jcdenton1723

February 01, 2008 at 1:59am

I say that you could be really anal and say that a conclusion happens when the words "The End" appear on the screen. There have been a couple of movies I've seen that had open endings, "The Book of Shadows: The Blair Witch Project 2" is just one example. The movie's an hour and a half long, and all the good plot points are cramed into the last ten minutes. Well not all the plot points, but there are enough to be annoying when the film ends in the middle of the best part. Now I nominate any of the Grand Theft Auto games of the last two generations for the semi endings they have. Vice City is a great example, when the last mission is completed the final sequence reveals what happens to the major characters in the game, then segues right to more gameplay and mayhem. So, all the hours up to that point just to watch a cutscene. Saint's Row is the exception to the rule, seeing as it has the most final ending imaginable. After all is said and done, I want my games to keep going after the ending either by letting me run free in the game world, or by means of a clear game save allowing me to use all of the skills and loot I gather from the first play through. The ending itself must have some kind of conclusion, whether it be open to a sequel or not. Life without pain has no meaning.

cart00nstrip

February 01, 2008 at 12:56am

Oh! And how 'bout the ending to "Portal"? Did anybody ELSE feel like they had won without really winning anything? I mean, while just about everything about the ending rocked on a level of eleven, it still felt a little post-apocalyptic at best... "Congratulations, you've just become 'King of the World'! What do you have to say for yourself?" "Well, I was KINDA hoping that the world I won would be a little... What's that word? Oh, yeah, 'inhabitable'." ... gt: cart00nstrip

cart00nstrip

February 01, 2008 at 12:47am

There are three games that I know of with "downer" endings that I completely enjoyed: "Prey" - talk about putting a kink in the old "damsel in distress" dynamic... While the ending is a bit uplifting, it's bittersweet at best. Also ended with a bit of ambiguousness. Hope there's a sequel... "Halo 3" - sure you save the world, but at what price? "The Darkness" - the end is satisfying, but I would hardly consider it "happy", nor completely conclusive... Oh, and for the record: While I haven't seen "There Will Be Blood" yet (but I INTEND to, so don't ruin it!), I HAVE seen "No Country For Old Men", and I have to say that the ending really ticked me off. I mean, I was THERE for the whole damned thing, reveling in the macabre glory of it all - until that ending happened! I felt robbed, somehow. NOT because the movie isn't brilliant, but because the movie I felt I had been watching turned out to be something completely different. Had I known going IN to the picture what I knew coming OUT, I probably would've enjoyed myself more. As is almost always the case with the Coens, I'm sure I will enjoy this film much more the SECOND time I see it. You're right tho', BRILLIANT heavy... gt: cart00nstrip

bnaujoks

January 31, 2008 at 4:41pm

That's a tough question to answer, I think, given the overwhelming lack of games that even come close to doing that. Every game that blatantly doesn't wrap everything up is almost guaranteed to have a sequel (or was at least planned with a sequel in mind). Take Assassin's Creed. Without giving anything away to the three people on the planet who haven't played it yet, the ending generated buzz because it was A) unexpected but tied in well with the dtory, and B) abrupt. But a trilogy is in the works (so far as I have heard) so it really doesn't count in this discussion. Same could be said about Mass Effect. And it is a rarity to have the protagonist die at any point in a game's story, especially the end.
Myself, I love movies and books that don't tie everything up all nice and pretty. There's something to be said for allowing the reader's/viewer's imagination to fill in the holes. Perfect example being Cloverfield, which I found to be amazing in part because nothing outside the central storyline is explained, but there are ideas thrown our way. I also love books and movies that kill off main characters, if only because it lessens the predictability.
But could video games pull this off? To some degree, there is a certain expectation that everything is tied off with a bow (including a victorious and very much alive protagonist) when there are no sequels to be had. But in that regard, the same can be said about movies and books. I can't count the number of poor reviews I've read for movies and books, because the people writing the reviews were upset by the loose ends/dead characters. So, I definitely think the "artsy fartsy" endings appeal only to a certain demographic.
I don't think that the amount of effort put into a game has much to do with how somebody will react to an artistic ending. Take an epic fantasy series (of novels). Depending on the author and the length of the books in the series, you can easily invest 20-30 hours in that series, which is comparable to the average length of games nowadays. Therefore, the disappointment level should be relatively close. Yet there are those epics out there that end artistically - either without tying off all the loose ends or with the death of a hero - yet they are still heralded for the amazing story they tell. I'd argue that the same thing could be accomplished in a video game provided that the story was strong enough to justify the ending. You certainly can't take a shallow storyline and expect people to be happy when it doesn't really "end". However, given a deep story with a lot of emotional investment - Mass Effect, for example - an open or downer ending could be pulled off successfully.
There is one game that pulled off something very close this, though it wasn't at the end: Call of Duty 4. Shock and Awe. For those of us that have played it, how many times has that happened to you in a video game? None that I can think of. But it is one of those moments that I tell everybody about; you have to play this game because of this moment. Granted that revenge was paid out gloriously by the end of the game, I think if a developer built an entire storyline that led to that one moment, I think it would turn out brilliantly.
I'd certainly play it.

discopete

January 31, 2008 at 4:37pm

my fave example is killer7. that thing is a lynchian piece of art the whole way through.