The end

 For now

Having recently sat down to watch the original Total Recall for the umpteenth time, I'm struck again by how fantastic it's score was, how fun it's story is, and what a brilliant note they chose to end on. That ever haunting and ever present '...' just before the end forcing the audience to question the validity of everything they just saw and carry that doubt with them all the way home. Poignant, simple, effective. God a great ending is hard to pull off, isn't it? A real cracker of an ending that you carry with you and chew on. It's often the last and most lasting impression we get of the games we play, which is probably why we put such stock into trying to get them right. Of course, the games industry doesn't always manage to pull it off, but then endings are the bane of many an entertainment medium. I've been mulling over some of the various favourite types of them and I've yet to decide on what might be considered 'The best'.

'Open Ends' would probably be the closet to what Total Recall does; as in presenting an ending where the confines of the narrative are not exactly wrapped up, but left for the viewer to interpret. There is quite the precision play that goes into making sure such endings feel like a resolution without resolving, because otherwise the audience just feels like they got jipped on a non-conclusion. I think one game that performs this quite well, and it set to do so again in the coming future, is Persona 3 with it's rather open ended conclusion that feels almost allegorical in a vacuum. Of course a sequel game exists which rather definitively defines what happens in that moment, but if we remove that from the equation there's an almost ethereal beauty to that moment on the rooftop head-perched in Aegis' lap under the Spring sun. At least I hope they do it justice for the remake, get people thinking in time for that spectacular ending theme.

Of course Role Playing Games tend to bigger fans of 'pick your end' affairs wherein the player drags their world and character towards the inevitable consequences of their actions at break neck speed typically in one final moment of ultimate decision just after the final boss fight. Baldur's Gate 3 features a smattering of different endings that tally up the major plot actions and provides some slight degree of closure and transferrable worth behind all the decision making. Although Baldur's Gate 3's endings are a bit underwhelming thanks to a perplexing design choice to tone them down for fear of 'slowing down the game'. I mean sure, if you're entering the hour mark during the ending cutscene then something needs to be trimmed down, but I don't anyone would have complained about a little more time exploring the various life paths of the heroes we've spent the past fifty hours fighting alongside.

Too many endings can be a problem all of its own though, so I understand the concern. Just look at Metal Gear Solid which is already unfairly judged for having 'bloated' cutscenes (I challenge those same people to cover the level of narrative topics that same franchise does in as entertaining of a fashion) but for me it's when we have endings behind endings that things get ridiculous. Kojima is developing a habit of rolling credits for a game mid way through it's final act, or even half way through the game in the case of Phantom Pain! The result is that the audience is shaken free of all the narrative momentum before the story has reached it's climax which makes those final moments stick a little less powerfully than they overwise should have.

One of my least favourite types of endings is the go-to resource for one of my favourite RPG companies (or rather a company that was once my favourite, not sure how I feel about them now) Bethesda. These are the endings that are dictated to us. You know, when you are sat down and shown projector slides about the aftermath of your journey and where everyone is now and told in great detail how much of an arse you are for blowing up that one little nowhere town full of annoying busybodies who had it coming. A benefit of these types of endings is you can pull back the scope of the viewer to the years and tell of them of the story's consequences over entire generations or across a whole continent. On the otherhand it is a sudden abandonment of all the immersive storytelling up until that exact point in order to go storybook and narration heavy at the last yard. I don't like it.

What I much prefer is the very rare instance where a game allows the player to live their end-state world and persist in the world they've created. This is pretty much never the case in choice based games because the amount of resources it would take to fully flesh out various permutations of the world would be actually insane. And yet Bethesda did do it (albeit retroactively) for the 'Fallout 3: Broken Steel' expansion. As a game is an medium defined by interaction it only makes sense to allow the player the chance to interact with their saved or doomed world states, the way that Fable 3 permits. But making that worthwhile, to a complete state, would probably require the level of insane risk and development effort only a company like Larian would drum up. (God, I'd love to see Bethesda remember their routes and smash out a ending like this for Elder Scrolls 6. Maybe after Todd retires.)

An ending can really make or break an experience, and that's probably the reason why Horror is considered to be one of the weakest overall genres of the last few decades- it's really hard to make a decent horror story finale. Most every Horror game for a long while leaned towards the, in hindsight painfully predictable, trope of 'you were the bad guy all along but forgot that you were!' which is probably influenced by Amnesia, but even Amnesia knew not to keep that snippet as it's final narrative event for how weakly it would be perceived. I think modern horror falls too often into the trap I mentioned early with 'open endings' that forget to resolve anything. Cliffhanger's are a plague upon the genre, dragging out for unnecessary and unsatisfying continuations that drag things far past their 'sell by date'. Just look at Five Nights at Freddy's and tell me you don't sigh everytime a new one gets announced. (At least it's better than Hello Neighbour. Marginally.)

Of course all of these are just some of the more general paths that video games take when it comes to wrapping up their narratives, and most aren't actually born from specific creative choices made during the design process but more necessity out of the tools to hand. With all the work that goes into creating the body of games, the final hurrah rarely gets the reverence that it deserves which can create something of a lopsided impression for those paying attention. I, however, am a champion of the ending, and believe that satisfying conclusions are every bit as important as strong introductions and fulfilling mid-acts. If every game could leave me as fulfilled and complete as the Persona 4 Golden true finale did; we would be having a totally different conversation altogether right now!