Game Design - What Makes an Ending

A few months ago I wrote a post about game design, specifically the relationship between Cost and Reward (Here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/game-design-cost-7856670 ). Picking apart games and figuring out why they're good is one of my hobbies, and with the release of v0.5 so close I thought I'd look at what makes an ending a good ending.

So, lets dive right in. There are a few critical parts to a good ending. First, it should provide some sort of logical conclusion to the events of the game. Second, it should flow from the game mechanics of the game. And third, the player and their actions should matter.

First, what does a logical conclusion mean? It means that the ending actually deals with the content of the whole game. An ending should wrap up story lines, explain details, and provide closure. For an example of a strong ending, look at The Last of Us. The goal is talked about from the beginning, and you succeed by the end. For an example of a bad ending, look at Boarderlands: You spend the whole time searching for the key to the vault, and then suddenly the vault is actually a giant monster. No hints of this before, no stories from other people, just a sudden monster that undoes the entire premise of vault hunters existing.

Next, an ending should flow from the game mechanics. An ending isn't a special unique part of a game, it's just the last part. A strong ending should use the same game mechanics that have been used in the rest of the game, rather than playing by it's own special set of rules. A lot of RPGs do this well: you spend the game fighting turn based battles, and end the game fighting a turn based battle against a powerful bad guy. Portal 1 is another great example, where the boss fight at the end is based around mastering the portal gun. A counter example where an ending didn't flow from it's game mechanics at all is Mass Effect 3. Throughout the game your responses in conversations build up two different values (Renegade and Paragon) which affect what other conversation actions you can take. At the end of the game, this system is disguarded completely, and you are instead handed three choices that you can arbitrarily make, with no influence from your previous actions.

Finally, the player and their choices should matter. This seems kind of obvious, but a lot of times endings are written where the player just doesn't have any input. You either kill the last bad guy, or you stop playing. Video games are by their nature an interactive medium, and depriving the player of agency during the ending is a huge mistake. For an example of what not to do, look at The Last of Us (Again, but on the other side this time). You get to the end, and find out [Spoiler] that getting the cure to the zombie plague will kill the girl you've been taking care of the entire game. You don't get a choice about what to do, the main character fights his way out and you drive off into the sunset. Having the chance to stop the apocolypse is kind of a big deal, and the player should have some sort of input. Maybe they think it's worth the sacrafice, maybe not. Depriving them of choice makes the entire experience feel like a movie, rather than a video game. An example of how to do this well would be Mass Effect 2, which did this far better than it's sequel does. The end of ME2 is a long drawn out infiltration mission, with multiple gunfights and tasks to accomplish. At each step, you make decisions, and those decisions in addition to your actions earlier in the game decides who lives and who dies on your squad. The results are immediate and obvious, and you're in control the entire way.

These are all things I'm keeping in mind for v0.5, which is just about done now and ready for release. Hopefully it will tick all three boxes, and have an ending you like as much as I do.