Thread by @BigDamnArtist

Okay video game developers *spins around chair* we need to have a chat about endings. Specifically, why are you so bad them? Like,really, atrociously bad at them. (This thread is mostly about story heavy RPG type games,but it can apply to a lot of thngs).Spoilers for Prey ahead.

I'm gonna make a bold claim here, there is no single moment of your game that is more important than what your audience feels the SECOND the credits start the roll. That is the moment that defines the entire game in your players memory.

You can fuck up moments along the way of your story, you can have slightly weird mechanics, you can have subplots that don't go anywhere if you really want, gamers are VERY VERY VERY good at suspension of disbelief.

If I can look at the pixelated, janky as fuck, unsynced mouth movements of an NPC and STILL care about them as much as I love Garrus, there's no way anyone can say I am not sitting here begging to be allowed to fall into your story head first.

So you can fuck up along the way if you really want, and we'll forgive you, a game's story is generally pretty large, and if you're doing it right the story can be even larger, so there's lot of wiggle room for other ways to make us fall in love with your universe.

So in Prey there's this entire side-quest that exists almost entirely in notes you find scattered around the level that tells the story of this girl and her girlfriend, how they first asked the other out, and a big chunk of thier relationship and the RPG game that they were...

...playing together with some other crew members. Not until the very very end on the side story do you actually interact with an NPC in any meaningful capacity and yet I knew these girls and loved them, and felt sincerely sad when I discovered one of them was killed.

That's an entire bit of world building and character work that someone else could just completely miss, and never interact with. Anyways, that was a bit of a diversion, the point is, there's lots of ways to tell your story during the run of the game.

It's big and long, and there's tons of wiggle room, so the little moments don't means /as much/ as they would in something like a TV show or film. Obviously, you should WANT every moment to hit 100%, but hey, reality doesn't work that way. I get it.

But what absolutely isn't disposable is that last moment, that final bit that wraps up the entire story you've set-up and built up.

So in Prey, you play Morgan a man or woman who has been trapped in a cycle of repeating the same day over and over without realizing it for...

...weeks, months, years? We don't know. They exit the simulation into Talos I a space station overrun by the alien lifeforms they were experimenting on. One of the products of these experiments is Neuromods, devices that let you implant skills and memories...

into your mind instantaenously. The downside, if you ever uninstall them, your mind is wiped back to before you installed them. Hence the situation Morgan was in, their mind was constantly being reset for...? A reason? Presumably.

So during the set-up for the game we meet January a sort of artificial AI that "you" created before you voluntarily went into these experiments. Apparently. It was to activate with a message from your past self catching you up to speed and with a message...

...that you need to destroy the station and yourself to prevent the aliens from reaching and destroying earth. So, okay, oh shit, you go off and start doing that.

But then as your going along you meet ANOTHER artificial AI, also apparently created by past you but this one has instructions from your past self to just bail on the station, hop in an escape pod and gtfo.

So now you're like, kaaaaay, and you keep going, but not quite so sure, and then even later on you finally meet up with your older brother (The de facto antagonist of the game, who has been keeping you from doing what you're trying to do), who has /another/ message from...

your past self saying that you developed a way to kill the Typhon and save the station and the research. So, now, we have this AMAZING set-up for a psychological mystery thriller about who am I, are those messages real,...

... in a universe where I can create an artificial intelligence with my voice, and create a perfect replica of a crew members voice from thier audio logs, how can I trust any of these recordings?

Thus far (And this take us up to like 80% of the way the game) the themes of the game have all been related to "Who am I?", "Am I still the same person as I was before?", and "Who can I trust if I can't even trust myself?", "What are the Typhon and what are they doing here?".

Like it's a FANTASTIC bit of story structure, by the end, you are definitely almost willing to be on board with Alex. He might be money hungry, but he's also trying to save the work they've done AND save Earth... Right?

But then, the game almost /immediately/ throws all of that away. A giant fuck-off Typhon pops out of space and wraps itself around the station and you have to decide whether to blow up the station or implant the device past-you created into the Typhon brain and try to kill it.

Personally I did the latter one, did the quest, which basically at this involved walking from one end of the station to the other almost entirely unimpeded because the giant alien had put the rest of them into a hibernation?

Which I thought was an odd choice considering 5 minutes ago "The Typhon will sense your hostile intensions and try to defend the hivemind." was a bit of dialouge that was muttered.

BUT ANYWAYS. You plant the thing, there's a nice bit of dialogue where the AI that wants you to blow up the station is like "Fine, but you'll have to kill me to do it." Effectively killing yourself.

A nice moment, completely unearned, but a nice moment. But you kill the AI, push the button, the Typhon all blow up, you killed it and saved earth! Credits.

SO. You can see why I was sorta left... shall we say... dissappointed, the moment the credits started to roll? So much wasted potential just sitting there. It feels like they got 75% of the way through the game, ...

...realized they didn't have an ending, or the money ran out and just threw "Video Game Ending #5 on it.". HOWEVER, the best was yet to come. So picture poor BDA sitting there lost and sad and what he had just witnessed watching the credits scroll by....

....desperately hoping for a post-credits scene to fix it all.

However, side-note. post-credits scene's DO NOT COUNT. You'll notice way up there I said the most important moment is what your audience feels the SECOND the credits start to roll. That is the end of your game.

Anything else is bonus.

And yet, there I was waiting, hoping. And there is a post-credits scene. Oh yes. So not to drag this out basically it's a scene where you see the human Alex and AI versions of a bunch of the NPC's you saved from the station in front of you.

And they run through all the different choices you made in the game and judge you.

Did you save X person? Did you do X sentimental side-quest? Did you blow up the station? Etc. AND THEN, it reveals it's actually like 10 years in the future, and that you arn't...

...actually even Morgan at all, you're one of the Typhon they kidnapped and implanted a construct of Morgan's memories into to see if Typhon's could feel empathy and human emotions in an attempt to manufacture a bridge between the two species.

So, not only did the game completely disregard the amazing work it did building up a cool psychological mystery, it then completely disregarded the entire game because none of it actually happened, and it was ALL JUST A DREAM. OH YEAH. *cue extremely annoyed BDA*

Because, and here's the bit that really annoys me right, so throughout the game there are a couple moments throughout the game where January will mention that something isn't quite right about you.

Specifically at one point they mention that you are scanning as a Typhon not a human in the stations scanners. And you keep getting memory flashes with things like "They're lying to you." "Don't believe them" being screamed at you.

So THIS set's up an amazing bit of intrigue in BDA's brain about, ooh, interesting, is there some sort of other cover up going on where because of the repeated exposure to typhon biology in neuromods I've started changing, will I be able to communicate with them?

Is that how I have to fix this, does that become a thing?! And NOPE, all of that work, all of those amazing story and emotional beats during gameplay are an attempt to foreshadow that you are actually Typhon dreaming all of is. Woo-fucking-hoo. Great, thanks guys.

So, I should say before going on, I do really love Prey. The atmophere, the world building, the gameplay, the first...two-thirds of the story is AMAZING, and then it just completely drops the ball in the last act.

So just so we're clear, I'm not /just/ shitting on this game, there is a spectacular amount it does very very right. Okay? Cool.

But, that said, I still left it going "Well, that was a bit of a waste.", and that feeling now tints my memories of the entire game, because I know that all of that amazing lead-up was just leading to...that.

And that is why I personally feel like singular moment as it switches from end of game to credits is so incredible vital. If I go into that moment going HOLY FUCK THAT WAS AWESOME, that's going to pave over a lot of the rough patches that happened 12 hours of gameplay...

ago, but a lackluster (Or right field sucker punch of wtf) ending is only going to reinforce them and make them stand out.

There's a reason I tend not to write these sorts of stories, and it's because I know that no matter what I come up with at the end....

.... it will probably not live up to the amazing speculation that the hints along the way spurred.

And you can use that to your advantage as a story-teller for sure, as reinforcement of the mundanity of the situation if you're telling that kind of story,...

... or as a red-herring so that when you jank the wheel to the left with something even crazier and cooler the audience goes OH SHIT I DIDN"T EVEN SEE THAT COMING! HELL YAH!

But pulling that off is so so so hard to do properly, and it's an even greater shame when you have a property like Prey that gets it so close to amazing and then just doesn't even try to pull it together at the end and just let's it all go pick up sticks.

And the greater shame is that, that's just what's expected because it's a video game. You can't pull off a psychological mystery thriller as a video game. Of course you just throw a giant boss at the end that by killing it deus ex machina's saving the earth.

It's just a video game who cares.

Right?

@threadreaderapp unroll