[EDITED]how would you react to a distopian ending to a game

[Mrkillhappy]

For the original ending you proposed so long as the credit roll and I can figure out that is was a no win scenario all along I wouldn't mind (i.e the kill is done in a cutscene). If the kill was done in gameplay I would be pissed reloading my save and trying again or looking on a faq to see if their is a way to beat him.

As for the second ending I think I could get into a game having a downer ending so long as the game was well written throughout.

 

[ItsNotRudy]

Compare that, to, say, the ending of "Fallout 3", which is as outside of the player's control as the rest of the main quest. Who wasn't p---ed off at the "choice" the player is presented with then? Especially if they have Fawkes with them, whose very presence should make the whole decision moot.

I guess what I'm saying is that an ending, good or bad, should be "earned".

I don't quite understand what you mean? You either die, kill the Brotherhood girl or if you found Fawkes you come out with a win-win.

Now, I didn't play the game when it was first released so I may be wrong here, but I believe that, originally, Fawkes refused to take your place and you just had to die.

Spoiler

With the Broken Steel DLC, Fawkes will not refuse and survive the nuke chamber, extending the main quest now that you have lived.

Wait... SERIOUSLY??!!!

I got that DLC but never bothered to play the main quest until the end with it. Why didn't they just do this with the original damn game??!!!

From the Fallout Wikia:

Spoiler

When the player is faced with the climactic decision at the conclusion of the game, Fawkes politely declines to enter the radioactive room in lieu of the player (even though he is immune to radioactivity), stating that the decision is the player's destiny and not his. However, if the player has the Broken Steel add-on installed, the option to send Fawkes in will appear, allowing the player to opt out of entering themselves or Sentinel Sarah Lyons. When this option is used, he states that although he was going to tell the player that the player's destiny lies in that chamber, he has already altered his own.

See, this is the thing... I prefer not to get my game ending via the wiki. I prefer, y'know, PLAYING THE DAMN GAME. If you hadn't pointed that out, I would never have known.

I discovered it on my own though. I started the franchise with NV and bought the whole FO3 package a bit after. Having Fawkes with me was also pure coincidence.

 

[likalaruku]

I remember being pretty annoyed by the endings of Dungeon Siege 2 (I still have mixed feelings about this game) & one of the two Neverwinter Nights 2 stories (I need to replay that). All of the protagonist's friends died (Sorry if I spoiled that for anyone, but those games have been out for years).

These days I'm very used to wandering into spoilers; I forget almost everything I learn, yet I still know what to expect from the story by the time I get the games. If I know ahead of time that everyone is going to die, I refrain from ever giving a shit about those characters. That's why I didn't care for Telltale's Walking Dead games.

I'm just basically giving the game a f**k you before it can give me one by making me feel like I worked hard for nothing. It's kinda like that episode of South Park where a kid in the juvenile detention center tricks Cartman into sneaking cigarettes up his ass with the promise of freedom only to tell him that he's stuck there until he's 21.

Dungeon Siege 2 really pissed me off after I finally got used to how utterly different it was from the original game. "Congratulations, you've postponed the demise of the world for a few years & all your friends are dead & the beautiful green landscape is brown & bleak."

 

[00slash00]

Actually, I heard Square is making the game specifically so it can be played multiple times, they said it is impossible to view all cut-scenes in one play-through, so that is something to look forward to.

Also, there are quests that can increase the time on the timer and actions that can decrease it, so there is a balance.

Looking forward to the game, hope it is worth the wait.

Also, I too am very grind heavy, but we will have to see the new leveling system.

oh i really hope they dont force you to pay the game several times just to get the ending to the story. i hate when companies do that, it always just feels like a way to artificially extend the length of their game. then again, nier did that, and i loved nier. i guess i wouldnt mind, if they find a way to make each playthrough feel new and interesting. if the only significant change is the final cutscene, theres no reason for me to not just watch them online after beating it once.

i finally played the lightning dlc last night and i really hope it isnt representative of the gameplay for 13-3. having 2 battles that you have to fight over and over again until youre strong enough to win just seemed like a poor design choice and just seemed like a cheap way to lengthen a bit a short dlc.

by the way, id just like to say how nice it is to meet someone else on this site who enjoys the final fantasy 13 series

 

[00slash00]

Well, if the gameplay is fun, then replaying it is not a problem. I heard it is only going to have one ending (besides a clock running out ending I believe) and there is a lot of freedom, so if the game is fun, I will gladly replay it and find all the content.

Truth be told, I didn't like 13 very much, I thought it was a bit of a bore and the narrative wasn't very good. The crystarium was completely pointless, the weapon crafting was silly as all other picked up weapons were useless. Lightning as the protagonist wasn't a good choice because although she is a badass, she is not a compelling hero. Hope complains about Snow causing his moms death, which is stupid because Snow asked someone to take a gun and guard the refugees, why didn't the mom take that job instead of abandoning her son in a warzone? Snow and his "heroes don't need plans" bs got people killed, which left a bad impression. Vanille was okay except her voice was just annoying due to all the overacting (moaning) Fang...I can barely remember much about her. Sazh...is easily one of my favorite characters in the series, his struggles and scenes were beautiful. The combat was pretty annoying when every battle where you paradigm shift, has you pan over to all characters first, wasting time and having most combat commands done by pressing auto-attack. The music, graphics, design and mythology are great, but the games actual story and combat dragged it down

However, I simply adored 13-2, possibly as my 5th favorite Final Fantasy game, I loved every minute of it! Pretty strange, but it improved every single gripe with 13 that I had. The crystarium wasn't bad and no crafting system. Serah and Noel made for a fun duo without being romantic (a breath of fresh air) The story was more straight-forward instead of jumping all over the place. It wasn't harshly linear, with several hours of sidequests. The combat is faster and monster taming kept things interesting. In other words, I loved the game and it made me excited for the sequel!

In other words, despite being disappointed with FF13, 13-2 did what a sequel should do and refine and fix everything from 13, which it did beautifully.

Thats funny, I think I feel the exact opposite you do. I liked Lightning. Sazh was definitely my favorite character too but I thought Lightning was awesome. I always kind of thought of her as a female Cloud. I mean Cloud certainly had a more interesting back story, but they were both badass characters who seemed constantly depressed. I hated hope. He annoyed the crap out of me from beginning to end and I hated that he was the best ravager, so I pretty much had to keep him in my party. Snow was a little obnoxious but I still found him very likeable. The other two characters, I didn't really care about one way or another. I loved the combat. It's been about a year since I played 13, but I don't remember 13-2 combat being that much different, aside from the cinematic events. But I always liked that there was a limit to how high your level could be at certain points. The reason I grind in rpgs is because I don't know how strong the next boss will be, but in 13 it was just like, "Okay, I should be this level." In Final Fantasy games I usually use the same attacks on enemies so I never found auto-attack to be that big a deal, and I always liked how battles depended mainly on setting up the correct paradigms and knowing when to switch. I cared about the story in 13 much more than in 13-2. I never really cared about the plot of 13-2 that much, or the characters. I mainly just played to be ready for 13-3, but I found the story of 13 to be better and the characters to be much more well developed.

I did like that Serah and Noel didn't turn into a romance. I was really worried that they would do a whole stupid romantic triangle thing with Noel, Serah, and Snow and I'm gad that never happened. I kind of liked the linear fashion of 13, it allowed me to focus more on the story and that's what I really pay rpgs for. There were a few parts of 13-2 where I just didn't know where to go or had to stop what I was doing to hunt for wild artifacts and by the time I found the ones i needed to progress, I had kind of forgotten what had been going on in the story. I never cared about Serah or Noel and the ending had no emotional impact on me, even though I know it was probably supposed to. The monster thing was a neat idea but honestly, I pretty much ignored them. I never leveled them up unless I was going in to a big boss fight. The crystarium also confused me for a long time. I had to research it just to figure out how I was supposed to use it. The crystarium in 13 was a litte pointless, since you got the same abilities and stat increases either way, but it did allow you to more or less choose when you would gain certain abilities or stats. All that said, 13-2 did feel more like a Final Fantasy game. Mog and chocobos everywhere certainly helped that, while 13 just felt like a jrpg with no relation to the series (in fact, I think it would have been much better received if it hadn't been associated with Final Fantasy). I always found it very strange that monsters didn;t give you gil in 13 and instead just gave you scraps that you were supposed to sell. It just seemed like an unnecessary step. Also, 13-2 was much less grindy. Even with a level cap, you still had to grind for gil toward the end so you could upgrade your gear and get items to avoid the final boss's cheap insta-kill attack. Final Fantasy 13 took me over 80 hours to finish, compared to 13-2 taking me around 48 hours, including dlc, and a huge chunk of those 80 hours were from farming gil so I could max out specific items.

So yeah, I found the characters and story of 13 a lot more interesting and they constantly motivated me to keep playing and see what happens next, which isn't something I really got from 13-2, until I got toward the end (though once I started to have some idea of what the hell was going on in the story, it did get significantly more interesting). Neither games were bad and I enjoyed them both, but I liked 13 a lot more. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[Silvanus]

I think this depends entirely on the kind of game it is. With the majority of games, where you're fighting against the bad guys, success should at least be achievable-- otherwise every effort you've made feels wasted. In this way, bad endings suit videogames much less than they do books & films, where you're just along for the ride. (I happen to feel that negative endings are all too rare in books & film).



HOWEVER... sometimes, the game justifies it entirely. Silent Hill 2, I got a bad ending, and it fit so damn well with the tone and environment of the game. Very suitable.

 

[00slash00]

Lightning wasn't a bad protagonist by any means, but she was just...bland, she did all the flips, kicks and all that good stuff, but she wasn't very compelling.

As for Snow, I do like him, but his actions did get people killed, which didn't help this character going to save someone.

Hope, honestly, it was the moping that annoyed me, he served to bring everyone's spirits down when they were trying to deal with the situation, when he tells you he fought because it kept his mind off his moms death, that was well done, but then he goes back to moping until he meets Snow again. He becomes actually likable in 13-2.

Vanille and Fang didn't leave too much of an impact. But Sazh? Damn, he was just awesome!

For the combat, I was pissed you didn't get to use that finger click-y thing from the games opening, that looked awesome! But it is never seen again (the things they use in Eden are different) Also, auto attack selects the best possible sequence of actions for the set paradigm, meaning you will only ever need to go into abilities to use a supermove which are obtainable until the last leg of the game! Setting paradigms is fun, but when it mostly consists of mashing the A/X button and occasionally switching paradigms, there wasn't a lot you were doing (Also, main character dying ends the battle and is annoying as hell) Also, some enemies and bosses took forever (Barthandelous in Oerba took half an hour and he sics doom on you like a *****)

For the story, the main cast just wasn't that interesting, I was digging the world and design, Cocoon and Pulse are freaking gorgeous, but then you have charaters like Rosch (whose's death was directly copied from Persona 3) who you are supposed to care about, but has so little screen time that you barely remember his name. Same with that pilot who was with Cid and the Cavalry (Rggdia or something)

Yeah, different strokes for different folks, but I was more interested in what was going on in Final Fantasy 13-2 than 13 (also, battles in that weren't nearly as tedious and long)[/quote]

I would have liked Lightning to have more back story. As I said, i can see a few similarities between her and Cloud. He didn't have much personality and would have been a very bland character too, if he didn't have such an interesting back story and personal connection with the antagonist.

Snow is a character that I always felt was just a normal guy who wanted to do good and desperately wanted to be a hero, but he just didn't know what he was doing. My biggest issue with Snow is that he never changes. After the events of 13, you would expect him to not still let his fists do all the thinking, in 13-2. Honestly, if him and Serah hadn't spent most of their relationship frozen in crystal or in separate timelines, I think they would have broken up a long time ago, hahaha. I can't imagine what they could possibly have in common.

I was so sad that Sazh was barely in 13-2. i hope he plays a bigger part in 13-3 (which is somewhat unlikely, unless they kill off his kid or something). I completely understand the criticism about the combat system but I don't know, I guess it was just never a big deal for me because in all Final Fantasy games I've played, my melee classes would always just use their standard attack most of the time and magic classes would use pretty much the same spell every time (unless it was a boss with a specific weakness or resistance. A bigger issue I have with the combat is that you only control the leader. In tougher fights I would sometimes be yelling at my team mates because I had no control over them and they weren't doing what I wanted. I feel the complaint that you just hit auto-attack and watch your character fight for you is only relevant in the earlier parts of the game though. Maybe I was just playing differently, but towards the middle of the game, I can remember switching paradigms every few seconds. Also, the lengths of battles was actually something I enjoyed. It made me feel like I was really working for my victories and it's something I didn't like about 13-2. I rarely needed to change paradigms much and just used all commandos or com/rav/sen for the majority of the non-boss battles. I was happy to see that the bosses weren't as doom happy in 13-2 though. Barthandelous was ridiculous and I feel like that fight was a lot of luck, but I also felt a big sense of accomplishment once I finally beat him. By far, the toughest fight in the game (at least in the main story).

Hahaha well I think I proved your point, because I don't remember either of the characters you mentioned. Really I'm just not big on time travel. I think a big reason I couldn't get in to the story of 13-2 was that I was just so confused for the majority of the game. I love mysteries but I need to have some idea of what was going on. That's why I liked 13's story. It was pretty much laid out, early on, that this is what they were going to do and the rest of the story was mostly just about them dealing with the situation and was focused more on character development. Whatever the reason, I finished 13 in about a week and 13-2 took me a couple months, despite being about half as long, according to my game time.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I think the best downer endings are ones which are foreshadowed, have the hero win but there life is now shit, or ones where you know for sure the hero won't win because it's a prequel. But downer endings just for the sake of being "so edgy and dark!" or downer endings just to kill a character for forced emotion are terrible. Fallout 3 Pre-DLC is the worst offender in my opinion.

So yeah, unless you can do it really well then don't try it at all. It's a very risk-reward thing having a downer ending.

Now I really, really hope Bioshock Infinite doesn't have another "YOU R DA VILLAIN!" or "HELPFUL CHARACTER IS DA VILLAIN!" ending/big twist, they've done that two times already in System Shock 2 and Bioshock they need to have something new for Infinite.

 

[Squilookle]

So i am trying to write a story to a game, and i came up with an ending to the game where you fight the final boss and you are kicking his ass, and just as you deal the finishing blow, he transforms into something big and crushes you and your party like a bunch of flies.

My question is how would you react to this kind of distopian ending to a game: would you demand your money back, or would you feel that this was a good ending to a game or something else.

please comment as much as possible on this, as it would be interesting to hear from every gamer. Also it would nice to hear how people take distopian endings in general.

captcha: happy rlappy

god damn that thing is sentient, or something


EDIT:after reading the comments, this is what i think will be a be better ending than the lolkill i proposed:

somewhere in the middle of the story, the protagonist and antagonist face off, the antagonist not being at his strongest, because he has not preformed the ritual needed to release the power of the artifact that he stole. the antagonist is naturally overpowered, and sees that should the protagonist not be slowed down, he will not have the time to do so, so he puts a curse on him, that in time will kill the protagonist. he also during this battle tell, that were he to be stopped a much greater evil would befall the world, but no one believes him naturally, after that, he teleports away.

despite the curse, the protagonist presses on. during the last battle he wins just by a thread, and as he does, he succumbs to the curses effects. as the rest of the party emerges from the battle, the greater evil starts invading.

*credit roll*

is this better?

It's a bit better, but the 'greater evil'; is too contrived and boring. What would be better is if you knew you would die and had to kill the antagonist before they do some horrible final deed, and while you do in fact manage to stop them, by this stage the world is so screwed anyway that all you did was stop it getting even worse.

That way you have a silver lining. The world is in near-ruin, most of the cast is dead, etc, but before you died you were able to stop the antagonist going further, and therefore you made a difference. So the jorney you went on had a point to it, and you still get a dystopian ending. Whether you then show whether the world can be rebuilt or not is up to you.

 

[00slash00]

You derped up on the quoting.

There was Lightning being a mother figure to Hope, but that was significantly glanced over. She taught Hope not just to resign to fate (which were good scenes) and he was agreeing, but then suddenly when he is with Snow, he is back to his "Teh only hope for a l'cie is a quick death!!1) which was annoying.

I agree on Sazh, he was the most entertaining and best developed character in the game, but he just wasn't done justice in 13-2. He had his own DLC, but that was a bunch of casino games (the cutscenes are still excellent) I do hope he appears in 13-3 and have a major role.

I didn't mind some battles being long, but when they also have shit like doom and instant kill attacks up their sleeve, it can be annoying because you didn't lose on how you fought, but because how cheaply you died. Switching characters upon death in 13-2 was a good move. I noticed that not being able to manually move characters in fights sucked, because you would think when an enemy is charging a super attack, your party would be smart enough to get out of range.

It is nice to talk about the game without bashing it completely, actually talking about it is quite fun too.

Oops, sorry about that. Let's see if I can manage to not completely fail this time.

Yeah, I have definitely enjoyed being able to talk about games and compare them without it devolving into, "Your opinion is stupid and you're stupid!" Which is sadly somewhat rare around here.

 

[Joccaren]

TBH I'm not entirely a fan of either of your things so far.

The first, as has been said a million times, is a "Rocks Fall, everyone dies" sort of thing. Its like "Yeah, you win, but I don't want you to win so you die and bad guys become 10 times worse". Its like those portions in games where if you die it gives you a game over screen, and when you finally make it the extra 2 meters to the end, you get a cutscene where you're shot and killed. What the fuck was the point of those extra 2 meters?

The second one I'm not so much a fan of thanks to the clichéd artefact and ritual to unleash power. I kinda get that there's not a lot different that can necessarily be done successfully, but it still just reeks of cliché.
The whole greater evil thing I'm fine with, and the artefact thing could work well, so long as its not a magic bullet, deus ex machina or other piece of instant win bullshit, just the way you describe that part sounds incredibly clichéd and meh. Would depend on execution though.

Edit: IMO the best sort of dystopian ending is one that you can see coming, but that you distract the player/reader from so that they don't necessarily notice it. Its there on the edge of your awareness, but it doesn't hit you until the end that this is what's going on.
And it should be caused by the protagonists actions. They stop the main villain, but the extents they had to go to to get there put the world in a kinda shit place.

One classic example is the protagonist starting a massive fight in a major settlement midway through the book. Maybe the capital instead of having the clichéd "Last fight is in capital city" sort of shit I'm kinda sick of seeing. In doing so half the city is destroyed, and thousands of refugees flee.
From here the protagonist continues on their quest to stop the evil guy, however every settlement he visits is short on food and supplies as a constant stream of refugees from the capital have been coming in thanks to what the protagonist did. No-one knows the protagonist was behind it though, and the protagonist is so caught up in trying to stop the bad guy that he, and likely the reader, just passes it off as a byproduct of the bad guy's rule. At the end, a bunch of events like this add up and the protagonist is confronted by the fact that yes, he has stopped the evil guy, but he's also screwed over the country/world in the process. Of course you'll need more things than just ruining the capital city, and directly ruining every city just makes the idea tired, but doing things like having the protagonist provide aid to some city, train its people to be able to fight, give them equipment and free them from some sort of oppression that was keeping them under control, then having that city turn around and become the oppressors after the protagonist leaves, using their new training and weaponry to raid other settlements and trade caravans, and cause everyone else trouble now that they have some power - though they have an agreement with the protagonist to come to his aid to defeat the evil guy, and honour this agreement, but he has no control over them beyond that, and cannot stop their raiding once he realises what they're doing without destroying that village.
Basically, and ends don't justify the means style story. I like them. I don't like things where you're doomed to fail from the start no matter what happens, where obviously stupid decisions are made [If its one that's a risk then W/E, but if its a choice in setting a Mass Murderer out of Prison, giving him a fully automatic rifle and all the ammo he'll need, then getting surprised when he starts killing people... No, that's just stupid], or where it looks like your winning when out of nowhere "LOL ROFLSTOMP, just kidding, you lost!".

 

[Comrade Richard]

I believe I am going to get flak for this but hopefully not, I'm going to compare the endings of two games (Mass Effect 3 and Dead Space 3).

The gist of it is that it really depends on the tone of the game.

The longer explanation is that, things like Mass Effect 3 where things are bleak but there's hope do not benefit from a soul-crushing ending (on top of other nonsensical last minute story elements, IMO) because it makes one's efforts feel absolutely moot - you were supposed to fight hard and win by the skin of your teeth, taking heavy losses, losing people you cared about, but ultimately coming out on top if you put in the extra effort. Many agree this was not the case.

Dead Space 3, the Awakened DLC in particular, has never been hopeful or happy. The universe is bleak, what little humor there is will be black as the void and dry as the desert, even disregarding the space zombies life -sucks- in this universe what with the EarthGov which feels like it's straight out of 1984 and Space Scientology Jihadists. You're a handful of nobodies going against a cosmic force in a last ditch effort to fix everything without being sure that's even possible; this is why Awakened's ending is ultimately fitting (and better than the base game's IMO).

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Isn't that like Final Fantasy 8?

As I understand it the events on that game are stuck in a time loop that eventually will lead to the heroes defeating the evil and breaking free, but the time you play in the game isn't that time.

 

[Dalisclock]

Your original concept sounds like it would probably just make everyone feel frustrated, unless you are a really good writer and could pull it off and make it in keeping with the theme of the game so it feels appropriate.

Your revised sounds better and reminds me of one of my favorite FPS's ever. A lot of people hated the ending to COD4: Modern Warfare because

Spoiler

You manage to save the world from nuclear apocalypse by a hair, but most of your team dies in the process because they were forced into a no win situation trying to escape from the missile silo. You just managed to kill the leader of the bad guys at the very last moment, saving yourself and one other person. You had reinforcements coming to save you. They arrived a few minutes too late to save everyone else.

I thought it was brilliant and very much in keeping with the games theme. Real life is sometimes like that. You did everything you could and things still suck in the end. Apparently a game

Spoiler

involving thousands of people being killed in a nuclear blast(including the PC you were controlling)

was supposed to end with rainbows, sunshine and ponies, at least according to some people.

 

[Auron]

Dying epically at the end of the game if it meant something = awesome and respected move, pretty rare too, Torment does it beautifully, Dragon Age does it well imho.

Dying foolishly for no reason with no consequence = sucks.

 

[ksn0va]

Dystopian ending suggests not just defeat, but failure that goes far beyond a boss battle. It would mean that the world is changing for the worse, and those endings do work in rare cases.

Spec Ops: The Line did something similar

Spec ops is a great example. Even the ending that looked like it was a good ending was actually still a bad ending.