If I were to list some of my favorite books and movies, you might notice a trend regarding their endings, ambiguity. A few of them would have endings so ambiguous that it might seem like the writers hardly tried at all to end their story. In those mediums, it’s a common practice and happens all the time. Questions go unanswered. Goals may or may not have been met. Characters may or may not have died. They often end with loose ends all over the place and without the intention of having a sequel. The viewer or reader is left to make their own conclusions. What about video games? Players don’t often get treated to those types of endings. I’m here to ask why the hell not. Is there a reason that games almost always seem to end with the hero either definitely winning or losing? Why is it that the only time we get an open-ended narrative in a game is when a sequel is all but in development? Can players not handle it? Do players not want it?
Before jumping right into the nitty-gritty of this week’s article, we’ve got to do a little exercise first. Imagine for a moment that there was only one Super Mario game ever created. It doesn’t really matter which one because they all pretty much entail a similar goal of rescuing the princess. For the sake of this article, let’s just use Mario 64. Let’s also say that after nights of white-knuckled platforming, countless hours logged and maybe even a thumb blister or two, you are finally at the end. It’s just you and Bowser getting ready to duke it out over the fate of Princess Peach. Now come along with me as I rewrite the game a bit.
The final battle ensues with both Mario and Bowser taking their fair share of punishment. The castle is crumbling all around them, and fires climb the walls. Just as you land your final stomp on the giant lizard’s head, an explosion rocks the castle and fire fills the screen. Then…darkness. As the picture fades back in, we are shown an aerial view of the smoking rubble that was once Bowser’s lair. The camera slowly zooms in to show a single pair of footsteps in the sand. We are still too far away to see if they belong to man or lizard, and just before the camera brings us in close enough to make that call, the screen fades to black again. The end. Game over. Well what the hell happened? Did Bowser live? Did Mario live? There was only one set of prints in the sand. Does that mean Peach didn’t make it, or maybe Mario was carrying her? This is how it ends?
Ok, back to reality. First, let me be clear that I’m not talking about games with sequels. If it is a game that is part of a series or franchise, this only applies to the last entry, the end of the story. So how would you have felt if Mario had ended that way, and you knew it was the only one you would ever get? Cheated? Satisfied? Ready to punch the screen? There has to be some reason why games generally don’t end this way. Let’s explore what some of those might be.
The first reason I can think of is the simple reason of developers not wanting to cheat gamers out of a rewarding ending. Let’s face it; games are work. You are actually doing something while playing a game. You are participating in the experience which can lend itself to greater immersion in the story than other mediums. Of course this doesn’t always happen, but it can. You aren’t just sitting there passively watching the events unfold; you are making them happen. Another way to look at it is to imagine a God of War movie. In the movie version, Kratos is raging a war against the Olympian Gods, but when you play the game, it feels more like you are battling against them and Kratos is your vessel. So it becomes easy to see why a developer wouldn’t want to give some wishy-washy ending after the player has invested themselves so heavily in a story. The player has conquered, overcome obstacles and completed levels that may have taken every ounce of their gaming skill. It was a task that was completed, and most cultures condition us to expect a reward at the end of completing a task.
The next big investments with games are time and money. I know I’ve brought this factor up before when making comparisons to other mediums, especially film, but it applies just the same here. Games take quite a bit more time to get to the end than a movie – reading speeds vary so we’ll stick with movies for this comparison. While I haven’t actually crunched the numbers, it has been my experience that most action/adventure/FPS games are usually around 8-12 hours long. Given a two hour movie, a game on the short end of that spectrum is still four times longer than a movie. So even if a movie’s ending is crap, let alone ambiguous, the viewer didn’t invest nearly as much of their time as the player did in their game. Again, this may be a reason why game writers feel compelled to deliver an ending that can do nothing but leave the player feeling like they got everything out of the experience. And of course, sixty bucks is a lot of lettuce to throw down on something that you feel like makes you come up with the ending on your own. You paid for a story, obviously you’d like all of it.
So with all these reasonable arguments for why game stories are fine just the way they are, should players even want ambiguity in their games? I say, absolutely. Gamers are growing up, and mature a game doesn’t need to only mean that it has more blood and boobs than a game for kids. It should also mean that the story makes players use their brains for more than twitch reactions and hand-eye coordination. We are growing into adults, and I think it’s about time that we let developers know that we are able to handle a game that doesn’t serve us every little detail on a silver platter. Here’s a couple reasons.
First, cut and dry stories limit the range of narratives to be told. If everything needs to be wrapped up in a neat little bow by the end then writers will most likely skip sub-plots and arcs that add character development. Often times, when they try and shove these elements in, it’s with mixed results.
The more important thing to keep in mind here is that ambiguous doesn’t have to equal unsatisfying. That point can’t be stressed enough. An ending can still be good and rewarding even if it doesn’t completely lay all out all the answers for us. Look at a movie like American Psycho. The ride was so crazy and intense that it painted an extremely detailed picture of the character and the world he inhabits that the viewer can revel in the task of imagining what’s next for Patrick Bateman. (We will not speak of the atrocious direct-to-video sequel since it shares next to nothing in common with the book or the original film other than the title.) Why can’t games give us that same experience?
One of the few games that came close to this is Shadow of the Colossus, and even that cheats a little bit because people assume it exists in the same world as Ico and is perhaps even a prequel. However, I’d argue that even without the tie to Ico, the game ends on a note that doesn’t explain everything and lets the gamer fill in a lot of the blanks while remaining quite satisfying. A game that seemed to try this concept and missed was Condemned: Crimnal Origins. The trouble there was that it seemed to confuse ambiguous with confusing which is also an easy trap for an unskilled writer to fall into. It also ended up getting a sequel that attempted to explain away some of the mystery of the first game. So again, players lost out on a compelling ending.
[Spoilers: The following paragraph will discuss God of War 3. So skip it if you don’t want the ending spoiled.]
God of War 3 is actually a game the ends Kratos’ trilogy and gives some room for players to make some conclusions of their own. After Kratos has slain Zeus and the credits are done rolling, we see the spot where he lay dying is now empty. A trail of blood leads to the edge of a cliff. What did all this mean? Did he finally complete the jump that he intended in the very first game? Did he get up and walk away? Was the impression of the bird he was lying on a phoenix? Will he rise again, or was it a regular bird meant to imply some sort of ascension? We have been told that this was indeed the end to Kratos’ story, and at this point, a direct sequel isn’t presumed. This ending was wholly satisfying and still left some things for the player to decide. This is what gamers deserve to see more of. Of course if this was just a cheap ploy to leave it open for a sequel, then shame on the writers.
[Spoilers ended.]
Developers, I understand that players want to feel like they accomplished something at the end of a game, and the reality is that they should feel accomplished in having completed the game regardless of what the story does. Obviously, don’t cheat us out of anything at the end, but we don’t need a happy ending, and we don’t need all the answers. Some players may want them, but we don’t need them. Coddling us with the most elementary of story arcs is getting boring. A story can still be great without showing its whole hand. We’re a creative audience, give us the chance to let our imaginations run free with the universe we just inhabited. Just give us a great experience in getting there. That’s what we really crave.