…not like it?
I was discussing ideas for my game with some of my friends, and when I mentioned some ending ideas, the first thing my friend pointed out was that none of the endings feel like "good" endings – they're all grey at best, and possibly outright downer endings. While that was my full intention, he got me worried that some people might not like it. o.oMy game's story is a deconstruction of a popular RPG storyline. Happy endings obviously don't work well in that context. But I don't know how well the average person can appreciate a well-written deconstruction – some are met with praise (Watchmen), many are disliked (but possibly due to quality) and with some, people don't realize their nature (Final Fantasy VII, for example. Most fans like it because it's "teh coolz," not because it's a brilliant deconstruction of the first 6 FF games).In context, I would basically need for it to end on a bad note to get my message across. I'm utilizing multiple endings to show the possible resolutions to the situation presented throughout the story, and why none of them are particularly good. Hopefully the people who can't appreciate that aspect of my game/story will at least enjoy the ride enough to like the game.The player characters and their actions directly cause the outcome in each ending. Nonetheless, the outcome in any of the endings isn't particularly good, and not quite what they set out to do. It's basically an examination of not only the particular plotline (which has been used in a number of recent RPGs), but as an extension uses that plotline to form a critique of… basically, humanity as a whole. There's a lot of moral grey areas present in the story, and it's almost made to make the player question who exactly was the worse of the two sides.Thanks in advance for any input.
If a heavily story driven game has a downer ending (or multiple endings, all downers), would players
Posted by Vance_Kimiyoshi on July 21, 2010, 12:30 a.m.
Comments
This blog post is 3 forum posts thrown together so, some information overlaps between the paragraphs. Duly ignore that. Thanks.
if it properly evokes emotion, i would personally almost prefer a sad ending since that can be much stronger than some kind of cliche upbeat resolution. case in point:
"oh great, the antagonist is dead and the kingdom has been saved."vs."holy shit did that just kill everybody?"Sounds pretty good to me. Better than those games with distinctly bad or good alternate endings.
Everyone hated in Fallout 3 where your player died at the end.
*highlight to view*If you're going to have multiple endings, maybe make them all downers with the exception of one. And make said ending the most difficult to acquire.good comments there be.
I've given my opinions of this over MSN, but for restatement:
Gray endings are not bad, especially with a proper meaning behind them. For a typical fantasy story, people want to see the fantasy: good triumphs over evil, unquestionably, with rarely a gray area in sight. Setting something in the modern day, however, gives you a bit more hold on things than "at some point in the past, something threatened to blow the earth up, and you're here now so that obviously never happened, here's that story."Take your gray endings and hold them with pride."Black and white sounds like moral segregation, why isn't it, like, red and green? Stop and go?""Because then there'd be brown areas, ranging from 'baby poop' to 'check into a hospital,' and no matter what falling into that range makes you crappy.""Gray it is, then."That's awesome.
I swore to myself a long time ago if I ever directed a movie or wrote a book or something, that I'd just kill the heroes at the end in some anticlimactic way and have the evil guy win. The journey, of course, would be epic, but the ending would be such as to drive my fans to suicide.Generally speaking, people don't like bad endings. It feels like the story doesn't have sufficient closure.
@Obelisk: The hero dying is too played out, that's not in any of the endings. Having a good ending would ruin the entire point of my game's story. ._.;
@Zaron: It's set twenty minutes into the future.@Juju: Even if the ending wraps everything up?