Sign in to follow this  
Gormongous

Is It Possible for Long-Form Games to Have Good Endgames?

Recommended Posts

The answer is yes, of course, but I want to hear what people say. This is coming off of a couple of posts in the thread on Banished, which made me think that so few long-form (that is, non-iterative and non-repetitive) games actually get more fun as you get further along in a given session. All strategy games outgrow their own power curves in terms of either difficulty or complexity, becoming rote at best. Most shooters get boring once you've shot a certain number of enemies. Even more exploration-based hybrids like the Assassin's Creed series wear out once you get a good sense for the world they've created for you. Is it just a problem of resources and diminishing returns, that it's impossible to keep up with the levels of discovery and wonder established in a game's first few hours?

 

If so, I think it's a problem closer to solved in some genres. Certainly, RPG elements do have late-game fatigue, but usually out of sheer length than a diminishing number of interesting interactions. In fact, character-building is what drives me to play most RPGs, because I love having more options as a game goes on, although if most of the options turn out to be functionally the same, then I get the same kind of burnout as with a shooter. I also think that the roguelike renaissance has made progress along different lines, not only with shorter-form design but with features that reward the achievements or skills gained from repeat play. I initially thought that I wouldn't be interested in Spelunky, since it has no advancement scheme and a skill ceiling that's probably above me, but the pleasure of developing a certain competency with such an uncompromising design nearly equals the pleasure of watching my clockwork empire tick away in Civilization.

 

So, what do you think? What are the great games that are ruined by a poor endgame? What are possible solutions to them? Do any other genres or games contain such solutions?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Super Metroid and Half-Life 2 "solve" the problem of a boring endgame by basically throwing challenge out the window.  You get de facto cutscenes and a "super gun" in both before coming to a boss battle.

 

I have spent the last week dying repeatedly during the Octodad boss level; the generous failstates in the rest of the game are replaced with one-hit kills.  Do I really want to post about Octodad in the Quitter's Club thread?  I might have to.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Super Metroid and Half-Life 2 "solve" the problem of a boring endgame by basically throwing challenge out the window.  You get de facto cutscenes and a "super gun" in both before coming to a boss battle.

 

I have spent the last week dying repeatedly during the Octodad boss level; the generous failstates in the rest of the game are replaced with one-hit kills.  Do I really want to post about Octodad in the Quitter's Club thread?  I might have to.

 

Interesting, and I hadn't considered those games either! Is throwing challenge out the window a legit solution, though? I mean, I definitely enjoy it more than the old-school design philosophy that a game should be an ever-mounting challenge and that the endgame should be a boss fight that demands you execute all skills and strategies learned in-game to perfection, but is a balls-out power fantasy only less tiresome because it's less tired? These are serious questions, of course.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Weirdly, 2 games I think had excellent endgames were Shadows of the Empire and Goldeneye 007 for N64. Both games encouraged you to play through on each difficulty level and rewarded your mastery by feeding you various cheats that let you break the game in interesting ways.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Huh, it's interesting that so many people are frustrated by the endgame of Octodad. I was impressed by how much it relied on skills I'd learned by playing without being too difficult or seeming like a rehash of earlier stuff.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'll second the notion of having more power being a good endgame. Currently I only have the Metal Gear Solid series and Metal Gear Acid games coming to mind. The former tends to be pretty obnoxious until you get used to the stealth and in turn begin to do it with ease. Although MGS 1, 2, and 4 have final boss fights that kind of throw everything you learned out the window (going for an action game sort of thing), they usually all have one open room right before the final boss that has multiple guards you have to either sneak past, take out, or both. Suddenly it's not so daunting when you get to the point. Snake Eater ends with that great fight with The Boss where you have to use a variety of your stealth manuevers to win.

 

Acid is just turn based card game stuff, but by the end of the game you have some pretty good cards to choose from inevitably, making the game become a cakewalk but also getting to see your new and cool abilities. It's almost like every Metal Gear game initially begins with being a bastard towards you on purpose.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I always especially loved the finale in Wind Waker, with Ganondorf painted as a person hopelessly trapped in the past while the world around him looks towards the future. It was an unexpectedly effective thematic conclusion for that game and probably the best story Nintendo's ever told. (Which, to be honest, is not a very high bar i guess.)

In the context of long-form games, i don't really want endings to be the final gameplay exam, that should be penultimate dungeon or level or whatever. Instead, I want an end to the journey, I want to see that certain tone set that makes you reflect back on the many previous hours you've spent with the game.

The challenge should definitely be mitigated somewhat, because the last thing you want while the game is asking you to be invested in a carefully paced conclusion is to get hung up on a frustrating boss fight.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One solution is to not let the player go on a power trip, keep things balanced throughout the game.  Bad solutions (Oblivion) have done it by scaling all enemies to the player's level.  Good solutions (the Souls games) let players feel a lot more powerful, while continuing to throw increasingly challenging enemies at them.  Since you revisit old areas in those games, you get the satisfaction of crushing things that once killed you, but know that out there somewhere is your next death at the next monster.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One solution is to not let the player go on a power trip, keep things balanced throughout the game.  Bad solutions (Oblivion) have done it by scaling all enemies to the player's level.  Good solutions (the Souls games) let players feel a lot more powerful, while continuing to throw increasingly challenging enemies at them.  Since you revisit old areas in those games, you get the satisfaction of crushing things that once killed you, but know that out there somewhere is your next death at the next monster.

 

That's a good point, bringing up Dark Souls. I haven't gotten anywhere close to that one's endgame, but it certainly sounds like a unique approach. I also wonder if the key to making sure difficulty scales properly throughout the game is designing an ideal playthrough around minimal deaths (or fail-states, really) rather than no deaths. So many games expect a competent player never to fail, which makes the ball-crushing challenge of many final bosses feel all the more painful.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the best endings are definitely the ones that ease off and just let you enjoy the story's wrap-up. Either a game throws an incredibly difficult final challenge at you then completely removes challenge with a cutscene, or the whole final segment of gameplay is practically a slightly interactive cutscene — so there's still a slight element of challenge. The latter works better IMO.

Incidentally, strictly within the scope of 'builder' games, I think that Black & White 2 got that totally down. You could entire cities with curved roads and everything, had to worry about feeding and resources, military defence was a concern, etc.

But there was also the threat of another god or city doing the same, and as the game progressed you would clash. Ultimately one of you had to go down, leading to a satisfying finale and then moving onto a new island/level.

Now I think about it, Banished does seem a lot like a crappy Black & White. ;(

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

For a long time I've thought that what games really lack are 'post-endgames'. Last acts are difficult, and it might be interesting to explore the space after the narrative, especially in hybrid RPG/action/adventure games. It would give the player some time to digest the finale and enjoy the fruits of their labour. I'm going to do something hugely pompous now and quote myself:

 

More than once I’ve finished a great game and felt a little empty. Not because it was deficient in any way or the ending was unsatisfying, but because for all my efforts I don’t get to enjoy the peace I’ve brought about. After hours spent liberating the world, I rarely get to kick back and enjoy it. Having watched the credits I’m invariably returned to the File Select screen and the game forgets I’ve already won. Hyrule is forever in a state of impending doom that I am powerless to affect no matter how many times I thrash Ganon.

Imagine defeating him and riding into town a hero, being offered the key to the city and basking in the glory a little bit. Imagine taking Zelda for a picnic or playing with the kids in Kokiri Forest. Imagine having new ways to enjoy the places I’ve saved. Okami gave me such an opportunity when I returned triumphant to Kamiki Village for the festival. Fireworks exploded and the jubilant music heralded my victory like the end of Return of the Jedi. It was short-lived, of course, for I was only halfway through the game, but it felt so unusual and fulfilling to see the results of my questing and enjoy some kind of respite. Developers invest so much in building these worlds they should explore the possibilities of expanding your experience meaningfully beyond the endgame. I can’t be the only player to feel deflated when all my heroism results only in New Game+.

 

Obviously, this only applies to a certain type of game. It would be interesting to use skills and tools I've obtained in new non-violent contexts after the battle is over. Rebuilding, farming, hunting, I don't know. I've heard that the Last of Us DLC does something like this (eg. repurposing game mechanics in new contexts), though I haven't played it yet.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's a cool idea. I just had a vision of a hypothetic post-credits Deus Ex scene, where the player can go back to Hell's Kitchen and visit the Underworld bar for one last chat and a drink.

 

What you say about building  farming etc/ seems applicable to games like Morrowind. I remember thinking to myself, after finishing the main quest, that building a house and ''settling down'' would be the most appropriate thing to do next... and of course filling it with the loot i'd gathered from my travels. I think that game did have some mods to do that actually. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've always liked the idea of wandering a world after the "end" of the game.  I remember when Fallout 3 was released and many people (myself included) were upset that the game ended rather than letting you back into the world (assuming you chose an ending that would allow this).  One thing I dislike about games that have a big ending is the sort of crash that comes after.  Everything in the game was leading up to the final moment and hopefully it was exciting or entertaining or whatever is appropriate.  But if the game just ends there it feels like coming off some kind of high with no real letdown after.  I like when I can end a game because of my own sense of fulfillment, not because the game told me this was the end.  I also think this could be a good place to put game credits.   Zelda games sort of do this, but I'd prefer a more interactive form.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree with SecretAsianMan completely, and on the first iteration of Fallout 3 (before Broken Steel) it was a giant buzzkill that they just shut the door on the world for you the moment you finish the narrative.  I've had this experience with a lot of single player narrative driven games - generally I avoid finishing most of them, because that feeling of being shut out of the world after you alter it in such a meaningful way is so awful.

 

Lately I've only been playing stuff that gets better with repeated play.  I haven't played anything besides Spelunky or Street Fighter 4 for months now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I am reminded of how when you finish Earthbound, they remove all the enemies so you can go back to everywhere in the world, and there's a ton of different dialogue.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As far as enjoying the world I've rescued like dartmonkey brings up, I like to think that this is representative of human-psychology; the war never ends for the soldier. The illusion of security is forever broken and an alertness is required to maintain peace. One potential addition to this narrative is having a playable child being born to the original protagonist. When this happens in 7 Grand Steps, a demarcation does occur in my mind where I have the residual motives of my ancestor initially, but they become increasingly irrelevant and are replaced with the current character's own motive.

For the question of successful end-games in general, I'm fortunate in that I am not very good at optimization. I kinda suck at games. I end up with challenging end-games that may not actually be the end, but they provide a satisfying excercise that I can continually fail at. The example that comes to mind is Mount & Blade. I am not very good at being the Marshall, so it's exciting everytime and I reach some highs and then we go to war with another faction, they take away my title and I find out that my gains were fragile. I do that over and over again. Chime also has this end-game of a slope I can't entirely climb but that I enjoy banking off of.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I am reminded of how when you finish Earthbound, they remove all the enemies so you can go back to everywhere in the world, and there's a ton of different dialogue.

 

Thanks, I knew there was a classic JRPG that did that, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what it was.  It would be nice if more games did this.  Though given the generally pessimistic view that people have over completion rates, it's probably hard to justify the extra content.  Adding in a few dozen text lines to Earthbound is one thing, but recording another 30-60 minutes of dialogue for a big RPG is probably another. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A lot of roguelikes have excellent endgames, where the challenge really hits the razor's edge. Dungeon Crawl:Stone Soup comes to mind.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the post-endgame is an interesting idea. Fable 2 had this to a limited extent. You made your choice and you lived in the world shaped by that choice. You could go on hanging out with your family and being lauded as a hero and that was that. It also allowed me to exchange stories with friends on what we chose ( the dog obvs) and why.

 

Red Dead Redemption also had a super-cool ending/post-ending in terms of cycling story beats via new lineages.

 

Once Fallout 3 introduced the Broken Steel DLC it had one of my all time favorite end games for a long form RPG. All the DLC combined was probably a whole new game's worth of content. And it also allowed me to further explore the vanilla game subtly changed by various aspects the DLCs brought (ability to craft ammo in the Pitt and water merchants in Broken Steel come to mind)

 

So maybe well-made DLC is a good endgame. Guild Wars 2 is certainly exploring this with their Living World system of free expansions dropped regularly, rather than the traditional WoW-derived endgame of raiding dungeons over and over to get loot.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I definitely agree with the comments in favor of a Half-Life 2 approach, in which the game is simplified and distilled to something like its core essence. Half-Life 2 does this by removing almost all of your abilities, and then giving you one extremely powerful ability, and throwing an enormous amount of enemies at you. Bastion, Sands of Time, and Heart of Darkness all do very similar things. Interestingly, some games that are based on leveling up or upgrading your abilities end up effectively doing the same thing. You hit a point, at 90-95% through the game, where you get so much income/experience that you can max at all your abilities, and at the same time you're fighting so many enemies, that it becomes an entirely different game. Instead of carefully taking on your enemies one by one, conserving your resources, you're forced to throw around the whole of your (enormous) power. Not only is the normal combat rhythm completely redone, but the upgrade/level up rhythm is also dispensed with, boiled down to a single checkmark.

 

I might be alone in saying that I actually usually prefer my games to bar me from the rest of the world when I beat the main storyline. I think it's because, as I've grown older, I've become more interested in completing games than in playing games. I also may have got a bad taste in my mouth after finishing Skyrim, which I felt was one of the most anticlimactic worlds to wander around in after completing the game. Everything is exactly the same, only way too easy, and even though you've saved the world, the only response you get out most NPCs is "Oh, well done. Now don't steal anything or I'll arrest you."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Post-endgames are great, not enough games do it. In both LBA games you could walk around the main town where everybody's celebrating after defeating the bad guy just before the credits start. It's a rewarding ending.

 

As for the end game stuff. I hate endgames which are a boss battle where a completely new mechanic is introduced at the end. It's infuriating.

On a complete different note, there's what Spec Ops did:

no boss battle, no battle at all, just wrapping up the story.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I actually disagree with the people citing Half-Life 2 as a good example of a good end game. Half Life 2's end game is preferable to the more common situation where the developers decide to create a difficulty spike, but I didn't find the ending of Half-Life 2 memorable at all, certainly not compared to other sections of the game.

 

To me the key quality to a good end game is switching up the dynamics of the game. The end game should feel different from the early and mid points of the game. One of the great flaws of Bioshock Infinite is it completely lacked dynamism, and the gameplay felt identical in the early, mid, and late game. You can contrast that with Gone Home where the early game is partly about trying to figure out what the game is about, and the end game is about actively wanting to discover the narrative resolution. I also think a better example than the end game of Half Life 2 is the end game for episode 2 of HL 2. Even though I found it to be the most challenging part of that episode, it was also the most fun I had, and that was because it was a unique challenge.

 

Sometimes switching up the dynamics doesn't work. The end game of Civ feels different from the early and mid game, but not for the better (although I personally find the end game of Civ 5 with both expansions to work pretty well). So sometimes you can design something dynamically lousy, but I think if you create something that forces to player to pivot how she is playing the game, you're on the right track. My example in the discussion about end games for strategy games is Sid Meier's Railroads! In the early to mid game you're focused on the building up your economic engine. In the late game you're more focused on the stock game to buy out your competitors. When to shift from that early to late strategy is a strategically interesting decision, and the gameplay remains enjoyable throughout.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Man, you didn't find the crazy blue gravity gun memorable? I would just sit by those little gravity lifts and toss soldier after soldier into them and watch them ragdoll.

 

I'm interested in the builder endgame, because I agree than no game that I can think of has really done it well. Once you build everything you want to build, and make a big city or conquer all your enemies (Civ and CK2), you are just kind of waiting to win. Maybe if a game could add some sort of even higher element or planning to the game, where instead of just controlling one city you're controlling an entire world... I guess at some point you're just making different games. But there had to be a way to making endgames more interesting. Maybe it's just a matter of giving you more mechanics that are unlocked after you reach a certain population level.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I always kind of wondered in a Spore style approach to a builder game might be novel.  Start at a low, almost atomic level of development (manage this village), and upon reaching a goal state pull the focus up a tier where your former world is now a component (manage this county of villages).  Every time you demonstrate mastery you're pulled higher out of the current minutia and into a more complicated system made up of those previously mastered parts, while still being able to take along and apply the lessons you learned at the earlier stages (manage this state, this country, this planet, this galaxy).  Maybe you even provide incentive to dip back down into the lower levels now and again, both as a pacing mechanism and to create novelty.

 

It'd be a hell of a balancing act to pull it off, mind you.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To me the key quality to a good end game is switching up the dynamics of the game. The end game should feel different from the early and mid points of the game. One of the great flaws of Bioshock Infinite is it completely lacked dynamism, and the gameplay felt identical in the early, mid, and late game.

 

To counterpoint this, I thought BI's problem is that it established a relatively boring routine early (fight from medium/long range) due to your relative fragility, and then never really encouraged you to try something else.  The opportunity for a dynamic change to combat existed, but the game did nothing to empower that.

 

The combat was atrocious to me, until Charge was unlocked.   With Charge, several of the right pieces of gear and a good shotgun, combat suddenly went from being a chore to being a blast.  Combat became interesting once you had the full diversity of weapons and powers available.  Charge also has some powerful synergy with other Vigors, which were fun to discover and learn. Unfortunately it was hard to realize that, as the combat had been mired in routine and boredom for too long.   To be fair, the Vanguard is my favorite class from Mass Effect, and Charge basically turns Booker into a Vanguard. 

 

Which there is probably a good lesson there about how and when to withhold weapons/powers from a player.  Do it too long, and the game seems boring.  Give everything too early, and players will settle into a comfortable combination and are less likely to deviate. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this