of Double H and Pey'j

Speaking of UbiSoft... Assassins Creed. It just... ended. This is a game that, as I mentioned above, I only got last week, and only opened the shrink wrap for on Thursday because I was getting a tiny bit bored of Burnout Paradise (I'll be going back now... can't stand the idea of putting Mass Effect in). So final boss done, Desmond comes out of the Animus and... he's left behind in the lab with Eagle Sight (yes, I've seen the credits roll). And yay... guess what... I'm waiting for a sequel. One that's going to take more time to arrive than the other two.

Now it could just be my dumb luck thats given me three games with no clear definitive ending whatsoever, but I'm noticing it in everything I do now - I just finished watching the end of the Pirates of the Caribean trilogy since I heard the third one sucked and have been putting off watching the DVD for ages, and still THAT wants a sequel. And lets not get started on the half finished projects I've got at work that I've passed on to my boss, and have had passed onto clients, and now have hanging over me like a Sword of Damocles because the clients have miraculously forgotten about wanting them finished...

Am I going mad, or does everyone seem alergic to closure in storytelling nowadays? Lets be fair here, sequels just for the benefit of telling us what happened to X, Y, and Z when you left them behind in the last story aren't fun... sequels should build on the characters already introduced, which explains why Indiana Jones and James Bond are such strong lines - you can name the recurring villains and characters on two hands at the most in each (bar the title characters). And they're stronger for it because they manage to be fun and new and maintain the worlds and characters we love without having to dangle plot over the audience's head like some misshapen carrot. Sure, an overiding plot is fine, but it doesn't need over a year of foreshadowing - particularily foreshadowing that may NEVER materialise and will be left to the realms of fanfiction.

What happened to the good old days of plots that ended with no holes demanding they be filled in a sequel? Games like Metal Gear Solid... okay bad example... games like Freelancer... let me try again... erm... Oddworld? Final Fantasy VII?

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Hell

 

[Easykill]

Nice rant, but I don't really know what to say about your topic. Maybe take a Gravol or something? Apparently they can make you drowsy.

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

Well, yeah. I worked out there was no actual point here, other than to get some discussion about closure in video games and thier endings in general going. How can we as consumers allow our entertainment's plot to not actually END? We scream purple fury when they try that shazzle on us like they did with the second Pirates and second Matrix films, but call it 'brilliant' storytelling when they do it in the second Halo game

 

[Easykill]

No, no they did not. That's my biggest gripe with the game, and if Bungie is to beleived, it wasn't even intentional. They had the big cliffhanger ending, then an arbiter mission with no special ending. There was supposed to be another level, but they ran out of time.

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

Or the upcoming Too Human (again, part of a trilogy)

I like that, because last I heard, Too Human was originally planned for the PSOne...
It's like Duke Nukem Forever, only less cool.

While I never thought of Empire Strikes Back in my rants, yeah. It's the same thing. Lucas only gets off from a serious lynching because of two things - a, I was too young to care that Star Wars was anything but a trilogy when I found out about it, and b, Lucas designed it to follow the Hero's Journey as an artistic statement, which is about as strong a defense as paper sheeting to a charging rhino.

Anyway. More digging on google dragged up the effective 'WTF?' page for Assassins Creeds Ending. And my bet is because of the caligraphy and the End of the Mayan Calendar references, poor Desmond is going to have to relive the memories of his Ninja and Mayan Warrior ancestors. Man, the poor guy has a wierd lineage...

'Visions of the Future - 50 Gamerpoints'. May as well have been called 'Buy the Sequel'...

 

[Finnish(ed)]

People are greedy bastards. People are also cowardly little bitches. We want to eat the cake, but we also want to save it in case we want to eat it later.

The people who are making the big movies and games these days, try to give the product the appearance of closure, so it would not be revealed to be incomplete right away, but they also want to leave enough room for endless amounts of sequels. This is because people are afraid of trying something new. This seems to hold true to both gamers and developers. The gamers are more likely to spend their money on a brand they are familiar with and the investors are much more likely to invest their money in a brand that already has a decent track record.

Games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, both of which are made by the same team, are great examples of creativity, artistic vision and originality. It is quite vexing how few and far between these games really are.

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

It's kind of a no-win situation. If the game was excellent, including a satisfying and complete conclusion, you want more and you can't have it because it's done. On the other hand, if they leave some loose ends to which they hope to attach a sequel, then you've got sloppy endings and the possibility that the sequel will never get made. Damned if ya do, damned if ya don't.

Also, for the wisdom teeth, try putting teabags (decaf recommended) into the gaps. The tannins in the tea help the stitches heal, and if you use a flavored teabag like peach or blackcurrant, it will help cover up the nasty taste of the wound.

 

[end_boss]

This isn't a new phenomenon. In fact, you should sometimes feel lucky that you got more than just a "Congratulations." My brother and I played through the night on Rampage for the NES. We had to pull an all-niter to finish it, because you couldn't save your progress, and had to start from the very beginning if you ever stop. Then, when we finally finished the last, repetitive, tedious level, we got "Congratulations" and that was IT. Same with Roger Rabbit. If you hadn't seen the movie, you wouldn't know the story of the game. Then, when you beat Judge Doom, you get "Congratulations," and that's IT. When I finished Super Mario Brothers 2, it ended with a brief sequence to show you finished, then showed Mario sleeping in his bed. I waited and waited, expecting more to happen, but no. I love Alone in the Dark (the first game, on the PC), and it ended with no real closure, and suggesting that your character might die shortly after the game ends. The entire Quest for Glory series from the very beginning leads into the next game, complete with announcing what the next game will be named.

It might even be easier to list the games that actually DO fully wrap everything up. Sometimes, like in the cases of Rampage and Roger Rabbit, it's aggravating. But in cases like Alone in the Dark, Quest for Glory, Portal, etc. etc., just because it doesn't fully close itself up, doesn't mean that there isn't a nice pay-off to what you've just experienced, while at the same time leaving you wanting more. I didn't NEED any more at the end of Portal. The game itself was rewarding enough, and the limited information we received through the course of the game left it shrouded in an interesting and eerie mystique. Quest for Glory often left on cliff-hangers that had me drooling for the next one. The ending to the original Syndicate was a bit of a let-down, but in hindsight, we already knew everything that we needed to know; we needed to take over the world, and in the end, we did that. What more had to be explained?

I do see where you're coming from, though. It would be nice if a game felt secure enough in itself to just knowingly end as a single unit. So, it's not that I really disagree, I just don't think that it has necessarily ruined an ending for me in and of itself, but anything can be done poorly. It's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it certainly isn't new to gaming.