Poll: Persistent Ending or Reverted Ones?

[Qitz]

When it comes to some genres, mainly RPGS, a staple mechanic seems to be reverting the player back to before they defeated the big bad guy. Sometimes they wont and just let you continue on with your story.

Which of these is more enjoyable for you? Does having a persistent increase your enjoyment of the game compared to having everything reverted back to when you didn't save the world? Or does this entirely depend on how the game is set up, having a game continue after the "Happily Ever After" scene not making sense for example.

Personally, I enjoy the persistent endings. After beating the big bad guy I like to then wonder the world afterwords and see my efforts getting their just rewards as well as getting all the praise from the hapless villagers I saved.

 

[boag]

I like the idea of a persistent ending, but I have yet to see it implemented smartly, most of the time the pre ending world and the post ending world are exactly alike, and its kinda hard to feel like youve acomplished anything when the same npcs keep shoveling shit even after you killed the big bad demon and distributed the gold all over the kingdom.

 

[Scrustle]

I don't know. I can see reasons why both is better. A persistent ending sounds the most appealing at first since it puts a definite end to events and allows a narrative to continue on to new things instead of going over the same stuff over and over. But in a way I feel like sometimes if you do that it can take away from the uniqueness of the original story and characters. What I mean is that when you finish the first game in a series you feel triumphant at saving the world from the big evil guy. If you go on to other stories with different antagonists it makes each one seem less and less threatening as more are added. It feels like there's just countless people queuing up to get slaughtered by you, and none really pose any threat. If you keep using the same antagonist it at least makes it feel like this one person is the ultimate evil that is harder to get rid of than it seems. But I guess as time goes on the threat from that one antagonist diminishes too, but at least they don't feel like they are just one of a crowd of people who all have a grudge against you. And it does kind of feel like all your work in the previous game was just all for nothing. Maybe you can get round that problem if you set the games really far apart and with different protagonists, like the Zelda series. To me Ganon always feels like he is a real threat because he only rears his head after long periods of time. Each time he does he's trying to take over a completely different world in a different age, and each age has to produce it's own hero to defeat him.