You know what I like? Video Games. You know what I like even more? Video Games with a good story. You know what I hate? Video Games that end with a bunch of loose ends because there's totally gonna be a sequel, we promise. So today we are talking about closure. Is this the end of the article? No, it is only the beginning.
This is gonna be a hard one,as the lack of closure is not a universal problem.However, it is a problem that plagues today's pop culture. Companies wish to make as much money as possible from their properties , so naturally sequels and inter-medium projects must be prepared. And let's face it, people are just more likely to buy those sequels if you leave some mystique in your original product.
So before I start explaining when it's not okay to close your story let's talk when it is okay not to. All these can be optional with extreme talent and trickery , but it is going to be very hard. First, you need to have the whole thing pre planned. You don't do that and you end up with plot holes and possibly a stupid story. Second, you make sure you can actually produce the sequel. If you can't you mostly hurt your brand, as your viewers wont trust your next product when your last didn't make it far. You are left with a lessened market while we are left with just another poor story. And third, obviously the rest of the product needs to be good. The gameplay needs to be good, the rest of the story needs to be good, the cinematography needs to be good. If you give me a bad product, well there , you gave me a bad product. Why should I trust you again.?
Now this is the one that I will get the least mileage out off because quite a few people have really worked that one well.So I'm just calling it a big challenge rather that a problem. Do not leave your game open ended if your game has choices. Basically it shows that player input is pretty much negligible in the grand scheme of things. You don't do that. The point of having a game with story important choices is to give the player the wheel. Naturally we can't allow the player to do absolutely whatever he was, that is literally impossible. So you need to hide that fact as well as you can. So you can do it like Beyond or do it like Mass Effect( yeah lemme put a Spoiler alert here just so that we are cool, just go to the next paragraph cause I'm gonna spoil endings).If you chose to go full Beyond you can start from the end of the story and ruin the illusion from the get-go, but if you really want to go beyond that you can also go "Hey your choices never mattered anyway so yeah the world goes Terminator 4 regardless".But if you go Mass Effect you rock this shit to it's fullest. Those genius allow you to kill EVERYONE. Including yourself. Mass Effect 2 keeps those choices so well that if you do indeed die, Shepard gets replaced. Basically that sorta proves the three rules I gave in the paragraph above.
Right, now we spoke about how you could go open ended, let's talk why you shouldn't. For starters, let's look at the place that for decades now has avoided closure like Metax running Rogue on Payday. The Comic Industry. Which is ironic as later I am going to use Batman as a positive example for closure.When something runs for so long with an effort to keep the story open to sell more stories, the whole thing gets out of hand.Between Spider-man, Amazing Spider-man, Ultimate Spider-man, Avenging Spider-man,Spider-man 2099 and Super Robot Ninja Cowboy Spider-man , most of which are in the same continuity, you can see how this can be hectic. Newcomers are expected to understand things that happened 20 years ago , and veterans are required to remember things for 20 years ago. Even the huge cross-franchise Events like Secret Invasion involve events from Civil War, and then Secret Wars involves all of those ,and there is another Civil War going on right now and they are all based on each other and it hurts my head. As if that was not enough , this has started leaking to the Cinematic Universe, with Age of Ultron setting up Civil War, Ragnarok and Infinity War. Which also has made the whole thing predictable, as for the Infinity War to happen , soon all of our heroes are going to lose or fall . So what I'm trying to say is keep it closed and simple as , no matter how talented you are, go long enough and the story gets too complicated.
Another problem that derives from ending with "only the beginning" is the fact that you practically admit that you didn't give us the best story you could have.That means you purposely kept the most interesting part of the story away from us and all you gave us was a preview we had to pay for. You know, like Metal Gear Ground Zeroes. You know how much we loved that little controversy.
Besides, closing a story doesn't mean you can't make a sequel out of it. A prime example of it is the Arkham Series(well I told ya). All the stories are self contained even they often include the same characters. Heck, the sequels even take story elements to base their own story, as how Joker gets sick in the second due to the events of the first game. Besides can we really expect that Batman never solved a crime after defeating Joker? No. That's what he does. So making more sequels is possible. But each story finishes and practically all questions are answered, even thought it sometimes involves secret hunting.Not only that, but the sequels go as far as to include previous power-ups that Batman may or may not have collected previously.This only goes awry once with the whole prequel thing, where Batman has inventions he doesn't make until several years later. And a lot of attention is payed on details and continuity, so even with all those sequels the story is accessible and simple to understand.
Once again if done right , not having closure can work if you are talented enough. Perhaps this is a small problem, but it really gets to me whenever I have to deal with 4 years of unanswered question and forced to pay money just to get another incomplete story. That is why I took all this time to write this stupid article .
Now this is the one that I will get the least mileage out off because quite a few people have really worked that one well.So I'm just calling it a big challenge rather that a problem. Do not leave your game open ended if your game has choices. Basically it shows that player input is pretty much negligible in the grand scheme of things. You don't do that. The point of having a game with story important choices is to give the player the wheel. Naturally we can't allow the player to do absolutely whatever he was, that is literally impossible. So you need to hide that fact as well as you can. So you can do it like Beyond or do it like Mass Effect( yeah lemme put a Spoiler alert here just so that we are cool, just go to the next paragraph cause I'm gonna spoil endings).If you chose to go full Beyond you can start from the end of the story and ruin the illusion from the get-go, but if you really want to go beyond that you can also go "Hey your choices never mattered anyway so yeah the world goes Terminator 4 regardless".But if you go Mass Effect you rock this shit to it's fullest. Those genius allow you to kill EVERYONE. Including yourself. Mass Effect 2 keeps those choices so well that if you do indeed die, Shepard gets replaced. Basically that sorta proves the three rules I gave in the paragraph above.
Right, now we spoke about how you could go open ended, let's talk why you shouldn't. For starters, let's look at the place that for decades now has avoided closure like Metax running Rogue on Payday. The Comic Industry. Which is ironic as later I am going to use Batman as a positive example for closure.When something runs for so long with an effort to keep the story open to sell more stories, the whole thing gets out of hand.Between Spider-man, Amazing Spider-man, Ultimate Spider-man, Avenging Spider-man,Spider-man 2099 and Super Robot Ninja Cowboy Spider-man , most of which are in the same continuity, you can see how this can be hectic. Newcomers are expected to understand things that happened 20 years ago , and veterans are required to remember things for 20 years ago. Even the huge cross-franchise Events like Secret Invasion involve events from Civil War, and then Secret Wars involves all of those ,and there is another Civil War going on right now and they are all based on each other and it hurts my head. As if that was not enough , this has started leaking to the Cinematic Universe, with Age of Ultron setting up Civil War, Ragnarok and Infinity War. Which also has made the whole thing predictable, as for the Infinity War to happen , soon all of our heroes are going to lose or fall . So what I'm trying to say is keep it closed and simple as , no matter how talented you are, go long enough and the story gets too complicated.
Another problem that derives from ending with "only the beginning" is the fact that you practically admit that you didn't give us the best story you could have.That means you purposely kept the most interesting part of the story away from us and all you gave us was a preview we had to pay for. You know, like Metal Gear Ground Zeroes. You know how much we loved that little controversy.
Besides, closing a story doesn't mean you can't make a sequel out of it. A prime example of it is the Arkham Series(well I told ya). All the stories are self contained even they often include the same characters. Heck, the sequels even take story elements to base their own story, as how Joker gets sick in the second due to the events of the first game. Besides can we really expect that Batman never solved a crime after defeating Joker? No. That's what he does. So making more sequels is possible. But each story finishes and practically all questions are answered, even thought it sometimes involves secret hunting.Not only that, but the sequels go as far as to include previous power-ups that Batman may or may not have collected previously.This only goes awry once with the whole prequel thing, where Batman has inventions he doesn't make until several years later. And a lot of attention is payed on details and continuity, so even with all those sequels the story is accessible and simple to understand.
Once again if done right , not having closure can work if you are talented enough. Perhaps this is a small problem, but it really gets to me whenever I have to deal with 4 years of unanswered question and forced to pay money just to get another incomplete story. That is why I took all this time to write this stupid article .
