thespyisdead said:
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
First off, it's spelled "dystopian", same root prefix as dys●functional. Second, a dystopia is a society, typically characterized by a prevalence of sadness, misery, oppression, dysfunction and or similar atributes.
Unless your boss battle causes a plot thread leading to the formation of such a society (e.g: the bad guy wins and then takes control of the poor people with a tyrannical iron fist), is not dystopian. Disappointing, ironic, dissonant, frustrating, philosophical, cynical, abrupt, confusing, neutralizing, all possible, but not dystopian, as long as we're using our words with care.
---
Rhetoric aside, I think the context is more important the the mechanics of having the player character and friends getting smacked down. One of the foundations of gaming is the
possibility to lose, but with the exception of certain long-run rouge-likes and other oddities, rarely an
inevitability. People can accept fucking up, but they naturally own it as long as they were participating and the challenge seems plausible. I've never met too many people who really liked 'supposed to lose' fights or 'death in a cutscene' scripted bits in games they play. People weren't big on Aeris dying in FF7 (if anyone calls spoilers on a that I'mma sock 'em) and people did not, generally, like the limited and 'hands off' nature of the ending in Mass Effect 3, for examples.
If you write your players into a 'fuck you' boss battle where they lose, there had better be a good reason for it. If you do so just because it seemed like an interesting way to mess with peoples expectations, they'll pick up on that.
My suggestion would be to do the Ozymandias thing and let you players beat the boss in play, but have that be insufficient to stop what they've set into motion or been doing, if you're married to the idea. Not everyone will love it, but you'll have more people thinking, 'hmm, yeah, I guess some good acts can't undo evil ones' than 'fuck this game and it's stupid on rails ending.'
