The Final Boss

[Shamus Young]

The Final Boss

The final showdown in games is usually disappointing, because an ending that satisfies everyone is nearly impossible to create.

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[Tarmon'gaidin]

Well hardly a discussion possible here. Because wether a boss fight is good or not is as you said a matter of oppinion.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I fall pretty firmly into "heroic" myself, I'm all about the Dramatic Final Encounter and I figure that the final boss should be the most impressive and interesting encounter in the entire game. The thing is though, while I'm "heroic" having an end boss that is way to easy (see Yu-Yevon in FFX) it can suck all of the drama out of an encounter as badly as having an overly hard end boss can. It's hard to strike that good balance between Drama and Challenge but I feel that Game Developers should be striving for that more than anything, since it rewards both types of gamer.

One of My "perfect" final bosses would be The Boss from MGS3, who was "hard" but was very much worth beating and Lavos from Chrono Trigger who, while hard, was not too hard if you had already trounced the Black Omen. Hell look at Glados, a challenging but narratively charged "final boss" that felt truly awesome. Bosses that really disapointed me was Liquid Ocelot in MGS4, which to me felt like "Press X to Win" sure it was dramatic, but it wasn't "fun" like fighting Solidus was. Colonel Autumn in Fallout 3 was pathetic and I was more disapointed than anything when he didn't put up a fight, but he was neither challenging or dramatically satisfying.

 

[barryween]

Yeah, I heard (sorry if this is in the article) that the fial boss is usually completed last so It is like that "poorly done last problem on your math homework."

 

[NeedAUserName]

In retrospect, this entire Heroic/Skilled thing is probably why they tacked on the "Epilogue" in Call of Duty Modern Combat.

Although everything you said was true, I feel the need to point something out... Its Modern Warfare

 

[Robyrt]

Difficulty levels to the rescue!

The perfect example of a final boss that caters to both types is God of War. On the normal difficulty setting, you can just wail on the Big Bad repeatedly and watch the cool story bits. On the Very Hard mode, a single missed button press will get you killed. Fun for the whole family!

 

[NeedAUserName]

Although everything you said was true, I feel the need to point something out... Its Modern Warfare

Wow, thank you very muchly for pointing that out. *Sheepishly goes back to edit*

I look too far into most things, its both a gift and a curse.

Edit: Also muchly isn't a word.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Golden Sun 2 last boss: can't be beat.

 

[Veekter]

as long as the boss is at least 30 times my own size then i am satisfied

 

[KaZZaP]

Golden Sun 2 last boss: can't be beat.

Try him on hard mode... and there's a boss MUCH harder then him in the bonus area, crosbone or treasure isle?

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Golden Sun 2 last boss: can't be beat.

Try him on hard mode... and there's a boss MUCH harder then him in the bonus area, crosbone or treasure isle?

I didn't think that one was all that hard.. odd, crossbones I think. And how do you get hard mode, is that after beating the game on normal difficulty?

 

[Lukeje]

Edit: Also muchly isn't a word.

The OED disagrees:

Spoiler: Wall of Text

1. a. Much, exceedingly, greatly.
In later use usually with conscious humour, or for some other deliberate effect.

1621 J. LANE Tritons Trumpet (B.L. MS Reg. 17B. xv) f. 173v, "The Ladie Cantabrigia..Went gravelie dight to entertaine the Dame, They muchlie lov'd, and honor'd in her name." 1663 J. BIRKENHEAD Assembly-man 14 "Commonly 'tis larded with fine new words, as Savingable, Muchly, Christ-Jesusness [etc.]."
1862 A. WARD Artemus Ward his Bk. 195 "They confisticated me too muchly." 1867 in Putnam's Mag. (1868) May 631/2 "The poor Chinamen suffered the most... They wished for terra firma 'muchly'." 1911 ST. C. GRONDONA Collar & Cuffs 69 "A large red fruit, muchly sought after by blacks and emus." 1946 Liberty 1 June 9/1 "The heavily corseted, muchly petticoated ladies who used to swoon all over the pages of Victorian literature." 1976 Let. 22 Apr. in K. Payne Between Ourselves (1983) 330" We love you muchly always." 1988 Pilot Nov. 26/2 "By this time I was muchly aware that most of the instructors just wanted to get me airborne so they could add a little more to their logs."

b. humorous. ta (also thanks) muchly and variants: thank you very much.

1881 M. E. BRADDON Asphodel I. 33 "Thank you muchly. And now my box?" 1922 J. JOYCE Ulysses II. 253 "Respectable girl meet after mass. Tanks awfully muchly." 1929 Butterfly 17 Aug. 5/2 "Thanks muchly mate." 1970 W. SMITH Gold Mine xii. 32 "He eased a five-Rand note out of his wallet and handed it to her. 'Ta muchly.'" 1996 Sugar June 13/2 "Ta muchly Kelly for showing me what a caring individual Gwynnie really is."

2. Chiefly, largely. Obs. rare.

1882 W. MORRIS in J. W. Mackail Life W. Morris (1899) II. 70, "I took this place muchly for the sake of its water-power."

 

[Dev Null]

I'm about 0.75 heroic, 0.25 skilled, just to mess with your nice clean black-and-white bucketing system. Its the story I care about, but the story loses its drama if the skill challenge is too easy just as much as it does if its too hard...

Edit: I should have said if its _obviously_ too easy. As you rightly point out, the appearance of difficulty will do, if its well enough done to be believable.

 

[KaZZaP]

Golden Sun 2 last boss: can't be beat.

Try him on hard mode... and there's a boss MUCH harder then him in the bonus area, crosbone or treasure isle?

I didn't think that one was all that hard.. odd, crossbones I think. And how do you get hard mode, is that after beating the game on normal difficulty?

Ya you need to have a clear save or w/e its called after you beat the game.

 

[Khizan]

I rather like how WoW handled it in the Sartharion fight. You can choose to kill the three drakes before you kill him, or you can take him on with the drakes up. Leaving the drakes up makes the fight much more difficult, but it gives the players and option as to the difficulty level they'd like to tackle.

You could easily have something similiar. Maybe the boss has several lieutenants/magic artifacts/etc elsewhere in the final area. You can hunt them down alone for an easier fight, or you can leave them up and they'll assist him in the final battle and make it harder. Scale the difficulty yourself by deciding how many of the lieutenants/devices/shields/etc you leave up on him. Too hard? Kill another! Too easy? Leave one of them up.

 

[Strafe Mcgee]

I like both types of games. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it

 

[thenumberthirteen]

A Good example of a Drama over challenge boss fight is The Darkness. Where your ultimate enemy is lying on the floor begging for his life and the Darkness is goading you into killing him so it can finally take over your soul. There's no challenge, but for me it really showed how that it is your character that is your real enemy, and it's too late.

 

[RedRingRico]

I think I'm in the "mostly heroic, still likes a bit of a challenge" camp here. I want the final boss to be the climax, so I want them to be hard. On the other hand, I can appreciate the last "strike" being easy if it's a multi-stage boss battle. Overall I want the last battle to be an "experience" that at least feels a step away from the rest of the game.

A lot of CRPGs seem to do quite well with final bosses. You're carried to them by the narrative and you -want- to beat them, therefore engaging the heroic element, and they're either (assuming a non-munchkin player) challenging enough or "epic" enough to make you feel like you've accomplished more than just defeating another enemy in your numbers-based murder simulator of choice.

Bad examples are missing one of the points. For example, they set you up to make you want to pummel the villain's face in, then they either make you kill them with a cutscene power or make them so dreadfully weak that you'd find more challenge and pleasure in beating an innocent bunny rabbit to death with the kitchen sink (Fable 2 comes to mind: I want to bash Lucian's skull in, and having come straight from the battle with the Very Hard Yet Generic Looking Minoboss Thing I'm expecting something epic, but it never comes). Or they simply throw a very hard boss at you, so hard that eventually you think "what's the point?" and look the ending up on Wikipedia.

 

[Valiance]

I don't buy or play games for the story, most of the time, unless I really love the world or franchise or fantasy involved.

I have gone out of my way to find difficult and challenging games because they give me the most satisfaction, but many, many boss fights leave me disappointed either way.

I certainly love being the hero, but it really depends on my mood. Honestly, I wish that Twilight Princess had difficulty settings, that Fallout 3 wasn't incredibly easy, that some actual skill was required to complete Kingdom Hearts II.

Granted, all of these games have optional areas to cater to the crowd looking for challenging combat (cave of ordeals, a few sidequests, that 50-round paradox cup...), but it doesn't really feel the same as beating a game with a challenging boss.

It depends what you call "skilled player," really, because when I think of games I want to play for skill, they involve strategy or reflexes, one of the two. Heroism can involve these too, but it doesn't seem to in most games. Granted, I think it'd be unfair if a boss fight was incredibly difficult, because players would have to be of a certain caliber to complete a game, leaving others who were interested simply unable to do it.

Personally, although I like RTS games and tactical combat games, and I love shooters like Ikaruga, when it comes to boss fights, I want the heroic ordeal, even if it does make me feel mediocre afterwards, because I know I'd feel even worse if it took me 30 tries.

If I'm a "skilled" player, I'd be looking for that type of competitive gameplay the whole time, and I'd easily settle for a boss fight that made me feel like a winner rather than another section of the game that's nearly impossible to complete.