My name is Juan, and I need closure in games.
Specifically, I am referring to the end of a game's plot and the game's end mission itself. The annals of games history are filled with kill-screens and end bosses that are followed by a short or long cut-scene. These endings have fulfilled closure, in the past, but more and more games are ending in vague situations only to leave the door open for sequels.
The problem with games is closure. We have great beginnings (Half Life 2). Witness awesome twists (Bioshock). Create a sense of being in the story (Red Dead Redemption). But I always feel in-satisfied when the ending is just the equivalent of a Back to the Future movie. Sequels can have great closures, movies and video games, Godfather and Half Life 2 ended in satisfactory ways.
The Portal ending was one of the better endings in games circa 2007
Yet, all the video game heavy hitters are in fault; Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto 4), Rocksteady (Batman Arkham Asylum), Kojima Productions (Metal Gear Solid 4), the now defunct Infinity Ward (Modern Warfare 2), Valve (Half Life 2: Episode 2), and Bungie (Halo 2 and 3). The list is endless, and the lack of closure is hampering our medium. Continue on.
Video-games are not the only medium in need of good closures. Books, Movies and TV series all have the fans crave to have a proper ending to their choice of exposition. Most recently, the series of finale of LOST shined a huge light on the missing plot holes.
Die hard fans have started to question the series creators and the lore of the show. The sense of being cheated lingers. But this was not the first time I felt this way, video games have cheated on their closures and needs to stop or they run the risk of pushing away the fans they seek to retain.
Where the hell is Eko, Walt and his father! Racism!
Video games started in a coin operated world, where the business model was to entice players to continue on with their adventure after death. For Americans the only place to play was at the local theater, 7-11 and the arcade.
Especially for the youth living in Redwood City, Malibu Castle was the "mecca" for weekend fun. Besides mini golf, go-karts, water boats and the batting cages, I was pulled tothe large room filled with my favorite arcade machines. Street Fighter 2 and it's successors, to the fabulous multiplayer beat-em ups of X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons and the gun gallery of Virtual Cop and House of the Dead – I spent hours on hours of multiple summers.
And, unless I had a co-worker to ) open the cabinet and unleash all the possible credits (yes I worked at Malibu), I hardly ever beat any arcade games. It is only the distribution of classic arcades games via XBOX Live, PSN and MAME where their endings have become known. Game endings have not much evolved from the arcade hey-day; 1942 ends with a gigantic boss battle, after defeating Magneto the X-Men a replays on a harder difficulty, Street Fighter 2 reveals some story of their characters, and the House of Dead with an annoying boss battle.
Why does House of the Dead feel the same as Resident Evil 5? We are introduced to the issue, mad scientists create a virus causing the undead to have an appetite for human flesh and death with the player traversing through the world.
With rinse and repeat bosses, and the whole "shoot the creature in its highlighted weak point" is featured in both games! The feeling of wasted summer hours in 1998 and 2009 plague me to this day. But the similarities are not the problem the fact that there is no closure that properly sends the game off is.
Nasty Joker after taste
Batman Arkham Asylum falls into the same trap, Rocksteady's magnificent game with a good, as a comic book plot goes, but the ending was ridiculous. Three of the bosses were eerily similar; Bane, Super Mutant and Super Joker. And who cares if it is silly cartoon canon for Joker to use Bane's super power venom, the ending was piss poor.
And why do cheap bosses still exist? Street Fighter 2 with M Bison, its successor Seth in SF 4 continues the trend, along with Dead or Alive 4, Soul Calibur 4 and Virtual Fighter 5. Cheap bosses are not just in fighters, but in todays' popular games; Uncharted 2, God of War 3, Gears of War, Halo 2, Killzone 2, Dead Space and Dante's Inferno.
Killzone 2. Great game. Cheap Boss.
Just like the end of a relationship, good closure is needed to move on to the next one. At the end of Grand Theft Auto 4, after Nico Bellic successfully got his revenge on his would be assassin and the architect of his cousins death, Roman Bellic, I felt a huge letdown. After gunning Dimitri on the Island of Happiness, and all I can think of "it was all a facade all along." I had gotten my revenge, but the fate of Nicco was uncertain.
In a character driven game, Nicco hardly had any character change, each mission felt like a choice between cash or revenge or both. With the final mission over, Nicco was lost but so was I. Nicco was left alone and heartbroken, or so I thought, there just did not seem to be enough feedback from the game that the story had ended. Actually, the game continues and you are left to do whatever you want.
Twenty-six hours of missions (I avoided the side quests and races) and there was no prologue, an open ending without the proper send off. And just like the ending of the European book Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, we endure seven years of a morbid sanatorium only to see the protagonist volunteer for his possible demise in World War 1.
With Nicco, we do not see him off to war or back to his home country to visit his ailing mother, the last image I saw of him was wondering around the Island of Happiness wondering what to do next. I moved onto the next one.
Many video game stories fall into the category of creating a franchise, just as Hollywood does. Sequels are good, but so are movies who only garner one entry into the market. It is the Star Wars franchise that is the bane of video game stories.
Where is my Spin off!
The popular Halo Series is modeled after it. Halo 2's cliffhanger reeks the Empire Strikes Back. Luke, Han and Leia all saw development of their stories within all three movies yet, Master Chief, Cortana and Abriter saw little to none in the Halo series.
Not all sequels are bad, as mentioned earlier, Godfather and Alien are the high bar. But game franchises only clear the low bar of Back to Futures, and Terminators. Why is nailing the end so difficult for video game developers? The ending is the most critical piece of a game, so why leave it half baked?
Now, this is how you do a cliffhanger!
