On Endings

[Emo-Hawk]

Stand by for a fan boy suggestion!
Okay going to say I'm a Devil May Cry fan boy.
Now some of you can slate me all you want but when a game gives me as much joy and happiness and over all entertainment (which is the reason for an entertainment media) I don't care what you think =3
Now with that out of the way, Devil May Cry 3 in my eyes had a nice ending. Yeah wasn't all flashy like you expect a lot of games to have, but it summed up the events of the game and left you with a "ooo that's the outfit Dante wears in the first game =3" moment and you finish as you did at the beginning of the game with the phone ringing. Now a sort of common feature in a lot of texts (City of God and La Haine being a good film reference)

Now I will admit that some games have a better ending but there are a lot more disappointing endings out there such as MW2 being a prime example!

But yeah even "secret" ending that appears if you kill enough enemies in the credits, has a good feel to it as if you've played the first game you'll understand. If not it makes you want to see what happens.

 

[RedBeta22]

Singularity FTW!!! Buy it! Play Multiplayer! Its awesome. I love you Yahtzee.

 

[fozzy360]

Yea endings are important to the story, but, in my opinion, the story isn't all that important to the game. Most people play games to have fun and.....play a game. When's the last time you turned on a game and said "Oh my god I can't wait to find out what happened to so and so at the thingy majig?" (I don't think I've ever had such a reason to start playing) Even in games that have amazing stories start to finish, the story is second to the gameplay. I'd much rather have an insanely epic and challengeing final boss fight followed by credits and a game over screen than a nice neat literary ending.

Actually, I do. I go for the campaigns that have a decent or compelling narrative. I'm always open to a new story, and games can be a good source of experiencing one.

Going back to Yahtzee's point, I do agree that game endings just end with annoying abruptness. The game just suddenly stops as if there's another cutscene or another piece of gameplay, but instead we just get the credits roll. I was actually enjoying Mafia II for what it was up until the end, when it just the leaves the player hanging with this half-assed conclusion that manages to bring about nothing. Since the game is all about the narrative, one would think that we would at least get a satisfying end to Vito's tale. Nope. If games and their stories want to be taken more seriosusly, then developers should focus on creating a cohesive and, more importantly, complete story. Once they get over that hump, then we start seeing some real interesting stories.

 

[Karloff]

Weren't there three endings to Mafia II? They cut two of them, IIRC, saying that the test audience (or whoever) only really liked one. Anyone know what the other two were like?

 

[Plurralbles]

did he purposely make his ending shitty

yes.. yes he did.

 

[oranger]

Who the fuck gives away their best work for a multimillion dollar earning project,
while being paid 40 k a year?

Somebody who hopes that penning a really good story will help them make it big. Writers, in general, do not make a lot of money. Writing is a lot like acting: tons of people want to do it, and are willing to work a day job while they try to make it. Most of them will never be able to make a living off of it. The ones who do know that there is a horde of people willing to take their spot if they don't work hard enough to keep it.

Well either they're "working hard to keep their job" and a lot of them are morons or there's an upper limit on what terrible pay will produce. And you can't "make it big" as a game writer, because the industry deliberately attaches little value to it. Its why game writers are so poorly paid in the first place, and thus why game writing is usually really bad.

 

[Starke]

snip

(Excerpt from the article. Naturally.)

Reminds me heavily of Deus Ex's ending(s). Proof that Warren Spector actually did know what the hell he was doing.

Warren Spector didn't write them, did he? I heard he designed the game, and hadn't written it.

Based on interviews. He did, and the rest of his design team needed to drag him away from the keyboard in order to get him to scale down some of the intended set-pieces into something manageable.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Well either they're "working hard to keep their job" and a lot of them are morons or there's an upper limit on what terrible pay will produce. And you can't "make it big" as a game writer, because the industry deliberately attaches little value to it. Its why game writers are so poorly paid in the first place, and thus why game writing is usually really bad.

Fun fact: A lot of history's greatest artists barely made ends meet for most of or the entirety of their lives. Many creators did their best work while they were still struggling to make a name for themselves. To claim that good writing can't come from somebody being paid 40k a year is to ignore objective reality.

 

[Evilsanta]

Well...I do have seen that many games nowadays have kind of crappy endings. Especially Mafia 2 as Yahtze mentioned. I want endings that really feels satisfaying and gives closeure.

 

[mjc0961]

This reminds me of the first time I played Golden Sun. I was having a blast until all of a sudden the credits rolled at what felt like the halfway point of the game. It sets you up like, okay, we're going out to do this thing next, and then all of a sudden CREDITS?! WTF IS THIS?! Man I was pissed off.

Of course by the time I had played it, the second game was already out, and once I found out about that and how stuff carried over I was quite a bit happier, but man was I cheesed off the first time those credits rolled.

 

[oranger]

Well either they're "working hard to keep their job" and a lot of them are morons or there's an upper limit on what terrible pay will produce. And you can't "make it big" as a game writer, because the industry deliberately attaches little value to it. Its why game writers are so poorly paid in the first place, and thus why game writing is usually really bad.

Fun fact: A lot of history's greatest artists barely made ends meet for most of or the entirety of their lives. Many creators did their best work while they were still struggling to make a name for themselves. To claim that good writing can't come from somebody being paid 40k a year is to ignore objective reality.

When I said "you can't make it big..." I meant there is and will be no great game writers until something in the field changes. As it is, a potential Van Gogh level writer will simply have his "paintings" thrown out instead of being passed from gallery to gallery until they achieve acclaim,
because there is no interest in a writer becoming great. That won't line the pockets of the corporations and trends that currently control the industry.
That's objective reality.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

I wholeheartedly agree with the Kane and Lynch ending.

Spoiler

Seriously? The main advesary (aside from Kane and Lynch themselves who are their own worst enemies) just happened to be inside the building where the duo crash your helicopter. He doesn't get a cool speech, only some brief words before his brains are blown out and then the plot it goes off into a tangent where Kane and Lynch must reach a plane before time runs out.

For a story given game complete with hammy foul mouthed long cutscenes, it had the same amount of depth as a Left 4 Dead match. I'm not even talking about "reaching the rescue vehicle," but how enemies appear including the "boss" seemed so random, I thought they were randomly generated. The whole plot and level design direction could've been written with one of those story wheels or plot generator programs.

 

[rock_midget]

It's arguably the same problem that occurs in any medium that involves storytelling (so, all of them, really).

It's been argued in the past that the reason why it's so difficult to come up with a decent ending to any story is because life doesn't have nice, clean cut endings. Cancer doesn't care about whether you've resolved the issues with your parents. You rarely get the guy/girl of your dreams right before you get hit by that bus. From this perspective, the ending of the Godfather trilogy could be argued as the most realistic end to a story ever, but I digress.

A lot of endings are pants because there aren't that many terrific examples in life. Not that this is a decent excuse for a fictional narrative, but it's an excuse nevertheless.

 

[Cabamacadaf]

I hate endings. They make me sad. I actually prefer cliffhangers, because then you know that something else is going to happen afterwards.

 

[foxtrot3100]

For all this talk about endings, I felt like this article didn't have one. You talk about only one game whose ending you liked and cut it off. What? Can you never write more than 2 pages about anything?

Oh well. I'm just QQ

 

[Jandau]

Bonus points for mentioning Singularity's endings. They truly were a pleasant suprise at the end of a decent (but forgettable) romp. The game would likely leak out of my mind in its entirety inside a month as another FPS were it not for the endings.

 

[wonkify]

I heartily agree with this. A proper ending not only adds significantly to the story, but for me actually pulls me along through the entire story behind the game.

I eagerly played Deus Ex and both Mass Effect games because I was so interested in what the ending would turn out to reveal, and all of them were tremendously satisfying.

So much so with Mass Effect that I can not wait for the third installment to wrap up the larger story arc. But each of the first two games had excellent endings of their own as well, not a worthless, "Continued" place marker. Very well done and very satisfying to me.

 

[Falseprophet]

AC2 had a shitty ending that tried to connect the time you spent as Ezio to Desmond and the future. I get that they had to somehow tie everything to Desmond, but how did that shit make any sense and left me pissed off. The game was good but the ending left me staring at the screen for an hour thinking "really, thats how you want to go out?" Seriously though, how is Desmond supposed to solve this problem. How can he and his scientist buddies restore Earths magnetic field or whatever it was? No amount of stabbing Templars in cool ways is going to fix that (unless the universe had a specific stabbing quota that Desmond must meet before it decides not to destroy the planet).

I've played World of Darkness tabletop games for over a decade now, so I guess I'm kind of used to duelling globe-spanning ancient conspiracies that every important historical figure was secretly a member of, even if I still usually find them ridiculous. AC2's duelling conspiracies are no exception, but I was willing to handwave that. It's not a bad framing device for historical stories otherwise separated by centuries. In this case, I'm sure some sort of alien deus ex machina will be involved.

What bothered me more about the ending to AC2 was that I spent 20 hours playing as Ezio, one of my favourite video game characters of the last few years, only for that bait-and-switch ending where Ezio's pushed aside and perennial loser Desmond gets all the attention. I know the game was leading up to that point, but it still annoyed me. Still, clearly Ubisoft understands this, with AC2 getting a direct sequel and all.

 

[Cabamacadaf]

For all this talk about endings, I felt like this article didn't have one. You talk about only one game whose ending you liked and cut it off. What? Can you never write more than 2 pages about anything?

Oh well. I'm just QQ

I think that was the point.

 

[naughtydoggus]

I felt all three of the Jak games for the PS2 had really good endings. Even though it was a trilogy like so many other franchises, each one of them had closure and told it's own story. Naugthydog is pretty good at that.
I'd mention both the Uncharted games too, but I think we're all clear where Yatzee stands with those games.